Chattanooga: Is This Sustainable

While many different and sometimes conflicting definitions for what is or what is not "sustainable" exist, in keeping with the spirit of the Center for Sustainable Cities, our assessment of the city of Chattanooga's sustainability will be guided by the notions of both social and ecological sustenance developed in its Manifesto. Particularly important for this discussion are notions of sustainability which include a recognition of the city as an appropriate level for affecting change, placing primary emphasis on humans as a part of a larger ecosystem rather than conceiving of the natural environment as a resource to be harnessed for exploitation, acknowledging the social component of sustainability, and understanding that contextual forms of urban design and shape must emerge which can not necessarily be appropriated from different socio-historical backgrounds.

Chattanooga has tried to chart a path towards sustainability which brings into balance the sometimes tenuous relationship between economic well-being and environmental respect. Implicit in addressing this relationship has been at least a rhetorical concern for the social welfare of the community. As David Harvey has argued environmental problems, when probed, reveal more fundamental problems of injustice. Thus the questions which emerge with regard to Chattanooga's effort at sustainability should focus on the tangible progress such policies have had on the social condition of its inhabitants. Increases in green spaces and introduction of electronic mass transit systems are all well and good ideas, but if inequalities in income and access to community services are still prevalent, sustainability is far from being achieved.

One of the first civic groups to lay out a framework for sustainable development in Chattanooga was Vision 2000. Through a series of weekly meetings throughout much of 1984 this group developed a plan for urban renewal which addressed issues of revitalization of business areas, refurbishing abandoned industrial areas, and developing parks and recreation space.

The Riverpark development provides a telling example of the type of sustainability the forces of power have forged in Chattanooga. In keeping with Chattanooga's sustainable slogan calling for "economy, ecology, equity" this project has clearly addressed the first two conditions, but ignored the latter when its implications are not consonant with maintaining the other two. The ideas for the Riverpark (which are clearly elucidated at http://www.chattanooga.net/CityBeat/politics_f/cita_f/riverparkjl.html) came from a closed group of business leaders and developers whose propensity for profits above all other considerations is explicit. A nonprofit organization (the Lyndhurst Foundation headed by Rick Montague who is the son-in-law of Coca-Cola Bottling magnate and major financier of the Foundation, Jack Lupton) was set up to secure both public and private funds to develop among other things "[an] aquarium, hotel, marina, 1700s trading post...new golf course, [etc]"(Chattanooga Times January 27, 1986). These were seen as ways to provide jobs and revitalize the area.

However, in these efforts at providing opportunities for development, the cultural and material concerns of certain groups were either disregarded, unsolicited, or ignored. One of the projects for the Riverpark has been to construct an outdoor amphitheater to provide a space for presenting Civil War-era plays representative of Chattanooga's "heritage". The space where this proposed theater will be built, however, lies on Native American burial grounds. Native American leaders have been disappointed first because the religious sanctity which is afforded Christian and Jewish religious sites has not been granted to those representing Native American religions; second, no Native American representatives were involved in the formulation of the proposal for the theater; third, they find it offensive that such a limited part of Chattanooga's history (Civil War glorification) would be presented at the site ignoring the real Native American struggles against institutionalized genocide which occurred on the site. (see http://www.chattanooga.net/CityBeat/politics/cita_f/index.html).

The Chattanooga Creek area is another point of contention which reveals the racial and class biases of the forces behind the revitalization of the city. This creek is a tributary of the Tennessee River and has served for decades as a veritable sewage canal for exploitive and polluting industries operating in a primarily African-American section of Chattanooga. Residents of the area have called for both corporate and governmental institutions to provide the funds to clean up the area. While these entities pay considerable lip-service to the conditions and at least acknowledge that a problem exists, projects to clean up the area are interminably "put on hold." (see http://www.chattanooga.net/sustain/mayors_letter.html) At the same time plans are implemented for a "zero-emissions" industrial park elsewhere in the city, the pollutants in this section of town continue to provide health hazards to its low-income residents. (see The Amicus Journal Spring 1995, v17, n1, p.22)

While the major thrust of the sustainable movement in Chattanooga has been focused on encouraging a degree of ecological responsibility within the limits required by continued economic growth, there have been several groups not directly associated with the Vision 2000 program and Riverpark corporation who are seeking to insure that issues of equity are taken seriously. These groups represent community-based activists who, although seemingly distinctly removed from the mainstream decision-making apparatus of municipal policy, nevertheless act in innovative ways to promote a message of economic and ecological justice.

