Quote:
Originally Posted by JMT
I'm not sure I understand. You don't think Memphis has much history because you couldn't find an historic house large enough for your daughter's wedding reception? Or one that would allow you to serve liquor? My gosh, Memphis oozes history. There are so many historical areas of Memphis that it's pointless to mention them all.
And I think you need to look up the definition of "sprawl." Compared to Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, and indeed most American cities, the sprawl around Memphis isn't really that bad (although it's still worse than I would prefer to see). The Memphis urban core is actually quite compact, and half of the metro population lives in the central city. There's not a whole lot of wide open spaces between the city of Memphis and the major suburbs of Bartlett, Germantown, West Memphis, Olive Branch, and Southaven. Shelby Farms helps give the illusion of sprawl, but of course it can't be touched by developers (thank goodness). Same with the flood plains across the river in Arkansas.
[COLOR="rgb(72, 209, 204)"]I lived smack in the middle of the city when I lived in Memphis. I would never dream of contributing to sprawl by living in the suburbs, especially Collierville[/color].
I would spend my dollars shopping in the city, eating at independent restaurants in the city, and supporting my neighborhood schools no matter how bad they are. I would buy season tickets to the symphony, ballet and opera. I would become a member of the Botanic Garden, the Dixon Gallery, the Pink Palace, the Brooks Museum, and the National Civil Rights Museum. I would attend all the various festivals and street fairs around the city. I would go to local sporting events, both professional and collegiate.
I would become involved in my neighborhood association and participate in the neighborhood crime watch. Above all, I would get to know all my neighbors in our homes that were designed for friendly neighborhoods, where our homes open up to the sidewalks so that we can enjoy the warm summer evenings together, sitting on our porches chatting with each other. It's shocking to me how many suburban McMansions don't even have a front porch, and forget about sidewalks.
Memphis is a CITY, and it's unique. I wouldn't dream of moving there only to live in a cookie-cutter suburb that looks like any other cookie-cutter suburb inhabited by suburbanites that look and sound like suburbanites of any other American suburb.
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Well I have done some research on "sprawl"--urban and ssuburban. The definition of it from Wikepedia is: "Urban sprawl (also: suburban sprawl), a term with pejorative implication, refers to the unplanned, rapid and expansive growth of a greater metropolitan area, traditionally suburbs (or exurbs) over a large area." I also looked at numbers where Forbes magazine ranks Memphis city in crime.....And moving from out of state one usually relies on their realtor (and what research is available). We were told not to even look in Mid-town, even though I preferred the homes there....too much crime....and as you start to move out past there, the property with the houses get smaller and smaller....we were also told not to move to the unincorporated areas because of the school systems...we asked around, to the few people who knew anything at all about Memphis and they all told us the same thing.....Living w/in the city would have been impractical for us, because of job location and schools...and of course the crime....We have some friends that live one block from the Orpheum (which is beautiful) and look out over the Miss., but their major problem is grocery shopping...she goes when she is out more towards the suburbs.
On my drives aroud the area, since we have moved here, I have found MANY areas that I didn't even know existed, like Shady Grove.
But these are the numbers Smart Memphis quoted as well as Forbes about Memphis "Saturday, May 13, 2006
Memphis' Best Future Begins With A Dose Of Reality
Memphis is in trouble.
There, we’ve said it. Please tell us we’re wrong.
We have traditionally been dependable cheerleaders for Memphis, but right now, we’re hard-pressed to feel like our team is even in the major leagues, much less competing there.
This jolt of reality slapped us in the face when we read Forbes’ always influential rankings of the “Best Places: 200 Places Rated For Business.”
It wasn’t pretty.
Sometimes in Memphis, it’s as if we’re the city equivalent of the frog sitting in the pot on the stove as the water gets warmer and warmer until it’s boiled to death.
We rationalize away the low Milken ranking or a poor showing on another competitive list. We justify our lack of impact on the “Places Rated” types of rankings. We dismiss a negative Tennessee study or a national Brookings report.
All the while, we’re slowly boiling to death.
The Forbes magazine jolted us off the stove.
Of the 200 largest metro areas, Memphis ranks 98th on the list of “the best metros,” according to Forbes. As a wake-up call, just consider that Nashville is in the top 10 – ranked at # 7.
Span of Success
But it’s not just our natural competitiveness when it comes to Nashville. It’s the impressive performance by a number of places located roughly between the 34th and 36th latitudes.
Besides Nashville, there’s Raleigh at # 2, Durham at # 8, Charlotte at # 24, Asheville at # 24, Knoxville at # 5, Fayetteville at # 9, Little Rock at # 22. Tulsa at # 43 and Oklahoma City at # 13. Albuquerque ranks # 1.
Yet, as your eyes sweep eastward to westward along this “span of success,” there is Memphis, mired down in 98th place. A non-player. A no-show in the big leagues. A non-factor in business decision-making.
And yet, Memphis is not mired down in the bottom rungs in all categories. We’re in the top 10 in one. Unfortunately, it’s the list of the most crime-ridden cities. Only one other metro area in the entire U.S. has more crime. We are # 2.
