And see.

Everything back.

Here to.

My.

Longtime colleague my.

Guess is.

That.

He is.

Twelve.

Years.

Here.

Where.

This is the only.

And.

Least least.

That.

He's done.

So that you guys.

Are great and welcome.

So this work that I'm doing on Chattanooga
actually goes back for a moment

of time my first introduction Shenouda was
back in the one nine hundred eighty S. and

I have often on worked in Chattanooga
since that time one of things that's very

striking about Chattanooga is the degree
to which issues of civic engagement and

issues of sustainability
have intersected and

as we will see that ties directly into
the literature on sustainability and

therefore raises some very
interesting research questions

if you look at the the issue
of pain ability and over time

what you see is that it actually comes out
of international development issues so

the dominant paradigm in international
development was the growth paradigm it was

an idea that the way in which you engaged
environmental concerns and issues

of poverty is by growing the economy and
that in fact was the dominant model for.

International development until
the one nine hundred seventy S.

you start to see in one thousand nine
hundred sixty some questioning of this but

it's not really until the environmental
movement becomes strong that you

see systematic critiques in the critiques
are both in terms of environment and

in terms of its impact on the poorest
people who live in these communities

in one thousand nine hundred in one
thousand nine hundred nine the Brooklyn

commission and
a whole series of other U.N.

sponsored initiatives develops
a key idea of sustainability and

the components of sustainability
the commission in fact

created a working doctor a document called
the world's Commission on Environmental

environment and development our common
future in which focused on this and

they they defined sustainability
in a particular kind of way

I said the development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising

the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs and

then goes on to talk about the concept of
sustainability ultimately this has number

of different opponents there's the issue
of the economy which was the dominant

model that originally in terms of growth
model but adding to it this notion of

society that in fact it which not just at
the social level at the national level

that you have to deal with these issues of
concerns but also at the individual levels

and therefore issues of equity in society
were important and issues of environment

this whole notion that we are reliant
on resources and living conditions that

are created by environments and
if we degrade those conditions in

order to meet current needs we in fact to
do disservice to the community as a whole

this is a ability model has become pretty
well known the idea of environment and

economy tends to be the part
of the sustainability model

that dominates the discussion if you look
across the United States if you look at

even in developing countries most of
the discussion is around the intersection

between environment economy can
you offer for instance maintain a.

Active environment while allowing for
economic development and

what does that look like and the whole
notion of viability of the economic system

over a long period of time but of course
the other piece of that is this piece of

it related to society and
the notion of course that societies

ultimately are what you're
trying to be to protect and

hants involves this whole issue
of a just and vital community and

it intersects of the environment in terms
of the healthiness of that environment and

all its many of the stations and intersect
of the economy in terms of equitability

of the distribution of benefits
associated with the economy and

ultimately those things together are what
we talk about in sustainability but

the model itself is not without its own
kind of controversy there hasn't fact been

a significant debate both internationally
and domestically around the question of

sustainability sustainability in the
United States tended to focus primarily

on environmental issues probably even more
than international development issues

focused on it and it in as much
as it dealt with civic kinds of

concerns social kinds of concerns attended
to focus on civic engagement as as

a kind of key notion of how society would
be improved that in fact you would improve

it by expanding the opportunities of
people to engage these kinds of issues and

it provided lesser attention to
the issues of equitable distribution and

equity concerns the critiques
therefore interesting Les are two

kinds of largely this is related to
the kind of conceptual ambiguity

of what sustainability actually means is
it really about environment and economy or

is it really also about equity
the progressive critique looks at that and

says you know sustainability is
such a nebulous concept that it's

used as a way of suppressing debate about
key issues so if you look at the beltline

for instance and in Atlanta the beltline
is talked about in terms of sustainable.

But the equity questions are often not
central to that debate and so there is

this kind of concern from the progressive
side that this tends to suppress

debate of a certain kind as a conservative
which I'm not going to deal with but

is the conservative can critique
is that sustainability is also

kind of a key code word for
government intervention and

increased government role in
the economy and in communities and

therefore is kind of at
the suspect in that regard.

Ultimately what we see if you
look at the range of research and

papers written about this is that this is
actually very little direct assessment of

what happens on the ground when people in
fact try to engage in sustainability and

they try to do it over long periods of
time and that's the niche in which I'm

trying to fill so the research questions
that I'm dealing with is first of all

under what conditions do local political
regimes favor sustainability favoring

sustainability actually emerge more causes
them to emerge the second is that one of

the roles of elites and grassroots sort of
people in the community and the community

leaders in the development and maintenance
of sustainability initiatives over a long

period of time to send ability does not
make a set any sense if you only do it for

three years right I mean it's something
that you're you're implying as you're

going to be engaged with over a long
period time so what sustains that and

then the third piece of this is what's
the distribution of impacts that

are societally sustainability and
how do different groups for

instance how is it distributed
within the community itself

and I'm doing that through a number of
different manners which I'll talk about

a little bit later the building blocks
to this is first of all the notion that

sustainability is embedded in decision
processes the question of governance in

localities how that how those decisions
made her out how do they come about what

are the power arrangements that allow that
to happen how our interest out with and

things like that is another
system which is of course and

equally important probably
more important is.

