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10 changes in Nashville in the past 10 years

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Some years ago, Betty McLeod, a Murfreesboro native, who married Duncan McLeod, a professor at Oxford University in England, told me that “’Nashville changes more in five years than Oxford does in one hundred.”

Having been to Oxford, I agree with her. Just for fun, I’ve listed 10 ways Nashville has dramatically changed in the last decade. See if you agree with my choices.

  1. Vanderbilt’s becoming one of the the two leading heart transplant hospitals in the world, alongside New York City’s Mount Sinai.
  2. Belmont University’s remarkable growth in enrollment, facilities and programs.
  3. The replacement of locally owned meat and three restaurants in favor of much more expensive restaurants opened here by restaurateurs from Charleston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York City, Australia and elsewhere.
  4. A sharp acceleration in Nashville law firms being acquired by some of the largest law firms in the nation
  5. The explosive growth of the Nashville, Murfreesboro, Franklin Statistical Area, which had a population in 2024 of more than two million.
  6. The enormous growth of the Nashville International Airport (BNA), “a world-class airport for a world-class city,” which has more than 20,000 paying passengers annually.
  7. Nashville’s new status as the number one destination for bachelorette parties. These are held mostly on lower Broadway, an area which in 2023 produced 25 percent of all liquor taxes collected by the state of Tennessee. Many of the bars and honky tonks there and on Second Avenue North are owned by county music stars.
  8. The division of the 5th Congressional District, represented for more than 30 years by Democrat Jim Cooper. a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Law School graduate, into three congressional districts 5th, 6th and 7th represented by conservative Republicans.
  9. An enormous change in our skyline by the construction of an unprecedented number of high rise apartments, condominiums, office buildings and hotels in downtown, Sobro, the Gulch, Germantown and Midtown.
  10. Increasingly enormous congestion on our roads, a sharp increase in property values due partially to the gentrification of such areas as The Nation, East Nashville, and Germantown, and an acute shortage of low income housing. Addressing these serious problems are Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s highest priorities.

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