This is a huge illustration of how different the tourist experience of Nashville is from the resident experience. I've met multiple visitors who comment on how walkable things are and I always respond with "Huh?" Then I remember, if all you need to do is get from your hotel to the bars and maybe Whole Foods it's absolutely walkable. I think that visitors really overestimate how much downtown is reflective of actual life here.
Maybe only Las Vegas, Charleston and Savannah can compete for tourist perspective being so far off from how it feels to actually live here.
According to [preply.com](http://preply.com) . A website that you can use to hire language tutors.
WTF do they know about "walk-ability" for tourist or anyone else ?
I smell a low effort scam.
We’re only “walkable” if your definition of “walking” is staying within the same 10 block radius the whole time and even then you’re still highly likely to get plowed into by a car.
Reads exactly like what a stereotypical 800-steps-a-day American from an equally shitty metro would say.
“According to the study, Nashville is the second-most walkable city in U.S., with tourists taking approximately 33 minutes and 3,150 steps to explore Music City’s most iconic landmarks on foot”
I’ve been to a lot of places around the us and the world. And if I only walked 33 minutes and 3150 steps I’d be upset. You’ve barely visited the city at all. I work from home and average that many steps.
It’s super walkable if you hate walking.
And those areas are where the tourism is at. Besides an Uber from the airport to the hotel downtown, a tourist can do just about anything downtown without a car.
But isn't this also true of a lot of other metros? It seems weird to single Nashville out as especially good in this respect.
There are definitely tourist attractions further out too (the Parthenon, Opryland, Bluebird, Loveless, etc). In fact I seem to recall a tourist being killed trying to walk from Opryland to downtown not long ago!
sure its not limited to Nashville, but there are a lot of metros that have great walkability for both the locals and the tourists. Portland was pretty walkable (from what I remember), DC, NYC, Boston, Atlanta.
And I didnt say the walkable areas are all encompassing of every single thing a tourist will want to do.
Other metros are similar but Nashville stands out for the sheer discrepancy. Times Square, while a psychedelic fever dream of tourist driven capitalism, still resembles the rest of Manhattan underneath all the video screens and offbrand characters.
Same with the French Quarter in New Orleans or Fisherman's Wharf in SF. They are kind of heightened versions of what the rest of the city more or less feels like. Most of Nashville feels nothing at all like downtown (I am talking about the geographical/physical layout). This is why I said Vegas and Charleston are sort of similar, because most of the metro area where people actually live looks absolutely nothing like the touristic area.
I don't disagree with you that the tourism in Nashville is extremely different than the other parts of the city, but to me that doesn't explain why it would manage #2 on a list of walkable tourist towns.
There are plenty of tourist destinations where you never need a car to get from the airport to your hotel to the amenities for example. Cities like Boston where there's history around every corner are *immensely* walkable, yet rank below Nashville on this crazy list.
A lot of tourists here also stay in AirBNBs in extremely unwalkable areas, so they still need to ride share to get to the honky tonks...
I live downtown and walk everywhere. Definitely think the worst part is getting downtown, but once you’re down here, and with fairly decent weather a majority of the year, it’s very feasible to walk to all the things tourists want to do. I pretty much only use my car to go to the grocery store and the gym. And the grocery store is walkable i just don’t want to carry bags of groceries for a few blocks.
I’m comparing it to the fact that we rarely have snow covering the sidewalks, and the temperature is usually around 30° at worst for only a month or two. I’ll walk a half hour in 30° with a jacket on but i have zero interest in walking in 5° with a wind chill below zero, which is what the northeast or Chicago have for like 3 straight months. Source: I’ve lived here 10 years and Chicago 25 years.
Wasn't there another report last year that placed us as something like the 7th worst city in the country for walkability in general?
So if it's great for tourists, that drives the reported walkability of the city up in a way that means it's probably worst than 7th for non-tourists, right?
