American urban history is dotted with failed (and occasionally infamous) pedestrian malls. But there are success stories too, which offer lessons in designing walkable, mixed-use districts.

The world’s first planned pedestrian mall was built in 1953 in Rotterdam. Six years later, Kalamazoo, Michigan, became the first American city adopt the concept. Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen (most famous for his American shopping malls) envisioned a project that would resemble Vienna’s Ringstrasse. Instead, a much scaled-down concept was built in 1959.

The Kalamazoo Mall did well at first, with a fourth block added in the 1970s. But by the 1990s, it had become a sore spot for many residents. The “mall” had less parking, less weather protection, and more vagrants that the traditional shopping center. When the city decided to reopen part of the street in 1998, citizens excitedly competed, via raffle, to drive the first car down the mall.

Others have been more successful. Some of the  best pedestrian malls in America are located in college towns like Charlottesville, Ithaca, Iowa City, and Madison.

Larger cities, however, have have seen particularly mixed results. Chicago turned 9 blocks of State Street into a pedestrian mall in 1979 only to see a drop in commercial activity and safety (traffic was restored in 1996). Buffalo’s has been long regarded as a failure, though the redevelopment process has only just begun. Sacramento will also be bringing back auto traffic to its K Street Mall. Youngstown’s lackluster former mall was replaced by a much more exciting downtown space.

But Miami’s Lincoln Road Mall is an unquestioned cultural hub for locals and tourists, dotted with restaurants, cafes, and memorable architecture. In fact, it has become such an integral part of Miami’s identity that last year it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In Manhattan, a 2009 experiment, temporarily turning a section of Times Square into a pedestrian zone, was so popular that a more permanent design by Snøhetta is now in store.

Returning to Memphis a few weeks ago after participating in a Washington, D.C., panel sponsored by the Washington Monthly and New America Foundation about the damaging effects of high airfares on Memphis, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, I had a new sense of urgency about Memphians and Mid-Southerners sending a message to Delta Airlines and the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority that enough was enough.

So, last Wednesday, at about 10 p.m., I created a Facebook page, Delta Does Memphis, to give us a place to express our frustration and anger by the unfair airfares charged by Delta Airlines.

The group began with a grand total of four people.

Sometime today, the group will exceed 1,500 members.  It took one week, indicating the pent-up emotions and aggravation about airfares.

I had thought that if there were 200 members in the group by Monday, it would be a success.  Then I told someone that if we got 500 members, it would be a movement.  It does now seem to me that we have unleashed a current for change that is directed at Delta Airlines and also the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority.

Horror Stories

The original Facebook group description started this way: “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more,” and after a few days, that gave way to this description: “The current Delta airfares are bad for the Memphis economy and have consequences in the options for our personal lives.”

If we have learned anything in the past week, it is that saying that the airfares are “bad for the Memphis economy” is an understatement in the extreme.  For seven days, Memphians from all walks of life – all races, all incomes, all family situations, and all locations – have given powerful witness to the horror stories that are now routine for passengers departing from Memphis International Airport.

There are stories about a $1,400 ticket to a funeral while the rest of the family flew from other cities with tickets $1,000 cheaper.  There is the young Memphis mother who can’t afford to attend her friends’ weddings because of Delta’s gouging.  There is the former Memphian who lives in Chicago but planned with his wife-to-be to have their wedding in Memphis but are now worried if their friends can afford to attend.

There are the countless stories about people driving to Little Rock and taking Southwest Airlines to their destinations, but there are also numerous stories about people who drove to Little Rock to board a Delta flight and then flew back to Memphis before departing to their destinations.  One of these boomerang flights resulted in a former Memphian flying here from Salt Lake City for more than $600 while his son flew from Salt Lake City to Little Rock for about $250.  The son’s route home is Little Rock to Memphis to Salt Lake City.

There are the companies that won’t hold their sales meetings in Memphis because airfares are too expensive.  There is the hotel manager who complains that high airfares are hurting this occupancies and City Councilman Shea Flinn who says that the airfares are the “wolf at the door” of Memphis tourism.

Equally Opportunity Unfairness

In other words, the airfares negatively touch all parts of our city, county, and region, but it creates a hurdle for our people, our professionals, and our companies to connect with the national economy.  The repercussions to our economy are pervasive.

If I have employees in Memphis, it is too expensive and now inconvenient to fly them anywhere.  If I am a supplier in Memphis, it is too expensive to see my customers unless I can drive to them.  If I am a professional, it is expensive to connect with a peer group elsewhere.  If I am a young entrepreneur or young professional, it is an expensive place if I need easy and affordable connectivity.

