Birmingham Mayor Objects To His City's I-269

Watch this 10 minute video. Replace Memphis every time they say Birmingham. Substitute I-269 every time they say Birmingham Beltline. They have the same Chamber, the same project, the same inner-city desires and the same need for transit. Fascinating and frightening.

A recent report on Blueprint America for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, hones in on a specific six-lane interstate highway projected for Jefferson County’s Northern Beltline, encircling Birmingham, Alabama. The highway, which is slated for completion in 2025, is receiving criticism from locals—as well as Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford.

“We have built enough interstates to kill our inner-cities.” Langford said in the video interview with Blueprint America correspondent Rick Karr. “Yes, we can get from point A to point B but now what we are doing is cycling traffic around because of the grandiose idea that ‘we need more interstates.’ No, we don’t need more interstates—we need high-speed public transportation. But we’re always spending our money in the wrong places.”

Modern planners see highways as a thing of the past, considering that in many places they have been detrimental to the development of cities by creating vast regions of sprawl. So why bother building more?

“It’s an entirely political process.” said David Burwell on Blueprint America. “No one wants to turn off that federal spigot of money.”

Et Tu LXIX

The reason we are so exorcised about I-269 and other sprawl-inducing highway projects are because they deepen the economic segregation that holds back Memphis’ progress.

Memphis is #1 in economic segregation among the largest 50 metros in the U.S.

Here’s the kicker: sprawl is a major cause of economic isolation, and economic isolation in turn exacerbates poverty and creates obstacles for residents to connect with the social networks that are often essential to employment and improved lifestyles.

Well-connected cities have less division between economic groups, and based on the recent decibel level here, it shouldn’t be too surprising that we are at the top of the list of economically segregated cities. Nashville is #38.

Cross Purposes

Meanwhile, the economic segregation results in concentrated poverty that is the seedbed for our city's most serious problems and derails our best efforts to address them. Projects like I-269 promise only to make them worse, because every problem becomes harder to deal with in cities that are economically segregated.

In other words, at the precise time when every city, county and state agency should be focused on encouraging infill redevelopment that revives and stabilizes Memphis neighborhoods, our transportation investments hollow them out, and leaders appear unable to turn the tide and abandon the idea that sprawl is "growth."

At the same time, the cause and effect — connecting the dots — between sprawl, the climbing Memphis tax rate, and an economically polarized city are overwhelmed by the influence of those who drive these transportation projects.

The inattention to the urban center that fuels our regional economy is symbolized by I-269, but its impact will be real and immediate. It will further produce an economically polarized city where fewer and fewer Memphis workers are paying more and more in taxes — including those spent for services and amenities that are in truth regional.

Green-washing

Let us say this clearly and unequivocably: there is no economic or social benefit to City of Memphis as a result of I-269. Don’t believe the propaganda or the breathless media headlines.

Wrapping I-269 in a shroud of terms like smart growth, knowledge economy jobs, New Urbanism and open space protection, supporters of the interstate suggest with straight faces that Memphis will benefit from new economic growth and development that the interstate will provide. If our past teaches us anything, it is that the I-269 corridor will be characterized by unwalkable, car-centric sameness.

Someone from North Mississippi said in an article in The Commercial Appeal that the task now is to apply smart growth principles to I-269. We’re not sure when we’ve heard such a contradiction of terms. It reminds us of the story on NPR about the developer proudly boasting of the region’s most sustainable residential development – green energy, walking trails, etc. There was only one problem: it was an hour commute to New York and an hour and half commute to Philadelphia.

It’s the kind of green-washing that’s being done by developers and economic development types to try to put a pretty face on projects that are clearly unsustainable.

Making It Worse

Here’s the thing: Memphis’ ability to compete in the new economy is undercut by the hollowing out of the middle class, by the worst economic segregation of the 50 largest metros, by the quickening loss of college-educated 25-34 year-olds, a 15% house vacancy rate that’s doubled since 2000 and 20% of Memphis families living on less than $8,700 a year.

