We asked recently how deep the hole can get before Memphis can’t climb out of it, and we thought of this seminal question again this week when the electrifying young mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, came to town.
Newark is one of those cities that can’t climb out of the hole that it’s in. It can create programs that improve things on the margins, it can build some major new buildings, as it did with its performing arts center a decade ago, that helped improve the city’s image. It can see some encouraging changes – new, funky and bohemian restaurants and businesses – and it can shake off the fatalism of the old days and adopt a new hopeful vocabulary.
But, in the end, there is little chance that Newark will turn around. It just allowed the hole to get too deep.
The Renaissance Word
Mayor Booker reminds us of how a dynamic mayor can improve a city’s image and the impact that can come from installing a modern management philosophy. But in the end, Newark will need sustained, neighborhood-by-neighborhood programs to lift up its poverty-laden public, and it will need this sustained attention for decades.
Two decades ago, Newark began calling itself Renaissance City, but if any city has represented the entrenched, cancerous problems of urban areas, it’s still Newark, often paired in this category with Detroit. It has shown signs of progress, but it remains one of America’s most violent cities, has the lowest-performing schools in New Jersey and a high school graduation rate of about 55% and the deep housing problems that result from a city that’s about half of its largest population (although city officials are ecstatic that population has grown 10,000 in recent years).
Newark problems are amplified and intensified from the fact that its 280,000 people – about a third fewer people than its historic high, with a high poverty rate and low educational attainment – live in 23 square miles. Memphis, on the other hand has about two and a half times more people in about 15 times more land area.
Higher Office
That’s why some political friends of Mayor Booker – who moved from an affluent New Jersey suburb to run for mayor of the dysfunctional city – suggest that he’s established his bona fides and has captured national attention, but he should enthusiastically accept a major appointment if Barack Obama is elected as U.S. president. The ties between the two post-racial politicians are close, and it’s no secret that Mayor Booker would be on the short list for a couple of appointments. Some of his friends don’t see much future to being the person whose political potential is shaped by whatever progress Newark makes.
What we like about Cory Booker is the intellect, the themes and philosophy, and the motivation that he brings to his work. The next few mayors will need all of these – and more – because as economic and demographic trends prove in Newark, even the most motivational speaker can’t transform the city.
That’s why Mayor Booker’s appearance in Memphis is rich with lessons for Memphis.
Causes Rather Than Symptoms
If we don’t start now working on the root causes of Memphis’ problems, the hole in fact can simply become too deep. After all, it’s pay now or pay later, and the costs of personal interventions now are in thousands of dollars but to pay later costs millions of dollars.
We write often about the economic measurements of the largest 50 metros that routinely find Memphis in the bottom 10, and too often, in the bottom five. The fact that Newark ranks worst than Memphis is no source of pride, because over the years, Memphis has unfortunately drifted closer to Newark in key ratings.
As a result, it cries out for a sense of urgency. It is within the realm of possibilities that our city might join Newark and Detroit.
A City Of Possibilities
It is also within the realm of possibilities that we can stem the tide. We can come to grips with the fact that we are the first metropolitan area with more than one million people in history that will shortly be majority African-American and find ways to prove that it is a competitive advantage in a world known for its diversity and in a nation that will be minority majority in 35 years.
We can identify and relentlessly pursue leap frog strategies that move us to the middle of U.S. metros in measurements that matter, and chief among them is the indicator that matters most in deciding which cities are successful and which are not – the percentage of college graduates in Memphis.
We can develop interventions that take our city’s bulge of students that is an anomaly among the largest metros and find ways to get them through high school and college. Ultimately, they are the keys to unlocking Memphis’ future – one way or another.
Celebrating The Creatives
We can celebrate the creative workers in our city, because they are the heart and soul of Memphis. But more to the point, innovation comes from the edge, and no city has proven this truer than our own. We need to nurture, finance and expand our creative workforce, and more to the point, we need creativity to be infused in everything we do – from breakthroughs in the private sector to creative solutions in the public sector. If we want to find a brand that speaks to who we are and who we need to be, we vote for Memphis: Creative City.
Successful cities generally do have great mayors, but more to the point, they have great non-public leaders. That’s one of the most encouraging things about Memphis these days – the caliber of ideas, energy and imagination coming from the grassroots – in culture and arts, in neighborhood development, in community development organizations, in neighborhood groups, and in young leaders groups from MPACT to Urban Land Institute.
All of this is building a current for a young, nontraditional person to run for city mayor. At this point, the prohibitive favorite to take the oath of office as the city mayor in 2012 is Shelby County Mayor AC Wharton. It’s just a political reality – it’s hard to beat someone with an approval rating in the 80 percentile and with a campaign fund that is likely to be in the middle six digits in 18 months.
The Next Mayor
In other words, the Booker biography may have another lesson for those seeking someone with his profile – young, well-educated, smart and motivational. They, like him, may also have to experience a losing mayoral campaign before they are successful.
There’s no question that Mayor Wharton will be on the ballot. He has been expected to file the paperwork to create a political organization for mayor for weeks, and it is said to be imminent. It will be followed closely by a campaign fund-raiser designed to send a clear message that anyone interested in running against him faces formidable odds.
Meanwhile, there was another speech being given Friday that was probably even more relevant to Memphis’ future than Mayor Booker’s. At the Economic Club, nationally respected political observer Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report talked about the presidential election and the increasing inevitability of an Obama victory.
New Federalism
Absent something historic to capsize current trends, he said the country’s first African-American president will take office. But here’s the more important message that he delivered: regardless of who wins this election, taxes will rise.
Economic turmoil, international challenges, foreign policy crises, and the cost of war demand it. With a stalled economy come stalled revenues. Or put another way, Memphis – and other cities – are about to witness a major period of federal retrenchment. The reality of this is there will be even less money for the problems of cities.
In other words, cities, including ours, need to fight the temptation to see Washington as the center of the university. We need to fight the notion that we should craft policies that treat Washington as the solution.
The experts on Memphis are on our own Main Street today. That’s why we need them to develop plans and programs that address and solve our own problems and to create the “do it yourself” attitude that not only characterizes successful cities but could be absolutely essential in the coming years.