The Bethlehem Center (http://www.chattanooga.net/bethcent/index.html) is one such group. Located in the southern, primarily African-American section of Chattanooga, the Center is involved in community development on several levels. They educate the community about the health hazards of the aforementioned contaminated Chattanooga Creek and organize protests and campaigns to encourage accountability and clean-up efforts. The physical structure of the Center itself serves as a gathering point for recreational and educational activities involving both children and adults. Efforts are also made on the part of the Center to monitor the nutrition content of public school meals to insure that children are allowed access to healthy food.

Tennesseans, Alabamans, Georgians for Environmental Responsibility (http://www.chattanooga.net/TAGER/index.html) is a local citizen activist group who seek to emphasize the links between the rural environment surrounding Chattanooga and the health of the city proper. As such they are involved in environmental issues specifically related to the Tennessee River and the resistance to the placement of wood chip mills in the area which promote both deforestation and chemical run-off into the water (see above photo of forest clear cut to serve chip mills). They additionally seek to position these local concerns within the larger web of the global environmental movement.

Finally, the Chattanooga Intertribal Association (http://www.chattanooga.net/cita/) deserves to be mentioned as a community-based group seeking to insure that equity is promoted in the movement towards sustainability. The major emphasis of their current work has been to resist the aforementioned plans to build an amphitheater on sacred Native American grounds. Generally, the group seeks to insure that the Native American community is granted a voice in local affairs, particularly the sustainability movement.

While there have been several positive efforts by Chattanoogans to insure that a sustainable community based on both ecological and equitable principles be the focus of community efforts, the primary tangible advances have been strictly in the area of environmentally-minded economic development. While it is laudable that the mainstream sustainable movement has acknowledged the necessity of environmental respect in their conception of city life, the larger discourse of an uncritical adherence towards growth and technological facility in confronting ecological problems is in discordance with the basic tenets of sustainability as articulated by the Center for Sustainable Cities. Thus in the example of Chattanooga what is seen is not necessarily a drive towards a socially-minded sustainability, but rather an embrace of "green capitalism". (in fact the Mayor's letter cited above contains numerous references to the guru of green capitalism, Paul Hawken, whose Ecology of Commerce is frequently referred to as justification for avoiding social problems associated with environmental degradation and environmental justice) Efforts at revitalization of the economy and culture have been done within a framework administered by the city's economic elite with token gestures administered to marginalized groups. In a 1996 interview with Coca-Cola bottler Jack Lupton, he listed the members of the Riverwalk Corporation who included specific state legislators, business leaders, city and county officers and "one representative from the black community not [yet] chosen." This pecksniffian gesturing is not in consort with the stated goals of the sustainability movement in Chattanooga. Mechanisms for organic, community-based participation need to be democratic in nature--not repositories of tokenism to satisfy the vacuous requirements of ill-conceived "identity politics". Without a real, democratic space for the articulation of the desires of all the citizens of Chattanooga--not merely those endowed with great amounts of capital--the movement for sustainability will stagnate under the subterfuge of a false notion of ecological responsibility.

"Chattanooga--Committed to Sustainable Development--Economy-Ecology-Equity," the logo on Chattanooga’s Web page trumpets, with the Earth seen from space surrounded by a ring of human stick figures. What does a critical review of the city’s own literature tell about the veracity of this claim? We continue by examining the Briefing Book that the Chattanooga arm of the Presidential Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) put on the Internet and compare it to principles of sustainability developed by the Center for Sustainable Cities at the University of Kentucky in order to dispute the city’s claim of sustainable practices. Can one accept the uncritical definition of "sustainable development" that Chattanooga’s literature asserts? This is highly doubtful. Rather, is Chattanooga’s effort actually an example of the greening of a city? This is more likely, but it remains problematic. Are some of the efforts steps toward rural development? This is closer to reality. Is it development? This can’t be disputed.

