‘Chattanooga’s Forgotten’: UTC students call on City Hall for safer streets

Joseph Ryan (left) and Hattie Martinek present at Chattanooga’s City Hall. Photo by Peyton Schultz.

After spending a year studying walkability in Chattanooga’s Oak Grove neighborhood, students in Dr. Chandra Ward’s class brought their findings to City Hall—asking officials to make the area’s streets safer and invest more fairly in underserved communities.

The students, as part of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Innovation Lab I course, shared their work during a City Hall presentation focused on the stark disparities between Oak Grove, a historically working-class neighborhood, and the nearby Mill Town development.

“This has been a class that is unlike one we have ever taken before,” said Joseph Ryan, a junior history major from Syracuse, New York. “We went into this with a question of, ‘How can we help these people?’ And we started by walking around. We parked at the (East Side Elementary) school and we just explored from there.”

Ryan described the difference between Oak Grove and Milltown as “night and day.”

“Oak Grove didn’t have nearly as many sidewalks,” he said. “The sidewalks were crumbling. It was immense.”

Led by Ward, a UC Foundation associate professor of sociology, the students spent two semesters installing tactical urbanism signage, conducting a walkability audit and building an online toolkit with resources for residents.

“It certainly has been a journey, not just for the students but also for myself—as an instructor, as an academic and as an urbanist,” said Ward in her opening remarks at City Hall. “We created a lot. This was a class of creativity, even though it wasn’t an art class or an engineering class … The students learned a lot about Chattanooga and I think that’s very important.”

Caroline Schrader hangs a sign in the Oak Grove neighborhood. Photo by Angela Foster.

The students’ walkability toolkit included self-assessment templates and a plan to distribute QR code stickers around high-traffic areas. The site will connect residents to community resources like housing, food access and basic needs.

Hattie Martinek, a sophomore political science and public service major from Hendersonville, Tennessee, spoke about the group’s collaboration with housing developer Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE) in sending out a survey to residents.

“Part of our collaboration with CNE and that survey is to ask, ‘What does the community need?’” Martinek said. “None of us live in the Southside Highland Park area, so we want to know what the residents are looking for and how to meet those needs—and then also provide an agency for them to be able to meet those needs themselves.”

Martinek explained some of those needs, including more third spaces—community gathering spots like parks—along with a stronger sense of neighborhood pride and improved aesthetic appeal.

“When you don’t own a home, there’s a lack of pride that comes with ownership,” she explained. “The residents aren’t as inclined to take care of their yards and to really take pride in their home. With that comes a sense of community, prioritizing the public infrastructure in these underserved areas and then supporting public education and family services.”

Sophomore Caroline Schrader, a mechatronics engineering major, said the class helped her see how small design decisions can shape how people interact with their environments.

“You can see there’s a lack of sidewalks and crosswalks, tactile paving, also trees to provide shade for people walking outside, and a lot of trash and pollution,” said Schrader, who hails from St. Louis. “All these things kind of come together and stop people from wanting to go outside.”

Ava Rawls, a sophomore early childhood special education major from Huntsville, Alabama, outlined the group’s recommendations for how the city should take action. She emphasized the importance of maintaining improvements and expanding efforts beyond just one neighborhood.

“If you do not know the issues, if you do not know the areas that need improvement, then you can’t really do anything,” Rawls said. “Think about the different things that you can do as well as the different areas that you have seen that need a little bit of an extra boost.

“From there, you can identify the issues, address those problems, figure out what you yourself can do, as well as find resources—what you can help others do.”

The students proposed a multi-year project that could help guide city leaders and community members in advancing progress. The overall vision, Martinek explained, is to “bridge two Chattanoogas.”

“We’re asking the city to invest equitably across all neighborhoods,” Schrader said. “From our time in Oak Grove, there’s just such a stark contrast and it’s part of why we titled our presentation ‘Chattanooga’s Forgotten,’ because these are historic residents and there’s so much deterioration of public infrastructure and a lack of investment in this specific area.”

Neighborhood Program Specialist Steve Lamb (right) and Office of Innovation Delivery and Performance Administrator Tim Moreland (center) gave students feedback on their work.

After the presentation, city officials took part in a Q&A with the students. Steve Lamb, a neighborhood program specialist for the city of Chattanooga, was moved by the student’s presentation.

“Thank you for the signs,” Lamb said. “As somebody who works in the surrounding communities and with neighborhood associations—and with this digital toolkit—I’m really excited to dig into that and would love to support this work forward.”

Tim Moreland, an administrator in the city’s Office of Innovation Delivery and Performance, said the students’ work reflects how in-the-field learning can produce results.

“One thing I love most about what you guys did is you started out with tactical urbanism—learning by doing,” Moreland said. “And a lot of times when people are starting out in design, it takes them a really long time to actually get to the doing part … but you learn so much when you’re actually doing experiential work.”

Dr. Jordan King, director of UTC’s Innovations in Honors program, said the course exemplified the mission of combining community partnership with student development.

“Our goal is to put ideas into action,” King said. “We want them to do this by being creative, trying to think how they can use things like design thinking to come up with solutions to problems and really engage in something that helps to create change.”

Ward echoed that reflection in her closing remarks.

“They created things that can be used by other people long after this course has ended,” she said. “I think that is missing in a lot of academia, and I think that’s something really cool.”