Cumberland Region in 2000
The Cumberland Region is made up of 3.4 million acres in ten counties. Over 1.4 million people called it home in 2000. Located in the center of Middle Tennessee, the region consists of Cheatham, Davidson, Dickson, Maury, Montgomery, Robertson, Rutherford, Sumner, Williamson and Wilson counties.
These ten counties are the population and economic center of Middle Tennessee. Unlike metropolitan areas such as Atlanta or Chicago, most of the 34 cities and 20 towns of the Cumberland Region are physically separate. Residents of the region, however, are interdependent, with daily living, shopping and working patterns crossing many political, economic and geographic boundaries.
The Cumberland Region is emerging as one of the most land-extensive metropolitan areas in the United States. Only about 15 percent, or 504,000 acres, of land in the Cumberland Region is developed (2000); the great majority of land is undeveloped farmland, woodland and natural areas.
In our region, 80 percent of the population resides in urban or suburban areas (2000). The remaining 20 percent of the region's population lives in what might be called rural residential areas - plots of land too small to be farmed but at too low a density to constitute a suburb. Density of development in the Cumberland Region is an important indication of growth trends. Higher density means that more people and businesses are located nearer each other, thus reducing automobile travel between them. Lower density indicates a spreading out of residential and commercial development, using more land per person.
The average density of the 52 largest metropolitan areas in the country is approximately 4.7 persons per acre. If just the areas of the Cumberland Region defined as urban (those with density levels of 1.6 or higher persons per acre) are considered, our average density is 4.8 persons per acre. Total population density in our region, which includes urban, suburban, and rural residential areas, averages 2.7 persons per acre, which is sixty percent of the national average. This level of development suggests what some people identify as "sprawl", a popular buzzword with many different levels of acuteness.