These are the forces driving Memphis’ trajectory and defining our future. There is nothing in I-269 that does anything to improve these trends that are threatening the future of our city. More to the point and despite the denial by our suburban cities, the trends of Memphis will in fact determine the future of the entire region.

If Memphis must live with the problems that are exacerbated by I-269, we must do more than all pledge our commitment to regional planning. More to the point, we must change policies so that the interstate does in fact mitigate its negative impact.

For example, we’re said previously that I-269 and Tennessee 385 should be toll roads. They would produce more than $100 million a year that could be invested in strategies to strengthen our core city and to make Memphis a city of choice.

Nontraditional Thinking

There are other innovations like a higher sales tax along the route to establish a tax-sharing program that could direct money into the improvement of Memphis neighborhoods. Or perhaps there’s a way to pass impact fees and sustainability guidelines for development along the interstate route, to set up land trusts and to require the same level of public investments in public transit.

In a perfect world, our local and state officials would simply turn down the federal money for I-269, calling Mississippi's bluff as it is faced with the interstate version of an oxbow lake. Perhaps, it's not too late to call on our leaders to say enough is enough and make the most important decision facing them - doing what's right for Memphis.

But, I-269 exists because of politics. That's why we think the answer needs to be found in the same place.

These are difficult times for the Memphis metro – let’s say it again, metro. Unlike most other metro areas, the cancerous problems that threaten our economic health are regional and not just the problems of the city. Unless we start to figure out how to avoid self-indulgent projects like I-269 and make the investments that strengthen our entire region so that it is prepared for the fundamental restructuring of the economy that is well under way, we will prove that the road to hell is indeed paved with intentions that aren’t always good.

In the end, it’s not great roads that will draw jobs to Memphis. It’s great quality of life, a culture of creativity and a willingness to support dreamers and entrepreneurs that will attract the talented people that in turn attract jobs to our community. The blind pursuit of more lanes and more roads without the fuller context for community in time creates an incomplete plan for transportation and replicates the same mistaken policies of the past.

Et Tu Sixty-Nine, Part II

Present transportation policies are critical to creating the tax burden that drives people out of Memphis.

While density is one of those things that cause people’s eyes to immediately glaze over, it’s a factor that drives everything in government – from quality of service to the tax rate.

As we pointed out a year ago, within the 1970 city limits of Memphis, there are today 28% fewer people. This reduced density results in services being delivered over an area with fewer people, driving up costs and ultimately driving up taxes.

It doesn’t stop there for Memphis taxpayers. They are caught in a vise of taxes caused by the reduced density in the urban core and the cost of suburban sprawl. In other words, for 30 years, Memphians have been forced to subsidize policies that have eroded their own city.

Pro-Choice

That’s at the heart of what is wrong with transportation policy and so many public decisions here. There’s no sense that choices are being made. As Shelby County Government invested $1.5 billion to open up the greenfields of unincorporated Shelby County, it was in fact making the choice to fuel the decline of the urban core.

Of course, Memphis City Council members acted as co-conspirators since their approval was required for projects and zoning changes with its “extraterritorial jurisdiction,” as local government calls it. Regular people would say that Council members have to approve projects outside of the Memphis city limits for three or five miles.

Acting as puppets of the development and homebuilding industries, City Council rubber stamped project after project with no thought that they too were making a choice. They were in fact choosing development on the edge rather than redevelopment of the core.

Jared Diamond wrote in his book, Collapse, about how “societies choose to fail or succeed.” In other words, sprawl did not just happen in Shelby County. It was a choice. The suffocating county government debt did not just happen. It was a choice. The hollowing out of the urban core did not just happen. It was a choice.

Voting For Their Own City’s Decline

Diamond describes in his best-seller how civilizations that formerly flourished made choices that doomed them to catastrophe, and many of these bad decisions were tied to the squandering of resources, to ignoring trouble signs that the environment emits and to the cutting down of too many trees.

Using his yardstick, the threats to our small corner of Western culture seem obvious. They are seen in choices in favor of rapid population movement, degradation of the environment and instability of government.

For more than a decade, when Memphis City Council routinely approved any development within the 3-5 mile zone outside of the city limits, it never had the sense that it was making a choice. Developers wanted more development, and these areas were outside of the city limits, so there was no perceived cost in giving them what they asked for.

