Will the new zoning code change the landscape of Chattanooga?

The new code aims to increase housing density and affordability and could make Chattanooga feel ‘more like a city’

Graphic/Ian-Alijah Bey

By William Newlin

For 60 years, Chattanooga’s growth has been shaped by zoning policy. Maps created in 1961 segmented parts of the city into commercial, residential, and manufacturing areas and expanded the single-family home suburbs characteristic of Chattanooga’s urban sprawl.

This “Euclidean zoning,” the most common method of urban organization in the United States, carries strict regulations about where different kinds of buildings can go and what they have to look like. By favoring big homes on big lots and limiting multi-family developments, those rules are partly responsible for today’s high housing prices.

Graphic/William Newlin

Mayor Tim Kelly’s office, City Council, and the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency (RPA) recently passed a new zoning ordinance focused on increasing housing options for Chattanoogans. The ordinance doesn’t re-categorize how swaths of land are currently zoned, but it eases the path for developers to build new, denser housing.

Chattamatters spoke with Chris Anderson, who has spent the past three years within the mayor’s office helping to rewrite the code, to dig into how updated zones and future planning decisions will change Chattanooga.

‘A little bit closer together’

Through the new zoning code, Anderson said he expects Chattanooga will “look more like a city.” A key driver of that “city feel” is housing density. Since Tennessee cities can no longer annex territory except by the request of outlying property owners, Chattanooga’s horizontal growth is limited. 

“We've got to be a little bit closer together and build a little bit taller,” Anderson said.

Amended zones will allow for townhomes, condominiums, and apartments in more places, especially in Chattanooga’s urban core, where multi-family structures already have a footprint. 

“So just making it more acceptable and more permissible to build this very popular type of housing,” Anderson said.

He pointed to Chattanooga’s thoroughfares as areas ripe for dense redevelopment. Take Highway 58. Anderson said mixed-use zones along parts of the seven-lane road would make shopping districts feel more like a community, putting residents right next to the retail and services they frequent.

Likewise, more housing along E. 23rd Street, with its savanna of parking lots and vacant tracts that are still zoned for manufacturing, would boost the population and the customer base of local businesses. 

“We’ll see some mixed-use housing/commercial, you'll see a grocery store go back in that area because you'll have enough people living there to support it,” Anderson said. 

Despite its massive scale and long-term impact, the zoning code overhaul required little compromise, Anderson said. Every City Council member supported it, adding small,  district-specific tweaks along the way.

Why the consensus?

“It's hard to buy a home in the city of Chattanooga. It's hard to find an apartment that people can afford that's close to their job and close to their necessities in the city of Chattanooga,” Anderson said. “And since everybody understands that, everybody is willing to try and solve it.”

Code updates include common recommendations made by zoning reform and affordable housing advocates — encouraging multi-family structures, lowering parking requirements, and reducing lot sizes to name a few.

All of these changes get back to the city’s core goal: increasing housing supply to drive prices down.

A variety of sizes and price points

Anderson said the new ordinance contrasts with the last major zoning update passed in 1961. Then, officials expanded zones that allowed only single-family homes in North Chattanooga, Eastdale, Brainerd, and East Brainerd. 

The previous code also required more parking spaces and large lot sizes for homes of all types, which makes construction costlier, limits density, and promotes suburbanization. Today, about three-quarters of property in Chattanooga is zoned for single-family residences, Anderson said. 

By promoting exclusivity, Euclidean zoning across the country built upon the more overtly segregationist designs of redlining in the 1930s to reinforce economic and racial separation in cities.

“There's definitely an element of keeping people out who don't look like me that clearly went into that,” Anderson said of Chattanooga’s past zoning code. “We're trying to be more inclusionary.”

Three new single-family zones allow for smaller lots than the standard R-1 zone that dominates the city. Single-family zones also permit accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, capped at 700 square feet. Chattanooga's ADU ordinance passed in 2022, and backyard apartments are seen by advocates as another tool to bring down housing costs. 

Anderson said encouraging the construction of housing at varied price points will make living and working in Chattanooga more accessible.
 
Short term vacation rentals

The new zoning code includes the STVR rules that City Council updated in May 2023. STVRs in which the owner rents out their primary residence can be located in any residential zone within a certain area called the “overlay.” 

New STVRs in which the home is not the owner’s primary residence can only go in commercial zones that also allow hotels.

Form-Based Code

Buildings downtown, in some surrounding neighborhoods, and in parts of Northshore are governed by the Form-Based Code, created in 2016. You can find the entire Form-Based Code area here. 

Chattanooga’s new zoning code only affects buildings outside this area.

Email William Newlin at william@chattamatters.com