In other words, at the time every city needs to connect easily and freely with the rest of the world, we have a major barrier to entry, and the greatest irony of all is that in the city where FedEx invented modern global commerce, our citizens are priced out of full participation in the global and even the national market because of air fares.

Over the years, the tendency of Airport Authority officials to mimic Delta Airlines talking points has only exacerbated widespread concern.  If anything is obvious from the Facebook page and our emails, it is that as a result of the insular way that airport affairs are handled, the public has many, many questions.  We have received dozens of them.

Questions

There are questions about the location, design, and cost of the parking garage and if rental car revenues and parking fees will really cover its annual debt service.  There are others about how much the parking garage’s debt service is each year and if that money could have been used as an incentive to Delta to lower airfares.

There are questions asking if the Airport Authority is really serious about attracting a discount airline, why it’s seemed to have placed all its eggs in the Southwest Airlines basket, and if it should be hustling as many air carriers as possible.  There are questions about how Delta got such an iron grip on the airport and if officials were complicit in this. There are questions asking if the Chamber is the downtown airport office, why a public employee of the airport heads a business organization, and if all the airport-related officials make the Chamber less assertive on this issue.

There are questions about why one law firm has handled the legal work for the Authority for about 30 years.  There are questions about why the terms of Airport Authority members are the longest of any public board.  There are questions about why Plough Boulevard now has an honorary road sign for the chairman of the airport authority and there are questions asking if any Airport Authority members get perks from Delta Airlines.

In other words, there are questions and more questions coming in from all kinds of people on all kinds of issues, which is more than anything an indication of the depth of concern by the public that it is being held hostage to Delta Airlines and its onerous airfares.

We know that the Airport Authority is serious about its work and the questions that we have received indicate to us that the work should include more emphasis on communications.  It’s likely that each of the questions emailed to us have straightforward answers, but the convergence of frustration by the public and lack of transparency by the Authority is a lethal combination that should be dealt with as soon as possible.    There’s never been a better time for the Airport Authority to clear the air and open lines of communications with the citizens whose city and county governments created it.

Meanwhile, Delta does what it does best – issuing its pro forma responses about how Memphis pays a premium to have so many flights and how fuel costs are driving up costs.  It seems to escape them that all those cities with fairer airfares have to buy fuel too and if we have been paying a premium for too many flights, shouldn’t airfares then be going down since Delta has cut 30% of our flights?

There are people we respect who are nervous about this campaign and the potential for upsetting the airline, but we are customers, and only in Delta’s world are the customers not always right.  They explain away our feelings and bat aside our opinions.

They leave us with a civic version of Stockholm syndrome and that’s the worst byproduct of our reationship with Delta Airlines.

EPI had a tremendously productive week, releasing research on CEO pay and income inequality, the rough labor market 2012 graduates must navigate, the impact of state and local government job cuts on women and African Americans, and the challenges facing low-wage workers.

CEOs made 231 times more than workers did in 2011

In CEO pay and the top 1%: How executive compensation and financial-sector pay have fueled income inequality, EPI President Lawrence Mishel and research assistant Natalie Sabadish find that CEO compensation has grown exponentially in recent decades, while worker compensation has been relatively stagnant. The report found:

• From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, compared with an increase in compensation for workers of only 5.7 percent.
• CEOs were paid, on average, 231 times more than workers in 2011. This CEO-to-worker compensation ratio includes the value of stock options exercised by executives. An alternative measure of CEO compensation that includes the value of stock options granted in a given year yields a CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of 209.4-to-1. By comparison, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was roughly 20-to-1 in 1965.

While previewing data that will be further examined in the forthcoming 12th edition of The State of Working America, scheduled to be released this August, CEO pay and the top 1% is already drawing media attention to widening wage-growth disparities. Its findings were reported in outlets such as MSNBC.com, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and MSNBC’s Ed Show.

Class of 2012 faces high unemployment and depressed wages

Young workers are still struggling to overcome the deep crater the Great Recession left in the labor market, a new EPI briefing paper shows. In Class of 2012: Labor market for young graduates remains grim, Heidi Shierholz, Natalie Sabadish, and Hilary Wething find that 2012 graduates face high unemployment and underemployment rates, depressed wages, and burdensome student-loan debts. The report’s findings include:

• Over the last year, the unemployment rate for young high school graduates (age 17–20) averaged 31.1 percent, and the underemployment rate averaged 54.0 percent.
• For young college graduates (age 21–24), the unemployment rate averaged 9.4 percent over the last year, while the underemployment rate averaged 19.1 percent.
• Young workers who find jobs in today’s labor market accept lower wages than they would have a decade ago. Between 2000 and 2011, the real wages of young high school graduates declined by 11.1 percent, and the real wages of young college graduates declined by 5.4 percent.

