When thinking about the importance of place in Memphis, elements like economic segregation, globalization, and suburbanization are blatantly evident are crucial to understanding the problems in the city. Clearly there is a disparity between rich and poor, black and white, that leaves Memphis tangled in dichotomy. The shells of factories and warehouses loom over the impoverished ruins of former cites of production and current unemployment. The roads are full of potholes, until reaching Germantown and the segregation, still erodes the public education system, and no efficient public transportation system. There are no production sites and jobs for many impoverished areas, leading to obscene concentrations of poverty. Overall, if place is so important, Memphis is drastically unimpressive, despite it's natural transportation location and resources.
So here is my question, if there are all these issues in Memphis, how does a city go about shifting from a desert to the "Creative Class" to a successful, attractive urban entity without gentrifying or afflicting the urban poor? Is this possible?
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