Actually, every vote on one of the developments in this area should have been weighed as a choice -- to shift public investments to the suburban fringe rather than spend them on strengthening the urban core and protecting the public infrastructure already paid for there.

Consequences

Meanwhile, across Civic Center Plaza, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted time after time to approve every development placed on its agenda, its members never had a sense that they were making a choice -- to fuel sprawl and set in motion their own financial decline, cuts in public services and erosion of their ability to take a leadership role in the community.

Like many of the societies described in Diamond’s book, Shelby County made the choice to ignore the warning signs, always believing that the flow of money was endless, short-term benefits were as good as long-term ones and its political power was unshakeable.

Shelby County chose to see sprawl as “normal” and beyond its control. It called it “growth,” when it was no growth at all, but a massive subsidized There is no real growth in Shelby county because population increases are essentially births over deaths, not the result of an influx of new residents.

To understand the cost of the choices made in favor of sprawl, just do the math: every new single family detached house valued at $175,000 costs Shelby County Government more than $4,000 a year for 20 years in public services, primarily schools and roads.

It takes about 6,000 square feet of commercial/industrial development to offset the deficit to Shelby County that is produced by one residential unit. (This assumes of course that the commercial/industrial development is paying taxes in the first place, rather than receiving a tax freeze.)

Even Roses Have Thorns

Of course, it’s not just transportation policy that suffers from the lack of a clear, comprehensive analysis. Notably, there are the analyses conducted by City of Memphis before it annexes an area.

It’s not about choice at all. It’s about the rosiest scenarios – assuming no decline in the areas or exodus of residents – but more to the point, they never take into consideration the impact on existing neighborhoods of taking in new area. Instead, the exercise is about determining the amount of revenues and the cost of city services, and the answer is that in time, the annexation is a money maker for city government.

But they haven’t been. They have in fact diverted money to pay for infrastructure and services for the new areas of Memphis while the urban core received less attention and money. And as changes take place in the new area, as in Hickory Hill, city government has compounded the scope of the challenges facing it.

It’s essentially the same thing done in transportation planning here. There’s never a new road and more lanes of traffic that can’t be justified by engineers who make their living off such projects. It’s all about traffic flow, congestion and travel times and rows and rows of numbers.

Faux Planning

Unfortunately, it’s never about the impact that building a highway on the fringes of our community will have on our existing city and the infrastructure we’ve already paid for. Like annexation, it is at its essence a false equation and a faux exercise in planning.

In the end, the seminal question of Collapse is: How can society best avoid destroying itself?

The seminal question in our community is how do we create a balanced approach to decisions – weighing all factors rather than just the justifications of special interests – and how do we treat every decision as what it is – a choice.

Tomorrow: Et Tu Sixty-Nine, Part 3

Et Tu Sixty-Nine

The drumbeat of the asphalt lobby is getting louder, and as it has been so often, its persistent beat hypnotizes elected officials who should know better.

What is it anyway about otherwise logical people who suspend all logic and sense of balance when roads come into play? How do so many of these hypnotized people end up in positions where they make decisions about roads?

If you doubt our cynicism, just consider the last time you heard about a major road project voted down. Instead, people in appointed elected offices and economic development officials paid with our tax dollars, who are entrusted to make sound transportation decisions, cavalierly pave over Memphis’ future with more and more sprawl and less and less conscience about the consequences for the urban heart that keeps the regional economy beating.

Lost In The Wilderness

Somewhere, we lost our way.

We lost the perspective that all of life and the life of our city in particular is about making the right choices.

We lost the idea that the quality of life of our city is much more important than the quality of our ability to move freight through our community.

We lost our sense of priority, buying into the belief that nothing is more important than moving cars, even if it means moving Memphis into the danger zone.

We lost our ability to be consistent. The same people who are now putting a pretty face on I-269 through north Mississippi – which the state sees as a heavy competitive advantage - are the same people who told us last year that we had to give away more tax freezes to compete with the Mississippi.