Women and African Americans hit hardest by job losses in state and local governments

While the private sector has experienced some job growth since the Great Recession officially ended in 2009, the public sector has continued to shed jobs. In fact, in 2011, state and local governments experienced their worst job decline on record. The public-sector jobs crisis, by EPI experts David Cooper, Mary Gable, and Algernon Austin, finds that public-sector job losses have been particularly damaging for women and African Americans.

The report explains the particular importance of public-sector jobs for women and African Americans, the progress that state and local government employment has made in reducing wage disparities, and how cuts to state and local budgets have disproportionately hurt women and African Americans.

Some key findings include:

• Historically, the state and local public sectors have provided more equitable opportunities for women and people of color. As a result, women and African Americans constitute a disproportionately large share of the state and local public-sector workforce.
• Between 2007 (before the recession) and 2011, state and local governments shed about 765,000 jobs. Women and African Americans comprised about 70 percent and 20 percent, respectively, of those losses.

The future of work: Trends and challenges for low-wage workers

In The future of work: Trends and challenges for low-wage workers, EPI policy analyst Rebecca Thiess provides an overview of the jobs held by low-wage workers—disproportionately female, young, and minority—and analyzes how projected changes in job structure will affect them. In the next 10 years, it is unlikely that the composition of the jobs in the United States will shift to occupations with markedly higher pay, or to occupations that require significantly higher education or training levels than do those that exist today. In other words, there is no reason to expect that an upgrading of jobs will improve workers’ prospects. Full employment and higher compensation in the types of jobs that already exist are the necessary routes to economic prosperity, particularly for low-wage workers.

The report also finds:

• Low-wage workers are disproportionately female, young, and minority workers. And in 2010, 28.3 percent of workers were low-wage workers.
• Mississippi and Tennessee had the highest shares of low-wage workers in 2010, while the District of Columbia and Alaska had the lowest.

Reporters have already turned to Thiess’s paper to broaden the discussion of low worker wages and rising poverty.

• Calling the report “a wonderful new paper,” The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson focused on which occupations and which states have the highest shares of low-wage workers. Thompson wrote, “One in four U.S. workers — or nearly 40 million people — earn a salary below the federal poverty line of $23,000 for a family of four.* Who are they, where are they, and how does their education differ from the rest of the country? A wonderful new paper from the Economic Policy Institute explains it all.”

Influencing the debate

EPI President Lawrence Mishel’s work on the growing gap between productivity and workers’ wages continues to influence the public debate, with reporting from the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Slate.com, and Talking Points Memo drawing upon his research.

• In his blog post “Where the productivity went,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “Larry Mishel has a systematic breakdown of the reasons for worker income stagnation since 1973. He starts with the familiar divergence: productivity up 80 percent, the compensation (including benefits) of the median worker up only 11 percent. Where did the productivity go?”
• BusinessWeek’s Peter Coy added, “Mishel has done the most careful study to date of what accounts for the productivity/pay gap.”
• Slate.com’s Matt Yglesias wrote, a “great report that Larry Mishel wrote for the Economic Policy Institute last week” answers the question of where the productivity gains went during the last three decades. “Rather than a single cause, there are three separate sources of divergence. One is structural shift in which labor claims a smaller share of national economic output and capital claims a larger share. A second is a shift within the labor share toward greater inequality such that the mean wage rises faster than the median wage. And a third is a very interesting phenomenon that has to do with the existence of different inflation indexes.”

Paul Krugman makes EPI the first stop on his D.C. book tour

Click here to watch Krugman assess the current economic situation, explain what could and should be done, and field audience questions.

There are those who believe that there are Biblical admonitions against miscegenation.  Should we put it up to a vote to see if African-Americans and Caucasians can marry?

There are those who think that the Bible says that wives should be obedient to their husbands.  Should we put it up to a vote to require that principle is included in all wedding vows?

There are those who think that there are Biblical directives about women staying at home to raise children and prepare a home for their husbands.  Should we put it up to a vote to eliminate anti-sexual discrimination rules in the workplace as encouragement for women to stay home?

There are those who use Bible verses to oppose workplace rules and to affirmative action programs for African-Americans.  Should we put it up to a vote making it illegal for employers to have such programs?

So, exactly why do people who employ the Bible to limit the equality of homosexuals get to apply their version of Christianity to public policy?

As for us, we’re ready to have a statewide referendum that bans all religiously-based referenda.

Bible as Weapon

Equality is like pregnancy.  You either are or you’re not.  As American and world history shows us, equality is about protecting the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority, and once again, the impulses that gave us everything from the Crusades to the Inquisition to Southern segregation are at play again, and once again, the Bible has been pulled out to justify the worst tendencies of humanity – to attack and demonize those who are different from us.