And that is what's the actual impacts on
the local and regional systems do they

become more sustainable What are the
physical conditions that emerge from one

of the policies and institutions and
emerge and that the within this there is

a number of different kind of key ideas
that inform my research first of this is

that there that civic engagement
processes are important to shape ing and

reshaping decision making systems that in
fact if you're going to do sustainability

you can't just do it by having the normal
government systems try to do it and so

the whole issue about whether sitting in
Gage and processes are both responsive and

efficient to the needs of the community
second piece of this is obviously

the substantive outcomes themselves
are they beneficial are they durable do

they last over periods of time and
then those two together

interact with social capital and civic
capacity the capacity of the community

over time to act in a sustainable
way more effectively and

to integrate that into their normal way
their culture their normal governance

systems and things like that and
there are course feedback loops to this so

this is kind of the building
blocks in the model for

how I approach the issue of sustainability
within these different cities so

the research method I'm using as
them using case study methodology

there are multiple cases Chattanooga's
the first it's a pilot study but

ultimately this will involve
eight different cities so

that we're comparing eight cities all
of them are cities that are known for

engaging in sustainability over long
periods of time not doing case studies of

the normal cities and
then the second is that

the second piece of this is that the case
studies are embedded case studies so

they in fact deal with multiple
cases within each city and

the cases involve neighborhoods
specific neighborhoods within each city

of the city itself and
then the region as a whole and

how those things interact and so
the methods they used are semi-structured.

Interviews there are all recorded
transcription and coding of those

interviews in terms of the themes
that I'm exploring and and then also

a statistical comparison mostly in terms
of outcome measures impact measures such

as Circle comparison between the cities
that are in the study and control

cities that I will identify that are have
not in fact a gauge in sustainability so

that's the overall methods of not talk any
more about that the talk itself when I

talk about is mostly going to focus
on the dynamics I think most of

you are probably interested what happened
in Chattanooga the dynamics in Chattanooga

we're going to start by giving a sense of
the geography and history of how they got

to the point where they started this whole
thing within going to look at the two

major foeticide being downtown which
is mostly where they started and

then what happens in the neighborhoods
itself to how far does this actually

spread into the communities that are not
downtown and then looking at findings and

conclusions OK sorry Chattanooga this
is actually in one thousand nine

hundred sixty picture of Chattanooga since
one thousand nine hundred sixty three

I presume it's Union eight hundred
sixty three presume it's Union

soldiers invading because they're coming
from the north looking at Chattanooga but

you see the Tennessee River you see
the mountains this is a strategic location

in fact you could argue that it only
into would not exist without Chattanooga

because the reason Atlanta is here is so
that the railroads could go

around the Appalachian Mountains and go to
Chattanooga or which point the IT WOULD

they were offloaded to the Tennessee River
and went into the Midwest Chattanooga is

both the predecessor to Atlanta and
probably.

More important than the land I guess
a lot of people would argue with that.

So this is the area that we're
talking about and if you kind of

do a blow up of this you can see why
Chattanooga so strategically important

you have the Appalachian Mountains on
this side you have the Cumberland.

FLATOW And you can't and I don't think
this does work you can see just barely

kind of break in the Cumberland Plateau
which is the Tennessee River the only way

to really transport from one side to
the other and so this is the kind of

landscape now this landscape turns out to
be important to the city in lots of ways

because part of the problems that drive
Chattanooga into the difficulties

it has is this is a regional success and
it's a regional excess is partially based

on the river but it's also based on
the fact that it's near the mountains and

the mountains in fact provide
resources particularly coal for

the development of industry eight hundred
seventy one it's always interesting to me

if you look at the eight hundred eighty S.
through the one nine hundred twenty S.

and you look at pictures of cities
that are designed to show the city and

its best light what you see is a lot of
smoke stacks right I mean the smoke stacks

were prosperity at that time and you can
see the degree to which the city had

been industrialized particularly
along the river but

also along railroad lines and
in fact had developed a fairly

significant base of economy Broad Street.

And shows you the kind of
integration of railroads.

It was called the dynamo of Dixie right as
of the the fact that it was such a kind of

industrial center and so
the city in fact has grown over time

the two places that we're going to talk
about mostly are the downtown area there

and Alton park and piney woods which is
a neighborhood and so when I talk about

downtown this is the area that I'm talking
about we'll come back to that later so

this is a picture of downtown from Lookout
Mountain It gives you a sense of the scale

of the mountains that are actually around
there and this is from the south this is

from the original perspective kind
of looking to the south excuse me so

you're looking at downtown and
Lookout Mountain in the background and

so it became Of course not and

you look at places like Detroit
you look at places pits.