No Room For Mistakes

Here’s why this matters so much. Memphis has no margin for error.

If we are to succeed and change our trajectory, we have to do an awful lots of things right. Decisions on highways and transportation here are not only not right; they are disastrously wrong.

How is it that there is such a clear, consensus opinion that we have paid a devastating price for highway decisions that fueled sprawl and hollowed out Memphis, and despite that, in an act of cognitive dissonance, we unbelievably continue on blithely with the same misguided attitudes toward road-building.

This assault on reason continues to most dramatically play out in the advocacy of I-269.

It’s a case study of the way that political insiders and development interests are able to win even when they appear to have lost. I-269 was apparently blocked when Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout, the county delegation of the Tennessee Legislature and Center City Commission opposed the inexplicable I-269 interstate loop that sweeps through North Mississippi and swings along the easternmost edge of Shelby County.

Facts Of Life

The mayors’ opposition was persuasive and unshakable. At least in the beginning.

But developers are different than regular people. Once a decision seems to be decided, the public moves on. Developers move in and game the system through operatives and apologists who back door the system, looking for soft spots in the decision-making process and painting elected officials into corners, where exhausted and politically hemmed in, they almost uniformly give in.

That’s what happened with Mayor Herenton and Mayor Rout with I-269. Although they thought they had made the final decision to put a nail into the coffin of the project, developers and the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce simply went under the radar, joining hands with Mississippi officials who were determined to use the interstate through Northern DeSoto to open up the green fields for developers.

With few options but surrender, the mayors eventually acquiesced, angry and frustrated.

It’s a seminal fact of life about the system. There is always the force that comes from those driven by their financial benefit – developers and highway builders and from those driven by their political benefits. That both groups can be so single-minded in their self-interest to the detriment of the overall health of Memphis is something best left for psychologists to study, but it is odd how often short-term financial and political interests trump long-term sound public policy.

One Trick Pony

It’s the sort of mentality that blandly accepts as reasonable that our roads and highways should be built as if it is always 8 a.m. or 5 p.m. It’s the sort of philosophy that answers every question about better transportation with more roads. God knows that there is always an engineering study to justify more and more roads.

MATA offers third-world public transit. So what do we do? Build more highways.

Neighborhoods are begging for bike lanes. So what do we do? Build more highways.

Yes, people want “complete streets” that offer transportation alternatives. So what do we do? Build more highways.

It was utterly unbelievable a decade ago, but it’s just unconscionable now. Despite dire warnings of gridlock that act as if we the need to give people a way to drive from Nashville to Jackson, Mississippi, without even seeing Memphis from the interstate, there’s really no crisis.

Need For A Detour

In a comparison with 35 large metros (see the list at the end of this post), including all of our peer cities, federal government data show that Memphis is #27 in the annual cost of delay per peak traveler, #25 in travel time index, #28 in commute time and #22 in change in travel time index. Meanwhile, we have the same freeway lanes per square mile as Boston and more than Chicago and Philadelphia.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group said that Memphis is 6th in the number of lanes of highways per capita, and our community was cited by the Federal Highway Administration for lack of safe alternative forms of transportation.

It hardly sounds like the makings of catastrophe. Funny, we’re fourth from the bottom in transit capacity, but you don’t hear any of the usual suspects calling for a 21st century transit system.

That’s the thing about transportation planning. There’s little consideration for what the public really wants and even less consideration about what makes successful Memphis neighborhoods and the damage that is done by the present transportation policies.


Tomorrow: Et Tu Sixty-Nine, Part 2


* Cities in study: Los Angeles, San Diego, Baltimore, San Francisco, San Antonio, St. Louis, Charlotte, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbux, Salt Lake City, Washington D.C., Denver, Louisville, New York, Seattle, Miami, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Portland, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, Nashville, Phoenix, Boston, Memphis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Austin and Atlanta

Wanted: Someone To Connect The Dots And Disconnect I-269

Perhaps what local government needs most is a Department of Connecting the Dots.

While one public agency talks about creating a workforce that can compete in the knowledge economy, another gives tax freezes to companies that perpetuate low-wage, low-skill jobs.