There is nothing more disturbing than the way some people use the Bible as a weapon to attack other people.  The targets these days are gays and lesbians despite the fact that Christ never said anything about homosexuality and all that’s being requested is the dignity to be like everyone else when it comes to their loving relationships.

If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, the ultimate poseur is the patriot wielding a Bible to beat up other Americans.  The Family Research Council types acknowledge that they are on the wrong side of history and public opinion with the shifting sands of their rhetoric opposing same-sex marriage.

These days, the anti-acolytes claim that gay marriage is not about civil rights, because civil rights are based on natural law and it was natural law that was ensconced in the Declaration of Independence.  Of course, they ignore the natural law that treated women as second-class citizens and African-Americans as slaves.  Then again, there are even arguments about what the natural law really is.  As Bertrand Russell pointed out, many things that are pointed to as natural law are in fact human conventions.

Scapegoating

Where is the natural law in 50 percent of heterosexual marriages in divorce?  We’ve all heard ad nauseum that marriage is a sacred relationship between one man and one woman.  The fact that 50 percent of Americans are today defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman…and then another woman…apparently are no cause for concern for the people virulently opposed to gay marriage.  Rather, it’s the marriage of two people of the same sex that somehow threatens the institution of marriage.

Then again, the damage to marriage by heterosexuals hardly matches up to the damage done by Christians to the Bible through the cherry-picking of verses to validate biases already held by the faithful.  It’s all so reminiscent of the way the Bible was used in the 1960s in the South as justification for segregation.

More than anything, we are exhausted by people, reporters, and commentators who refer to Christianity as if it is only about fundamentalism.  Recently, a commentator in a local newspaper said we needed more Christian candidates to fight gays, the liberal agenda, and diversity.  And yet, many Christian would find this attitude and beliefs as anti-American and anti-Christlike.

After all, it is a Bible verse in 1 John that says: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”

Context Matters

We are inspired by the always wise words of Rev. Steve Montgomery, senior minister at Idlewild Presbyterian Church and Micah Greenstein, senior rabbi at Temple Israel.

Rev. Montgomery said: “And so we turn to scripture for guidance. That sounds easy, doesn’t it? And for some it is easy.  Take the five or six verses in a cursory reading of the entire Bible that seem to speak to homosexuality and one could conclude that it condemns homosexuality unequivocally. End of discussion.  But it is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one.

“You see, the Bible is violated whenever it is used as a catalogue of proof texts to support my own prejudice. Everybody knows, I assume, that there are passages of scripture which can be, and often have been, used in support of slavery, of brutal war, of women keeping their heads covered and their mouths shut in church. Now, it is no more legitimate to pick and choose those passages of scripture which seem to point to an anti-homosexual bias than it is to pick and choose those passages which seem to support an anti-woman or pro-slavery bias.”

Narrowness

Rabbi Greenstein said: “After all, isn’t this what the faith of Jesus and all good religions teach? Isn’t this the meaning of the prophet’s plea: ‘Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?  Why then do some deal treacherously every man against his brother?’ Whether gay or straight, black or white, Jew or Gentile, all are children of God, created in the divine image.  That is why I subscribe to Jesus the Jew’s central idea – not Jesus the Baptist – but Jesus the Jew’s central idea to love one another, especially those different than me.

“The shameful demonization of people who happen to be gay or lesbian underscores what must happen now.  We must all take a stand for non-discrimination and basic human dignity in the public square or be labeled a pious fraud. People of all faiths need to remember that we forfeit the right to worship God whenever we denigrate the image of God in other human beings.  I pray that any person infuriated by, obsessed with, or tired of dealing with discrimination against gay people will turn to the Bible and follow the words of Psalm 118, which reads,  ‘I called out to God from my narrowness, and God answered me with a great expanse.’”

The fact that the most religious country on the face of the earth – United States – now has a majority that support gay marriage tells us that it’s the gospel of discrimination and hatred that’s being rejected by people of faith, and the momentum for equal rights increases.

Here’s the dirty little secret about gays and lesbians – the values they exhibit in their daily lives are no different than the rest of us. They are committed to their neighborhoods, they love their family, they follow the law, they volunteer to charities, they try to be good citizens, they want meaningful relationships and most remarkably of all, they are religious.

If you ask Whole Foods why it’s breaking ground on a store in Midtown Detroit this month, it’ll say it wants to be part of “an incredible community” and “make natural foods available to everyone.”

