Determining the Alternate Case Scenario

A Report to the Region, pg 14 – View the “Report to the Region”, PDF

During the workshops in October 2001, we asked residents to help in developing different growth scenarios based on current trends and desirable alternatives. Participants used large-scale maps of the region to redistribute such factors as population, development and housing across the region while maintaining the numbers of forecasted growth. This second set of workshops produced three distinct growth scenarios. Each contained alternate growth patterns we would prefer to see in the future to avoid the problems associated with the Base Case scenario.

Three distinct growth scenarios emerged from the October 2001 workshops:

• Seventeen percent of the resulting maps show a “Dispersed Development” pattern—similar to our current growth patterns, but with more concentric growth around cities and more compact land uses. While the overall pattern of development is not different from existing conditions, it uses less land than Base Case trends suggest.
• Thirty-six percent of the maps show “Regional Cities”— two distinct clusters of development in the Nashville-Gallatin- Murfreesboro areas and the Clarksville area. Other cities were developed in a fairly concentric fashion. While some participants placed housing between cities in the greater Nashville area, several others developed density gradients between cities using the “Rural Conservation” development type in order to retain the appearance of countryside between cities. These maps had a strong openspace component, avoiding the Highland Rim and the riparian (river bank) areas near the Cumberland River and local streams and farmland at the edges of the region.
• Forty-seven percent of the maps emphasize “City Centered” development— a distinct pattern of redeveloping city and town centers, concentric growth around cities, separation between cities and open space with results similar to the “Regional Cities” maps.

The following graphic is a compilation of recommendations from the “City Centered” and “Regional Cities” maps, which represents 83 percent of the participants. The assemblage results in the following differences from the Base Case scenario:

1. Uses less land to accommodate projected growth development

2. Provides a greater variety of housing types

3. Locates jobs in existing centers and downtowns

4. Focuses new jobs on transit lines or in new industrial sites

 

These workshop results define a consensus Alternative that allows more open space, more access to that open space, less automobile traffic, and cities that retain their individual qualities while not growing together. We will refer to this as the Alternative Case scenario in future discussions.