While one government launches a "sustainability agenda," no government seems able to rein in sprawl-inducing projects that make Memphis the most economically segregated of the top 50 metros.

While one department talks about keeping and attracting twenty-first century workers, another operates a public transit system that's barely in the late-twentieth century.

While one division of city government works to revitalize urban neighborhoods, the projects of another make them more disconnected and less walkable and bikable.

The Symbol Of Unconnected Dots

If there's a poster child for this disconnect, it is I-269. It's essentially the latest gift to developers, but for Memphis, it's the gift that keeps on giving, fueling trends that already batter the city's ability to compete.

The Brookings Institution recently released a report that showed that jobs created within three miles of downtown are decreasing while those more than 10 miles from downtown are climbing. It underscored an earlier study by the think tank that showed that Memphis is a national leader in the loss of middle-income families and neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the economic segregation caused by sprawl results in concentrated poverty that is the seedbed for our city's most serious problems and derails our best efforts to address them. Projects like Tennessee Highway 385 and I-269 promise only to make them worse, because every problem becomes harder to deal with in cities that are economically segregated.

In other words, at the precise time when every city, county, and state agency should be focused on encouraging infill redevelopment that revives and stabilizes Memphis neighborhoods, our transportation investments hollow them out, and leaders appear unable to turn the tide and abandon the idea that sprawl is "growth."

Hammering It Home

To their credit, both city and county governments opposed and lobbied hard to prevent I-269 from ever happening; however, in a high stakes game of political gamesmanship, Mississippi held all the cards, and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott owned the deck.

Lott was supported by former U.S. Representative from Texas and House Whip Tom (Hammer) Delay, who had earlier suggested that the I-69 Coalition hire someone who would be uniquely skilled in presenting its case in the nation's capital. That person just happened to be his brother, who was paid about $300,000 a year. To DeLay's hammer, Lott played the nail.

Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton and Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout were relieved when they thought their fierce opposition and relentless lobbying of the Tennessee Congressional delegation had blocked the interstate add-on that jerks eastward at Millington and runs along the far eastern border of Shelby County (dipping into Fayette County to open up those green fields to residential development and a rail yard) before swinging downward across unspoiled North Mississippi landscape. (I-69 itself reflected the premise that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.)

Faced with defeat, Lott added wording to a federal bill that essentially took the decision out of Tennessee's hands while stepping up construction of the interstate through his home state. In the end, it was like many road and highway projects in the region, born from a tradition of political patronage between government and developers that is embedded in our local DNA.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

The project cost is now moving toward $1 billion, and backers now justify it with terms like smart growth, knowledge economy jobs, New Urbanism, and open space protection. They also claim that Memphis will benefit from new economic growth and development as a result of I-269.

At the same time, the cause and effect — connecting the dots — between sprawl, the climbing Memphis tax rate, and an economically polarized city are overwhelmed by the megaphones (political, civic, and media) enjoyed by those who drive such projects.

The inattention to the urban center that fuels our regional economy is symbolized by I-269, but its impact will be real and immediate. It will further produce an economically polarized city where fewer and fewer Memphis workers are paying more and more in taxes — including those spent for services and amenities that are in truth regional.

This was the City Journal column in the May issue of Memphis magazine.

Time For Candor And A Call To Arms

We know the primary job description for any reputable staff member of a Chamber of Commerce is to be a reliable cheerleader for Memphis, but there are times when we just want someone to tell us the truth.

While we admire the dependable hyperbole that’s attached to all things Memphis, we are concerned that our leadership – not just at the Chamber -seems hesitant to tell us the unvarnished facts about our city. Here it is: Memphis’ trajectory is headed treacherously in the wrong direction, and because of it, we absolutely have no margin for error.

That’s why what we need most from our leaders is for them to shoot straight with us, to acknowledge that we are now setting the course of the city for the next 25-50 years and that all of us need to be mobilized to tackle the challenges that confront us.

Instead, when asked about the report by the highly-regarded Brookings Institution that showed that the Memphis metro is in the bottom of metros in the rate of jobs growth nearest to the downtown core, a Chamber official responded: “We are probably among the leaders (nationwide) of bringing growth back to the core.”

