Chattanooga, Tennessee

Those two city personas are not mutually exclusive and Chattanooga is living proof why. With its reasonable cost of living and southern staples like the annual Tennessee Whiskey Festival, Chattanooga might seem like many other small southern cities. But with more and more startups and tech companies moving in every month, this feels less like the Tennessee/Georgia border and more like Silicon Valley. Chattanooga was even the first city in the country to roll out a citywide gigabyte network for residents. You truly get the best of both worlds here.

Chattanooga was already on the rise prior to Covid but since March of 2020 things have gotten really crazy. Particularly for locals, the explosion is causing some cultural, and structural challenges. Chattanooga is the perfect storm for contemporary and pandemic growth: it’s in the south in a state with low taxes, it’s a college town, it’s a smaller city that helps big city folks feel like they can spread out more, and then for the newly minted work-from-homers it has that gigabit network. Holy moly all these things add up to a storm of northeasterners and northwesterners to flock down here.

Grumpy local on the growth: Honestly, without trying to offend anyone, I hate the out of state transplants and traffic that comes with it. This is pretty much Tennessee in general, however. Growing up in Chattanooga, I never felt the traffic was bad. Now it's almost unreckognizable due to the growth. The traffic sucks and I never recall it being that bad.

There’s a lot to do in Chattanooga for a relatively small city with a nice mix of cool city options and amazing outdoor lifestyle options. The downtown area is filled with local boutiques for groovy shopping and foodies get a food scene thriving as much as its tech scene, with way more than just the southern classics. Chattanooga also has great access to outdoor recreation opportunities, with rivers and parks in town for daily play, and tons of forest trails, river rapids, rock formations, and waterfalls close by for more intense excursions.