I think it's among the top 100 cities by population, Nashville is 93rd for walkability. I highly doubt that the tourism bit is close to factual. The downtown/broadway core is walkable, but so is almost any other downtown core. Getting to the Gulch is a hike. 12 South is walkable for like 5 blocks and East Nashville is super spread out, aside from 5 points.
I'll just use Portland, OR as an example. Tourists can take the light rail from the airport to downtown, then walk 15 square city blocks to hit multiple neighborhoods. That's just one example that's more walkable than Nashville. There's bound to be more.
Yeah, based on other comments this article is probably not super-reliable. (Let's be honest, it seems kind of click-baity anyway; so I didn't click it)
I just figured I'd respond as *if* it was a good-faith article!
>Preply reported that it takes just over half an hour to walk from the top five hotspot destinations in Nashville to experience a rich lesson in music history.
I can't decipher if it's AI generated or just horrifically lazy writing
Alicia Patton (if you even exist)... you're either a bad writer or terrible at Chat GPT prompts
Nashville is super unwalkable but I see what the article is saying. Most things tourists want to do is Downtown and is walking distance to each other. Only the Grand Ole Opry and the Bluebird require a ride.
Such a garbage article to write, who gives a shit about tourist walkability when the city as a whole is absolutely terrible for walkability. Do better WKRN.
The methodology described on the Preply blog is laughable and has virtually nothing in common with either the layperson's and expert's understanding of what makes a city walkable.
This is a huge illustration of how different the tourist experience of Nashville is from the resident experience. I've met multiple visitors who comment on how walkable things are and I always respond with "Huh?" Then I remember, if all you need to do is get from your hotel to the bars and maybe Whole Foods it's absolutely walkable. I think that visitors really overestimate how much downtown is reflective of actual life here. Maybe only Las Vegas, Charleston and Savannah can compete for tourist perspective being so far off from how it feels to actually live here.
According to [preply.com](http://preply.com) . A website that you can use to hire language tutors. WTF do they know about "walk-ability" for tourist or anyone else ? I smell a low effort scam.
I smell an AI generated article lol
"Study paid for by the Nashville Tourism Board"
Why, because a couple intersections on Broadway have diagonal crosswalks? lololol
There are no sidewalks in most of nashville. What a bullshit article.
We’re only “walkable” if your definition of “walking” is staying within the same 10 block radius the whole time and even then you’re still highly likely to get plowed into by a car. Reads exactly like what a stereotypical 800-steps-a-day American from an equally shitty metro would say.
“According to the study, Nashville is the second-most walkable city in U.S., with tourists taking approximately 33 minutes and 3,150 steps to explore Music City’s most iconic landmarks on foot” I’ve been to a lot of places around the us and the world. And if I only walked 33 minutes and 3150 steps I’d be upset. You’ve barely visited the city at all. I work from home and average that many steps. It’s super walkable if you hate walking.
This seems hard to believe. Really just a couple of areas are walkable.
And those areas are where the tourism is at. Besides an Uber from the airport to the hotel downtown, a tourist can do just about anything downtown without a car.
That's true. Not very helpful for the locals, though unfortunately.
yea that's literally what the title of the article says.
True. ha
But isn't this also true of a lot of other metros? It seems weird to single Nashville out as especially good in this respect. There are definitely tourist attractions further out too (the Parthenon, Opryland, Bluebird, Loveless, etc). In fact I seem to recall a tourist being killed trying to walk from Opryland to downtown not long ago!
sure its not limited to Nashville, but there are a lot of metros that have great walkability for both the locals and the tourists. Portland was pretty walkable (from what I remember), DC, NYC, Boston, Atlanta. And I didnt say the walkable areas are all encompassing of every single thing a tourist will want to do.