How Many Warning Shots Are Enough?

Hyperbole is one thing. This one is simply misleading. The notion that we are among the nation’s leaders in urban revitalization is simply the stuff of myth-making, and unfortunately, it comes at a time when we need to hear the honest facts and a call to arms about the price that our urban core is paying for our willingness to subsidize suburban lifestyles.

If current statistics represent success in revitalizing our urban core, we hope we never see what failure looks like. For 30 years, our government, our business community and our economic development officials have conspired to fuel sprawl in the form of more and more lanes of traffic and car-centric transportation systems. They have done it in recommendations and justifications that obfuscated the negative impacts that sprawl was enacting on our city.

Because of it, Memphians have been required to subsidize the deterioration and abandonment of their own neighborhoods, and all the while, our leaders kept telling us that this suburban relocation of our population was “growth” and “economic development.”

The recent Brookings report was just the latest warning shot for our city, and we don’t want to beat up the Chamber too much. Elected officials from Memphis to Washington also immediately sought to dismiss the results of the analysis, suggesting that somehow the Mississippi River was to blame or that the state line was an impenetrable barrier. By the way, these were metro-wide statistics.

More Of The Same

The Brookings Institution's latest negative report about Memphis said that the share of jobs created within three miles of downtown Memphis declined from 14.4 percent to 12 percent in 2006, while the share of jobs created beyond 10 miles of downtown climbed from 40.9 percent to 49.3 percent.

Perhaps, it’s no wonder that the exodus of 25-34 year-old college-educated workers has quickened in this decade from the already troubling rate of the 1990s. These workers are about 60 percent more likely to seek work within five miles of downtown.

Meanwhile, Memphis is one of the most hollowed-out cities in the U.S., and is #1 of the 50 largest metros in economic segregation. Put plainly, public policies have promoted the flight of middle-income families and left concentrated poverty that sprawns our city’s most serious problems and challenges our best efforts to address them.

A recent briefing paper by CEOs for Cities summed it up well in three key points: 1) When metropolitan areas are economically segregated, every problem becomes harder to address; 2) suburban sprawl has been an engine of economic segregation; and 3) infill development increases the possibilities for stable integrated neighborhoods.

It’s A Choice

In an especially ominous statement for Memphis, the researchers wrote: “Suburban sprawl becomes especially damaging in metropolitan areas with weak job and population growth...the outward movement of middle and affluent households and rising concentrated poverty creates a reinforcing cycle of decline.

These facts are why we get so exorcised by the continued investments in wider lanes and more roads. These are not just curious decisions. They are in fact attacks on our city’s future.

Worst of all, they are made as if we are not making choices, serious choices about the future of our city.

Jared Diamond wrote in his book, Collapse, about how “societies choose to fail or succeed.” In other words, sprawl did not just happen in Shelby County. It was a choice. The suffocating county government debt did not just happen. It was a choice. The hollowing out of the urban core did not just happen. It was a choice. The dependence on low-wage, low-skill jobs did not just happen. It was a choice.

Rubber Stamping Sprawl

Diamond describes in his best-seller how civilizations that formerly flourished made choices that doomed them to catastrophe, and many of these bad decisions were tied to the squandering of resources, to ignoring trouble signs that the environment emits and to the cutting down of too many trees.

It sounds familiar. For more than 20 years, when Memphis City Council routinely approved any development within the 3-5 mile extraterritorial area outside of the city limits, there seemed to be no sense that it was making a choice.

Developers wanted more development, and these areas were outside of the city limits, so there was no perceived cost in giving them what they asked for. Actually, every vote on one of the developments was as a choice -- to shift public investments to the suburban fringe rather than spend them on strengthening the urban core and capitalizing on the public infrastructure already paid for there.

For more than two decades, when the Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted time after time to approve every development placed on their agendas, they never had a sense that they were making a choice that was fueling sprawl and setting in motion their own march to the brink of bankruptcy, cuts in services and erosion of their ability to take a leadership role in the community.

