One of those pikes is Gallatin, which runs through several council districts, including Clay Capp’s District 6 and Emily Benedict’s District 7. If denser zoning is allowed to spread back a half mile from either side of it, then there’d be a lot of new builds a stone’s throw from downtown up past Briley Parkway and beyond.

That’s many more people on a well-traveled road, which is why looking at transit matters. Enter Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s “Choose How You Move” transit referendum, currently making its way toward a spot on this fall’s ballot.

“We have excellent transit in District 7, with four bus lines that service the district,” Benedict says. “But the transit plan would improve safety with better crosswalks, for one thing. It also would help with traffic management, which will be essential if we have more people on the road.

“If you’re sitting at a red light with no oncoming traffic, you shouldn’t have to wait two minutes to turn or go,” she continues. “The proposed new traffic management center will help with that flow and more people more efficiently.”

“If you build a ton of housing and people can’t get out their driveway, you’ve created a new problem,” adds Capp. “The East Bank is going to be a meaningful project with a genuine neighborhood of mixed-income and mixed-use properties. To work, it will have a transportation component.”

“If we see the transportation referendum pass, and we can deliver affordable housing new those transit corridors and centers, we’ll have solved two major issues,” he says. “This will take years, but it’s an example of Nashville living its values, and being a city where everyone can live.

“You can see where some more dense zoning has happened, and it’s not always been the same,” Capp continues. “We need to have this urgent conversation in a way that people feel included, and hopefully we can come together around both housing and mobility because each of them needs the other to succeed.”