The PCSD was created by an Executive Order by President Clinton on June 14, 1993 with the goal of promoting both a healthy economy and a healthy environment. Clinton’s motivation is to promote both economic growth and environmental preservation. Chattanooga, already working on environmental woes that were evident before the institutionalization of environmental regulation in the early 1970’s, responded enthusiastically. "Chattanoogans were putting the President’s premise into practice with an economic development strategy which prominently features opportunities for an education-based economy which capitalizes on the business of the environment," Mayor Gene Roberts states in an introductory letter (Roberts, http://www.chattanooga.net /SUSTAIN/mayors_letter.html). One can detect the emphasis on economy already; it is always listed first and so the logo is accurate in this regard. The results become evident in the policies enacted as there are some green solutions that are intelligently used, but the claim of sustainability is exaggerated; the primary motive is economic growth.

‘Sustainable development’ as such is not defined, much less ‘sustainability.’ The President claims that environmental problems are a result of reckless growth, not robust growth--a problematic assumption in an era of global economic competition with countries that have no environmental regulation. Chattanooga’s position is amply stated by the mayor’s quotation of Paul Hawken, "no ‘plan’ to reverse environmental degradation can be enacted if it requires a wholesale change in the dynamics of the market" (The Ecology of Commerce, quoted in Roberts). Paraphrasing Hawken, the mayor argues that they don’t need to be restrictive, but need to encourage creativity and productivity, and that only business can muster the resources to save the environment (emphasis added). Therefore, the guiding principles of ‘sustainable development’ for Chattanooga become clear without a definition. They follow the neoliberal tenets of the ‘free market’ without qualification; they expect a top-down solution imposed from above in spite of repeated references to widespread cooperation between government, business, and the community; and they expect deregulation and technocratic fixes to ameliorate problems in an incremental and piecemeal manner (problems that business has created in the first place).

A very brief, but penetrating, definition of sustainability may be given as ‘ecological and social sustainability in a holistic process that recognizes the importance of the ecosystem’ (Yanarella and Levine, 1992b, combined from 301 & 310). As we shall see in the following two sections, Chattanooga’s programs are arguably so far from this definition of sustainability as to appear entirely unrelated. Indeed, the effort is closer to Yanarella and Levine’s understanding of the unsustainable city, "where growth and change are favoured over stability and sustainability" (1992b, 309). Nevertheless, since Chattanooga’s market principles bring the claim of ‘sustainable development’ seriously into question, it leaves the efforts undertaken to be classified as either rural development, green development or development individually.

To begin with its strengths, policies in Chattanooga have been adopted to promote tourism that could honestly be seen as a sustainable effort. Except there is a qualification that two of the three efforts immediately below appear to have begun as grassroot efforts against business, which undermines the city’s claim of cooperating interests above. For example, the Tennessee River Gorge Trust began as early as 1981 and has protected about half of 25,000 acres in the gorge by purchase, easement, or lease. They have had to fight the usual land use conflicts. Citizens, alarmed by the prospect of clear-cut forests marring aesthetic vistas, also organized to prevent four chip mills from being built in the Chattanooga area. The private property versus public interest conflict was waged here too, while the city characterizes it as an awakening to the importance of the surrounding forests. On the other hand, the Bowater Corporation can be credited with creating a 1095 acre pocket wilderness on its property in the North Chickamauga Creek gorge in an example of corporate civicness (though this also entailed prior citizen involvement to raise awareness).