And that may be. But it’s also true that the Austin, Texas-based retailer has made a science of putting down roots in urban locations at what often seems to be just the right moment. In Washington, D.C., near Logan Circle in 2000, Uptown New Orleans and the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh in 2002, Boston’s “Latin Quarter” in Jamaica Plain in 2011 — areas that other specialty grocers might have considered unworthy of goat cheese and ostrich eggs, but that were actually on the verge of a boom that, lo and behold, kicked into high gear as soon as Whole Foods moved in.

“Whole Foods will move into neighborhoods that, at first glance you think, why are they moving there?” says Bill Reid, a principal at the Portland, Ore., land-use consultancy Johnson Reid. “But they’re confident in their numbers.”

The company is so good at the real-estate game that it has spawned a catchphrase, the Whole Foods Effect, a phenomenon Detroit is clearly banking on — the developer of the site is receiving $4.2 million to build there. That figure suggests city leaders believe that Whole Foods is a force unto itself that can give a neighborhood the escape velocity it needs to break free of its doldrums. Are they right?

Whether the Whole Foods Effect is real, or the company is just extremely good at slipping into areas that would have gone upscale anyway, has never been directly quantified. But evidence suggests that Whole Foods can accelerate gentrification in particular ways. A new Whole Foods may not cause property values to shoot up on its own, but it can set into motion a series of events that change neighborhoods.

Take Gowanus, a windswept, post-industrial section of Brooklyn, N.Y., that’s home to a few bars and art spaces but is essentially a no man’s land sandwiched between the tonier neighborhoods of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. Though Whole Foods announced in February it would open a 56,000-square-foot store there, Jim Cornell, senior vice president at Corcoran Group Real Estate, said prices in the neighborhood didn’t budge. “What [the announcement] did do, however, is give Gowanus, which already has a burgeoning arts and entertainment scene, additional credibility as a place to live,” he says. Fully half of his potential buyers have asked about the Whole Foods.

This “seal of approval” quality is Whole Foods’ Midas touch; as with streetcar tracks, potential gentrifiers see it as something tangible that certifies a neighborhood as a quality buy. And not just residents; businesses, too, look to Whole Foods as a disciplined pioneer that does its homework. (The retailer is debt-free, growing steadily and has 50 new stores in the pipeline.) Sue Mosey, president of Detroit’s community development organization Midtown Inc. and a key player in bringing Whole Foods to Detroit, is hoping other businesses follow. “We definitely feel that just the signal that there’s a quality national operation moving in will interest other businesses,” she says.

But it’s not just what Whole Foods signifies — it’s the evidence of success that it generates. “Before a Whole Foods goes in, if there’s not much private investment in that district, there’s no data for developers to look at,” says Reid. A publicly traded behemoth is a data-generating machine. “You can go to their annual report and see how many customers they’re getting, how much traffic,” which lures other potential developers. And those other developers can bring Whole Foods’ numbers to a lender to get a loan. “To a lender and a developer, those are bankable numbers,” says Reid. “They’re as good as gold for a business.”

Which brings us back to how Whole Foods picks the locations where it can get those good numbers. Its most basic criterion is reportedly 200,000 people, a good portion of them college educated, living within a 20-minute drive. Amanda Musilli, the company’s Detroit Community Liaison, demurs when asked to elaborate, saying only that Midtown is “a community that’s going through a transformation right now.” About that, she’s absolutely right. The average household income of new home buyers in Midtown Detroit is now nearly $113,788, the highest in the city. And the neighborhood is facing a housing shortage (a miracle in Detroit), thanks to financial incentives offered to residents who move there. There’s also the $33,000-a-year College for Creative Studies nearby, packed with free-range foodies. If Whole Foods can succeed anywhere in Detroit, it’s here.

If it does, property values could eventually rise significantly. An exhaustive 2007 study by Johnson Reid quantified the effects that individual urban amenities have on home prices. Using hedonic modeling, it found that a specialty grocer will increase surrounding home prices by an average of 17.5 percent, more than bookstores, bike shops or gyms (with the caveat, of course, that this varies greatly depending on the situation — in the instances studied, the increases ranged widely from 6 to 29 percent).

But wait — I thought Whole Foods doesn’t raise real-estate prices. Not in isolation, and not right away. But like the retailer’s potential to attract residents and businesses, the Whole Foods Effect isn’t caused by the store itself, it’s caused by the events it sets into motion. And one thing Whole Foods does is stay open later than a lot of the other shops around it, laying the groundwork for expanding the length of that neighborhood’s day.

