Darcy Kiefel A family enjoys the Tennessee Riverpark, the backbone of Chattanooga’s extensive greenway system.
out clouds of particulate pollution. Because the surround- ing ridges create a natural bowl where polluted cold air becomes trapped beneath a blanket of warmer air, by the mid-1900s, the city was literally choking. In 1969, Walter Cronkite announced on the CBS
Evening News that Chattanooga was the dirtiest city in the nation. It was a stunning wake-up call. Within the year, Chattanoogans adopted aggressive legislation restrict- ing almost every pollution-causing activity in the area. Incredibly, within three years, every major pollution- generating facility was in compliance. But Rust Belt deindustrialization had already begun,
and for many factories the cost of cleaning the air was simply too high. Those companies simply closed up shop. Unemployment soared; the tax base shrank. Chattanooga was no longer choking, but it was in danger of dying. Like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and other cities dependent on heavy industry, Chattanooga struggled with the issue of survival—how to create a future in a new economy.
RETURN TO THE RIVER Trust for Public Land Tennessee director Rick Wood leans over a 50-square-foot topographical map in TPL’s offices in a converted home near the Tennessee River. Since 1994, TPL has been helping to build the Tennessee Riverwalk, which traces the river through the city at the heart of a growing regional greenway system. “The green dots mark the completed Riverwalk,” Wood explains. “The red dots are where we are working to acquire prop- erty or easements.” Like so many waterfront cities, Chattanooga long saw
its river as a resource for commerce, not for people. Before the 1980s, much of the riverfront was industrial; urban buildings faced inland, their backs to the water. But as the city began to contemplate its postindustrial future, the river emerged once more as a key resource—now for people rather than industry. A series of citizen vision- ing and planning efforts culminated in 1985 with the release of the Tennessee Riverpark Master Plan, which