Heard you know cities that in fact
had significant economic bases and

industry when you got to
the one nine hundred sixty S.

that clearly was a problem the problem
was literally Chattanooga was

declared to be the most polluted
city in the United States and

so in this context part of the reason
it's of the most polluted is because

it's in this valley right and so that you
have the air pollution coming out and

you have this Valley River Valley and
inversions occurring and so the air

pollution gets trapped and in fact it's
a significant problem this is a population

this is a fairly common population as
will see the the nine hundred ninety S.

into thousands are a bit unusual the kind
of decrease in population is obviously

related to white flight as the city
in fact or middle class flight

as a city in fact becomes
more polluted Yes.

Nine hundred sixty nine yeah so
nine hundred sixty nine eighty W report

if you ask a question
I give you the answer.

And in fact this is a picture at noon you
had to have your headlights on regulators

literally would put out mayonnaise
jar as and then measure how much.

Particulate fell out of the sky
because you could do it by a ruler

you didn't need to be subtle about this
to three times the national average and

this is across the city right
this is the entire city so

wasn't focused on any particular
places no place to get away from it

except if you were fairly wealthy you
lived on top of Lookout Mountain or

on top of any of these other ridges and
you actually had cleaner air so in

one thousand nine hundred sixty nine the
city itself in the county around it and

gauges in a process to start a Pollution
Control Bureau and I have a start here

because this is the first effort to
use collaborative processes to try to

deal with environmental issues that
relate to the economy the process.

The push control board was put in place
and I might note because it happened

before the Clean Air Act in one thousand
nine hundred seventy it still exists so

it still runs its own Pollution Control
Board not at the state level and

it was originally run by
the Chattanooga Manufacturers Association

this is like putting the industry
was putting the industry in charge

I might note that that at that time
it actually made sense because

it was the industry that was pushing for
the Pollution Control Bureau because they

basically said we have an acceptable
conditions but none of us are going to do

anything unless we do it together and
so it was almost a trade union and

to deal with the most obvious problems
which had to do with particulate

in the air you might note of course that
soon as the Clean Air Act comes in and

there's a lot more stringent requirements
that they start to get resistance from

the board to riginal you're right in terms
of trying to implement some of the more

stringent kinds of things the other piece
of this is of course the fact that much of

the economy was going offshore that
would just like the North lots of these

industrial towns were drying up so was
this one so this shrinking economic base

and the kind of Central City disinvestment
a lot of abandoned properties

kind of buildings torn down those
kinds of issues and a highway that

dissected the city a couple of different
local hot state highways that also did

the same kind of thing and so this is
Jack Noura the Lyndhurst Foundation and

he says in the early one nine hundred
eighty S. the sense of doom in the air and

the future seemed for close so this is
the kind of predecessor to why city

would take the risks because I would argue
that it that going into sustainability in

any serious way ultimately is risky
because you're going to disrupt

the existing order of things and so
in this context the economic decline

this is the kinds of properties of what
you're seeing manufacturing properties

downtown properties these are the kinds
of industries that were leaving town.

Honorees coking operations chemical
operations those kinds of things

tar operations these are nasty in the
sense of air pollutants are the kinds of

things they were all leaving of particular
importance was the volunteer army in

addition plant which was an enormous
site where Volkswagen eventually goes so

in this context what we see is Chattanooga
is only one of ten cities in the entire

United States the metropolitan area which
the central city lost population in

the one nine hundred eighty S. and then
reversed it in the ninety's into thousands

so it's pretty rare it's an unusual city
the question is how did it do it and

why did it why was it able to do it and so
what we have then the other piece of this

is that this is that while it was the most
polluted city in the United States and

nine hundred sixty nine by the time you
get to the late one nine hundred eighty S.

early one nine hundred ninety S.
It's called the sustainable city right and

so there's something that happened and
the something that happened was a rather

interesting redevelopment process and
were so

let's look at the first stage of that in
the first stage of that is to do it mostly

with the downtown and with the waterfront
so in one thousand nine hundred one we go

back to that it actually starts
a story starts with a studio

master students in urban planning and
architecture so

all of you who are in that this is your
save the city it was from the University

of Knoxville there is a faculty
member there name Stroud Watson and

Stroud Watson did exactly what Mike
Dobbins does or Perry Yeah and I mean in

this sort of combining urban
design with with a studio and

what he did is he actually set up
a office in the city itself and

so for the first time in I might
note that it was a big end and

commercial building which had no heat and
so they brought in a pot belly stove and

that's how they heated it
during winter right so

I mean this is a low budget operation
here but it became a place where.