“What something like a movie theater or a Whole Foods does is it creates an extended-hours district,” says Reid. “Lots of downtowns close up shop at 6, but there are certain amenities that can make a downtown go from being a 10-hour thing to a 16-hour thing.” When this happens, evening foot traffic arrives, and new types of business can thrive. When Whole Foods moved onto P Street in Washington, D.C., 13 years ago, the only nightlife on the block was a divey (and awesome) rock club called the Vegas Lounge. The Lounge is still there, but it’s since been joined by a popular burger joint called Stoney’s, a “food-to-fork” locavore restaurant called Logan Tavern that owns a farm 30 miles south of the city, a Starbucks (open till 8 p.m.), a coffeehouse-slash-bar called Commissary and several retail stores, all squeezed onto the same block as Whole Foods.

Once evening-oriented development starts attracting people from outside the neighborhood, the area acquires what realtors call the “dwell factor,” a fancy way of saying it gets used in multiple ways. When we talk about the value of mixed-use neighborhoods, we’re often thinking of physical attributes — housing, retail, parks — but you could just as easily think of “mixed-use” in terms of time: school and work during the day, shopping in the afternoon and evening, restaurants, bars and entertainment well into the night.

Could a Safeway gentrify a neighborhood like Midtown Detroit? Could a Wal-Mart? Probably not in the same way. Not only do those brands not lure the high rollers that Whole Foods does, they don’t create an upscale version of what University of Chicago sociology professor Terry Nichols Clark calls the urban “scenescape,” the theory that public space is an idea as much as a physical place. Urban amenities have a multiplying effect on their immediate area — a Whole Foods is more likely to end up in a neighborhood with similar amenities, and vice versa. Jamaica Plain has had a big supermarket since 1964 called the Hi-Lo, known for its Latin-American items, which Whole Foods replaced. But the Hi-Lo didn’t gentrify the neighborhood — J.P. didn’t really start changing until the 1990s. That’s because Hi-Lo and Whole Foods aren’t just stores, they’re ideas that lead to similar ideas, and attract people who identify with those ideas in cyclical fashion.

Whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on what you believe your neighborhood needs: sustained affordability, or a gentrifying shot in the arm. Midtown Detroit is hoping for the latter. Unlike Jamaica Plain, where a vocal group of activists fought the new Whole Foods, opposition in Detroit has been virtually nonexistent. In fact, one of the most common concerns has been that Whole Foods will give the city a half-size store. (The company swears that it won’t.) Because just in practical terms, the city needs more places to buy groceries: Detroiters spend $200 million at suburban grocers each year because the city itself doesn’t have enough stores. But this is about more than having a supermarket. It’s about the gravitational force of a single establishment. In 2008, a gourmet grocery store called Zaccaro’s opened in Midtown — and closed less than a year later. Time will tell whether truffle oil will have better luck in the Motor City this time around.

Here’s your chance to send Delta Airlines a message.

We’ve written previously about the declining service provided by Delta Airlines to Memphis International Airport and about the increasing airfares.

We’ve set up a Facebook group called Delta Does Memphis so you can speak your piece to the airlines and the Airport Authority and share your stories about the absurdities of airfare prices at MEM.

The impact of saying nothing is pretty clear, because cuts in services continue and Memphis continues to be one of the three most expensive airports in the U.S.

As customers who are victimized by a fortress hub (Delta has 85% of the business at MEM), it’s time for us to tell Delta Airlines that we deserve more competitive, reasonable airfares.  The airline in the past  listened to customers and changed course when it was considering changes to its frequent flyer program.  We can only hope it does again.

Join us on Facebook at Delta Does Memphis.  We’ve posted (and we’ll continue posting) articles and commentaries about the problems.

All we need is you.  We hope you’ll join in the conversation and invite your friends.

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns was in Memphis recently to share his passion about America’s places and what can be done to build a town or neighborhood the right way..by obtaining the highest return on infrastructure investments.

During his visit, he gave special emphasis to the Elvis Presley Boulevard improvements that we wrote about earlier this week.  As we wrote, we are concerned about the highway’s expensive improvements simply being more of the same – aimed at shaving a few seconds off automobile travel while doing nothing to create a positive sense of place.

In response to our Tuesday post, Mr. Marohn commented and then posted some observations on his own blog.

First his comment:  “This is such an important project.  I really hope you can get it right.  Thanks for this article.  I posted some follow up thoughts just now on my website to get you an alternative to consider.”

Click here to read “Memphis Diversion.

Mr. Marohn calls Elvis Presley Boulevard a STROAD (street/road hybrid) and suggests the challenge is “to transform this STROAD from a corridor solely purposed for moving cars to a place that creates value for the community.”  He writes that it is likely to cost less than what is being considered ($47 million) and generate a much higher rate of return.  He also points out that “with a little love” for the design in front of Graceland, “this place will pop.”

