Praising Our High Marx

Often, it seems Memphis took Groucho Marx’s self-deprecating attitude and overlaid it on the entire city. Paraphrasing the comedian, Memphians don’t want to belong to any city that will accept them as members.

It’s a lack of self-worth that plays out in local politics where big projects pass for vision and where cheap projects win out over quality ones. The poster child for this lack of ambition is The Pyramid, a bargain basement arena touted as state-of-the-art until we saw what one really looked like when the FedEx Forum opened.

It’s as if there’s an underlying belief that Memphis just doesn’t deserve the best or that it doesn’t have the ability to do what great cities do – dream big and set national standards.

Vital Signs

There are signs that things are changing – FedEx Forum, Autozone Park, National Civil Rights Museum expansion, and Hattiloo Theater – and exciting ideas bubbling up from the grassroots – Memphis Music Magnet, Memphis Art Park, Skatelife Memphis, Project Green Fork, Clean Memphis, Coalition for Livable Communities, Grow Memphis, and dozens more.

A hub for Memphis creativity, Memphis College of Art, continues to be a force in neighborhood redevelopment, a new theater for Playhouse on the Square hints at new life for Overton Square, Memphis Bioworks Foundation advances construction of its research park, and the Fairgrounds offers a blank canvas for something nationally significant.

But a great city isn’t about great projects. It’s about great people. That’s what’s most exciting these days – the willingness of groups of people all over the city to be part of a DIY (do it yourself) movement to improve Memphis.

Bottom Up

Often, news coverage leads us to believe that great things only happen when there is a great mayor. There’s little denying that after the chaos, division, and distractions that have dominated City Hall in recent years, it will certainly be a welcome change to have a different style and attitude in the mayor’s office. That said, there are just as many cities whose success is tied to citizens working for change as mayors leading change.

That is why all of us should be so hopeful right now, because we could be about to have both – innovative mayoral leadership and a growing number of citizens involved at the grassroots level. As this new era begins, Memphis must shake off other evidence of our lack of self-worth – the lack of recognition for the experts and the “best practices” that we already have here.

Youth Villages CEO Patrick Lawler seems to win a national award every year, and this year, he was invited to join a select group of nonprofit leaders to meet with President Obama, and to top it off, Youth Villages got a shout-out from the First Lady herself.

The Best In The Field

Church Health Center is a regular tour stop for cities looking for innovative ways to respond to the health needs of their poor, and founder Scott Morris has been featured often in national and international news programs. The Urban Child Institute is a unique civic asset, driving policies and programs for children from conception to three years of age and its research is definitive. Local foundations have been forces for riverfront improvements, Shelby Farms Park/Memphis Greenline, and community development.

Meanwhile, the university that gets too little respect – University of Memphis – has methodically improved its faculty so that it now has people and programs that are competitive with most universities.

For example, this year’s Distinguished Faculty Award winner, Robyn Cox, is recognized as a leading international researcher in audiology and hearing aid research, and Provost Ralph Faudree is a world-class mathematician specializing in the field of combinatorics that is understood by only a few people on the globe. Director of the Graduate Program in City & Regional Planning, recently moved here from Cornell University, is the oft-quoted and widely respected Ken Reardon, an activist for neighborhood redevelopment.

Bring On The New

Robert Neimeyer, professor in psychotherapy research, is the author of 21 books with emphasis on finding meaning in grief. Communications professor David Appleby is well-known for his nationally broadcast documentaries, which have won almost every award in his field. Meanwhile David Cox, Laura Harris, and Karen Weddle-West spoke at a Congressional hearing earlier this year, an invitation that is often used as the marker for a major university.

With a new mayor will come a new attitude, and hopefully, a new appreciation for the grassroots leadership, the innovative programs, and the national expertise that need to be treated as the kinds of forces that can change the course of Memphis history.

This was previously published as the City Journal column in the November issue of Memphis magazine.

