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1. Introduction
This article compares the use of foresight and community visioning in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Montgomery, Alabama, two mid-sized cities in the southeastern US that have embraced the smart city concept and participatory planning as fundamental to 21st century urban development. Each city has a rich and complex 20th century history. By the early 1970s, both confronted significant challenges such as ongoing racial tension and socioeconomic disparities, de-industrialization and the hollowing out of the urban core. Yet, in 2019, both cities were recognized at the Smart Cities Connect Conference in Denver, Colorado: Chattanooga won a Horizon award for its Smart City Community Collaborative, while Montgomery won an award for its Automated Road Assessments using Artificial Intelligence initiative. Understanding each city’s pathway to participatory urban renewal via the smart city framework is the key focus of this research.
The article analyzes how each city has pursued a coordinated and innovative urban renewal program that puts the smart city concept at the center of strategic planning and how city planners in each locale use a variety of visioning and community engagement tools to reach this goal. This research is qualitative, drawing upon discourse analysis of relevant mass media, expert and public documents. The theoretical framework extends from the concept of the “smart city,” both in terms of how this concept structures the goals and processes of each revitalization project and how each city brings specific cultural and urban identities to bear upon the pathways and initiatives chosen. This research should be of interest to scholars of foresight and community engagement processes and to practitioners seeking insights into how visioning can contribute to ongoing community investment in urban revitalization and smart city development. In contrast to globally prominent cities such as San Francisco, California and Boston, Massachusetts, which are anchored by high-technology corridors and elite research universities, Chattanooga and Montgomery are middle-tier cities in the American South that are seeking to revitalize both downtown infrastructures and to attract business investment and knowledge-economy workers. As Kevin Comstock, Smart City Director of Chattanooga and chief executive officer (CEO) of Prometheus Transportation argues, “you have to have a chip on your shoulder. Southern cities are not known for innovation. Who would ever think of Chattanooga? [But] the level of cooperation...