Memphis' Economic Segregation

I found this article on Smart City Memphis' Blog and I thought it was an interesting addendum to our discussion this week. It relates crime to the spread of a virus with some tie-ins to racial/economic segregation (in which Memphis is rated #1) and discusses some of the "solutions." Take a look.

http://www.smartcitymemphis.com/2013/01/economic-segregation-spreads-crime-and-were-1-in-economic-segregation/

WiReD

I have a difficult time reading these articles and feeling productive; it seems as if there is no right answer to solve problems of economic sprawl and segregation. At what point should the U.S government step in and try to solve some of these economic issues in urban areas? Are the government's attempts to solve these problems beneficial? Re-locating or removing people from the 'slums' or 'ghettos' does not seem to be working and many community empowerment programs do not have access to the materials and resources necessary to be productive.

I connected our readings to the first season of The Wire and the culture surrounding poverty and violence. *spoiler alert* After the police tapped suspicious beepers and phone booths, they were able to listen and de-code the language of the dealers and even some of their code names. I couldn’t help but notice that the “gang members” have their own set of moral and ethical rules, their own language, their own forms of entertainment, their own social norms and their own way of enforcing justice. It occurred to me that in order for the Baltimore Police to truly understand and predict Barksdale’s accomplices they had to actually get to know them. Through the lens of an ethnographer, this seemed like a form of participant observation. Which leads me to my main point; before we can attempt to solve a social problem with volunteer work and donations, we must truly try to understand them and learn what the actual sources of the issue are.

Memphis Manifesto

Last class I think that Professor Jamerson brought up this article from Smart City (which if you aren't checking out every so often, you're missing out) 

http://www.smartcitymemphis.com/2013/01/memphis-losing-ground-in-the-race-for-talent/#comments

All of this talk of the creative class also reminds me that Richard Florida who has pioneered the study of "Creative Class" came to Memphis a few times, but most notably for a selective conference gathering people from all across the US to start a "community of ideas," if nothing else, 10 years ago called the "Memphis Manifesto." Below are the pillars/principles:
 1) Cultivate and reward creativity. Everyone is part of the value chain of creativity. Creativity can happen at anytime, anywhere, and it’s happening in your community right now. Pay attention.
2) Invest in the creative ecosystem. The creative ecosystem can include arts and culture, nightlife, the music scene, restaurants, artists and designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, affordable spaces, lively neighborhoods, spirituality, education, density, public spaces and third places.
3) Embrace diversity. It gives birth to creativity, innovation and positive economic impact. People of different backgrounds and experiences contribute a diversity of ideas, expressions, talents and perspectives that enrich communities. This is how ideas flourish and build vital communities.
4) Nurture the creatives. Support the connectors. Collaborate to compete in a new way and get everyone in the game.
5) Value risk-taking. Convert a “no” climate into a “yes” climate. Invest in opportunity making, not just problem-solving. Tap into the creative talent, technology and energy for your community. Challenge conventional wisdom.
6) Be authentic. Identify the value you add and focus on those assets where you can be unique. Dare to be different, not simply the look-alike of another community. Resist monoculture and homogeneity. Every community can be the right community.
7) Invest in and build on quality of place.While inherited features such as climate, natural resources and population are important, other critical features such as arts and culture, open and green spaces, vibrant downtowns, and centers of learning can be built and strengthened. This will make communities more competitive than ever because it will create more opportunities than ever for ideas to have an impact.
8) Remove barriers to creativity, such as
mediocrity, intolerance, disconnectedness, sprawl, poverty, bad schools, exclusivity, and social and environmental degradation.
9) Take responsibility for change in your community. Improvise. Make things happen. Development is a “do it yourself” enterprise.
10) Ensure that every person, especially children, has the right to creativity. The highest quality lifelong education is critical to developing and retaining creative individuals

When we think about the creative class and sprawl, this piece, almost encourages separation through the development of individual communities. For a small example, think of the fact that there is a craft/arts fair in every neighborhood: Germantown Craft (not really certain of its name but its in Germantown), River Arts (downtown), Cooper-Young (midtown), Pink Palace (east memphis) and there are probably even more-while these are all different and people from all over a region might go to one and not the other or all of them or none of them, they all exist and provide a different sense of creativity than the next. However, part of this difficulty is that most of these "festivals" function for those nearby and with disposable income, not everyone, and it is not working to cultivate new creativity by maintaining the same crowd they typically have. It seems we basically have white creativity down(young artists think Broad, occasionally S. Main has some diversity), but if Memphis is to thrive, we need to do what the suburbs have done: create a unifying factor. Even if in the suburbs that is just to be somewhere more safe or big yards or newer homes, it is a distinct population that takes advantage of these things and they live with each other for them. The density a city can have can encourage people to be creative, but while we lose this density to the fears of crime, further decline, unemployment, food deserts, and lack of environment, we may need to start thinking like the suburbs."The Roads Not Taken" mentions the ability of the suburb/edge city to produce individuals based on individual desire and expression which becomes a community of individuals which seems to be less and less individual, but I could definitely be wrong (107).

