Can we hear the future calling? We can. And in Chattanooga, it won't be about attracting someone else's talent. It will be - must be - about growing our own.
That is the message of Chattanooga and Hamilton County's new visioning process known as Velocity 2040, unveiled Thursday on the heels of a survey involving more than 5,000 residents here thus far.
The survey finds that we're looking to make five things right in our hometown area. The short list is learning, earning, moving, leading and collaborating.
Futurist and consultant Rebecca Ryan, who has been working with community leaders on the survey and 20-year plan, summed up our needs and goals this way: "There are things that are timeless and things that are timely. All of these hit on both of those points - timeless and timely."
In a presentation about the findings on Thursday at Memorial Auditorium, Ryan made some insightful points about each of our five new goals:
» Become the smartest city in the South. We know some of our students don't have the same opportunities, she reminded us, so we know our kids will have to learn differently in the future, and we owe it to them. "Kids can't vote," she said, "so this is an act of stewardship." We must ask ourselves how we can vote for our kids and put them first.
» Earning, and doing so in a way that every resident thrives economically, offers important balance. Chattanooga, like many communities, has developed an income gap with a bell shape. Our goal must become one of making sure every single person in this community can get at least one foot on the rung of the economic ladder here. Chattanooga has a good entrepreneurial base. We must broaden it.
» Moving needs a plan that makes 20 minutes or less our city's transit standard. In coming years the question will increasingly be: Do I have to have a car to move to Hamilton County? The answer should be no. And where better to start than with an expanded transit system in a city that already has free electric downtown shuttles and VW's recent announcement that it will build an electric car here? Already in one of the first visioning input meetings came this suggestion: If every student in our community had a student ID and we dropped a chip into it, students could ride on all public transit for free.
» Leadership here should look like our community. We can look at any measure and see that our community is changing, said Ryan, so "Leadership in this community needs to look like the United Nations." We must recognize that leadership talent doesn't know race, age, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.
» Collaboration is key - and perhaps hardest. Everyone in our community likes to talk about the Chattanooga Way - visioning and collaboration. But despite all that rah-rah, we still have divisions and deep, deep scars. To our visioning, we must bring humility and recognize there is a brokenness in our community that needs to be healed.
"The new way forward for great American cities can't be 'Chamber, stay in your lane,' and 'city, you stay in your lane,' 'African-American community, good luck,' and 'women, well, we got a women's program for you,'" Ryan said. "That is not the way cities of the future are getting work done."
Ryan threw us one more suggestion. Make this process less about recriminations and more about aspirations.
"Catch somebody doing something right," she told us. "And tell them about it."
In other words, instead of armchair quarterbacking, build the momentum.
What great advice.
This stuff isn't new. If it was easy, it would already be done. We know where we have to go. We just have to get there. And to get there, we have to keep talking and working together and setting finer compass points.
Velocity 2040 - like Chattanooga 2.0 - has given us a good foundation.
This is people building, not empire building. Come on, Chattanooga and Hamilton County: Let's get to work.