Some questions about East Nasty? (Cleveland, Gallatin: apartments, neighborhoods, income)

[0'Farrell]

1. Will is completely revitalize/gentrify? Meaning will all the working class eventually get priced out?
2. What is the grittiest part of East Nasty? What has been least affected by the revitalization? What has been most affected and changed?

[nashvols]

Originally Posted by 0'Farrell

1. Will is completely revitalize/gentrify? Meaning will all the working class eventually get priced out?
2. What is the grittiest part of East Nasty? What has been least affected by the revitalization? What has been most affected and changed?

I don't think East Nashville will ever rival West End/Richland/Whitland in terms of popularity and pricing out the working class.

For one, the area still has a big block of projects (notably Cayce), and some of the projects and ratty apartments that have been replaced or revitalized still target lower income/working class families. I think the better question would be, will East Nashville as a whole ever be "cleaned up." And the answer to that is a definite maybe. While huge strides have been made in neighborhood areas, and there are large sections of "safe" and gentrified areas of East Nashville (Lockeland Springs being the most notable), there is still the issue of the Gallatin Road/Main Street and Dickerson Road commercial districts, which to outsiders would still look quite run down and ghettoish.

It seems to me that a lot of the cool and hip places are just off from the main commercial districts, with the exception of a small area around Woodland St. and 5 points, which backs up to Main. There have been efforts made, and I think the Gallatin Road commercial strip is safer than it used to be, but the whole area has a long way to go in terms of appearance.

The area west of Ellington Parkway lags far behind the areas to the east (and especially the areas east and south of Gallatin Road/Main St)...but there have been some efforts made, especially in the Cleveland Park and McFerrin Park neighborhoods. Eventually I think they will rebound as well...but how far?

The other issue is exactly what do you consider "East Nashville" to be? In its smallest definition, you might just consider it to be the areas on the East Bank within about 2-3 miles of downtown. Kind of the "core" of East Nashville. That area has roughly 34,000 people. If you expand it further to include all the areas east of I-65 and south of Briley Pkwy (including the Inglewood, Rosebank, and Maplewood areas...basically the entire Gallatin and Dickerson Road business districts up to Briley Pkwy), that area includes about 60,000 people. A city-data poster previously informed me that the areas west of I-65, along Brick Church Pike over to Whites Creek Pike and the Haynes area (a predominantly black neighborhood) used to fall under the definition of East Nashville, but has since been shifted to the North Nashville area by the media (this area would actually be in the northeast quadrant of town if you orient yourself to the downtown street grid, which is not aligned to true north). This would push the population to about 70,000.

What I'm getting at is that East Nashville is an enormous area, by various definitions...and a lot of it, especially the historically black areas, are still very impoverished. I doubt that the entire area will ever be gentrified. There's just too much land to cover.

The interesting demographic shift that seems to be taking place is that more whites are moving to the "core" area of East Nashville while more blacks and Hispanics are moving to the outer areas of East Nashville.

But really, there are a lot of changes going on around the city demographically. Here's a cool map if you want to explore.

Interactive map: 30 years of census data - The Washington Post


As to the second part of your post...I don't know the area intimately, but I would say the area that is grittiest is along Dickerson Road, and the area that has changed the most is the East End and Lockeland Springs area.