On clean water programs, Chattanooga’s record is mixed. It is the site of a Superfund remediation program on Chattanooga Creek, which was an industrial area in South Chattanooga that developed ahead of the rest of the South, populated by coke, chemical, and other industries. The clean-up still defies the experts, and blame is cast in the Briefing Book. The federal government is criticized for its regulations stymieing new technologies and excluding local efforts. The black communities of Alton Park and Piney Woods are not involved, though the creek is in their industrial/residential neighborhoods. This section of the city’s own book brings into serious question the ‘equity’ and the community participation claims of the sustainable development effort. Further inquiry is needed to determine what has been done to include the black community overall in the broad Chattanooga effort. The neighborhoods above also suffer from poorer air quality than the city in general.

In a contradiction to the derision of federal regulations above, Tennessee is lauded in the Briefing Book for implementing its own regulations to protect its groundwater resources from pollution, which provide one third to one half of the Chattanooga area’s water and are vulnerable. Certainly, this is one effort at sustainability by any definition. Stormwater management has begun and is seeking to involve the public, businesses, and construction sites.

Chattanooga is putting together a continuous greenways system along twenty miles of the Tennessee River on either side of Chattanooga for riverfront access, green space, and recreation. In spite of creating public access to the river, the equity question must again be raised as "high quality private developments" are to be incorporated into the system. This is an aspect that challenges the validity of the top-down effort, and clearly comes across as development.

‘Sustainable agriculture’ may be claimed, but rural development would be a more accurate description of the Chattanooga initiatives in this area. If honestly addressed as such, the desire to provide jobs for the 50% of the local population classified as rural would be more laudable. There is strong impetus to develop a biomass energy program that will include tree plantations to fuel it. Rural development is hoped to be attracted to this energy source; what type it is remains to be seen. Though fertilizers and pesticides will hopefully be managed more effectively to protect water sources, the reliance on them will still be there and the program’s effectiveness off paper will need to be verified. The poultry industry produces an amount of pollution that this program will seek to mediate and recycle as fertilizer, but again the effectiveness will have to be documented.

Chattanooga had some of the worst air quality in America in the 1960’s, and they have turned this around as a community. They are recognized as having good air quality today and are proud of their effort. An inversion layer can trap smog in the city, and so their electric vehicle program is an innovative solution today. Electric shuttles are replacing diesel buses. However, it must be pointed out that the energy to run these buses (and future cars?) must be generated somewhere and there is significant energy loss when it is moved from power plant to outlet. Thus, this not only isn’t sustainability, but is a negative drain on finite resources overall!

Though electric buses for the time being may be appropriate, for the future the sustainable solution is to replace the dependence on automobiles within the city altogether. For Americans, autos may be the best example that sustainability is not a mere ‘buzzword’ but a serious commitment that requires radical change. One solution is to begin to work towards a more human scale within the various parts of the city, wherein people don’t need, nor even desire, a car to conduct their daily business.

With energy, Chattanooga’s programs remain committed to its high use and consumption. The Tennessee Valley Authority is said to be seeking to balance hydroelectric, gas, coal, nuclear, and biomass to promote regional growth and development. On energy, Chattanooga doesn’t even register as green, much less sustainable. In addition, the creation of tree farms for biomass production and a source of energy and subsequent development hardly qualifies as a green initiative (and one hopes there won’t be adverse affects to the area’s air quality).

The city is pioneering brownfield redevelopment or the reclamation of industrially contaminated properties for reuse by industry. However, the example they choose for the Briefing Book illustrates very well how the commitment to development vastly supersedes their environmental agenda: W.R. Grace & Co. has reclaimed one site for a "recovery and storage project for commercially valuable rare earths and low-level radioactive material" (PCSD Briefing Book, http://www.chattanooga.net/SUSTAIN/pcsd_briefing_book/industry_summary.html).

One effort that does address equity is an affordable housing program that has invested $65,420,725 into 4166 units of low to moderate income housing between 1987 and 1994. The goal is to make the housing livable and reenergize neighborhoods. The funding came from foundations, banks, and local, state, and federal government. There is also considerable pride in the city’s effort to make the downtown area and riverfront an inviting place again.

