No. 9 – April 28, 2022

 

Hi First name / there, 

 

I visited Nashville for the first time last weekend, and I’m already sad I wasn’t there longer. This was a last-minute trip for me – I was lucky enough to tag along with my friend Anela from Feed the Malik on a work trip, one of the many perks of her Magic at the Margins community!

 

I was struck by a couple of things while there. First, there were a lot of tourists, particularly white tourists; the downtown area honestly had Las Vegas strip vibes on Saturday. This probably shouldn’t have been a surprise, since Nashville has been crowned the bachelorette party capital of the nation. While drinking in the street in matching shirts is extremely not my thing, I understand the appeal (this is literally what I did with my sorority in college). 

 

But here’s why it struck me so intensely. As we wrapped up our visit to the National Museum of African American Music, tears in our eyes from the deeply moving experience we’d just had, we had to weave through crowds of screaming drunk people and a man dressed as a bush waiting to jump out and scare unsuspecting passersby. (As a Northern Californian who experienced the original Bush Man personally, I found the bush particularly offensive lol.)

 

That contrast of rich Black history amid a crush of (mostly white) tourists hit me hard. To be clear, Davidson County, which contains Nashville, is about 65% white and 27% Black according to the Census. It’s a relatively white Southern city. But those steps out of the museum were… a lot. For a smaller city that’s trying to bring investment to help grow its economy, big hoards of tourists can be a dream come true! But as Anne Helen Peterson puts it: 

I highly recommend the remainder of this article, as it’s a thoughtful, well-researched deep dive into this strange new reality for the Country Music Capital. 

 

Nashville, like a lot of American cities, is changing. Throughout the pandemic, its real estate market went into superdrive. Tech companies like Amazon and Oracle, chasing lower tax rates, lure highly skilled (and highly paid) workers to the area. As in the country at large, Nashville can’t build homes fast enough. It’s getting more and more expensive to live there.

 

Here’s some perspective on where things are at in Nashville: 

 

 

I want to hone in on those investor buyers for a minute. There’s a lot of nuance here that we won’t have space to get into today, but suffice it to say, I don’t think that all investors are bad. 

 

I shared this in my Instagram post, but “investors” means anyone who bought a home without the intention of making it their primary residence — that’s anyone from BlackRock to house flippers to your cousin who is trying to build their Airbnb business. 

 

But what is clear is that investors tend to target certain neighborhoods. Their goal is, of course, to turn a profit. So naturally, they look for homes that are perhaps undervalued. The map below from the Washington Post depicts the neighborhoods where investors bought most intensely in Nashville: 

Now comparing those same zip codes in a Census analysis over the last five years, you might notice that there’s some overlap with the map below. 

Homes in Black neighborhoods are historically, presently, and systematically undervalued. 

 

The map above shows zip codes in Nashville based on their total Black or African American population. The 37218 zip code is 72.66% Black or African American. Based on the Post’s analysis above, 32% of homes purchased in that zip code last year were purchased by investors. Other neighboring Black-majority zip codes saw similarly high rates of investor buyers. 

 

The issue here is that Black people lose twice. They often pay more for their homes, thanks to higher mortgage rates, and have to sell them for less because they are undervalued. 

 

This story isn’t unique to Nashville, of course. But as a resident of Northwest Washington, D.C., it’s been a while since I’ve seen such stark neighborhood change up close. Shiny, new townhouses seemed to sprout up all over central Nashville, next to low-rise buildings and old single-family homes. This isn’t on its face a bad thing; just because something is new doesn’t mean is for the “luxury” class, and we do generally need more dense housing in cities. Still, it’s unsettling to walk around a neighborhood and wonder what did this place used to be, and what are they trying to turn it into. 

While reading a beautiful exhibit about jazz’s contribution to music in the National Museum of African American Music, a rush of almost exclusively white teenagers suddenly flooded the halls – a high school or middle school class on a field trip, probably. They were generally pretty annoying and loud, but whatever, I was 14 once. As Anela and I waited in line for the rap battle interactive exhibit (lol seriously), a group of teenage girls started to encroach. At first, it seemed like they only wanted to see what was happening in the booth. But when they skipped the line and walked into the booth in front of us, another Black museum-goer remarked, “What is this, privileged day?” 

 

White people, in a Black space. No deference, no regard. Whatever space they are in becomes their space. When I think about those bach parties running drunk through the street, flooding into non-tourist restaurants around town to split their brunch bill 14 ways, this is what’s on my mind. The city is changing quickly, but for whom? 

 

Until next week,

🧡 Dominique

 

PS – I'm sorry this is a day late this week! For everyone who warned me that grad school would take a lot out of me… you were right! 😂

Next edition of Design Office Hours is May 4! Bring those little design questions that have been bugging you and you can pick my brain in a group setting. 

 

In full transparency, I plan to shift away from this type of event in favor of an article club (like a book club, but lower stakes). Be on the lookout for more details on that soon!