Ignoring The Signs

Like many of the societies described in Diamond’s book, our community made the choice to ignore the warning signs, always believing that the flow of money was endless, short-term benefits were as good as long-term ones and the political power structure was unshakeable. In the end, the seminal question of Collapse is: How can society best avoid destroying itself? It’s a question that should be applied to every project, program or policy of local government for the near future.

If, as the Chamber official suggested, our community is ready to be a national leader for urban rejuvenation, our leaders should begin by applying Diamond’s question to the proposed I-269, a pork project with no economic or social benefit to Memphis.

Don’t believe the propaganda or media headlines. As recently as Sunday, The Commercial Appeal editorialized: “Chances are good that speeding up the completion of Tenn. 385 and I-269 will have the desired effect, creating more jobs and circulating more money in the local economy.”

Should we really be building an interstate if the best we can say is "chances are good" it will create new jobs and economic growth? There is no research to back up that conclusion, and more to the point, I-269 is just another giant magnet pulling jobs and people out of the urban core.

Asking The Right Question

We need to connect the dots - these massive sprawl-inducing, car-dependent investments are not only gifts to developers, but they are killing off the city whose health will determine whether the region survives.

If nothing else, it’s time to connect the dots – cause and effect – and to ask the paraphrased question from Collapse: How can Memphis best avoid destroying itself?

I-269: Road To Hell Without The Good Intentions

Here’s something we don’t get to say too much: city and county governments were absolutely, completely right.

We thought this as we listened to the Saturday morning discussion at the “Inbound for Memphis: Speeding Toward I-269” forum organized and hosted by the Coalition for Livable Communities with support from Community Development Council, Urban Land Institute, Federal Reserve Bank and Community Foundation of Greater Memphis.

In the end, it’s unmistakable that our challenge is for our city to get prepared for an interstate that has no serious transportation value, but exists only because of the political gamesmanship by Mississippi politicos driven by an intensity to enrich the development industry.

Loopy

Back when I-269 was proposed, it was almost universally opposed in Shelby County, most notably by both Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton and Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout. Both said that the interstate looping around the edge of Shelby County spelled nothing but problems for Memphis.

Eventually, some Memphis Chamber of Commerce officials flipped and supported I-269, ostensibly to keep some prominent developers happy, including some interested in the proposed rail yard in Fayette County and others more interested in opening up development of their land in North Mississippi.

Their most compelling argument, in their opinion, was that I-269 would divert truck traffic that would otherwise travel on I-69 through Memphis. There was only one problem: our trucking companies said they would never take a 45-mile detour when they can drive straight through town.

A Lott Of Manipulation

While the mayors thought they had blocked I-269, former Republican U.S. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi - in league with former Republican House of Representative Whip Tom DeLay of Texas – trumped Tennessee officials when Mr. Lott passed legislation that limited Tennessee’s control over I-269’s routing.

Meanwhile, Mr. DeLay suggested that the I-69 Coalition should hire a well-connected lobbyist to represent them in the halls of Congress. That highly-qualified person just happened to be his brother, who would eventually get paid just under $1 million for his services.

Left with little option, our mayors relented, and Senator Lott was extolled at the ribbon-cutting for the project, saying “This is a ribbon-cutting for the beginning of a project. This is just the first leg.” Actually, the needless interstate highway is more like an arm and a leg, adding millions of dollars in construction costs to the federal interstate budget and an equal number of miles to our community’s unsustainable lifestyle.

Talking The Talk

If a picture says a thousand words, the map of I-269 says tens of thousands. It’s so obviously blatant that it’s slicing its way through North Mississippi solely to open up development opportunities for the privileged few. And despite assurances by some highly competent city and county planners in the area, if the past is the best predictor of the future, it’s clear that politics will win out and little is preordained except more and more sprawl.

Wrapping I-269 in a shroud of terms like smart growth, knowledge economy jobs, New Urbanism and open space protection, supporters of the interstate suggest with straight faces that Memphis will benefit from new economic growth and development as a result of the new interstate. Our past teaches us that it is more likely that the highway will be characterized by unwalkable, car-centric sameness.