Anyone can be an artist, not everyone, but certainly creativity comes from anywhere. What could the unifying creative factor be, what can we learn from sprawl to encourage creativity and potentially individuals who want to be in cities? 

Here is an article that came out in today's Commercial Appeal about a recent police shooting, which involves two officers with prior excessive force complaints. Unfortunately, it relates well to scenes we are watching in The Wire and it will be relevant as we discuss the criminal justice system a week or so from now.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/jan/30/two-memphis-officers-involved-in-fatal-shootings/

A Vicious Cycle: The Reciprocal Social Construction of Conceptual Frames and Public Policy

 

In ch. 4 of “Place Matters, the authors made the argument that much of the urban sprawl and racial and economic segregation we see in American cities today is all but the direct result of government policies.  The U.S. Government has a long history of proposing and supporting policies which directly result in economic segregation and the concentration of poverty in urban areas. The authors argue that many U.S. policies directly led to urban sprawl and the explosion of suburbia, which ultimately further economic segregation.  Furthermore, the policies which are in place to help cities or to combat racial and economic segregation are hugely underfunded and under-enforced.

This article closely paralleled several articles I just read for my Gender Politics and Protest class about the historical and social construction of cultural frames through which Americans understand notions of dependency, welfare, and poverty in general. In, “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State”, Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon traced the shifting meaning of the idea of “dependency” throughout history, and came to the conclusion that dependency has an especially powerful radicalized, gendered, and overwhelmingly negative connotation in the modern American political lexicon. Due to the nature of this particularly loaded term’s application to welfare recipients it comes to morally define them  in an incredibly negative and stigmatizing manner.

We also read the introduction to “The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen” in which Ange-marie Hancock lays out a very compelling argument for how “public identities”  are formed and come to define certain groups of people. She explains that individuals’ actions are interpreted through preexisting conceptual frames which allow people to make assumptions and moral judgments based on “public Identities” which result from historically reinforced and socially constructed stereotypes. She goes on to explain how public identities shape and inform public policy, which, in turn functions as a feedback loop and ultimately reinforces the public identities. We certainly saw this type of vicious cycle at play in the “place matters” articles, not only in the discussion of welfare policies, but also in the social construction and maintenance of economic segregation. 

 

The Reversal of the "American Dream"

I do believe that the free market idea of public choice theory is justifiable in terms of deductive reasoning because of the values that Americans hold so dear. People will do what appeals to them most if given the option, and in America, the appeal of the "American Dream" of comfort and consumption has become almost irresistible to us. This ideology perpetuates into selfish choices that only perpetuates economic segregation. As stated in the reading, many Americans "think that any attempt to "cure" these ills will only make things worse by violating human nature and introducing inefficiencies into the market". I question this because not all countries exhibit such extreme inefficiencies in the market. This makes me wonder if this problem is really resulting from human nature or our values as Americans.

In view of this, I would propose for government legislation that actively works to take initiative and reverse this economic segregation. I believe that if the American people will not take radical measures to ensure social justice, the government has the right and duty to do so. The government has made so many policies throughout history to promote economic segregation and capitalism. These policies benefiting the advantaged while hurting the disadvantaged are so unjust that I feel it would only be just to now not only enact legislation to prevent economic segregation, but that encourages economic integration and encourages more economic equality. This type of legislation may happen to hit the economically advantaged where it hurts; specifically their pockets and their comfort zones. Take away tax huge tax breaks on their property taxes and on the interest they pay on their mortgages and they may not be as absurdly wealthy. Take away zoning laws and upper class families may have to be experience a bit of discomfort living next to a low income apartment complex, or send there kids to school where some kids get free lunches. Sacrifices of comfort and convenience must be made to reverse this system of injustice. 

The Effects of Transportation on Suburban vs. Urban Life

I found that this chapter of Place Matters, “The Roads Note Taken”, brought up some very interesting discussion points.  The most thought provoking for myself was the discussion concerning the revolution of transportation in the United States throughout the twentieth century and how it has affected the development of suburban versus urban life. Dreier says that though cars have become quite beneficial to our society and substantially more efficient than public transportation, maybe this isn’t such a positive thing after all.

