The honest answer is: most of Nashville. The city’s overall Walk Score is 29 out of 100, placing it 48th among large US cities. That puts Nashville below Atlanta (49), below New Orleans (58), and in the company of cities built entirely around the car. A 20-minute drive from downtown drops you into landscapes where sidewalks disappear, strip malls dominate every arterial road, and walking to a grocery store is not a viable option for most residents.
Here is where you will need a car, and why.
The Suburbs That Are Inside Davidson County
Antioch sits in southeast Nashville and consistently ranks among the city’s least walkable areas. The corridors along Nolensville Pike and Hickory Hollow Parkway are stacked with big-box retail, drive-throughs, and parking lots. There is no coherent pedestrian infrastructure connecting neighborhoods to commercial areas. Antioch is car-only.
Bellevue on the west side is similar. After the Bellevue Center mall closed in 2008, the area lost even the illusion of a walkable commercial core. Residents drive to everything: groceries, restaurants, schools. The Walk Score is in the low-to-mid 20s across most of the area.
Donelson and Hermitage in east Davidson County were developed as mid-century suburbs and remain fully car-dependent. The WeGo Star commuter train does stop at Donelson Station, but that gets you to downtown one-way; it does not make Donelson itself walkable. Grocery stores, restaurants, and everyday errands all require a car.
Madison along Gallatin Pike has a commercial corridor but almost no pedestrian infrastructure along it. Wide lanes, fast traffic, no shade, broken or absent sidewalks. The Walk Score for most of Madison is below 30.
Bordeaux and Whites Creek in north Nashville have even fewer amenities in walking range. These areas are almost entirely residential with long distances to commercial nodes.
Old Hickory and Hermitage at the far eastern edge of Davidson County score near zero for walkability. These neighborhoods function as exurbs that happen to fall within city limits.
Green Hills: The Affluent Exception That Still Requires a Car
Green Hills sits 4 miles south of downtown, contains The Mall at Green Hills (the city’s upscale shopping destination), and has a Walk Score of 30. The area around the mall is built for cars, with wide surface roads and no walkable street grid. You can drive to excellent restaurants and stores, but you cannot walk between them without crossing arterials with no pedestrian accommodation. Green Hills is a destination you drive to, move around within by car, and drive home from.
The Suburbs Outside Davidson County
Brentwood, Franklin, Spring Hill, Nolensville, Hendersonville, Gallatin, Mount Juliet, and Murfreesboro are all separate municipalities where car dependency is total. These account for hundreds of thousands of people in the greater Nashville metro area. None have meaningful transit connections. Franklin has a small downtown that is walkable once you are there, but getting to it requires a car.
Why This Matters
Nashville’s car dependency is not just a lifestyle inconvenience. It creates real costs: the average Nashville household spends significantly more on transportation than households in more walkable cities. INRIX data shows Nashville drivers lose 63 hours per year to congestion, at a cost of roughly $1,128 per driver annually. When every errand requires a car, traffic compounds.
The city has invested in bike infrastructure and the WeGo transit network, but neither fundamentally changes the calculus for the vast majority of Nashville residents. Outside of the walkable neighborhoods in the urban core (East End, Downtown, Germantown, Hillsboro Village, 12 South, The Gulch), a car is not optional. It is the infrastructure.
If you are visiting Nashville and staying in any of these outer areas for cost reasons, budget time and money for rideshares or a rental car. There is no workaround.
Sources
- Walk Score: walkscore.com, Nashville city score 29/100; Green Hills neighborhood Walk Score 30
- Neighborhoods.com: “The 5 Most Walkable Neighborhoods In Nashville”
- NashToday: “Nashville ranks as a ‘car dependent city’ on Walk Score’s walkability meter,” January 2022
- INRIX 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard: Nashville congestion cost $1,128/driver annually
- Walk Score individual neighborhood pages: Donelson, Green Hills, Antioch-Priest Lake