People in the community
could come together and

it actually originally emerged
from an outside looking in and

saying there's possibilities here
the second thing that kind of

kind of informs this was a nine hundred
eighty two task force that was set up so

the mayor set up a task force
that focused on Marcus and Ben So

this right here is Marcus and then you can
see it's mostly undeveloped it was mostly

under government hospital and a couple of
other things like that and the city that

Allentown is right across the river from
in the question is what should be done

with that what was interesting is that the
task force decided to ignore the mayor and

to ignore its charge and to actually
do something quite different it said

the problem is the moccasin bed and
the problem is the river as a whole and

and so it started in fact engaging
in public participation process and

this was a new in Chattanooga there
wasn't a history of this but they engaged

these citizen participation and kind
of processes sixty five public meetings

in sixty five different neighborhoods
where did they get this idea where

they got this idea by in fact going
somewhere else in this particular

case they had visited greater Indianapolis
and the Indianapolis progress committee

was in fact a national model at that time
for how to engage in communities and

the redevelopment of communities at both
the same time something else happens and

the something else that happens is
that there's a local foundation so

this is an elite foundation in the sense
that most foundations are financed and

run by elite members of
the community really came out of

money that was associated with
the bottling operations of coke

it was a Lyndhurst foundation and what
they said is we know we keep on giving

money to schools we keep on giving money
to the museum but the city is dying right

so what good is this going to do right
let's do something that very few.

Stations that ever done let's
in fact invest in the city and

let's do it not by investing in
projects a city wants to do but

by asking the community
what they want to do and

the initial funding was not at all
project base they were not going to

fund any particular project they
were going to fund the process and

in fact they didn't design the process
what they did is they funded a nonprofit

a new nonprofit the nonprofit which
Chattanooga venture Chattanooga ventures

sole purpose in life was to engage
the community it was not to do or

implement anything and we will see
how they in fact deal with that so

it's really about civic passages
building right the focus is on civic

capacity that's an explicit model
focused on so that capacity building

they create a board of sixty individuals
if how many of you have been on board.

Not a couple how many people on
it ten twelve right never sixty

if this is ungainly Why did they have
sixty well they said look if we want to

in fact engage the whole community we have
to have the whole community represented on

the board and if we can't get our board
to work well how are we going to get

the community to work well and so
there was a kind of nesting of you know so

that they had this inclusive board and

the way in which as we all get into
this as the way in which things get

implemented out of this process is that
instead of Chattanooga venture doing it

Chattanooga venture works with people
who are interested in doing it to create

another nonprofit that will in fact
focus on the problems themselves and

they spawn off all these other
nonprofits that actually implement

that's get a little bit ahead of the game
the game itself was Vision two thousand so

the idea was in fact what we're going to
do is create a vision for the city and

what they did instead of going into
the community like the first round

where they held public hearings they
said we're going to create a process for

strengthening the name.

It's capacity to figure this
out on their own and so

they chose within each neighborhood
facilitators from those neighborhoods who

are people engaged in the neighborhood
trained them on how to in fact facilitate

meetings sent them back into the community
they train fifty different facilitators

might know Chattanooga venture at this
time probably had fifteen people on IT

staff they clearly could have done
the facilitation themselves but

they chose not to do it but rather to
empower the community to do it themselves

and so they engaged a thousand seven
hundred citizens world stuff and

sound like much but if you actually
calculate based on how many

people live in Chattanooga this represents
over five percent of all the households in

Chattanooga this is an enormous number
of people who are involved in this

what came out of this was something
that for planners would look weird

it was a list and it was a list of because
the process was this they they went

to the neighborhoods neighborhoods made
suggestions it went back to the community

the city as a whole they kind of had
a process and by the way it was open

anyone could come to any of these meetings
and gauge the whole set of goals and

things like that they sent back their
sense back to the neighborhoods and

neighborhoods reacted it went back to
the city so it went to this kind of this

interactive process back and forth and
then ultimately what they came out with is

a commitment portfolio of forty
goals which are general goals and

two hundred twenty three specific projects
none of them prioritized right just a list

and so you go Well how is this
going to work the model was that

the prioritization would occur
by people who are committed

to trying to solve one of the taking
on one of these projects and so

they put the two hundred
twenty three projects out and

said if you're interested in working
on any of these projects we will do

is work with you to build the capacity for
you to do that to help you connect

other people interested in it to train you
if you need to be trained to connect you.

