Plan Chattanooga, the city’s first citywide comprehensive plan, has received the 2026 Plan for a Large Community award from the Tennessee Chapter of the American Planning Association. Chattanooga City Council adopted the plan unanimously in September.
The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency (RPA) launched Plan Chattanooga in 2023 to give a growing city a coordinated way to strengthen neighborhoods, protect its natural resources, and manage infrastructure. The plan pairs a Citywide Growth Framework with eight area plans, each tailored to its part of the city. A parallel process, Plan Hamilton, covered the unincorporated county.
Testing growth before planning for it
Kimley-Horn modeled growth scenarios for all of Hamilton County, giving both plans a shared picture of what’s coming. The scenarios tested how 46,000 new households and 60,000 new jobs could affect place quality, infrastructure costs, economic progress, and the environment under different patterns of development.
Those findings shaped the Citywide Growth Framework, built on a centers-and-corridors approach. It directs growth to infill locations; evolves commercial areas into walkable centers; brings a wider mix of housing to neighborhoods, with better access to services, parks, trails, jobs, and schools; limits development that would harm natural areas; and makes the most of existing infrastructure. Kimley-Horn also led the plan’s vision for a regional transit and mobility network.
Shaped by more than 2,000 people
Residents took part through surveys, open houses, workshops, and stakeholder conversations, contributing more than 6,000 comments. A community advisory committee guided the process, and stakeholder groups from neighborhood associations and developers to students and young professionals weighed in on specific topics.
What the Awards Committee recognized
Along with the growth framework and transit vision, the committee cited the plan’s alignment with the City’s new zoning ordinance and its metrics, which give the City a way to answer “how do we know the plan is working?” The plan also carries out One Chattanooga, the City’s strategic framework for making sure more residents share in its growth.
The Team
Planning NEXT led the consultant team and facilitated the process with Mend Collaborative. Kimley-Horn led scenario modeling and transit planning, and Croy Engineering and Ninigret Partners contributed expertise in infrastructure, housing, and economic development.
View the adopted plan at planchattanooga.org