Someone from North Mississippi said in an article in The Commercial Appeal that the task now is to apply smart growth principles to I-269. We’re not sure when we’ve heard such a contradiction of terms. It reminds us of the story on NPR about the developer proudly boasting of the region’s most sustainable residential development – green energy, walking trails, etc. The only problem was that it was an hour commute to New York and an hour and half commute to Philadelphia.

Co-opting The Words

As the always wise Kip Bergstrom said on Smart City: “There’s a very high risk that folks will launch projects that are meant to really preserve the dead ideas. We call that managed decline or managed adaptive decline. It takes on some of the words and phrases of a different way of thinking about stuff, but it’s just aimed at preserving the status quo.”

I-269 is the physical embodiment of it, using some of the magic words – smart growth, efficient transportation and air quality attainment - to preserve the status quo for the development industry. “Building a highway bridge across the Columbia River in a time that calls for investment in transit is a clear failure to understand the emerging conditions of oil scarcity, global warming, of the potential of transit to make much bigger labor markets than could ever be made by auto,” said Mr. Bergstrom in a comparison that could have just as easily been I-269.

According to an interesting presentation by John Lawrence, our metro has 27 square feet in retail for each person, which is higher than the U.S. average and eight times more than the United Kingdom. I-269 will undoubtedly produce miles of strip malls, fast food restaurants and gas stations as each jurisdiction along the route fights for the biggest share of sales taxes.

Bad News

Let us say this clearly and unequivocably: there is no economic or social benefit to Memphis as a result of I-269. Don’t believe the propaganda or the breathless media headlines.

Here’s the thing: Memphis’ ability to compete in the new economy is undercut by the hollowing out of the middle class, by the worst economic segregation of the 50 largest metros, by the quickening loss of college-educated 25-34 year-olds, a 15% house vacancy rate that’s doubled since 2000 and 20% of Memphis families living on less than $8,700 a year.

These are the forces driving Memphis’ trajectory. There is nothing in I-269 that does anything to improve these trends that are threatening the future of our city. But, more to the point and despite the denials of our suburban cities, the trends of Memphis also will in fact determine the future of the entire region.

It’s About Policies

If Memphis must live with the reality of the problems that are exacerbated by I-269, we must do more than all pledge our commitment to regional planning. More to the point, we must change policies so that the interstate does in fact mitigate its negative impact.

For example, we’re said previously that I-269 and Tennessee 385 should be toll roads. They would produce more than $100 million a year that could be invested in strategies to strengthen our core city and to make Memphis a city of choice.

There are other innovations like a higher sales tax along the route to establish a tax-sharing program that could direct money into programs to improve Memphis neighborhoods. Or perhaps there’s a way to pass impact fees and sustainability guidelines for development along the interstate route, to set up land trusts and to require equal investments in public transit.

Three Strikes

A recent CEOs for Cities briefing paper set it out in compelling terms:

1) When metropolitan areas are economically segregated, every problem becomes harder to address.

2) Suburban sprawl has been an engine of economic segregation.

3) Infill development increases the possibility for stable integrated neighborhood.

It’s The Metro, Stupid

If we must invest our taxes in a boondoggle like I-269, it is not unreasonable for us to demand that infill development and public transit should receive equal attention. Our suburbs don’t think this is their problem, but as the briefing paper points out, 37% of suburbs lost population in the Nineties and the percentage of residents in “poor” neighborhoods has doubled.

In a perfect world, our local and state officials would simply turn down the federal money for I-269, calling Mississippi's bluff as it is faced with the interstate version of an oxbow lake. Perhaps, it's not too late to call on our leaders to say enough is enough and make the most important decision facing them - doing what's right for Memphis.

After all, I-269 exists because of politics. That's why we think the answer needs to be found in the same place.

These are difficult times for the Memphis metro – let’s say it again, metro. Unlike most other metro areas, the cancerous problems that threaten our economic health are regional and not just the problems of the city. Unless we start to figure out how to avoid self-indulgent projects like I-269 and make the investments that strengthen our entire region so that it is prepared for the fundamental restructuring of the economy that is well under way, we will prove that the road to hell is indeed paved with intentions that aren’t always good.