In his visit to Memphis, sponsored by Urban Land Institute and the Mayor’s Innovation Team, Mr. Marohn gave one of his “curbside chats” that have attracted so much attention from people who care about design, vibrancy, affordable transportation, public realm, and reducing the costs associated with land use, transportation, and development.  If you didn’t get to hear his presentation,  his “Curbside Chat Companion Booklet” is available here.

Because it’s always instructive to see yourself as others see you, you should read Mr. Marohn’s post from April 25 while he was in Memphis.   Here’s how it starts:

“Today is my last day here in Memphis, a city I am finding more endearing by the hour. As an outsider, I have a license to be both optimistic and critical. There are reasons for both, although I have found more justification for optimism here than many of the other places I have visited recently in this country. This city has a strong core, great bones, a rich history and — to a person that I have met — a tremendous inner spirit.

“While the problems are deep, serious and systematic, I would bet on the resilience of Memphis more than the flashier cities I recently visited in California or the more affluent cities in Florida and Texas where we did Curbside Chats this spring.  Part of that is a product of the fact that things have been tough here — the crazy growth seen in California, Florida and Texas has largely passed this place by — and so they don’t suffer from the growth hangover (and huge overhang of obligations) that others face. They’ve actually had to start getting real already, something many other cities are still struggling to figure out. When I share the details of the growth Ponzi scheme, I find they already implicitly understand it. That’s huge.”

To read the rest of Guerilla Painting, click here.

Here’s a taste of Mr. Marohn’s provocative and timely presentation:

The following is a more thorough presentation of Mr. Marhohn’s “Curbside Chat,” and it’s a great investment of 15 minutes.

By Neal Peirce

In terms of equity, it’s hard to argue with President Obama’s call to enact the “Buffett Rule” — setting an alternative minimum income tax of 30 percent for $1-million-plus earners.

But it’s also true: in Washington’s multi-trillion dollar budget debates, imposing the rule proposed by financier Warren Buffett would yield just $5 billion a year.

The far greater problem is to combat the argument that reasonable levels of taxes on the affluent somehow quash job-producing investment. It’s not just so. As Bill Gates Sr. argues in his foreword to a new book, The Self-Made Myth, by Brian Miller and Mike Lapham (Barrett-Koehler Publishers).

“A quick glance at the past 80 years shows that we have had periods of tremendous economic growth when the top marginal rates were high, putting a lie to the notion that raising taxes in upper income taxpayers will stunt growth.”

Then there’s the companion myth: that it hardly matters whether government services, ranging from education to infrastructure to public safety, are crippled by budget cuts.

What’s alarming today is that the anti-government agenda isn’t just being pushed in Washington, where it threatens to fulfill the wildest dreams of Grover Norquist’s “never raise taxes” campaign. There’s a concerted nationwide effort to sell the same perverse philosophy to state governments. And it’s based on the same supply-side economic theory — once termed “voodoo economics” by President George H.W. Bush — that reduced taxes automatically spur economic productivity.

Leading supply-side economist Arthur Laffer and the corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have just released a new edition of their Rich States, Poor States report, pushing this very idea while giving zero credit to the quality of state services.

ALEC, it’s worth noting, is the same group that’s gained newfound attention for circulating to legislators nationwide the National Rifle Association’s “Stand Your Ground” law tied to the Florida killing of Treyvor Martin. It’s also the key purveyor of “Voter ID” laws transparently intended to reduce voting by students and low-income citizens.

A raft of corporations — among them Kraft, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Intuit — have recently withdrawn from ALEC, apparently anxious to disassociate themselves from public kick-back against its extreme positions. ALEC itself announced, just this week, that it would discontinue its “Public Safety and Elections Task Force” that formulated and spread Voter ID and permissive gun laws.

But the low-to-no-tax, shrunken government formula it’s expounded is now throwing a shadow across paths of political moderation and bipartisan accords in state legislatures nationwide. In fact there are current proposals from governors in Kansas and Oklahoma, plus some legislators in Missouri, Maine and Ohio, to repeal their state income taxes entirely, claiming a burst of new investment and/or less population loss as a result.

Constant scrutiny of government does make sense. Free from tough open market discipline, bureaucracies have a tendency to expand beyond need. And there’s a severe problem of politicos, regardless of party, pushing programs but delaying finance to cover them. Public pensions — promise now, pay later — are a clear example. Today’s fiscal crises, in states from California to Illinois to Rhode Island, prove the dangers.

But abuses don’t mean that government isn’t a vital player. This is a key moment to mount a robust defense of public service — for the dedication of skilled public servants, and for the incredible value that government services deliver for our society.

The moral is that in a strong democracy, everyone counts. National prosperity isn’t just created by brave, gutsy executives and smart investors. It’s what we achieve jointly, with government a strong player — a point made forcefully in Self-Made Myth.