Resources we will not do it you will
do it but we will help you build that

capacity so again the kind of
capacity building kinds of things and

I might note this is probably the most
successful playin that I've ever seen so

usually you get these
twenty five year plans and

twenty five years later you go we need
another twenty five year plan because

we only did half of what we needed out of
these two hundred twenty three projects

within a decade about eighty five percent
of the projects were either completed or

substantially completed this is an amazing
kind of thing and just to give you a sense

of the scale of this Chattanooga this is
just a Chattanooga one of the ideas was

they wanted three downtown bussing free
downtown Boston and they didn't want

it to be nonpolluting they needed electric
car buses to do this you could only via

lectures buses in Germany they didn't want
to go to Germany they said wait a minute

we have a declining economic base we have
the skills we'll start a company and

we'll start a company to produce
buses that are electric buses and

we'll sell it to the city and then we'll
sell it to other people and that's what

they did the Down here the aquarium many
of you have been to Chattanooga I've seen

the aquarium Korean was probably already
on the list before this because I'm sure

that people already thought about this but
the whole connection to the riverfront was

significant this is a walkway to from
the aquarium up to the museum the idea of

connectivity of creating
pedestrianisation one that

street bridge a bridge that was going to
be torn down by the state because it was

outmoded it took by the way this was the
hardest project to do because it took over

ten years to get the state to agree to
give the city give the bridge to the city

and to give the funding necessary
to tear it down to the city also so

they could use it to repair it and turn it
into a pedestrian bridge interesting way

this he said well this is great because it
connects to this whole walkway system and

Pathway system but
it's also great because it turns out it.

Place that they hold festivals I find
it particularly ironic that they have

a the wine over water festival and
if you look at the railings there are how

tall people are you wonder why nobody has
fallen off yet but you know they're bold

so they do things like that this is
the museum the walkway to the museum

in the sense of it at night it looks like
this this is another one of the projects

just by the way it's a sculpture garden
from the museum to downtown along the way

so these are the kinds of things Riverwalk
those kinds of things the kind of larger

list here the one I want to point out is
Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise so

that particular project built kind
of group was formed out of this

vision two thousand they built five
thousand eight hundred affordable housing

units they didn't build them they
renovated there was all this abandonment

they went in and they renovated them and

they in fact successfully stabilized
the African-American community

that was right up against
downtown as a result of this.

The other the other piece of this bear
some kind of emphasis is the south

side project is three hundred eighty
acres so Atlanta station is one hundred

ten acres three times as big as that when
extension if you know how big that is and

the way they started this I think is
indicative of the kind of notions about

sustainability the first thing that
they built were two schools nobody

live there nothing to nobody to go to the
schools they go to schools they built them

as anchor institutions they said
the priority for being at these schools

will be number one if you live there so
the idea of attracting people into it

number two if you work downtown and then
a lottery and they were magnet schools and

so they created it it was a brownfield
continue to place into a place that

was desirable and now this obviously
took lots of institutional work because

the city doesn't control the school
board right school boards.

Independently elected and

if you've ever worked a school board you
know how difficult this can be so this

is a substantial kind of piece is the kind
of thing that that goes into making for

sustainability is building these
coalitions now they had they finished so

soon that they did a revision two
thousand in one thousand nine hundred two

because they originally thought
this was going to take twenty years

they had already finished
most of the things so

they did a revision this time they
had even more participation with more

facilitators that then becomes what's
known as the Chattanooga way this is how

they deal with things when they emerge
that they they create these processes they

bring trained facilitators within the
communities they bring people together and

there's a series of other kinds of uses of
that and so in this context these are some

of the projects of water have the complete
redevelopment of the waterfront.

The kind of downtown revitalization
projects the south side

redevelopment which is a two hundred
three hundred acre site neighborhood

renewal which is the affordable housing
components and things like that and

then they start to cross over now you
can see that all the focus is really on

downtown in the neighborhoods right next
to downtown if you've been in Atlanta long

enough you know that this is of course
the pattern because that's where the most

economic interests are right now in
this context the green way across

this is Coolidge park that was built
the coolest thing I thought was

was the Renaissance Park which lesson look
like much right there except that this is

what it eventually becomes it's actually a
storm water treatment park the whole point

was to collect water that's coming
down from off all the streets to treat

it before it goes into the Tennessee River
using wetlands and things like that so

these ideas is coming from the community
and kind of engaging the community

they ultimately get all
these kind of attention.

Kind of United Nations best practice
it is the President's Council

on Sustainable Development award I
like this in particular the new reader

anyone know what the new reader is.

It's sort of like
the the Reader's Digest for hippies.