Great Beaches Labor Day Surfing

Some folks are picking our their beach reading for the Labor Day weekend, so in case you're where there's wi-fi, here are some ideas.

We continue to live vicariously through Revolutions Bike Shop's Anthony Siracusa on his pedaling adventure. He made it to Amsterdam today, and you can read his account on his blog as he explores the way that bicycling connects and shapes a city’s character.

Speaking of bicyclists, Cort Percer, who works at the Peddler on Highland has a biking blog of his own. We especially enjoyed his post that included Live From Memphis video about Revolutions Bicycle Shop. Thanks to his mother, Suzanne Allen, for recommending the blog and the video.

The Memphis Music Magnet project continues to take shape under the direction of Charlie Santo and the University of Memphis' outstanding Graduate Program in City and Regional Planning. The neighborhood revitalization project in the Soulsville neighborhood is a fascinating experiment in place-making, using arts and culture, history and creativity as the instruments for the rebirth of the area. A new website updates us on the project's progress.

In support of our call for a guerrilla bike lane movement, Mary Fryman sent us information about a bike accessory that leaves chalk marks on the road behind bicyclists. It's a way to reclaim part of the road as shared space as cyclists mark their territory, and it's a great adjunct to the night-time bike lane accessory.

We remain impressed by the progress that Margot McNeely has made with Project Green Fork. It seems that it was just a few months ago that she had begun her pilot project to certify Memphis restaurants for their sustainability practices, and now, there are a dozen and growing. If only she could get some support from City of Memphis with a real commercial recycling program, the full impact of the program could be felt.

Mike Hollihan sent us the link to a fascinating talk by Stanford economist Paul Romer about his concept of "charter cities" that can break free of poverty and old rules. It's provocative and timely. By the way, Mr. Hollihan's work on the Main Street Journal website makes it a regular place for us to get an overview of the important news in Memphis.

Finally, if you haven't visited Live From Memphis lately, there's always something new and provocative there from Christopher Reyes and Sarah Fleming.

Turning Memphis Green

The burgeoning green ethos that’s bubbling up from grassroots Memphis is gaining ground, and it can’t come too soon.

The downturn in gas prices may have lulled our city into a false sense of security, but we’re confident that the various forces for change – the evolution of cycling from a group of enthusiasts into a community of activists, the ambitious agenda of Sustainable Shelby attacking sustainability on all fronts, and the mushrooming of community-based programs like Green Fork, Green Hope, Clean Memphis, Grow Memphis and more – will not allow us to lapse into lethargy.

The actions of county government that drove up the public debt paid by all of us to about $1.8 billion and effectively put millions of dollars into the pockets of politically-connected, influential developers and homebuilders produced a pattern of sprawl that will require Herculean efforts to reverse.

The Numbers

Here’s the tale of the tape:

• Of the world’s largest cities by population, Memphis is #159.

• In land area, it is #69 in the world.

• In population density, it is #168.

It would be bad enough to contend with the consequences of sprawl in terms of the financial costs, but the social costs are even more. The warren of houses stamped out on small lots on parallel streets make finding an address in many suburban areas as difficult as finding an address in Venice (where the street names change every block).

Digging Out Of A Hole

Worst of all, the problems that characterize Hickory Hill are destined to be repeated in other areas where the design ethic, the inferior construction and the inattention to creating neighborhoods have been recreated. In other words, there is little question that like Hickory Hill, these sad developments will require homeowners to invest significant money in their houses before the first mortgage is even paid off.

Despite the temporary respite from gas prices, it is likely that there will remain increased interest by many suburbanites in moving westward to reduce their commuting. If we can reduce the average mileage driven by motorists by just one mile, it produces $250 million in additional income.

Sadly, we have to dig out of a really deep hole if we are to create a more sustainable community. Most surveys of green behavior find us on the wrong end of the rankings.

