About The Innovation District

Where Chattanooga’s entrepreneurs, academics, and creatives collide. 

Events Calendar

Discover activities and events in the area.

Resiliency Checklist

Everything you need to prepare your organization for a crisis.

Small Business Supports

Helping small business owners across the region.

The Edney Innovation Center

The front door to the Innovation District of Chattanooga.

Tech Goes Home

Expanding access to technology and teaching digital literacy.

Digital Access Committee

Bringing together partners to close the digital divide, together.

HCS EdConnect

Home internet at no cost to thousands of families.

Connected Communities: Orchard Knob

The OKC leverages the collective support of partner organizations to tackle the whole picture of health and wellness in the historically underserved neighborhood.

Chattamatters

Answering the most basic and most complex questions about life in Chattanooga

EMPACT Program

Preparing residents for the jobs of tomorrow, and today. 

Chattanooga Smart Communities Collaborative

Working together to identify our region’s challenges and create solutions.

Environmental Sensors

Collecting and analyzing air quality data from across our region with US Ignite.

Education (4K Microscope & Lola)

High-tech tools in Hamilton County’s classrooms.

Community Connectivity

Expanding access to the internet in homes and neighborhoods.

Chattanooga joins national conversation on social impact of smart cities

Austin Harris poses at a table that reads CUIP at the Smart Cities Connect Conference.

By Andrew Rodgers

Once again I came away from the annual Smart Cities Connect Conference and US Ignite Gigabit Applications Summit energized and optimistic about the future of cities. The discussions continued well beyond the technology of smart city applications and tackled the ethical applications of these technologies in the public realm. UTC was well-represented at the conference, and I was proud to see UTC scholars demonstrating their work and leading important conversations about social impact. I was struck by the level of maturity in the discussion of urban technologies, much of the content shifting from the “what” and “how” to the “who” and “why”.

The conference, held in Denver this year, brings together government, research and industry leadership to discuss a range of topics affecting the future of cities, such as resiliency, mobility and sustainability. Although the conference was originally anchored in technology development and deployment, this year, Dr. Chandra Ward, an urban sociologist with UTC, attended for the first time, joining with peers sharing a people-first perspective to the conference. “I met leaders from other cities who are as excited and committed as I am to engaging and including members of our collective communities around smart city education and implementation,” said Dr. Ward.

While the benefits of things like license plate scanners, camera based sensors or real-time traffic monitoring to city leaders and planners is clear, there remains a lot of work in order for us to understand fully the implications these technologies can have on various communities. The level of focus demonstrated by Dr. Ward and her peers on better understanding how these technologies impact ALL of our citizens was forefront in many conversations I had with our peer cities, leaving me very hopeful.