Advocacy Agenda

2024-2025

Our Advocacy Agenda reflects the current status of local issues and highlights more specific milestones we hope to achieve this fiscal year. While we work with communities throughout Tennessee and the region, our advocacy efforts are based primarily in our city of Nashville.

The Agenda is always rooted in our Guiding Principles for Civic Design. Since the Principles are often extremely interconnected, advocating for one issue often leads to a combined advocacy effort in an adjacent issue.  

TRANSPORTATION

Develop an equitable and desirable transportation infrastructure

HOUSING

Supply housing options for diverse incomes and lifestyles that complement the neighborhood

LOCAL ECONOMIES

Promote community-supported, local economies to be equitable and sustainable.

Transportation

A transit referendum to provide dedicated funding for Transit in Davidson County is going to be on the general election ballot in November 2024 via the IMPROVE Act.

Why Now? We cannot achieve equitable and desirable transportation without first getting dedicated funding. This shows our city’s commitment to this goal and thus opens up additional federal funding resources to continue to improve our transit network. Our team actively participated in the development of the TIP, which addresses our ideal goal where, “the transportation system balances the needs of pedestrians of all abilities, micromobility, mass transit and automobiles.” We will be advocating for streetscape improvements in the plan that makes walking, rolling, and transit easier and more equitable. Efficiency and transit prioritization are critical elements to our advocacy that could improve transit speed over single-occupant vehicles making the choice of transit a more desirable one.  

Success!

Advocate for Dedicated Funding for Transit

Active Effort

Support the Implementation of Dedicated Transit Lanes on Key Corridors 

  • For the Gallatin Pike and Main Street Project, we have had meeting with with Kimley-Horn and NDOT who have been running the study. We have provided our feedback for the designs that included Dedicated Transit Lanes, promoted their community engagement events, and offered advice around stakeholder engagement.

  • During an interview for the Community Corner session hosted by Brother Love on Lightning 100, Veronica Foster and Eric Hoke spoke to the benefits of transportation improvements that would be successful if the Transit Improvement Program ballot measure is passed and implemented.

  • The Civic Design Center has been a member of the coalition, Connect Mid-TN, since its founding in May 2018 after the failure of the most recent transit referendum vote. The goal of the group is to collectively advocate for dedicated funding for transit in order to better improve our city overall.

Housing

Our Housing Guiding Principle has been at the top of our agenda the last few years due to the growing housing crisis in our growing city. This year, housing was the #2 concern of community members as determined by the Imagine Nashville data.

Why Now? Council Members have put forth bills this year that would address some of the concerns. Finally, in a year of transit and zoning reform on the table, it would behoove Nashville to put forth policy that supports the desirable transit system we seek, and the solution to that is density along high-capacity corridors.  

Our Metro Nashville Zoning policy is over 25 years old, which means that most new developments seek SP “Specific Plan” zoning because what a developer seeks to build is not compliant to the existing zoning of most areas in the Urban Zoning Overlay (UZO). Many Nashvillians believe that our city's growth is unchecked, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that we are rezoning parcel by parcel rather than in a holistic fashion. Nashville Next proposed critical zoning changes that would accomplish abundant housing, but since its release in 2017, we have yet to codify it. Now is the time to address big changes to Nashville’s housing policy, and we will be supporting the bills that align with our Guiding Principle goals for higher density near centers, multi-family homes on a single lot to support consistent neighborhood identity, and equitable zoning reform.  

Active Effort

Advocate for Zoning that Supports Missing Middle Housing (duplex, triplex, and quadplexes)

Active Effort

Advocate for Policy that Incentivizes Higher Density Transit-Oriented Development 

Local Economies

As of 2023, NDOT released two new permits that could be utilized by the community to reclaim public space, create safer streets, and foster thriving local business centers in Nashville.

Why Now? The new Tactical Urbanism and Parklet permits are not only great assets for safer infrastructure in general, but also for businesses building community around local commerce. Through our Parklet Design Competition, we have supported 2 businesses willing to reclaim parking for pedestrians, but the permitting has been confusing for all parties. The permitting process for tactical urbanism has been difficult for us to navigate that we can’t imagine how the general population would feel when submitting their own application. If we are to encourage local businesses to be better stewards of their own neighborhoods, it is essential that we solve this permitting challenge.  

The Jefferson Street activation project is a great opportunity to utilize tactical urbanism as an additional method of placekeeping, whether that is through a pop-up market or public art.  

Active Effort

Work directly with Metro departments to provide feedback on Tactical Urbanism and Parklet permitting processes, and help refine them

Active Effort

Use Jefferson Street activation project to amplify the need for more commerce on Jefferson Street through community placekeeping

  • This is our 2nd year working directly with NDOT to successfully implement another permanent parklet in Nashville. The permit process has been adjusted multiple times, so our job has been to ensure that the system is accessible to business owners as we continue to advocate for more street level activation.

  • After launching the new Tactical Urbanism permit, which we originally created for Public Works over a decade ago, we are encouraging local businesses and community members to apply for the permit. We have a partnership with NDOT to help support applicants that don't have the resources they need to accurately design the intervention for which they are seeking funding.