I had never really considered this because automobiles are a significant part of my everyday life and thus never contemplated my life without them. But this topic really got me thinking about how different our society could be if mass transportation were the dominate form of transportation. Is it because of automobiles that suburban areas are able to survive and to form in the first place. As mentioned in the chapter, suburbs are often formed around major interstates that would allow for convenient commuting to the city. Instead, the United States could have invested in bettering our public transportation. Thus, the title of the chapter is “The Roads Not Taken”. Obviously this title came from a great deal of other “roads note taken” that Dreier discusses throughout the reading.

Investing in public transportation (trains, subways, etc.) would not only reduce the suburban sprawl discussed in the chapter but would most likely have a great deal of other positive effects on our society such as a reduction in our carbon footprint and a decline in the destruction of the natural terrain. If you look at Japan, and countries throughout Europe, one can see that bullet trains and similar forms of transportation have been incredibly successful and efficient. However, I understand how difficult a road this would be due to the influence of the automobile corporations. It ultimately comes back to the same topics: greed, power, and self-interest. 

The Relationship between City and Suburbia in Memphis

   The chapters that we read of Place Matters discuss issues in both city life and suburban life. The most basic, sweeping take away points that I got were that city life is perceived as crime ridden, dirty, and morally corrupt.  While on the other hand, suburban life is disconnecting, time consuming, and expensive.  These are over generalizations but they were the major trends that I saw in the articles.  This was interesting to compare to the pros and cons of Memphis.

   Memphis appears, at a simple level, to be a combination of the bad traits of both city life and suburbia.  Many residents have long commutes to jobs and for errands, even those who don’t live in the suburbs, while simultaneously there is a perception of high levels of crime and poverty.  We discussed in class that much of the creative class leaves Memphis, and these negative traits seem like they could also be part of the problem.  Memphis doesn’t have the safety or physical beauty draws of suburbia even though it is spread out, and the city doesn’t have the draws of good public transportation or close proximity.  

   Does anybody think that this dichotomy explains the reasons that the creative class is leaving the city?  Our class discussion centered around the lack of social and creative opportunities, but I think that this is another reason that Memphis doesn’t seem to draw many young, educated people.

Thoughts on Mixed-Income Neighborhoods

            I found this chapter, "The Roads Not Taken," to be inspiring and full of good intentions, but I feel that there were a few issues with the author's position. The author comes from a place that seems to be rather idealistic. I felt the section on mixed-income neighborhoods might have exaggerated the potential benefits by implying that it would be a cure all, but I really understand and appreciate where the author is coming from.

            My hometown is Shreveport, LA. The suburbs were located about fifteen to twenty minutes away from my high school. I lived eight minutes away in the opposite direction. My school was located in the center of one of the "worst" neighborhoods in the city. I went to a magnet school, and magnet schools are often put in bad neighborhoods to increase the overall quality of the neighborhood. I remember feeling that the people living in the area had an aversion to most Magnet students, but upon reflection I realized that I would have distaste for a group of people completely different from myself constantly acting terrified and offended to be in my neighborhood.

            As I previously mentioned, I did not live in the suburbs or around my school. I lived in a truly middle class neighborhood, full of older, smaller homes that were somewhat expensive because of the location. My street was predominately white, with no sense of community among neighbors, but I always felt that there was something warm about the mixture of people living in one area.

            Obviously, in order to fix this problem we would have to go back and assess the policies of our government while noticing how they changed over time. Mixed-income communities do not come without their own problems—as I noticed near my high school—but they can also provide residents within a stronger sense of community, as I noticed in my own neighborhood. 

How the mixed-income housing could draft a "creative class"

When I was home in Atlanta over winter break I had the opportunity to go on a tour of a massive urban renewal project currently underway known as the Emerald Corridor project. It is a project that will transform an eleven mile stretch of the city using the preservation and purification of Proctor Creek, a Chattahoochee river tributary, as the linchpin of the development. One aspect of the Corridor is a mixed-income and mixed-use community called West Highlands (see article below). It is beautiful development consisting of retail, homes, rentals and subsidized apartments, which, from the outside is not what one would traditionally associate with government subsidized housing. This model that West Highlands has adopted is the new model for urban renewal in the US and is beginning to replace the old model which isolates low-income families in uniquely section-8 housing areas as we have talked about in class.  

