We can overcome

-- (Credit: Anand Singh Rawat)THE Habitat ii conference held in
Istanbul, in June this year, had one message broadcast loud and clear: cities
could be cleaned up and managed sustainably if only communities chose to
do so. Twelve communities who have
already demonstrated this were given
the Best Practices Award by the UN. One
of these was the city of Chattanooga in
Tennessee, US, where the combined
efforts of thousands have resulted in the
purification of the air and water of the
nation's most polluted city. In the
process, the local economy has also
diversified.

Located in south-eastern Tennessee,
Chattanooga has come a long way since
the early 60s when foundries, food processing industries and manufacturers of
anything from carpets and soaps to
boilers for nuclear plants set up base
here. The availability of cheap land,
labour and power attracted them to the
area. The small nondescript town soon
metamorphosed into an industrial city that produced hundreds of jobs and goods. It also produced a crisis.

The city's air was so full of pollutants that residents had to drive with
their headlights on even during the day.
Morning walks often left traces of soot
on clothing and around the nose. The
incidence of tuberculosis was three
times higher than the national average.
In the meantime, as labour-intensive
jobs gave way to capital-intensive ones,
Chattanooga no longer remained
attractive for industrial investment. By
the mid '70s, many of the city's older
industries relocated to other states in
the us or overseas. The industrial boom
had gone bust. Abandoned factories
began rusting along the Tennessee river.
Unemployment and crime rose. Urban
decay seemed there to stay.

However, the people realised that
change was essential. Says David
Crockett, a Chattanooga city councilperson, "We were like a drug addict who
hits rockbottom and needs rehabilitation." In 1983, a 'visioning process' was
initiated to get the city out of the mire it
had sunk into. Chattanoogans
expressed their 'vision' of what the
change was to result in, through the
process, A non-profit organisation, the
Chattanooga Venture, was set up for the
purpose. Rather than have a small
coterie of people deciding the city's
future, the Venture invited all residents
to come forward with their notions on
what their city should took like. The
result was 1,700 people sitting through a
series of brainstorming sessions that
lasted 20 weeks. The ideas borne from
the exercise were concretised in the
form of 34 goals for 'Chattanooga:
Vision 2000'.

Even though Vision 2000 included
223 projects, the city is most proud of
the Chattanooga Neighbourhood
Enterprise: an organisation involving
both public and private participation,
set up to make housing more affordable
for residents belonging to the lower
income group. The conversion of the
riverfront - with its series of abandoned factories - into a park, was on
the agenda too. Running eight km along the river, the park shall extend another
35 km on both banks of the river .
Residents have also tried to reduce the
damage done by downtown development. Sidewalks in the city have been
remodelled using bevelled bricks to
allow water to flow into the spaces
between them, thus reducing the load
on the storm-water drains. Trees were
planted along the streets and in parking
lots. Two thousand oil-skimming
devices were installed in parking lots to
prevent oil from getting into the water-
ways. The old buses in town were
replaced by what is now the US's second
largest fleet of electric buses.

A conscious effort was made to
avoid turning the city into a concrete
jungle. Instead of replacing the city's
century-old Walnut Street bridge with a
modern highway, the old structure was
preserved and converted into a
pedestrian walkway. Historic buildings
of the city like the famous Tivoli theatre
were restored.
Five-star hotel chains
were discouraged from coming to the
city. Instead, city planners encouraged
the renovation of small hotels, inns and bed-and-breakfast establishments. Street vendors
and musicians were
encouraged, the aim being
to put forth a friendly
image of the city centre.
Another successful initiative has been the
Tennessee Aquarium, the
US's largest exhibit of
freshwater fish, which
attracted 1.5 million visitors in its first year and has
pumped an estimated US
$133 million into the local
economy. "Five years ago, you would have driven through this area
with your windows rolled up," smiles
Crockett.

However, the most challenging task
was the revitalisation of the abandoned
and derelict industrial area of the city
into an environmentally-advanced
commercial-zone. Chattanooga hopes to
be home to the world's first zero-emissions industrial park. The city planners
want industries to recycle more
resources, use raw materials to the full
and create as few unwanted by-products
as possible. And if by-products are
unavoidable, they could be used as raw
materials for other industries. This
means that a whole network of industries efficiently feed off the by-products
generated by another. By doing so,
emissions will not only be curbed but
will be entirely eliminated.

"Zero emissions is both an environmental and a terrifically powerful business concept," says Paul Tebo, vice president of DuPont's safety, health and
environment division. In 1995, the
company opened a carpet reclamation
plant in Chattanooga to process 450,000
kg of used carpets every month.
The recovered nylon is sold and eventually used to make car parts. The
fibres are used to strengthen soil embankments.

By 1992,85 per cent of Vision 2000's
goals had been met. The whole exercise
was so popular that in 1993 it resulted in
another visioning exercise called
Revision 2000. The number of grassroots groups that have worked towards
cleaning up the city's image and sought
"to give something back to the community", has mushroomed.

Meanwhile, there have been murmurs of discontent alleging a form of
environmental racism. Says Peter Montague, director of the
Environmental Research
Foundation, "It may be
true that they are depolluting the air where white
people live, but I find no
evidence of it being true
for the African-American
population of chattanooga." In fact, the
Chattanooga creek, with
its heavy load of sediments
contaminated with coal
tar and other toxic substances -piled two m
high in some places - runs through predominantly African-
American localities. Though a few
clean-up sessions have been held, the
creek has received little attention.

But, there is no denying that
Chattanooga has taken not a step but a
leap in the right direction. US vice president Al Gore commented, "It (Chattanooga) has undergone the kind of transformation that needs to happen in our
country as a whole." It may already be
happening as Chattanooga has inspired
a number of cities not just in the us but
even in far-off Namibia, Fiji and the
Netherlands, to plan industrial ecosystems based on the Chattanooga
approach.