Chattanooga | World’s Best Cities

Chattanooga

A revitalized riverfront, a historic art district and a fleet of locally built zero-emission electric buses are some of the factors that make Tennessee’s fourth largest city so livable. It describes itself as having the most productive affordable housing program in the nation and is known as the Scenic City for its beautiful location on the Cumberland Plateau amid the Appalachian Mountains. It made our Top 10 for Attractions (#5) and Museums (#7), with iconic must-sees including Civil War battle sites, the Appalachian Trail, and the African American Museum. Along with the Chattanooga Convention Center ranking #13 for size (with 100,000 square feet of exhibit space), the city first made famous by Bing Crosby was on the cusp of our Top 10 for Product (#11), which measures a city’s difficult-to-build infrastructure. It also ranked an impressive #5 for Trip Advisor reviews and an overall #14 for Promotion. The city will have much more to tout with Volkswagen’s $800-million expansion to its Chattanooga factory that will become the automaker’s North American base for manufacturing electric vehicles and battery pack assembly. There’s also the proposed $21.9 million advanced manufacturing building for the Tennessee College of Applied Technology at Chattanooga State Community College that hopes to train the next generation of local leaders.