And so it's the most enlightened
towns of the country and N.P.R.

is the only small city in what makes
this city great the problem is

invoked as a kind of a last
piece of this that that came and

I might note that Volkswagen is
the first lead platinum LEED certified

manufacturing facility in the world
right I mean so this was this

was a really and so this international of
attracting industries that want to in fact

deal with sustainability there's
a lot of other pieces to this that

are around Main Street and other kinds
of things where they're attracting small

entrepreneurs who are also engaged in the
city and that kind of way but I want to go

instead to this whole question of how does
this relate to the economy a couple of

different ways to look at this one is of
course this is the employment in blue and

the unemployment rate in red the red being
on the right hand scale in the blue being

on the total employment scale over
here and we have a crisis right in

the crisis the same crisis that everyone
else had which is the recession and

I might note that that employment really
hasn't changed substantially from

where it was almost fifteen years ago and
so

that there is now these kinds of questions
about how does this fit together and

how does sustainability actually deal with
this and do we maintain that commitment or

not even at the level of
the city as a whole but

the bigger question is the neighborhoods
and how the neighborhoods it's

affected it's pretty clear when you go
into the neighborhoods that are right next

to downtown and there's really only one
of them that's right up against downtown

they have substantial populations that
the effort to focus on affordable housing

has in fact worked quite well and
is anchored the community in a way that

was quite useful but there's a lot of
other communities in neighborhoods in

the city and the question is how in fact
of those neighborhoods get affected so

what I'm looking at is one neighborhood
in particular it's the so if we.

If we take the Tennessee River this is
Marcus and Ben in the city centers up here

and we have Alton park and one of the
things that's hard to see all these train

tracks running through here but you
actually don't have very many roads going

into here is pretty isolated community
surrounded by a ridge on one side of

a stream on one side a kind of set
of railroads on another and so

it's in the reason it's isolated is
largely because it's the industrial

heart of Chattanooga It's the oldest
kind of really strong industrial area

other than right along the river itself
and the reason it's located there is

because Chattanooga Creek allowed you to
put all your pollutants in the water and

make them go away and so if you look at
this this is this area right in here is

where Alton park is so percent black is
almost sixty percent this is actually

the scales doesn't go up enough like now
ninety eight percent African-American and

in terms of percent poverty you were
up in this area of the scale right so

this is a poor
African-American community and

it looks like this so

we have the Tennessee River this is
the Alton park pony woods area and

in this what we see is a shift so you can
question about environmental justice if

you look at here all of these are in
major industrial areas right and

the communities are built all in and
around those industrial areas and

the way that this happened is that
in one nine hundred thirty S. and

one thousand nine hundred sixty S. What
headed to sensually been a white community

of workers who worked in those industry
moved out with automobiles and

things like that and prosperity and
at the same time the city had gone through

a urban renewal which had
essentially wiped out the core

African-American community that was right
next to downtown to the west side and

so they were looking for houses and
this is where houses were available and

in this context it became a wood
from hundred percent white to.

Black and so you would then now have
residents of the community who are not

working in those industries who are
getting all the impacts of the industries

right and so there is and the other
piece of course is public housing

schools recreation areas all of these
are located right on his top of here.

There is a place over here which was
originally a public housing project

to Chattanooga creek which I'll
mention a little bit later and

then these major major kinds of industries
that are in the middle of this community

this is a closer up so you can see how
you know integrated the industry and

the neighborhoods actually are so the
context of this is that of course race in

Chattanooga is at this time it's
only twenty percent African-American

it's now closer to a third
African-American in the city itself and

it had a history of problems they were
not as significant as many cities but

they were certainly significant problems
you also had these kind of interesting

kinds of efforts to kind of build
partnerships between I don't know if you

know who the Junior League is so
what's a junior league.

Yeah and traditionally very very
traditional It's over there but

their sense of wanting to somehow work
with this development corporation and

build partnerships so
there's a history of kind of doing that

ultimately the process that led
to the sustainability initiatives

one of the initiatives out of that was
to change the charter of the city and

to change it in a way that strengthen
the central the mayor and also that

created more proportional representation
so African-Americans would in fact

a political voice and that it actually
occurs in one nine hundred ninety S.

So that's another piece it's not
physical it's much more kind

of political governance this is
Cali homes Cali homes basically

it was a place with lots of problems and
this gives you a sense of the.

Community it's a so this is a.

Part of an interview process of some
posts here about so said this is about

mystics and mystics and was a person who
organized the residents of that Kali homes

mystics and played major mystics and
went to jail so this is of course

a pride thing right there they're saying
this in a very kind of respectful kind

of way she made things happen she defied
the law she organized the residents they

wouldn't pay rent they pack city hall with
children babies hollering and crying and

parents not about to stop them from crying
while the City Hall was trying to do its

business they took rats and things down
and let them go in city hall they got

the biggest rats they could find in Alton
park and they march to city hall and

let him go create a big mess down there
finally the mayor conceded right so this

is this is kind of struggle model right
this is not a model of of kind of get

together let's have discussions and try to
deal with that it was a confrontational

model and it was one that was
the only way to get things done so

in this context a couple of other
things that happened and so

one of them I'm just going to give
a couple of examples one of them is

the village an ultimate Park hope six so
the village in the hope.

