After surveying thousands, we can picture our hopes for our future
On February 7, the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce, spearheading a collaboration between key organizations in the city, unveiled the results of Vision 2040 Community Vision, the survey that asked Chattanoogans what they wanted the city’s future to look like.
This isn’t the first time that Chattanooga has done this. Indeed, when city leaders met in the ‘80s, gathered input from the community, and then set goals in a project they called Vision 2000, that’s what made the modern city of Chattanooga.
Out of that, we got the Tennessee Aquarium. The Walnut Street Bridge was saved from destruction. Both have become symbols of Chattanooga. Gig City. The Scenic City that mixes southern charm with internet so fast it makes browsing YouTube reaaalllyyy convenient.
And then a few days after the Vision 2040 survey dropped, Public Art Chattanooga unveiled its 2019 Public Art Strategic Plan, a proposal for what the art scene in Chattanooga will look like in 2030.
Together, the surveys paint a picture of what people in Chattanooga want their city to look like and how they want it to work—with implications for government, transportation, and the arts.
The key takeaway from the Velocity 2040 survey is that Chattanoogans believe the biggest challenge to a bright future is inequality.
Respondents identified the biggest solutions, too: Schools need to get better, and education needs to be meted out for people to get better jobs.
And the biggest danger, the report said, was doing nothing.
“Imagine if we watch and wait…if we ride the current wave of momentum and let current challenges go unchecked,” the report said. “Our racial equity gaps will widen. Our housing prices will continue to increase and our traffic will worsen. We’ll lack vision to make large investments and eventually headlines will ask, ‘What happened to Chattanooga?’”
So what’s the alternative?
Based on survey responses, the Velocity 2040 report said there were five goals that most Chattanoogans wanted: They want Chattanooga to be the smartest city south of the Mason-Dixon line, every resident to thrive economically (a chicken in every pot, so to speak), and transportation around the city to be fast. Twenty-minutes-or-less fast.
The last two goals involved the leadership of the community. Community leaders in 2040, the report envisioned, should include a diversity of races, ages, and genders. Furthermore, the way Chattanooga as a whole solves problems should change, adding more collaboration and respect to the problem-solving process.
Futurist Rebecca Ryan, who spoke at the Vision 2040 press conference held at the Walker Theater, said that Chattanooga should forge a new Chattanooga way, one that involves a focus on collaboration.
“The new way forward for great American cities will not be, ‘Okay, the chamber, you stay your lane and the city you stay in your lane. And African American communities, y’know, good luck and women, well, we got a women’s program for you,’ right?” Ryan said. “That’s not the way that cities of the future are getting work done.”
The survey polled just over 4,800 residents. Each respondent spent about 10 minutes completing the survey, which was administered online.
The authors of the survey were quick to tout the diversity of the respondents. The race of the participants tracked with what the U.S. Census Bureau finds is the makeup of Hamilton County. While 19.5 percent of Hamilton County is black according to the Bureau, 16 percent of the Velocity 2040 participants were black, for example.
The survey was sponsored by a who’s-who of notable Chattanooga organizations, including the City of Chattanooga, the Benwood Foundation, the Chattanooga Chamber Foundation, and the Chattanooga Airport.
According Ryan, envisioning and preparing for the future is a selfless act to better the lives of kids, who can’t vote on the future they are to inherit.
“I don’t know how many of you have done the math of how old you will be in 2040, but I certainly have,” Ryan said. “And if we want to leave a community worth inheriting to the people, younger and older, who are going to call this place home in the future, that means we've got to get down to work today.”
When asked what three things should be done first to prepare for the future, the most frequent response, at 1,682 answers, was, “Make sure students have what they need to learn.”
The second priority, coming in at 1,523 respondents, said that workforce training should be the priority.
The next two priorities for participants were, “Make sure everyone in the community has a chance to earn enough money to live” (1,425 respondents) and creating jobs, nay careers, for people with fewer advantages (1,265).