Chattanooga has a recycling effort that incorporates a shelter for mentally handicapped people to handle what’s collected from the city’s curbside recycling program. Besides recycling and reducing waste, the program is described as primarily a classroom and employment for the handicapped people. Here, emphasis on the use of people as a resource instead of complete mechanization can be seen as a sustainable solution. Chattanooga believes their program has wide applicability to other cities, as their costs are about 10% that of comparable cities.

Nevertheless, a closer look at Chattanooga’s recycling efforts raises questions about the community’s commitment and participation. Currently, the curbside recycling program averages 20-25% use per week and results in an estimated 14% reduction in landfill volume (City of Chattanooga, http://www.bmpcoe.org/surveys/CHATT_C/CHATT_C_bp.html). Although there is also a drop-off recycling center that also collects some business wastes, the goal of the Tennessee Solid Waste Management Act of 1991 was a 25% reduction in waste by January, 1996. The national average for municipal solid waste recycling (without organic wastes) was 24.5% in 1993 (Franklin Associates, Ltd., 1994). The Environmental Defense Fund reports well designed and publicized curbside programs in American suburban communities reach a use rate of 80% and cites a citywide recycling rate of 44% for Seattle (Ruston & Denison, http://www.edf.org/pubs/reports/advrec .html#summary). Although there is room for maneuver with these numbers, they seem to clearly indicate no more than an average participation and result for Chattanooga.

The realization of a sustainable city as described by Yanarella and Levine may still be far removed, as we cannot really expect "a radical break with modernity (which) can overcome the multidimensional crisis"(1992b, 303) facing our built and natural environments anytime soon. Nevertheless, Chattanooga’s reliance on market principles without the enthusiastic support of sustainable precepts by its populace and businesses is clearly bound to fail within the context of our democratic institutions for reasons outlined in Don’t Pick the Low-Lying Fruit: Sustainability from Pathway to Process by Levine and Yanarella. Chattanooga may be realizing success with a variety of discrete programs at present that are relatively easy to confront, but this strategy is shortsighted and the logic is flawed as succeeding steps become harder rather than easier to implement (1994, p. 1). It would be credulous to believe that when times tighten economically and push-comes-to-shove, Chattanooga’s corporate support and top-down approach won’t evaporate. Five points illustrate this (1994, 2-3):

"The wall of diminishing returns"--Costs will increase as easy problems are solved or solutions become increasingly expensive or turn out to be unworkable. The current debate that has flamed up about the cost-effectiveness of recycling and whether it is worthwhile illustrates this. The long-term sense of recycling is lost amid the squabble over short sighted economic arguments. Expensive problems or entrenched systemic threats are mighty intimidating yet still need to be solved, even if delayed for the time being by incremental policies.

"The wall of evaporating political support"--As the prices of solutions that promote sustainability rise, the effort for it can be expected to wither. A political coalition is necessary for these policies to be enacted in the first place and this coalition can be expected to break apart in the face of rising costs and diminishing returns. Hence, there is the need of broad and involved public awareness and support (since the public is also generally pluralistic and has competing interests which could contribute to the evaporation of support).

"The wall of hardball or interest-group politics"--Chattanooga’s coalition includes business as a very important player. If the economy is ailing, one can expect businesses to get out from under regulatory burdens. Regulations that are set up to seek sustainability are liable to be compromised or rescinded. If targets or regulations are being implemented over time, they could be delayed, have standards reduced, or even be abandoned.

"The wall of technological fixation"--In addition to the failure inherent in not addressing or solving the source of the problem as mentioned above, attempting to treat environmental ‘symptoms’ with least expensive, shortsighted or short-cut fixes based on the latest technology often create their own negative externalities and additional problems to be solved.

"The wall of misplaced collective effort"--Another failing of the incrementalist approach that does not deal with the whole problem and only the symptoms is when valuable collective effort and valuable resources, both political and physical, are spent in the incremental effort. This effort is a losing one and a demoralizing one for the agents involved and can place real solutions even further into the future.

