How Has East Nashville’s Walkability Changed as the Neighborhood Has Grown?

February 19, 2026

East Nashville’s walkability got better in the places that were already somewhat walkable and worse in the places that weren’t, which is roughly what happens to every gentrifying urban neighborhood.

The Pre-Gentrification Baseline

In the 1990s and early 2000s, East Nashville’s pedestrian infrastructure was unremarkable. Sidewalks existed but were inconsistently maintained. The commercial node at Five Points had a few businesses, but it was not the dense cluster it became. Lockeland Springs and Historic Edgefield had good bones structurally, Victorian grid streets with sidewalks and well-spaced housing, but the amenity layer that makes walking a pleasure was thin.

The neighborhood had a functioning streetcar system in the early 20th century that had been long dismantled by then. What remained was a car-oriented streetscape that served the post-WWII suburban layout that had spread through Inglewood and the outer reaches of Greater East Nashville.

What Growth Did to Walkability

The creative class that moved into East Nashville starting in the 1990s and accelerating in the 2000s brought something simple but important: businesses worth walking to. Margot Cafe & Bar opened in Five Points in the early 2000s and became a destination. The Hip Zipper had been on Forrest Avenue since 1999. These anchor businesses clustered in Five Points created the conditions for the walkable commercial district that exists there today. Grimey’s Records, which opened in Berry Hill in 1999 before eventually moving to East Trinity Lane, was part of the broader music ecosystem that made the east side attractive.

By the 2010s, the corridor from Five Points along Gallatin Avenue, Woodland Street, and Main Street had enough density to sustain genuine pedestrian traffic. The Five Points Alley Shops formalized a cluster of small retailers in one accessible complex. The Fatherland District at 129 S. 11th Street created another walkable shopping destination a few blocks away.

The city invested in streetscape improvements in the most commercial areas: better crosswalks, some additional lighting, bike infrastructure on select streets. Shelby Park, always a 300-acre green space in the neighborhood, got greenway connections that improved pedestrian and cycling access to the Cumberland River.

Where Walkability Declined or Stalled

The irony of growth is that it brought an influx of car-owning residents into a neighborhood that didn’t have the transit infrastructure to absorb them. Parking became a significant local complaint as Five Points filled with visitors who drove in from elsewhere in the city. Street parking on weekend evenings around the bar cluster near the 5 Spot and Dino’s on Gallatin fills completely.

More significantly, rapid development in Cleveland Park, McFerrin Park, and outer Inglewood produced new housing without the commercial density needed to support walking. “Tall and skinny” condos, two new residential units squeezed onto lots previously occupied by smaller homes, went up at scale throughout East Nashville. These added residents without adding walkable destinations proportionate to the growth. The result in these areas is more people with less to walk to.

The WeGo bus system runs routes 4 and 56 through East Nashville connecting to downtown, but frequency hasn’t kept pace with population growth. Most residents still drive or use rideshares for trips outside the immediate Five Points area.

The Pedestrian Bridge Effect

The Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge connecting East Nashville to downtown changed something specific about walkability in the neighborhood: it made the relationship between East Nashville and downtown feel physically real for the first time. Before the bridge’s renovation into a pedestrian-only crossing, the distance between Five Points and Broadway was a car trip. After it, the walk became something people actually do, roughly 20 minutes, and a genuine option for dinner-and-a-show logistics.

This didn’t transform East Nashville into a walkable downtown extension, but it created a literal connection between two parts of the city that had been functionally separate.

The Net Result

The core of East Nashville, the Five Points district and Lockeland Springs, is meaningfully more walkable today than it was twenty years ago, with better sidewalks, more businesses worth walking to, and improved bike infrastructure. The outer neighborhoods are largely unchanged in their car dependency, and in some cases have more residents than before without the pedestrian infrastructure to serve them. The neighborhood grew; its walkability grew unevenly.

Sources

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