Nashville, TN vTAP: Enhancing Heat Resilience and Equity in the Wedgewood-Houston and Chestnut Hill Neighborhoods

Report Summary: ULI convened a vTAP to focus on land-use strategies, building requirements, and other policies and programs that can help mitigate the effects of heat in downtown adjacent neighborhoods in Nashville. Specifically, the panel addressed building and site-scale landscape heat design resilience strategies, building retrofits and land use heat mitigation, and equitable heat financing opportunities.

Background and Assignment:

Nashville, Tennessee, is a city in the midst of a significant building boom. It is a city on the rise, in popularity both as a place to live and as a place to do business. It is also a city that is acutely aware of its responsibility to be resilient and sustainable in the midst of its growth and to ensure that its approach is equitable to all of Nashville’s residents. The city is on a path to world-class status; yet that world is growing warmer, with 70 percent of cities dealing with the effects of climate change (C40 Cities) and extreme heat killing more people annually than all other natural disasters combined.

Given this context, the Nashville vTAP panel was asked to respond to the following questions:

1. What are the building and site-scale landscape design heat resilience strategies that, if implemented more widely, have the potential to help the region achieve its extreme heat/cold resilience goals?
2. What best practices for extreme temperature mitigation from other cities can be implemented in Nashville?
3. Given the health impacts of urban heat islands and extended heat waves, how can the Nashville region ensure that building retrofits and land use heat mitigation actions are done so in an equitable manner?
4. What are opportunities and challenges for new programs like the voluntary energy benchmarking, as cited in the Resilience strategy, to demonstrate short-term feasibility to help Nashville achieve its longer-term heat mitigation and energy efficiency goals?
5. What relevant/current regulations and potential financing mechanisms programs can be leveraged to support extreme temperature mitigation retrofits and create a market for resilient buildings in the region?
6. How could future city policy encourage local property owners and developers to mitigate extreme heat/cold at their projects and open spaces?

Key Recommendations:

The panel highlighted a few scales of recommendations—at the building or site level, neighborhood level, or city and regional level. Additionally, the panel addressed financing mechanisms for these types of heat-resistant development. A few of the key recommendations are included below; read the full list in the report.

1. Remove barriers to green infrastructure by changing the definition of green roofs as permeable.
2. Update building codes to require reflective roofs in new construction and significant building upgrades.
3. Conduct a pilot program to test water cooling devices like spray pads, misters, and cool pavements.
4. Use citizen science as a teaching tool for community members about heat impact and solutions.
5. Address code enforcement to ensure green infrastructure components are built and building energy codes are met or exceeded.
6. Tap into private corporate leadership and financial resources to address broad community initiative.
7. Facilitate the full use of economic development incentives to fund resilient and sustainable real estate development with positive community impact.

This vTAP is part of an advisory services, technical assistance, and peer learning program called the Resilient Land Use Cohort (RLUC) that encourages enhanced resilience to climate change and related environmental and social vulnerabilities.