The next two priorities had concrete action points. “Improve roads, sidewalks, and bridges to meet the needs of the community,” said 1,206 participants. Behind that sat the priority of improving transportation.
It might be intuitive to start a big new building project and call it preparing for the future. But if a city is a computer, Ryan said, Chattanooga should direct most of its focus on software.
“You’ve got a software issue that we need to give as much time and attention to and that is how we work together,” Ryan said. “What is the new Chattanooga way? And what are you willing to do to contribute to the software of this community? Not just the hardware, the software of this community, so that the operating system for Hamilton County and Chattanooga is one where everyone can participate, everyone’s potential can be realized, and voices aren’t marginalized.”
Christy Gillenwater, president of the Chattanooga Chamber, said improving collaboration could help enhance the city’s arts and culture.
“We hope ultimately that ethos—we’re so well known for collaboration—well, let’s continue to take that to the next level so that all facets of the community are stronger,” she said.
At the same time that Velocity 2040 debuted its study, Public Art Chattanooga, the public art program for Chattanooga, released a study of its own looking into the future of art in The Scenic City.
Covered by The Pulse back in December, the study pulled from six focus groups and the responses of 222 people who took an online survey. Last week, Public Art Chattanooga introduced the plan before city council.
The City Council of Chattanooga was scheduled to vote to adopt the resolution on Tuesday, Feb. 19. It is still a proposal, and every step that Public Art Chattanooga takes will need to be approved by the council down the road.
The proposal lays out a vision of what public art could be in the city, and interestingly enough, it tracks closely with the conclusions of the Vision 2040 survey.
Besides expressing a sense of place and connecting residents to a particular area of the city, public art can “encourage multi-disciplinary collaboration in the public and private sectors to create vibrant public spaces.”
Furthermore, according to the study, public art has the potential to “Celebrate our communities’ cultural assets, highlighting the unique character of our neighborhoods, honoring their histories and preserving quality of place.”
There have been more than 150 outdoor art projects done for the public’s enjoyment in Chattanooga since the 1990s. And the study said Chattanoogans want more.
“Chattanooga residents spoke loud and clear—they want more art in more places,” the report said. “They want Chattanooga to be known as a thriving arts center. Residents described public art as empowering, a reminder of their humanity, and as a conduit for dialogue. They regard public art as an important tool for telling Chattanooga’s story of transformation and renewal, as well as its painful past and imperfect present.”
According to the plan, the city hopes to take on a greater mantle at facilitating public art.
One of the plan’s recommendation is to “Develop a budget policy and capital improvement project (CIP) guidelines that allocate two percent of the City’s overall above-ground CIP budget for integrated public art.”
It’s a bold plan, as many cities allocate only one percent to public art.
“If Chattanooga wants to be a destination for arts and culture, and wants to take things to the next level and really do some amazing things through public art, that’s the type of commitment we’d like to see to help sustain that,” said Katelyn Kirnie, director of Public Art Chattanooga.
And right now, “it’s a little bit year-to-year,” Kirnie admits, as funding comes in fits and starts.
She’s at least asking for a budget priority. Eventually she’d like to see that commitment solidified with an ordinance.
According to the brief of the plan, the city wants to place more art in underserved communities, use regional artists for the art, and integrate art into the very planning stages of projects.
For an artist, it’s a major career milestone to have a public art installation. Kirnie wants to increase transparency and look to local artists and hopefully bring racial equality in the public art sphere.
“We have a lot of amazing local artists in this community and a lot of them do have experience creating works in the public realm,” Kirnie said. “But it’s a big professional leap and if you’ve never created art in the public space, your qualifications with the city’s competitive process, it’s gonna be tough to just jump into the field.”
If the skyline with the Walnut Street Bridge and the Tennessee Aquarium has come to symbolize the Chattanooga renaissance, then what will come to symbolize the plans sketched by the residents who thought to ask: What does the future hold?
Daniel Jackson is an independent journalist working in the Chattanooga area. He studied Communications at Bryan College and covered national events at the Washington Times before moving to Chattanooga several years ago.