It’s Pretty Rank

Of the largest 50 metros in the U.S., Memphis ranked #45 in city preparedness for an oil crisis. The top 10 cities were unsurprising: 1) San Francisco; 2) New York; 3) Washington, D.C.; 4) Seattle; 5) Oakland; 6) Chicago; 7) Portland, Oregon; 8) Philadelphia; 9) Baltimore; and 10) Boston.

Ranking highest, according to the survey by Common Current, are cities with strong public transit system ridership (which we suspect is tied to delivery of a quality product, the crux of the problem here), well-organized and relatively dense city centers, a high degree of mixed real estate uses (retail, office and residential) and medium-to-high city population density.

Memphis’ ranking in various categories is revealing and points to the areas where we need to concentrate our efforts:

Carpooling: #13

Telecommuting Rate: #50 (dead last)

City Resident Public Transit Commute Use: #36

City Resident Walk/Bike Commute Rate: #38

Metro Area Overall Per Capita Public Transit Ridership: #39

Metro Area Sprawl: #35 (of 46 cities)

Trouble In River City

In stating the obvious, “clearly, the way in which cities and metro areas are planned and developed also has a measurable impact on fuel use, household transportation expenses as well as the degree of dependence on auto transport,” the report might as well have been commenting on Memphis.

A survey by BusinessWeek identified the 20 cities where Americans would most like to live and where they would least like to live. Memphis wasn’t on either list. The magazine observed how important it is to attract talent these days, and we’ve repeatedly pointed out the particular challenge facing Memphis when it comes to 25-34 year-olds – the most mobile, most entrepreneurial and best educated generation in history – and the precise group we need to retain and attract.

From 2000-2006, Memphis lost 14,508 people in this demographic, speeding up a skid that began in the 1990’s with a decrease of 6,814. It’s a troubling trend, particularly at a time when Memphis is struggling to compete in a knowledge-based economy. Past public policies, especially tax freezes given to companies that don’t pay living wages and that subsidized industries offering low-wage, low-skill jobs that relegate Memphis to the bottom rungs of economic growth in the future.

Selling Memphis At A Discount

By the way, already, the dismal job creation rate in Memphis and the weak record of capital investments produced a Greek chorus calling for weakening the PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) program of the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board little more than a year after some of the most liberal policies in the U.S. were reformed.

The mantra from developers and economic development types is that we need to loosen up the public cash register once again because we can’t compete with Desoto County unless we do it.

First off, our challenge isn’t to compete with DeSoto County. That’s part of our problem. We’ve got the question all wrong: we’re competing with cities in Asia and India. And frankly, we’d just as soon see some of the low-wage, low-skill jobs move to DeSoto County so their taxpayers can pay for the social services that they need as a result of not receiving living wages.

Freezing Tax Freezes

If we are going to loosen up the regulations for tax freezes, we sure don’t need to return to business as usual and the traditional over-reliance on tax freezes. As we were the first to point out three years ago, in a 10-year period in which Nashville only stamped approved on 5 tax freezes, Memphis/Shelby County approved 415 tax freezes which waived $60 million a year in taxes (we gave more tax freezes than the other 94 Tennessee combined).

If the IDB returns to the good old days, there would be one of those rare outcries that will reverberate loudly in the halls of government. That said, and this was why we brought up tax freezes in the first place, if the IDB is going to shift from perpetuating Memphis’ non-competitiveness in the knowledge economy to being a vehicle to create the kind of community that we need to compete in the future, it needs to tie its incentives to the objectives and strategies of Sustainable Shelby and to the overall sustainability programs that are creating a buzz about cities today.

And if you don’t think that is important, let us quote BusinessWeek: “Perception is a big deal when it comes to places. Everybody has preconceived notions.”

On A Bubble

Here’s the thing: we don’t have the margin for error that many cities have. We have to get things right, and we have to make the most of every investment, every program and every opportunity.

That’s why Sustainable Shelby is so crucial. It institutionalizes sustainability as a core principle and a core business of the public sector, and that’s an important beginning. There is so much to do, and we are blessed right now by the presence of so many people – especially young, creative ones – who are prepared to do what it takes.