The Politics of Black Self-Determination and Neighborhood Preservation in Lincoln Park

Chapter 9 discusses the politics of public space and neighborhood self-determination in the historically Black, working class neighborhood of Lincoln Park. The work describes a thirty-year history of neighborhood-level community building and planning, including the present struggles of the Coalition to Save Lincoln Park, an advocacy group that emerged in 2013 after the city announced its plans to extend Central Avenue through the historic park space and neighborhood.

Settling Chattanooga

Chapter 1 charts the historical relationship between Native dispossession and early city planning and development in downtown Chattanooga, to understand more deeply the complex relationship that many contemporary Chattanoogans have with the legacies of Cherokee dispossession that took place within their hometown’s borders. The chapter focuses on the construction of historical narratives of people and place during the pre-removal and Removal periods, and argues that a paternalistic, yet quasi-reverent and nostalgic, popular framing of Native culture and removal has profoundly impacted how many people today relate to, and represent, Chattanooga’s early history. Tracing the genealogy of race, property, and Native removal in the context of early city-building prepares the ground for later discussions of contemporary Native American placemaking activities along the Tennessee riverfront.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the reader to ‘diasporic placemaking’ as an alternative conceptual frame for understanding the cultural and socio-spatial politics of planning and development in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It also describes current demographic and housing trends to demonstrate how the racialized stratification influences the city’s housing, economic, and placemaking infrastructures. An overview of the book chapters are also provided.

Cosmopolitanism as Concealment

Chapter 3 continues this analysis through the ‘Jim Crow’ and Civil Rights eras. The chapter reveals critical double standards with respect to city planning and cultural development in Chattanooga; contradictions and inequalities that persist today. It also argues the historical conceptualization of black culture and community development as antithetical to urban progress was promulgated during and after the Reconstruction Period so that whites had a rationale to justify their ongoing subjugation and exploitation of Black labor across all areas of the Dynamo of Dixie’s rapidly expanding local economy. The long history of de facto and de jure Jim Crow laws and structural inequalities explored in this chapter are testament to these legacies of oppression.

From Rabble-Rousing to SPARCing Community Transformation

This chapter describes the evolution of Chattanooga Organized for Action as they transitioned from a popular protest group into a 501-C3 non-profit who initiates, supports and connects place-based social justice movements across downtown Chattanooga. It also discusses two components of a participatory action research initiative related to this research project: the Sustaining People and Reclaiming Communities (SPARC) Initiative and the Planning Free School of Chattanooga. Both were experimental community planning processes, designed to offer alternatives to mainstream citizen engagement and capacity building in the city.

Rooting a Black Diaspora in Downtown Chattanooga

Chapter 2 explores the rooting of Chattanooga’s Black communities through the late nineteenth century. Black labor and placemaking have been central to urbanization and economic expansion in Chattanooga since before the modern arrival of white settlers. Despite these substantial contributions, Black city-building has never been treated with the same level of admiration as exhibited toward the Cherokee. Nor have the centuries-long legacies of exploitation, violence, and marginalization been treated with the same levels of remorse or repentance. The chapter traces popular discourses of urban progress to illustrate how Black urban placemaking and community development were portrayed historically as antithetical to progressive urban cosmopolitanism.

Conclusion

The conclusion synthesizes the major lessons of the book into three categories: 1) how diasporic placemaking contributes to planning theory and practice; 2) how urban planners, planning educators, and others interested in these issues can better support diasporic placemaking through their personal work; and 3) the role of participatory action research in supporting these previous two goals.

Public Space, Cultural Development, and Reconciliation Politics in the Renaissance City

Chapter 7 extends this conversation by examining the politics of racial recognition and reconciliation happening vis-à-vis public space, art, and cultural tourism planning within the revitalized urban core today. The Tennessee Riverfront and areas immediately surrounding Ross’s Landing are sites of multiracial diasporic placemaking—spaces where different people have worked with and against one another to carve out communities of security and belonging. While these diasporic placemaking efforts have occasionally produced new collaborations and deeper affinities, they also ignite conflict and contestation over physical space and cultural place in the city. To this end, the work explores planning and placemaking elements of the Tennessee riverfront’s revival to show how community leaders have used urban planning and placemaking to acknowledge and, arguably, reconcile, with the city’s exploitative colonial past.

Chattanooga Homecoming

This chapter explores the politics of public participation in the context of Chattanooga’s 35-year, citizen-driven return to the Tennessee riverfront. Though the city has won numerous awards for its citizen-driven planning initiatives, the success of early revitalization programs such as Chattanooga Venture and the Vision 2000 process remains contested.

Singing a Big Nine Blues Revolution

Chapter 5 assesses the historic rise, ‘decline’, and ongoing revival of the East Ninth Street/Martin Luther King Blvd. corridor and neighbourhood. The work contends that public and institutional actors involved with the ongoing revitalization of the Martin Luther King Blvd. corridor and neighborhood stand to miss crucial opportunities for realizing the equitable redevelopment of the district. The potential damage wrought by this absence is particularly acute because of the neighborhood’s long history of creative, cooperative Black placemaking and community development.