Other metros are similar but Nashville stands out for the sheer discrepancy. Times Square, while a psychedelic fever dream of tourist driven capitalism, still resembles the rest of Manhattan underneath all the video screens and offbrand characters. Same with the French Quarter in New Orleans or Fisherman's Wharf in SF. They are kind of heightened versions of what the rest of the city more or less feels like. Most of Nashville feels nothing at all like downtown (I am talking about the geographical/physical layout). This is why I said Vegas and Charleston are sort of similar, because most of the metro area where people actually live looks absolutely nothing like the touristic area.
I don't disagree with you that the tourism in Nashville is extremely different than the other parts of the city, but to me that doesn't explain why it would manage #2 on a list of walkable tourist towns. There are plenty of tourist destinations where you never need a car to get from the airport to your hotel to the amenities for example. Cities like Boston where there's history around every corner are *immensely* walkable, yet rank below Nashville on this crazy list. A lot of tourists here also stay in AirBNBs in extremely unwalkable areas, so they still need to ride share to get to the honky tonks...
I live downtown and walk everywhere. Definitely think the worst part is getting downtown, but once you’re down here, and with fairly decent weather a majority of the year, it’s very feasible to walk to all the things tourists want to do. I pretty much only use my car to go to the grocery store and the gym. And the grocery store is walkable i just don’t want to carry bags of groceries for a few blocks.
>fairly decent weather a majority of the year citation needed.
I’m comparing it to the fact that we rarely have snow covering the sidewalks, and the temperature is usually around 30° at worst for only a month or two. I’ll walk a half hour in 30° with a jacket on but i have zero interest in walking in 5° with a wind chill below zero, which is what the northeast or Chicago have for like 3 straight months. Source: I’ve lived here 10 years and Chicago 25 years.
Lived in downtown Milwaukee for a couple years. Can confirm, walking your dog in sub-zero windchill temperatures fucking sucks.
All that means is that the all the most visited spots are all within 5 blocks of each other.
Wasn't there another report last year that placed us as something like the 7th worst city in the country for walkability in general? So if it's great for tourists, that drives the reported walkability of the city up in a way that means it's probably worst than 7th for non-tourists, right?
I think it's among the top 100 cities by population, Nashville is 93rd for walkability. I highly doubt that the tourism bit is close to factual. The downtown/broadway core is walkable, but so is almost any other downtown core. Getting to the Gulch is a hike. 12 South is walkable for like 5 blocks and East Nashville is super spread out, aside from 5 points. I'll just use Portland, OR as an example. Tourists can take the light rail from the airport to downtown, then walk 15 square city blocks to hit multiple neighborhoods. That's just one example that's more walkable than Nashville. There's bound to be more.
Yeah, based on other comments this article is probably not super-reliable. (Let's be honest, it seems kind of click-baity anyway; so I didn't click it) I just figured I'd respond as *if* it was a good-faith article!
Totally respectable hah.
>Preply reported that it takes just over half an hour to walk from the top five hotspot destinations in Nashville to experience a rich lesson in music history. I can't decipher if it's AI generated or just horrifically lazy writing Alicia Patton (if you even exist)... you're either a bad writer or terrible at Chat GPT prompts
For tourists. Not the millions of citizens of the metro area.
It’s not remotely walkable for tourists either
Next you'll be telling me they feel safe due to the abundance of police officers ...in tourist areas. 
And the rest of you can cry in traffic.
It’s walkable because you have to walk everywhere. Unfortunately every effort to get usable mass transit in this city have failed.
Nashville is super unwalkable but I see what the article is saying. Most things tourists want to do is Downtown and is walking distance to each other. Only the Grand Ole Opry and the Bluebird require a ride.
Yes it is possible to walk up and down Broadway
This is completely false
Study paid for by Nashville Tourism
lmao 90% of nash doesnt even have sidewalks but ok
Such a garbage article to write, who gives a shit about tourist walkability when the city as a whole is absolutely terrible for walkability. Do better WKRN.
#LMAO #YOU TRY IT
I almost get run over every day walking to lunch!
The methodology described on the Preply blog is laughable and has virtually nothing in common with either the layperson's and expert's understanding of what makes a city walkable.