Challenge

In 2019, Nashville had been growing rapidly for over a decade, and this only exacerbated existing challenges around infrastructure, mobility, and urban design. The main difficulty was that addressing these challenges required dialogue between public and private, for and not-for-profit sectors, as well as the citizens themselves.

Process

As part of Nashville Design Week, we saw an opportunity to bring together a group of Nashvillians to co-create a Nashville that is rooted in both current and future needs. We guided a group of 25 Nashvillians through a full-day co-creation workshop, using data and insights around 4 main storylines for a growing Nashville and trends for the future of cities. During the first Nashville Design Week. Lena, Jim, and a small group of change-makers offered a full-day workshop to co-create a vision that centers Nashvillians’ needs. They recognized that there was a need to be more intentional collectively to ensure well-being, health, and happiness for not just its visitors and powerful tourism industry but, most importantly, Nashvillians.

Impact

During the session, we co-created a set of future visions for citizens and decision-makers to work towards together. In addition, participants learned about new ways to tackle the work in their respective parts of the city - whether that be as citizens or as decision-makers—which helps drive change at a broader scale and with a wider impact.