Park hope six there was Colly
homes was torn down and

it was they there was thirty five
million dollars put into the hopes for

this project and it it turns out of that
if you look at the processes that emerge

out of that that citizens were actually
fairly engaged in the community now might

note that virtually no one from Alton park
was engaged in all these other processes

they didn't have anything to do with
them and so they weren't involved

in those processes but the city had
developed a way and not just the city but

residents in the city had developed a way
of thinking about how one made decisions

and how one made decisions is
from port to grassroots up and

import the elite kind of working
with that grassroots process.

And that had become part of
the political culture and

you actually see that quite clearly
in the design of the Hope six and

in some of the kind of ways that it came
out but not of course in the question

of whether the Hope Six itself was
the right solution right so it's of

there's a certain base level at which
the discussions don't go any deeper but

above that base level there's all these
issues of design and things like that

the interesting thing is that that in
addition to the housing that was built and

this is housing that's built on a grid
system that into the community around it

even though the original design was very
isolated the original public housing was

very isolated but there were certain kinds
of things like for instance the grocery

stores dry cleaners other kinds of support
structures that were supposed to be in

place were not even though they're in
the plan they were never implemented and

there are implemented partially
because of an environmental issue so

three point five million that was
supposed to go to these other things

was used to excavate
contaminated sands which

were quite an unexpected Now why these
were unexpected is unclear to me because

they had already found forty two hazardous
dumps in this in this neighborhood

by investigation so they should have
known that there were contamination

on a public housing project right that
that would have been pretty obvious and so

they obviously came with the with these
agreements but didn't actually go in and

figure this out or
then go back to the community and

ultimately only twenty five percent of
the original residents go back into

the new housing which by
the way is a higher than.

But nonetheless still quite low by
what you would hope and expect So

this is you know a good mix story in
terms of what's coming out of here

the other story is the story of
contamination and just going to have

to go through some of this faster than
the slides are going to allow me to do but

basically there's been so
much pollution into.

The creek and there were as I mentioned
forty two hazardous waste dumps

that were discovered there's
an industry burying things right and so

there's this whole issue about health
public health in the community whether or

not the health of residents affected
by all this and in this context.

Chattanooga creek itself was designated as
part of the Superfund seven miles of this

was the cleanup cost twenty five million
dollars They did it by basically

damming up the creek the Army Corps did
this they did up the creek for a mile and

then they piped all that water down and
they went in with with bulldozers and

actually pulled out the material sometimes
eighteen feet deep right think about

a creek that basically is only
about four feet deep in water and

eight hundred feet below that is
all contaminated strip sludge and

sediments So this is a place
which when you think about it

the challenges of doing sustainability
are so much more severe so

much more difficult because just so it's
twenty five thousand twenty five million

dollar investment the other was a thirty
five million dollar vessel both of them

improve the community in significant kinds
of ways but they do not get the community

up to the standard of the neighborhoods
that are around it right and so

this is kind of a real tension related
to that there are other kinds of

assaults things like releases of chemicals
that happened at different times so

you get kind of reactions to that right so
this is another individual when

I was young I walked to school I passed
those factories every day I got sprayed on

a bunch the industries caused the problem
we figured we couldn't do anything about

the industries the city would talk to as
if they would do something about it but

they wouldn't that leads to
a feeling of being unwanted

stepchild you say you're going to do
something and you never do right so

this kind of a sense of powerlessness and
the issue is how do you move

from powerlessness to engage.

In a way that's significant this this one
is largely about how the whites moved

out and the blacks moved back in and
in the process lost all their institutions

they lost their churches they lost
their They're kind of retail and

other kinds of things as well.

That leads us to the whole question about
what does this actually mean in terms of

health so the community residents were
insistent that their health was being

degraded the interesting thing is that
there was a whole series of studies done

and the last one if you don't know what
it's probably the premier epidemiological

group in the United States possibly
in the world it's run by the C.D.C.

and none of them in fact could
show a clear link between

what was happening in the neighborhood and
the health of the neighborhood and yet.

You know intuitively we know that if you
have an environment like that it has to in

fact be affecting what's going on and
so this is whole tension a bit about

how do you develop facts around this in
a community in which the history is so

convoluted as the history related to this
I just want to end with one quote and

to open it up to questions and
that is this is a individual and

it sort of underlies the the the role of
perceptions and the kind of difficulty of

kind of moving through in
a community with a history that.

Is this kind of assaulted in that kind
of the kind of ways as my grandson is so

sick with asthma I don't know why but I
think it has something to do with whatever

they pumped underground in Chattanooga
area whatever's in the air sometimes

you can wake up early in the morning and
I can look at my car I can see such so

much stuff like chemicals that
fell out of the sky overnight

like I'm telling you I think that a lot of
pollution still be let out around here but

at night time when people are sleeping
because you can see the results in

the morning time when you get up so
this is of course if you look

at the Air Pollution Control Data and
things like that there's a different pair.

