The “It City” moniker presents Nashville as a booming market, open for business and ready for development. Alternative narratives posit the emergence of a “second” Nashville alongside the prosperous one that is characterized by economic inequity, social injustice, and gentrification. Indeed, this second Nashville exemplifies place as a creation of global capitalism, racism and patriarchy (Smith 1996; Lefebvre 1974; Harvey 1996; Massey 1994). While this structural lens provides important context and is critical to our understanding of the city system, its writing of the city under-represents its permeability, multiplicity, and unfinished nature, and possibility for its reimagination (Massey 1994; Gibson-Graham 2006). As spatial theories offer, cities are made and remade, assembled, and the fluid creation of its constituents (Neely & Samura 2011; Soja 1996; Deleuze & Guattari 1987). The present study considers this third place-making process and traces it through the discourse and behaviors of residents and stakeholders in a Nashville neighborhood. Adopting a critical place inquiry lens (Tuck & McKenzie 2014) using depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, I explore the ways that these actors preserve and create place in the context of urban change. Specifically, I ask, what are resident and stakeholder place meanings and attachments in relation to the neighborhood and what behaviors do they enact that reflect these definitions and relationships. Further, I consider how the process of everyday place making reflects the construction of, following the framework of Neely and Samura (2011), racial space. This research intends to contribute to a deeper understanding of urban systems, reframe residents as generators of place not simply inhabitants of gentrifying neighborhoods, and offer an alternative approach to conceptualizing the booming but fragmented city.