An illustration of the applicability of these five points can be found in a recent article in the New Scientist about Chattanooga. A farsighted goal Chattanooga is encouraging within the brownfield development is "industrial symbiosis," where industries that could use one another’s waste products or heat generation are encouraged to locate together with the goal of getting waste emissions as close to zero as possible. This would ‘close the loop’ in the industrial cycle, much the same way nature itself is a closed loop with waste being reused.

Nevertheless, this is subject to the criticism just outlined. In fact, Sheldon Friedlander, a chemical engineer at UCLA, is quoted as saying this is "picking the low-hanging fruit" (Schmidt, 1996, p.35). It will become progressively more expensive, more technologically complex and require long-term investment. Many businesses would choose to avoid this and remain committed to their core business. Though its advocates say they are ‘changing the paradigm,’ the strategy still runs on the paradigm of high energy usage and the production of noxious waste in quantities that allow another business to run on it rather than seeking to cut it. Most damning is the realization that as business and technology change, critical components of the loop may fall out (e.g., go out of business, change processes, or move to a more favorable geographic location). Therefore, Chattanooga will have to have back-up options for supplies and demand. They will already have had to deal with how forcibly they will impose regulation.

This demonstrates the complexity and centralization of planning this technocratic fix entails, as well as its fragility. The prospect of a corporation exerting pressure on the city for concessions or suing over failed promises or constitutional rights must be kept in mind.

For Chattanooga, questions of equity and democratic participation are also of vital importance in achieving honest sustainability. Kevin Robins raises two important points in discussing urban and public revitalization (1993, 322-3). First, are the poor and/or minorities representing diverse cultural values excluded as the city promotes programs that directly encourage the homogenization and commodification of society? Secondly, does this catering to a culture of consumption serve only "fragments" of the city and serve as more "insulation" from the excluded populations? If so, diversity and democracy are not served, and Robins asks whether policy can be capable of encouraging a broader and inclusive public space. Chattanooga must ask whether its top-down policymaking is perpetuating this American tendency toward ever more consumption while also chronically marginalizing many of its people, a process that is hardly sustainable. For example, incorporating expensive private developments into the greenways system along the Tennessee River appears to be exactly what Robins fears.

Levine and Yanarella argue that centralization of policymaking must be accompanied by increased democratic participation (1994, 5). Hence, there must be balance sought within a holistic process that will include many debates over many models of solutions. This democratic discourse is essential to settling upon a sustainable model for a city to follow. The process thereby encourages the "collective genius of the many participants" to generate "accumulated wisdom" over time and allows the institutionalization of the successful and truly sustainable policies eventually (1992b, 312). Admittedly, this is a ‘radical break,’ considering modern policymaking, but when honestly thought out, answers two pertinent questions: how do we make subsequent policies toward sustainability easier to implement rather than harder and more intractable (or alternatively, counterproductive as Chattanooga’s promise to be)?; and how do we include the many diverse publics that have a stake in this encompassing reformation which is societal as well as ecological (publics who are instead becoming more and more "invisible" [Robins, 326] in urban policymaking that has a narrow predilection towards economic growth, competition, and consumption)?

Presently though, Chattanooga’s ‘sustainable development’ is basically development, pure and simple, even by their own presentation of it. Though the development may be a shade of green, the attainment of sustainability on the part of Chattanooga is simply not there, nor even near. Without addressing nor even contemplating systemic problems that are due to extremely high consumption and overuse of resources and energy as a starting point to solving ecological problems, they are defeating themselves before they start. Basic structural problems of the modern American urban environment also need attention. Two examples mentioned here are: one, the extreme inequity and the resulting socioeconomic and political marginalization of some publics and two, an infrastructure that is almost entirely for the automobile in spread out cities that encourages heavy dependence, inefficiency, and waste (and which further isolates the marginalized of the first example). Chattanooga and the Presidential Council on Sustainable Development appear to be deceiving themselves as well as others to whom they represent their efforts as pursuing sustainable development, much less sustainability.