But the whole question of trust and
distrust the question of perception and

how in fact you get communities
to work together I might note

that in this community there's a number
of processes that in fact work

to link people in the community to
the chemical industries to the clean

up of the Chattanooga river creek I
write out also that those generally took

almost ten years that these were not
short processes that the if you looked at

the the main downtown things in ten
years they had eighty percent done and

here it took ten years to sort of get to
the point where you had a clear sense of

what needed to be done a magnet also that
while they were doing that they were

making improvements but these prudence
are always limited by the kind of context

within which they're they're found so
that's where we are the ultimate

kind of connections our civic engagement
processes are significant and

important they they legitimize groups
that would be largely ignored but

ultimately that empowerment within these
groups is still limited by their financial

and other kinds of resources and
the impacts are much more limited in

places like this so at least it's so
far in the work that I've done so far

yes.

Actually it's not because
the main reason it was

called the most polluted is because air.

So that.

And you don't even know how to obviously
lots of water problems too and

the air problem was partially solved
by technology and regulation and

partially solved by industry
kind of going by the wayside so

it actually improved air quite
significantly quite fast

the issue of ecological is is
an issue of focus it's not

necessarily an issue of results when
they were doing this what they were.

We're seeing the initial wave of results
they certainly we're seeing progress

they're seeing a city turning itself
around in a way that very few cities were

able to do and
using a model of both engagement and

a kind of concept of the kinds of projects
that were appropriate that was within

an ecological framework and that's in fact
why they received all that attention.

Yeah.

Yes.

We're.

Hearing.

Yeah.

Yeah you know well over a.

Hundred.

Yeah well actually it's about two years
work is mostly statistical and it's not

actually looking into the dynamics
within each of these tends to equate

all this process is as being similar so we
can have a discussion about say about T.

has work but there's also the watershed
work tends to be focused on water

it deadens not to be the kind of
scale that this tries to be which is

kind of larger social economic and
environmental

interaction.

Yeah.

Yeah but
their stance certainly important yes.

Yes there.

Yeah just as a great book on case
studies that look really deeply and

are in fact in their stories but they're
they're quite deep stories as well as

other questions yes first and then second.

Yes

relate.

This.

Work.

You know the model is comes out
of claims made in the literature

that haven't really been tested that
I was particularly interested at and

I'm particularly interested in
the role of civic engagement.

In both in terms of elites and in terms
of grassroots and how those interact

as as a kind of coalition and
that allows us to sustain itself over time

it really is not a model to predict
results the substantive outcomes but

if it works if in fact that's what
drives outcomes then you ought to

see the outcomes right so the testing
is actually Do you see the outcomes and

as we saw at least in this story it
depends right there is a good day

of outcomes and in the more lete parts
of the city there is more outcomes were

positive outcomes and in the poorer
parts there are significant changes but

they're not as significant as
what happened downtown this is.

The worst places like yeah we're not just.

You know I.

Believe.

This well can put me has a book
taking sustainability seriously

editions of it will he actually tries to
do that scoring it's not exactly where

I'm going with this but but that was
informative to the work that I'm doing

yes.

But also this human health yeah yeah yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah and so I mean one of the things
about Chattanooga that I think

makes it a really interesting case is it's
big enough to have all these problems but

small enough that you can
actually see the interactions

you know West Side is a lot
like Alton park you know but

it's much bigger than Alton park this is
fifty eight hundred residents I don't know

what the west side is this is
a lot more than that and so

in this context the difficulties of
actually doing the intervention and

the number of people the lack of trust the
other kinds of issues that are bedded in

the system by history would play
themselves out in more complicated ways.

Yes.

Picture of the park.

Yeah.

That was.

That which park this park.

Yeah.

Now it's right here.

Yeah this is the carousel this
is the recreational park.

Yeah.

Right here.

Right here.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Let me let me pick up on that first
it's you know I said just very

briefly mentioned small enterprise but

this is a city that has put a lot of
energy into small enterprises and

has been pretty creative I mean
Google they're like the Google Fiber

is partially about community integration
there was first one they'd be for

Google Fiber they actually created
a utility to connect everybody up

to the Internet in the entire city
right and so this is pretty amazing and

they do a whole series of things that are
that are kind of infrastructure based or

social educational mentoring they
have a fellowship program to

bring entrepreneurs into the city to
try out new ideas where they provide

funding to them as a start up funding so
that they can try their new ideas.

You know no that's not the highway this is
this is this highway does not go to this

goes north so often park is south.

OK that's that's the.

I twenty four so it's separates but
that's like three neighborhoods away

from all to it so you have to go through
that to get from downtown to Alton

park.

You know that would not be the highway
that would be a street system and

as far as I know there's no efforts to
deal with it is kind of it's actually kind

of we're the only two ways in and one of
them is underneath a bridge that is so

small that you can't have two
cars go through it so it's.

Yeah.

No not that I know of.

Yeah.

And the questions.

Right.

Well.

Thank you very much thank you thank you.