Forty years across the full development and civic life cycle, planning through investment. Practicing civic sensemaking across silos.
Nashville, TN
Joined July 2011
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Chasing the Unplanned City
"Up Zoning" is not a plan - it’s a tax trap.
At every Council meeting, we hear the same panicked talking points about a massive housing shortage.
Chasing a phantom population boom is the most expensive way to build and burden. When we overshoot the target, the pipe still gets laid and the fire houses built even if the growth never arrives. And the people already living here are left carrying the cost in their tax rate and rent.
Anybody can hit the target when they spend enough to make it bigger, and overshooting is easy when you are spending other people's money.
How big is the city we are actually chasing? I opened up the Council's favorite housing statistic and found a population forecast inside it. Run three ways, it builds three different cities. Only one matches how Nashville is actually growing.
Your bill follows their number. Here is why nobody will name the number.
builttothink.substack.com/p/…?
Chris Remke retweeted
Nostalgic memes spread misleading messages, like:
“Once, families could own a home & send their kids to college on one income.”
But the homes were smaller.
Most kids didn’t go to college.
The memes ignore facts.
We give them to you:
"We need 90,000 new homes in ten years."
Nashville's officials have said this so many times it stopped sounding like a claim and started sounding like a fact, the same trick that convinced a generation that corn flakes were "part of a complete breakfast."
It's not a housing count. It's a population forecast in a housing costume, and I spent a year asking Metro to show me the math. They never did. So I did it myself. Three doors. Two Zonks. One car.
Every number is theirs, with pages cited. Come on down.
#Nashville #NashvilleHousing
Nashville’s own housing ask overshoots Nashville’s own target by 57,104 homes. The strategy’s implied destination: 417,204 units by 2034. The podium’s ask: 90,000 more on top of what’s already standing, which lands at 474,308. Same documents, same math, no reconciliation anywhere. Every figure sourced. 🔗
builttothink.substack.com/p/…
#MetroMath #Nashvillepolitics
"Metro-Davidson urgently needs 90,000 more homes by 2034."
Can we take a beat?
If you compare Metro's target against current Census data, you get two completely different answers. The difference isn't a debate over modeling or zoning theory. It comes down to one unstated line on a ledger.
A quick breakdown of the math:
#NashvilleRealEstate #MetroCouncil
Here is what happened: Metro's target is 388,000 households by 2034.
Add their 7% vacancy target, and we need 417,200 total housing units.
According to the Census Bureau, Davidson County already had 389,379 standing units in July 2025.
That leaves roughly 27,800 units to build over the next 9 years (~3,100/yr), not 9,000/yr.
No population debate or complex modeling exercise required. This is pure arithmetic from Metro’s own published files.
Stating the year the counting starts costs nothing and brings clarity to the entire housing discussion.
Read the full reconstruction and download the working file on Built to Think:
builttothink.substack.com/p/…
How many more housing units does Davidson County actually need?
“90,000 more homes by 2034” has become the trump card whenever anyone questions Nashville's housing policy.
Fine. Let's use the UHS's own benchmark: 388,000 households by 2034.
Add the UHS 7% vacancy target, and Davidson County needs about 417,200 total housing units.
The Census Bureau says we already had 389,379 units in July 2025, before counting what has been built since.
417,200 − 389,379 = about 27,800 units remaining to 2034.
That is roughly 3,000 units a year, not the 9,000-per-year number being telegraphed from Metro Council.
Nashville has already shown it can build more than 11,000 units in a year under today's rules.
So spare me the podium math.
27,800 is not 90,000. (#overzoning)
No population debate. No modeling exercise. No zoning theory required.
This is arithmetic, not ideology.
Welcome to #MetroMath
Full working file and sources:
builttothink.substack.com/p/…
Nashville's 90,000-home housing emergency has been checked against the census, the state's own population projection, and the city's own affordability charts.
It kept its job.
