Civil Engineer Nathan Bird works to make the Scenic City more bikable and walkable
From 1982 to 2007, the U.S. population increased by only 30%, while the percentage of developed land increased by 57%. Because of this, 23 million acres of farmland were destroyed. In addition, the land that grows 91% of the fruit and 78% of the vegetables in America is in danger of being developed away from food production ("Economic Benefit").
Nathan Bird is on the Zoning and Planning Commission for Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is deeply interested in Urban Design. He works as a Civil Engineer at RaganSmith
Associates, where he focuses on one project at a time to slowly develop the city away from being so dependent on cars. You'll find him in a flannel jacket and jeans walking around St. Elmo talking to his neighbors and friends. Or he’ll be sitting on the back porch of his little blue house, watching his three kids play together. If you decide to say hi to his welcoming face and friendly smile, he’ll tell you all about the latest book he's read in a smooth and calming voice.
As a teenager, Bird always had an interest in architecture, but as he was heading into college, he realized he cared more about the big picture. While also weighing the time it takes to complete school for architecture, he decided to move into civil engineering. As he entered the engineering field, he soon learned that he liked an even bigger picture and started learning about zoning laws and other general ideas about the design of cities. Finally, he ran for a seat on the Zoning Commission and won, which is where he is today.
The Commission for Chattanooga provides valuable insight and advice to local government and developers. Commissions like his create decade-long plans for their cities to reference back to when making zoning recommendations. The Zoning and Planning Commission for Chattanooga, as of November 2024, is in the process of making a new plan in which Bird intends to encourage a higher density of buildings within the city, especially the flat area around downtown which he calls the “river to ridge" area.
Bird’s argument and reasoning for why a higher density of buildings should be encouraged is somewhat financial. He found that for a bus service to be beneficial enough for a city, it needs to have a density around each stop of 14 residents per acre, which is much more dense than most American cities. His second argument is the cost of roads, as a mile of new road costs around 2 million dollars and needs to be repaved every 20-30 years, and the tax revenue of properties on the road need to cover that cost, which most roads in American cities don't. The Pennsylvania Conservation Library (PCL) supports his argument by explaining how lower densities require governments to spread utilities out further, which costs more money, even if they don't cover any more people. This eventually leads to an urban road costing more money to maintain than it makes in taxes.
Bird specifies what Chattanooga can do to densify, and he focuses on the “river to ridge” area. He believes this is the best area because it is extraordinarily flat compared to the rest of the city, and most people want to live with less driving in their life. He suspects the reason people don't walk or bike more is because they don't have a safe way to do it. In addition, people would take other forms of transportation if the other options were closer to being as fast and comfortable as cars, which could be the case if cities had more funding, which requires them to be denser. He believes the change away from cars shouldn't be done by making it harder to drive, but instead by making it easier to use other forms of transportation.
Bird claims he prefers to focus on the “river to ridge” area because it’s an “easy win,” which is what people should be focusing on in this issue. He believes many times governments and people calling for change can get blinded by big shiny projects, when the best way for change is to do tiny changes which take little effort. An example of this is making a street a little bit thinner or lowering the speed limit on a road by 5 mph, which doesn’t seem like it would make a big difference, but when done over the area of an entire city it makes people feel much safer walking and biking.
He also found that a major cause for low density cities, which cause car dependency, is zoning laws. These zoning laws not only decide what types of buildings end up being built, but also how those buildings are built and especially how many tenants and businesses can be in a certain amount of area. This naturally can prevent cities from being built denser as the number of people living or working on a certain plot of land can be restricted (Resnik).
Bird believes people would prefer to take another form of transportation than driving for mental and physical reasons as well. He personally feels much more relaxed and his blood pressure is lower when he decides to bike home from work rather than drive. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) backs him up, as they have found driving instead of walking or biking can lead to physical health problems like diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and respiratory problems, which can affect your mental health as both kinds of health are intertwined. The NLM continues to explain that cars are a budget strain on poorer individuals, which can prevent them from getting the necessary healthy foods and exercise needed (Resnik). Eliminating the need for cars can eliminate that budget strain and allow people to afford healthier foods and get to stores that sell those healthy foods.
Bird also argues that driving can prevent people’s social lives from being as healthy as they could be. This is because when you're driving and you see a friend, you can't really stop to talk or just say hi. When you're biking or walking, it's as simple as stopping. He believes in this change, not just because he’s very interested in it, but because he was directly affected by distance from his neighbors. When he was a kid, the closest business was two miles away from his house, which means as a kid and teen he needed to be driven everywhere, which damaged his social life. He wants change because he doesn't want other people to deal with what he experienced in his early life.
Because of his understanding of his needs and what would make his kids happier, Bird and his family moved from Signal Mountain to a little old blue house in St. Elmo. He explains that although the house was much more expensive and smaller, which meant his private life got smaller, the easier access to things around St. Elmo allowed his public life to grow a great deal bigger.
Bird claims the biggest challenge to changing Chattanooga into a less car-dependent city is the public perception issue, which is that people believe any move away from cars is a waste of money. Because of this, he calls everyone to speak openly about the need for change, vote for people who will make change, and contact people in power about your care for car dependency.
Works Cited
Bird, Nathan. Personal Interview. 12 November 2024.
“Economic Benefits of Smart Growth and Costs of Sprawl.” WeConservePA Library, 6 April 2012, https://library.weconservepa.org/guides/96-economic-benefits-of-smart-growth-and-costs-of-sprawl. Accessed 21 November 2024.
Resnik, David B. “Urban Sprawl, Smart Growth, and Deliberative Democracy.” PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine, October 2010, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2936977/. Accessed 19 November 2024.
Comments