Chattanooga Comeback

If you've read much on urban sustainability in North America, you will know that Chattanooga is a town that got into the sustainabilility game, early in the game, with great success. More than twenty years ago, Chattanooga Venture began to take the city from grime to green. Knit together with farsighted vision and great projects that integrated all three parts of sustainability, exceptional leadership made the city a sustainability poster child. But time moved on, politics intervened, leadership changed. The integrated vision that placed sustainability at center stage faded. Even so, the city accomplished more than $200 million of downtown redevelopment in the 2000s that kept Chattanooga in the limelight of new urbanism, if not sustainability.

In Hard Times and Hope, the best I could do was to conclude that there had been what 1990s visionary David Crockett called "sustainability blowback." The word sustainability got toxic, he said. As the book went to press, the city had formed a Green Committee to help Mayor Ron Littlefield figure out how to meet his commitment to the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement which he signed in 2006. Compared to the red hot 1990s, I took this to be a tepid gesture. I had to conclude that, without the visionaries and integrated planning of the 1990s, Chattanooga had lost its way.

But wait! Three months ago, Mayor Littlefield surprised Chattanooga watchers like me and brought David Crockett back into city government as director of the city's new office of sustainability. According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press (7 December 2009), Crockett observed that the sustainability train had already left the station. His job, he said, was first to run alongside that train, then jump aboard to see what's been happening. Jim Frierson, a member of the Green Committee, told the Times Free Press that Crockett would challenge the mayor to think more boldly and that his appointment was "a game changer." Another committe member said that if Chattanooga had followed Crockett's thinking of twenty years ago, we'd be at the head of the pack. Now there's lots of catching up to do.

Here's plenty of reason for hope from one of America's most intriguing mid-sized cities---a city clearly back in the hunt. And once again using "sustainability" without apology.

Here goes...

Hope and Hard Times is launched. Complementary copies are circulating. Two book signings in Athens and at Ohio University have happened. Folks in the hinterland are checking in with updates on the stories that are the essence of the book. A book tour is in the offing. It's time for a blog dedicated to communities, collaboration, and sustainability despite the hard times we're living in and are likely to face in the post-carbon world soon to come. I invite, first of all, postings from my friends in the communities featured in the book. This will be a way of keeping current, correcting mistakes and misinterpretations, and adding richness in detail and new interpretation. Let's hear about your heroes, your visionaries, your neighbors and collaborators, and your most innovative and promising projects. Communities not in the book with stories to share can plug in here too. Finally, I'll use this to help folks interested in sustainability at the level of community to stay in touch and to follow my own musings and treks. Come join us!