An executive at ING Clarion Partners says retailers would be smart to look more at locating in the nation's central business districts. Between retired boomers moving back to city cores and designers and developers focusing increasingly on mixed-use projects, the demand will continue to grow. Supply, meanwhile, will take some time to catch up, which means CBD rents will rise more quickly than elsewhere.

If you could relocate one of the city’s best nabes to a place in need of one, would you do it? We would. And, in this week's City Paper, we did.

A modern streetcar system shouldn’t be confused with trolley systems featured in cities such as Memphis. Instead, a model for Nashville could be the Portland Streetcar, first launched in Portland, Ore., in 2001. Today it connects that city’s downtown with outlying neighborhoods and districts. Streetcars there run on continuous loops on a track, operate alongside vehicular traffic, and top out around 30 miles per hour, though they typically don’t run that fast. Nearly 1.4 million passengers used Portland’s streetcar during its first year, with annual ridership reaching almost 4 million in 2009.

Weak capital markets will require Metro to offer a wider variety of incentives, experts said. Recommendations for the public sector include: assembling sites for development, assisting developers with financing structures and offering incentives, loans and grants to developers willing to build in the urban core.