Part Two of The Great Nashville Housing Paradox. Out today, free.
builttothink.substack.com/p/…
#nashvillepolitics #housingcrisis
Ready. Fire. Aim.
Metro's studies said Nashville must build 90,000 homes by 2034. The census just handled the aiming part: Davidson County already has more homes standing than the households forecast for 2034. Eight years early.
On Metro's own math, all that's left to build is the vacancy.
builttothink.substack.com/p/…
#Nashvillehousing #Nashvillepolitics
The builders went exactly where the policy pointed, and they delivered. No. 1 per capita in America, all 50 largest metros, for new for-sale homes built near the city center. Not apartments. Small houses and townhomes. Now 1.9 homes for every resident in Davidson, man, woman, and child. The Council says we need 90,000 more.
There are so many more disconnects from reality; there is simply too much to cover. Example: What happens to the tax rate when RN and RL are used? The state says, tax the potential; Metro says, but it is still great for a single-family resident.
If the housing numbers were driven by new jobs created in Davidson County, and the Planning Department says it wants to house them all, and the builders have already built all of that 90,000 except the vacancy buffer, when do the median price of a housing unit and the median family income merge? That is the promise when you cite teachers, nurses, first responders...
These are just a few of the underlying deficiencies in government groupthink.
Chris Remke retweeted
Listings for sale are now higher than they were in 2012- tells you everything you need to know about Metro's competency.
Ready. Fire. Aim.
Metro's studies said Nashville must build 90,000 homes by 2034. The census just handled the aiming part: Davidson County already has more homes standing than the households forecast for 2034. Eight years early.
On Metro's own math, all that's left to build is the vacancy.
builttothink.substack.com/p/…
#Nashvillehousing #Nashvillepolitics
The Nations' Wall of Murals is on life support.
Tonight, Metro Council votes on an amendment that lets a developer demolish them — no preservation required, no funding, no permit gate.
CM Allen asked twice who pays. Nobody answered.
The Story by a Nation's mural advocate quoted here:
Community-drafted amendment requiring professional preservation of the mural, submitted to the sponsor for consideration without response:
11. The existing mural located on the west façade of the existing structure fronting 60th Ave. N. shall be professionally preserved in place, or professionally removed, relocated, and reinstalled in a publicly viewable location, prior to the issuance of any building permit for development of the site. Prior to the issuance of any building permit for development of the site, a preservation plan shall be developed in consultation with the Mural Preservation Committee, consisting of the 12 original artist(s), or their designated representative(s), the Nations Neighborhood Association, the Metropolitan Arts Commission, and the Council Member for District 20. The preservation plan shall comply with all applicable preservation laws, including the Visual Artists Rights Act. If relocated, the mural shall remain publicly viewable following reinstallation. The cost of preservation, removal, relocation, and reinstallation shall be the responsibility of the developer.
What we got:
Sponsor-drafted amendment leaving the mural’s fate to the developer, with no enforceable requirement to preserve it, introduced one day before third and final reading:
11. The existing mural on the west façade of the existing structure fronting 60th Ave N. shall be preserved and reused or repurposed within the new development, returned or donated to the artists, or otherwise relocated to another publicly viewable area.
Act now ↓ open.substack.com/pub/builtt…
#NashvillePolitics #MuralsDown
SO FAR, Planning and the Council Bills say, Tear It Down...
Will today bring the mystery amendment with enough teeth to require the developer to fund a collaboration with the artists and the community that preserves the murals?
Thirteen days ago, from the Council floor, the member who sponsors this rezoning promised an amendment to save the mural. Since then, the community has seen nothing of it, no official or informal release, only a single sentence caught on screen for about three seconds during a Channel 5 broadcast. If the full text appears tomorrow morning, hours before the vote, do not mistake it for a rescue: that is the eleventh-hour move itself, a finished document handed down with no time for the community, the artists, or a single outside reviewer to read it, question it, or make it stronger....
open.substack.com/pub/builtt…
#Thenation #Nashvillepolitics
