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Working together, community groups, businesses, non-profit organizations and the municipal government transformed the city into a haven for nature seekers and outdoor enthusiasts.
The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare named the city of Chattanooga the “worst city in the nation for particulate air pollution” in 1969. The rapid industrialization of the early 20th century caused the pollution, and the city’s geography exacerbated it — Chattanooga is surrounded by mountains that trapped the polluted air.
By the early 1980s, most of the manufacturing plants responsible for the pollution had closed, making the air cleaner but leaving the city in disrepair. So, in 1985, a coalition of charitable foundations, private citizens, business interests, and government organizations came together in 1985 to address Chattanooga’s challenges via a 20-year plan for the city.
By all accounts, the plan has been wildly successful. Chattanooga’s downtown area has been revitalized with physical improvements and investments that have modernized the economy. The city is now home to one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the world, a world class aquarium, and a 16-mile paved pathway called the Riverwalk.
What’s more, Chattanooga has become a destination for outdoor sports like rock climbing, mountain biking, rowing, and paddleboarding. It’s hosted the IronMan Triathlon several times and has won Outside’s Best Town contest twice. And now, the city has been named the first National Park City in North America. It joins London and Adelaide, Australia, the only two other cities to hold the designation.
What is a National Park City?
Though the National Park City Foundation has a similar name to the United States National Park Service, it is not related to the government agency — just inspired by it. The foundation is a global organization that encourages cities to take on the vision of National Parks and better connect people, places and nature.
According to the Foundation’s website, a national park city is “a place, a vision and a city-wide community that is acting together to make life better for people, wildlife and nature. A defining feature is the widespread commitment to act so people, culture and nature work together to provide a better foundation for life.”
Becoming a National Park City is more about defining a commitment to making nature accessible than it is about rules or funding or government oversight. The process for becoming a National Park City gives a city’s residents an opportunity to consider green spaces, outdoor activities, pollution reduction, and the relationship between the city and nature.
The National Park City Foundation, along with its partners, invited numerous cities around the world to apply for the designation, with the goal of naming 25 cities as National Park Cities by 2025. The pandemic disrupted progress toward that goal, but several midsize cities in the U.S., including Sacramento and Louisville, were invited to pursue the designation through a detailed 10-step process. On April 3, 2025, Chattanooga became the first North American city to receive the designation.
The first step in the process is to simply “do some research,” and subsequent steps involve bringing the public into the effort by registering the campaign, recruiting sponsors and other supporters, defining the city’s story, and clearly explaining to residents and the National Park City committee why the city should receive the designation.
It’s not the city government doing this. It’s a collective, or even an alliance, of like-minded people doing great things to restore the city.
— Brian Smith, communications and marketing director for the City of Chattanooga Parks and Outdoors
The eighth and most important step is the submission of a Journey Book describing why the city is a good candidate. Chattanooga’s Journey Book was completed and submitted in March, and a National Park City peer-review team visited later that month to see some of the sights and groups described in the book.
Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly announced the official designation on April 3, and the city plans to hold a public celebration on April 19, with a presentation by the founder of the National Park City movement, Dr. Daniel Raven Ellison. More than 50 separate events are planned throughout the city the following week, says Brian Smith, communications and marketing director for the City of Chattanooga Parks and Outdoors.
A collective effort
Chattanooga boasts a long history of public/private partnerships. Government groups, businesses, local organizations and residents have cooperated on every step of the city’s reinvention, and the efforts to become a National Park City were no different.
“This is a collective,” Smith says. “It’s not the city government doing this. It’s a collective, or even an alliance, of like-minded people doing great things to restore the city.”
Chattanooga is home to almost 3,000 nonprofits, and Smith says that instead of launching another nonprofit to manage the National Park City effort, they decided to bring together the people already doing the work.
The list of partners involved in the initiative included churches, schools, nonprofit organizations, businesses, conservation groups, hobby groups, museums, and more. Many of the groups attest to the impact things like hiking and biking trails, public art, and gardening have had on the lives of Chattanoogans.
For instance, one of the partners in the National Park City effort is a group called H2O — Hiking Healing (H2) and Outdoors (O) — that works to provide “a safe space for women of color to connect and reset in the great outdoors.” The group evolved from a group of women who met for Saturday morning brunch but decided to start hiking instead after a suggestion from the group’s founder, Shawanna Kendrick.
Another partner is SORBA Chattanooga, the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association, started by a group of friends who wanted more single-track biking trails to ride for fun. By the end of 2023, they’d increased the number of mountain bike-accessible trails from 7 miles to 167 miles.
The work continues
The Journey Book doesn’t shy away from describing some of Chattanooga’s problems or its troubled past. Not everyone has equal access to nature, and racism has played a role in the city’s history. Parks in neighborhoods where the majority of residents are Black are some of the most neglected in the city.
Many of the groups involved in the National Park City charter are working to correct those kinds of problems. “When you start looking at some of the strategic plans and some of the organizations we work with, and you see what the city is trying to do, you see that it’s inclusive of everyone,” Smith says.
One of the city’s goals is to expand the tree cover, and multiple organizations are working to do that. “We want to make more equitable parks, even with the planting program,” Smith says. Rather than planting in the most popular parks, he says, the department “went to parks that haven’t seen much love, and decided to plant there.”
Smith says the work to connect Chattanooga residents to nature will continue, and the Journey Book will be updated over time, serving as a record of Chattanooga’s continuing transformation. The designation speaks to the city’s commitment to the natural world and can be used for marketing, of course. But beyond that, Smith sees opportunities for the different organizations involved to collaborate, and he says it could help when the city applies for grants. It is another chapter in Chattanooga’s unique history of partnership and transformation.
“We’re doing this our own way, the collective way,” Smith says. “And we’ll continue to do that.”