When reading The Roads Not Taken piece, I was often reminded of the West Highlands model as well as Brenna’s post on the “creative class” and how these two models for social change could work hand-in-hand. The mixed-income model is transformative in that it allows citizens of different socioeconomic backgrounds to share a community which combats our deeply entrenched system of economic segregation. Additionally, this seems like a worthwhile investment of government funds because it allows governments to invest in a public housing project that has the infrastructure (invested homeowners and renters) surrounding it to ensure that it thrives and continues to grow as opposed to many section-8 projects which fall into disrepair after a while.

To me, it seems like the mixed-income model would inherently attract a “creative class” of individuals who are interested in an organic transformation of their city. Deciding to move your family to a mixed-income community takes a bottom-up, non-traditional and proactive approach to city improvement which I would think the creative class would be drawn to. I’d love to hear what others think about this as well!

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2004/11/01/focus11.html?page=all

Governmental Negligence of the Poor and the Possibility of Personal Action

Even accounting for personal greed and philosophies of justice and good governance that differ from my own, I cannot fully understand why our politicians, locally and nationally, deprive so many of their own constituents and fellow citizens of healthy and less stressful lives. It is not just conservatives who enforce this deprivation, but apparently most politicians who stand to gain from policies that resist tax reform and urban aid spending (Dreier et al 2005:141).

            With as much powerful opposition that exists toward improving the lives of the poor—not necessarily providing them with financial assistance, that is, but simply allowing them more access to safe housing, affordable food and essential healthcare—it seems that someone like me is nearly powerless to help them. I can volunteer with organizations that serve poor people, and I can keep poor people company when I meet them, but I myself cannot be a home, nor a treatment, nor a good school for anyone. I do not have wealth enough to provide these things for poor communities, either, and it appears to me that the lack of these things are some of the major causes of low life quality for poor people. Furthermore, the huge power that business-based lobbies and business-affiliated officials exert over urban and social aid policies makes me wonder if protesting against insufficient governmental support for the poor could possibly be impactful.

            What can I do to help dismantle the thorny web of limitations that bind poor people in my community and nation?  Can I only act effectively on an interpersonal, individual level?

Conditions in Memphis in 1917

As I was doing research for another class I came across the following excerpt from a June 9, 1917 article in the Cleveland Gazette. The excerpt deals with conditions in Memphis at that time.

"Memphis is a very unhealthy city. The sanitary conditions are very poor. The streets are filthy in places, and the side streets and alleys are in poor condition. Malaria and fever lurk in the atmospehere. The people do not look nearly as strong and healthy as the western people, for they are compelled to take medicine for chills and fever. There are too many old shacks and swayed-in frame houses crowded with colored inhabitants. They live in alleys and rear ends of business blocks which are filthy and would be uninhabitable for any other class of people."

For me, this excerpt sounded extremely similar to the description of high-povery areas in Memphis we produced today. What do you all think?

Center City "Perform[ing] Crucial Functions"

One aspect of the reading that really struck me was in the chapter “The Costs of Economic Segregation and Sprawl,” around pages 72 to 75. The authors pointed out some people's belief that “suburbs now provide the same function traditionally performed by central cities” (73). Earlier in the class reading it discusses how suburbs satisfy our desires for privacy and some level of exclusivity if we can manage it. Suburbs are a very attractive place to live for much of the population. Moreover, suburbs contain anything a family might need on a day-to day basis. There are schools, places of employment, hospitals, grocery stores... a person who lives in the suburbs can probably go throughout an ordinary day with satisfied needs without ever leaving his or her suburb. This probably creates the illusion to suburban residents that they can exist independently of the cities they surround. But the authors deny this, claiming that the center city provides all sorts of resources and opportunities not found in suburbs, including corporate services, government branches and services, and “idea-intensive industries” (75). Many of the problems of the center city which suburbanites try to escape actually bring these thinking and solution-oriented industries into the city. The ultimate point is that “when concentrated poverty and fiscal stress pull down central cities, the whole region suffers” (75). That said, it became clear to me that earlier points made and negated regarding suburban independence are being acted on in the Greater Memphis Area through the school systems. The school systems Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools are merging, meaning they will be funded and managed together. Because of the low performance of MCS, people living in suburbs previously in SCS districts have been trying and succeeding in separating their districts from the schools system. For example, Germantown schools will no longer be funded or controlled in the same way as the remainder of the school system. Their funding will be supplemented with a portion of the sales tax in Germantown. But Germantown is a very wealthy area of Memphis, so not only will those Germantown schools be overfunded, none of the money from Germantown that has been funding the whole system will benefit any schools aside from those in Germantown. This removes funding from the other city and county schools. That sounds like “pulling down central cities” to me, and—if these authors are correct—this exclusivity of funding will ultimately disadvantage Germantown as well through the harm done to the center city (75).   

