Nashville Organized for Action & Hope (NOAH) http://about.me/NOAH.TN.

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Just Growth or Just Growth: A Regional Summit by NOAH (September 2013) Recently, Nashville was called the It city in a New York Times article. Economic growth, low unemployment, public works projects, and a powerful health care industry are all irrefutable signs that Nashville is on the move. Music City is a magnate for artists, music companies and tourists. But is the growth lifting all boats or just the usual suspects? Will this growth turn Nashville not only into the happenin' city, but a just city? Will expansion lead to bigger buildings, more millionaires, more disparity between people and neighborhoods or will it lead to more fairness, more equity, more justice? In other words will it be just growth or just growth? This year celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of a bold and courageous step by leaders and citizens of the region: the creation of a unified Metro government for the whole of Davidson County. While most cities in the country have been devastated by urban sprawl, a bleeding of resources from the urban core and destructive competition between municipalities, Nashville has been able to capture growth and develop as a unified region. Many scholars would attribute Nashvilles present vitality, at least in part, to this bold decision made fifty years ago. It has meant that, with one school system, there would not be huge disparities of resources to educate children, and with one government, there could be rational land use, planning and infrastructure expenditure without petty competition between municipal governments. Other major metropolitan regions would love to adapt the Nashville model but cannot do so because of entrenched political and parochial interests. They know a unified region, like Nashville, has a competitive edge. Among the many motives for constructing a unified government was the desire to curtail pockets of dire poverty and great wealth through a system where wealth is more fairly distributed. Has Nashville succeeded? Not as well as it could have. A map comparing areas of poverty before 1963 and now reveals poverty and disparity have remained very much intact. Gentrification has resulted in more urban removal than urban renewal. The loss in the last decade of over 50% of the African American population in the upscale 12 South area is just one example. Too often, development does not address poverty. It simply moves the poordenying them benefits of rising property values, better schools and more job opportunities. We are celebrating not only the fiftieth anniversary of Metro government, but also the fiftieth anniversary of Nashvilles dramatic civil rights campaigns. Like some of the goals of Metro government, some of the goals of the civil rights movement have yet to be realized. We still have segregated schools and neighborhoods, unequal access to jobs, housing, and health care, and a prison system that is rightly described as the new Jim Crow. The goal of the Nashville Next visioning process is to create a roadmap for future development. Will it be designed by the usual suspects to benefit the usual suspects, or will it be designed to benefit all people and communities of Nashville? Will it include policies that create a more equitable school system, that require developers to include low and moderate-income housing in every new development, that combine both government and private building projects with aggressive job training and job placement for low-income residents? Will this roadmap include reform of our prison system that devastates Nashville neighborhoods while bloating the private prison industrys bottom line? In other words, will it be just growth, or just growth. Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) is organizing a regional summit to gather together leaders from religious, business, academic, non-profit, and political sectors to begin envisioning Nashville as a new kind of It city: one with an inclusive, sustainable, and innovative economy, a diverse and vibrant music community, and a commitment to eliminating poverty through living wage jobs, educational opportunities, and safe, livable neighborhoods for all its residents.