Is Nashville a Big City or a Small City?

Nashville is a big city by population and a spread-out one by density. With an estimated 721,074 residents in 2025, it is the 20th largest city in the United States, and its metro area of about 2.2 million people ranks 34th among U.S. metropolitan areas. But those people are spread over about 476 square miles of land, so the city has roughly 1,500 residents per square mile, far fewer than older cities of similar population. That combination is why Nashville can feel like a large city downtown and like a much smaller place a few miles out.

Where Nashville Ranks

Population figures are the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates for the city itself and for metropolitan statistical areas (city file; metro file).

• As a city: 20th, between Denver (740,613, 19th) and Oklahoma City (719,849, 21st). The two spots are close enough to swap between annual estimates.
• As a metro area: 34th, with 2,197,416 people, just behind Indianapolis (2,205,695) and just ahead of Cleveland (2,165,775). Columbus, Kansas City, and Cincinnati are slightly larger.

So by population, Nashville is in the same league as Denver, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Kansas City: a mid-sized major American city, not a small one.

Why It Can Feel Smaller

The answer is land. The Census Bureau’s 2024 place gazetteer gives Nashville-Davidson about 476 square miles of land, because the consolidated Metro government covers almost all of Davidson County, including farmland, forest, and lakeside suburbs. Dividing population by that land area gives a sense of how differently cities of similar size are built:

City	2025 population	Land area (sq mi)	Residents per sq mi
San Francisco	826,079	46.7	about 17,700
Boston	672,973	48.3	about 13,900
Denver	740,613	153.1	about 4,800
Atlanta	529,110	135.3	about 3,900
Charlotte	964,784	311.6	about 3,100
Nashville-Davidson	721,074	475.6	about 1,500
Oklahoma City	719,849	606.5	about 1,200

The figures are calculated from the Census population estimates and the Census Bureau’s 2024 place gazetteer land areas. Citywide density is an average: downtown, Midtown, and the inner neighborhoods are much denser than the outer, more rural parts of the county.

What That Means Day to Day

A spread-out city of 720,000 behaves differently from a compact one of the same size:

• Getting around usually means driving. With people and destinations far apart, most trips beyond the urban core are car trips, and bus service has to cover a very large area. Whether a visitor needs a car is answered in do you need a car in Nashville.
• Neighborhoods feel like separate towns. Germantown, East Nashville, 12 South, and Green Hills each have their own commercial strip, which gives parts of the city a small-town scale even though the whole is large.
• Downtown is concentrated. The tourist core around Lower Broadway, the arenas, and the convention center is compact enough to walk, which is where Nashville feels most like a big city. Which areas work on foot is covered in which Nashville neighborhoods are walkable.

Planning a Visit Around the City’s Size

Expect big-city attractions, crowds, and prices downtown, and expect to need a car or a rideshare to reach almost anything else. Plan your trip around a base neighborhood rather than “Nashville” as a whole, because the experience changes more from one part of the county to another than the population figure suggests.