the good/bad neighborhood thread to end all good/bad neighborhood threads! (Nashville/surrounding) (Franklin: neighborhoods, tile)

[prettylittlecurls]

I haven't been to Nash (yet) but I've done tons of searches, and this is what I've come up with. (Figured I'd share my obsessive researching finds with everyone )

Good but expensive:
The Gulch
12th South (same as the Gulch??)
Belmont?
Hillsboro Village?

Suburban, family friendly:
Franklin
Hendersonville
Belle Meade

Safe, trendy; good for young professionals:
Green Hills
Berry Hill
Sylvan Park
West End
Bellevue

Maybe sketchy by some standards but trendy:
East Nashville neighborhoods
Germantown
Inglewood

Avoid due to crime:
Madison
Hope Gardens
Antioch
North Nashville neighborhoods

locals, what am I missing or wrong about? not sure where simply "downtown" goes.

[nashvols]

I've never met anyone who actually lives in Berry Hill.

[prettylittlecurls]

hmm so it's more businesses/shopping etc.?

[nashvols]

Originally Posted by prettylittlecurls

hmm so it's more businesses/shopping etc.?

Almost exclusively. Mostly small businesses....professionals, recording industry, restaurants, and some industrial/warehouse type stuff...a few tile companies.

Only about 530 people actually live there.

[steindle]

I wouldn't really put Madison on par with (a lot of) North Nashville by a long shot.

[Edit: Also, as nashvols points out below, this is kind of a random smattering of neighborhoods, some of which are too large to generalize (e.g., East Nashville, North Nashville, Antioch), and some of which are so small it's odd to even count them (e.g., Berry Hill).]

[nashvols]

Also, you forgot Donelson and Hermitage, which are both pretty good sized areas of town.

Franklin (Williamson Co.) and Hendersonville (Sumner Co.) are both outside of Nashville.

Belle Meade and Berry Hill are separate towns within Davidson County (as are Oak Hill, Forest Hills, Goodlettsville, and formerly Lakewood). The other areas you mentioned range from small neighborhoods (like Hope Gardens) to large sections of town (like Antioch).

If I were to list what I would call the "major" sections of town, they would be:
Downtown, East Nashville, North Nashville, West Nashville, West End (different from West Nashville) Donelson, Hermitage, Madison, Antioch, Green Hills, Joelton, and Bellevue.

Some more commonly known names of areas (that are generally smaller/more specific as to the location -- occasionally located within one of the "umbrella" areas listed above) would include Hillsboro Village, West Meade, Germantown, Crieve Hall, Paragon Mills, Percy Priest, Waverly (aka Belmont), Old Hickory, Rivergate, Pasquo, Scottsboro, Bordeaux, 12th South, The Gulch, SoBro, Inglewood, Lockeland Springs, Edgefield...and there are others. Some of these aren't huge areas, or are relatively new names for places (like The Gulch, SoBro) that didn't really have names before...but have become widely known due to their development and publicity.

There are a number of smaller or lesser known neighborhoods (about a million in East Nashville alone)...but sometimes their borders aren't agreed on or hard to define. Take Antioch, for example. Antioch is more or less defined by its zip code that covers a good 20-25 square miles and 75,000 people...but since a lot of the individual neighborhood names in the southeast side of the county aren't well known, almost the entire area has become known (by one source or another) as "Antioch"...and covering close to 200,000 people. This causes a bit of confusion when people say "Antioch is a bad area!" Which part of Antioch? Hickory Hollow?

Also, 12th South and the Gulch are not the same, though they occupy the same street. The Gulch is immediately adjacent to downtown. 12th South is an area that is south of Wedgewood running to I-440, a good 2+ miles from the Gulch.

[BirdieBelle]

If I'd never even been to a city, I would never dare to classify it in any way based merely on stuff I'd read online. Journalists have been fired from their jobs for doing that kind of "reporting."

Besides, a lot of the stuff on this forum is merely opinion. There are folks here who post reliable, factual info. But there are also people on here who want to steer people away from their neighborhood and intentionally post misleading info. There also are trolls who just want to spread hate/fear about their issue of the day.

Now it's going to take Nashvols all day to sort this out.

[prettylittlecurls]

Ha, sorry. I was just trying to organize what I found in a way that made sense to me. I wasn't saying I figured it out.. just was hoping to get clarification and that in the end it would be a good representation of Nashville neighborhoods.

I'll go away now. :P

[rossc]

The only one on your avoid list that is mostly problematic is North Nashville. The others have good areas, you just don't hear people complaining about them.

Having some experience with metro law enforcement, I would live in a nice part of Antioch before any part of East Nashville.

[vivelafrance]

Hope Gardens has experienced a lot of gentrification, rebuilding, etc. I wouldn't put it in the same category as all of North Nashville. It's more like Germantown and Salemtown.