Vision to Action in Chattanooga
When the last vestiges of industry vanished from Chattanooga, Tennessee in the 1950s and 60s, the pride of a community lay decimated behind thick clouds of filthy smog. By 1969, Chattanooga had earned its reputation as one of the dirtiest cities in America, a title that festered in the hearts of a determined group of civic innovators who wanted the world to love their city as much as they did.
Through multiple visioning processes and civic conversations, these committed, forceful citizens—from mayors and housewives to CEOs and city council members—paved the way for their city’s future by addressing a host of pressing local issues, from air quality to Superfund sites. The broadest of these movements was Chattanooga Venture, a holistic renewal movement symbolized by the restoration of the city’s historic riverfront. By the early 2000s, the results of Chattanooga Venture had earned Chattanooga a new reputation as the renaissance city of the South.
Following in the footsteps of Chattanooga Venture is Chattanooga Stand, the world’s largest survey-based community visioning effort. Over the course of five months in 2009, Stand gathered 26,263 four-question surveys from residents of the Chattanooga region.
The responses to these “Four Questions for the Future” showed that Chattanoogans were concerned about four key areas: education, crime, jobs, and the environment. In addition to all Stand data being available for use by any person or organization free of charge on the Internet, these four specific areas of concern are now being addressed in progressive ways by CreateHere, a collective of programs, projects, incentive funding, and individuals that encourages citizens to express their ideas, organize around common purposes, and take action for the betterment of their city and themselves.
The LeadHere fellowship program is the most active educational component of CreateHere and works to build experience, confidence, and connections for the next generation of community leaders in Chattanooga. Unlike a traditional internship or fellowship program, LeadHere starts by noticing the passions and skill sets of young people and enables them to put these skills to good use in building a marketable portfolio for a future career. “We want to demonstrate the idea that post-secondary education leads to a sustainable career,” says Josh McManus, Co-Founder and Creative Strategist at CreateHere.
In consideration of Chattanooga’s crime problem, CreateHere is initiating Broken Windows Brigade, a citywide effort to produce neighborhood agents of Broken Windows Theory, a social theory suggesting that crime is more likely to occur in neighborhoods that look uncared-for by residents and local authorities. In an effort to help citizens realize how a menial task can be as much about safety as it is about urban beautification, Broken Windows Brigade will regularly pick up trash in Chattanooga neighborhoods and empower citizens to erase pre-contexts for crime such as graffiti, overgrown grass, and broken windows.
Chattanooga is currently pressing forward on City R&D, an all-day exploration of Chattanooga’s multimodal transportation future composed of business and non-profit professionals, civic leaders, artists, and architects gathering to tackle challenges associated with Chattanooga’s urban, built environment. The end-goal is reinvention and development (R and D)—specifically, a new way of thinking about multimodal transportation in Chattanooga and the issue of connectivity between the urban core of downtown Chattanooga and a newly emerging center of commerce that includes a Volkswagen auto plant.
“City R&D is a comprehensive action session,” says McManus. “We don’t want to take any of Chattanooga’s resources for granted. Every element of City R&D will recognize the interdependence of this entire region on transportation, housing, history, clean air, clean water—and, most importantly, the wise use of all these things through good principles of design and architecture.” CreateHere’s partners for City R&D are vast and varied, ranging from local government officials and foundations to AIGA and The American Institute of Architects.
Though Chattanooga faces the same challenges as any other mid-sized American city, Stand created a platform for Chattanooga to move from merely being a good 20th century city to being an innovative 21st century city. There’s room for every citizen to play a part in the ongoing effort to make Chattanooga one of the most dynamic, creative, and entrepreneurial cities in the world.