Concentric Zone Model and Memphis

I considered exploring parts of the subjects discussed in Chapter 2: The Facts of Economic Segregation and Sprawl in my final research paper for my Senior Seminar. This chapter is fascinating and does a great job summarizing Urban Planning and Policy literature. While a great deal of the chapter is discussing things that are common knowledge/practice, like that wealthy people want to live away from the poor, the authors do a great job backing that up with facts and figures. One portion of this chapter that I find particularly interesting is the discussion of concentric zone theory wherein a city map can turn into Target logo based around any number of criteria: wealth, housing quality, economic activity, etc. My particular theory is that Memphis is a superb example of this theory, the different levels radiate from Downtown and the Mississippi River. If you looks at an income based map of Memphis you can see very clearly that wealth, in general, grows the farther you travel from the radial hub of downtown. 

Newer and larger cities have largely proven this development model theory inadequate but I believe Memphis continues to be an exception. The different levels can be drawn pretty easily. It would be easier with a map, but imagine the neighborhoods/communities along Poplar, arguably the original thoroughfare of Memphians to the suburbs. Now, draw the distinction lines at I-240, East Parkway, Highland, Perkins, I-240, and Germantown parkway. I think if you think about each of the neighborhoods between the lines, you will see an incredible array of quality of housing, quality of life, and access to amenities. Many of the issues Drier discusses about "inner ring suburbs" may not seem to fit at first glance to Memphis, but if you think about the fact that the neighborhoods immediately beyond East Parkway were among the first round of post-war suburbs, many of the issues can be seen. I think that this model works pretty well in general for Memphis but one thing that does not fit is the large collection of commercial space around Clark tower at the corner of Poplar and I-240. However, this exceptional space can be explained by the desire of developers to create a new downtown closer to the new, "center," of the city… perhaps only repeating the cycle of concentric development.

The Importance of the "Creative Class"

I was able to relate much of these readings to my experience so far in Memphis. The sections describing the effects sprawl and city vs. suburb relationships got my attention the most. The authors make it clear that the wellbeing of cities and suburbs are dependent on each other, and a productive relationship between them is critical for the success and progress of the metropolitan area as a whole. On page 73, the authors advocate for the importance of attracting a “creative class” to our cities. They define this group of individuals as “that third of all workers who generate new ideas, production processes, and strategies” and argue that they are the “key to economic growth.” Memphians recognize this, and this has sparked campaigns like “Choose 901,” which aims to attract educated young people to high-need jobs in education, finance, nonprofits, and the arts. This campaign seeks to bring the “creative class,” described by the authors of Place Matters, to Memphis.

I had a conversation this past weekend with Matt Farr, the Development Manager at Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. In our discussion of the importance of conserving green space in the city (Shelby Farms, Overton Park, etc.), he pointed out that it’s really one of the biggest things that makes a city attractive to outsiders who may move to the area. Or, at least, a lack of green space could discourage new Memphians from joining our community. His argument about attracting workers from other cities is critical when he advocates for on behalf of the SFPC to potential corporate donors (FedEx, for example). 

To answer one of Andrew’s discussion questions, I think that continuing to focus on attracting the “creative class” is one of the things that Memphis can do to begin to combat economic segregation. 

http://www.choose901.com/

http://www.shelbyfarmspark.org/

American vs European Segregation

Response 1/28/13

Segregation and Sprawl

            Time and time again I was blown away by the stark discrepancies between American urbanization and European urbanization.  In Europe the rich live in the center city where as in America, the rich flee from the city except to fill their 9 to 5 obligations.   Massive amounts of government spending in Europe ameliorate some of the effects of concentrated poverty.  Schools are better, healthcare is more reliable, and public transportation actually moves people efficiently.  As Chapter 3 explains, insufficient and costly transportation plagues the inner-city poor in a suburbanized service economy.  High stress influenced by larger families, expensive yet cheap foods, long commutes, and mediocre medical care has led to a nationwide health epidemic.  According to the chapter, “the US has a highly unequal income distribution and lower life expectancies, despite spending more per capita on health care than any other country.”  (77)  One has to think that maybe Obama his progressive agenda are at least steering towards the direction of our European counterparts, who at least statistically are doing it right.

            Questions for reflection:

·         How much can you relate to the anecdotes of pristine suburban communities or complex inner-city neighborhoods?  Can you visualize these locations?

·         What should Memphis city government’s first steps be to combat economic segregation?  Tennessee?  The nation?

·         Were there any stereotype of the poor challenged for you while reading?