In the past, I admit that I’ve tried to justify the impact of these devastating crime statistics by pointing at Atlanta, which has always been a hub for economy vibrancy and a magnet for talent, although it’s had one of the highest crime rates in the country for years. Yet, I realize that I’m only whistling in the graveyard.
The difference between Atlanta and Memphis is in national positioning. Atlanta has a news network broadcasting from its headquarters there, it’s constantly held up for the lessons of its economic boom, it has the nation’s most impressive park project under way and it never seems to rest on its laurels.
Information about Memphis comes largely from articles and lists like the one in Forbes. There is little countervailing information about Memphis, so our city becomes defined by the negative, defined by others.
We know it’s not all bad news. Memphis Bioworks Foundation is doing impressive things. St. Jude’s is known for its breakthrough research. FedEx is well, FedEx, and thank God it’s located here (although it has boosted operations in other cities because of workforce issues here). There are some nationally significant innovations on public issues inspired by the philanthropic community. The Memphis Regional Chamber’s new leadership grasps the importance of our city having strategies to attract talent.
Fundamental Problems
That said, the mayor is essentially invisible, emerging periodically to announce that he’s running for reelection and talking about his legacy. Sadly, it seems that the more he talks about his legacy, the worst it gets.
Rather than investing taxes to strengthen our urban core, our elected officials made the choice to take these taxes and use them to pay for sprawl that is financially and socially devastating. In other words, Memphians have been made to pay for the policies that led to the deterioration of their own neighborhoods.
We worry about the infrastructure for a distribution economy when we need to create infrastructure for a knowledge economy at a global scale. We have a propensity for chasing low-wage, low-skill jobs and even rewarding them with tax freezes in an age when cities competing globally are doing it with high-skill workers. We are obsessed with competing with DeSoto County when we need to be considering ways to compete with regions on other continents.
We have no over-arching public policy vision, complete with action steps and measurements. Crime is a good example, where we’re lulled to sleep by the barrage of press releases out of the state attorney general’s office and the lack of leadership from the director of police. No one seems to care that the birthright for young black boys in this city is jail, not college, and that there are ways to deal with the symptoms, not just the causes. Through it all, there’s no demand for action or attention from City Hall.
List after list of urban indicators paints the picture of Memphis as a troubled city, and we continue to drop in key benchmarks."
From LINDA HOPPER at The Regional Economist, she reports on Memphis "sprawl" (and there were so many articles saying the same type of thigs about sprawl, that it was difficult to decide what to use...But I just searched for "Memphis having sprawl":
Urban Sprawl or Suburban Success?
The FedEx World Tech Center (top) is located in Collierville, as is the headquarters of Parker Automotive Connectors (center). Parker and
several other firms are located at Schilling Farms (bottom), a 450-acre, multiuse development.
Even as Collierville attracts new business, its growth does not appear to be at the expense of the rest of the Memphis region—at least not yet, says Dexter Muller, vice president of economic development for the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Traffic patterns show a majority of suburban residents still commuting westward toward the city of Memphis each day for work and shopping, Muller says. That includes the residents of Collierville, located 20 miles east of Memphis, and Germantown, the closer, first-ring suburb just east of Memphis.
The trend toward faster growth in suburbs than in cities continues throughout the Federal Reserve's Eighth District as well as in the Memphis region. "Like most urban areas, Memphis has experienced considerable sprawl during the last half of the 20th century," says University of Memphis Economics Professor David Ciscel in his report, "Urban Sprawl, Urban Promise: A Case Study of Memphis, Tennessee."
Ciscel adds: "From the 1950s through the 1990s, the city of Memphis grew east in Shelby County from the Mississippi River, along the Mississippi state line toward the very rural Fayette County. As the city enters the 21st century, the rest of Shelby County is ready to be annexed by the city or one of its smallerurban complements. … Soon the whole county will be urban."
Well, good for you that you enjoy city life and would NEVER move to a place like Collierville.....Regardless of what you think about all of the areas surrounding the actual city, it sounds like you couldn't live anywhere but a city.....you said you wouldn't participate in the urban sprawl, even if it meant that your children were safer, and they got a better education? Because when we move to a new area, they are the 2 things I check right away, crime statistics and schools.....then of course unfortuately if you are a transferree and know there is a probability of a move, you have to check the real estate values. Memphis area has been undervalued for years, but it is slowly crawling up the food chain.
As far as history goes, you kind of missed the point......Looking for a historical place to hold a large event is difficult here......Now maybe I offended you with the remark on alcohol, which was not my intention; my point was there are not as many places that we looked into (all of which you mentioned) that could accommodate us, and my daughter wanted to show off the history of Memphis....Even though some were nice places, I think you would agree, that you would have very angry guests that have spent a lot of money to get here, and their table was in some hallway not even close to the bride and groom.....weddings are touchy. I agree with you about supporting the local arts, but why would I support the local collegiate sport teams just because I live here? None of our family went to any of the colleges here...they have their own alumni to do that.
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