Gates writes that his son couldn’t have built the fabulously successful Microsoft Corporations without the United States’ publicly-supported infrastructure, tax laws, government-funded scientific research, education and patent protection. The book goes on to cite experience of a range of successful entrepreneurs willing to acknowledge their immense debt to the broad base publicly-financed goods our society offers.

The reality is that government has been an indispensable player in developing America’s prosperity, from the early canals to our transcontinental railways, great dams to the interstate highway system, the first telegraph lines to government-funded research that led to the Internet.

The same is distinctly true at the local and state level, from public schools for all to our great public universities, the first minimum wage and workplace safety laws.

Today, rather than cutting basic public services, we need to use government to position us for future prosperity and global competitiveness. That means public investment is essential — in research leading to new technologies, public transit, export promotion, an alternative energy grid, high-speed rail to match world standards, and more.

With the income gap between our classes widening dramatically, with average worker incomes stagnating while executive compensation reaches stratospheric highs, taxes really ought to be made more steeply progressive — not the opposite. So that governments — federal, state and local — can do their essential job, for us all.

We’re about to find out if all the talk about a livable Memphis and placemaking was just that – talk.

The answer will be delivered in Whitehaven in how city government handles improvements to Elvis Presley Boulevard.

It will either be a $47 million engineering project – more of the same – or it will be more about creating place.  Memphis City Councilman Harold Collins has made it clear that he’s looking for the latter, but at this point, he’s not likely to get it.

All signs now point to a fairly typical road project whose success will be measure in cutting a few seconds off a drive up the street.  In the public hearings in Whitehaven, it’s been more about lanes, traffic, and asphalt than streetscapes, bike lanes, street trees, and other investments that would tell visitors who come from around the world to visit Graceland – not to mention the active small business community in Whitehaven – that Memphians value them.

Engineering Value

More to the point, we have the chance for Elvis Presley Boulevard to become model public realm that is attractive, pleasing, welcoming, and sustainable.  It’s anything but that now – it’s a damning indictment of Memphis urban indifference.

Here’s the thing: at this point, the words ring in our ears of the former NEA director of design who cautioned us that we should not let engineers determine our quality of life.  That’s what got Memphis overbuilt with highway lanes, it’s why engineers are still intent on plowing through Shelby Farms Park with an ill-conceived highway, and it’s why our local sense of place was undermined by car-centric thinking.

An emphasis on placemaking would be something altogether different.  It’s about designs that produced by a team with engineers, planners, landscape architects, architects, and urbanists.  In the words of the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago, it’s about “both an overarching idea and a hands-on tool for improving a neighborhood, city or region. It has the potential to be one of the most transformative ideas of this century.”

That said, this isn’t exactly brain surgery.  It’s a concept that dates to Jane Jacobs and William Whyte, and yet, here, we adhere to a engineering hierarchical approach that ensures that roads are the products of a one-dimensional understanding of the opportunity to create something other than more lanes and more asphalt and measuring success by how many seconds can be shaved off the travel time of car drivers.

People and Placemaking

The good news is that we now have a better sense of how much better a place can be – think Madison Avenue – when more emphasis is put on people than cars.  It may have taken an edict from Memphis Mayor A C Wharton to make city engineering get serious about bike lanes, but at this point, he shouldn’t have to get involved to make sure a project like Elvis Presley Boulevard is not simply more of the same.  City engineering should do it on its own.

We know that some people are concerned that former city engineer Wain Gaskins, now with Kimley-Horn and Associates, is in charge of the Elvis Presley Boulevard project.  But we’re not prepared to blame Elvis Presley Boulevard’s shortcomings on Mr. Gaskins, because in his current position, he is working for a client – the City of Memphis – and if his client said that it wanted a placemaking, rather than roadbuilding, approach to Elvis Presley, we believe that Kimley-Horn and Associates would do it.

After all, Kimley-Horn has a well-deserved reputation for green engineering and placemaking itself.  The company’s website said: “Renowned for our work on redevelopment, streets, and urban revitalization, Kimley-Horn creates memorable places. With specialties including urban design, redevelopment, entitlements, community planning, and recreation, our planners and landscape architects deliver award winning, practical, and sustainable design solutions.

“Known for our public involvement programs, workshop facilitation, and consensus-building, we respond to the unique needs of each client–mindful of the role effective planning and design plays in enabling stakeholders to establish priorities. Working side-by-side with engineers, architects, and construction professionals, we ensure the realization of our clients’ vision while solving the challenges of each site.”

ROI

Perhaps, the best solutions for Elvis Presley Boulevard is as simple as asking Kimley-Horn to treat this as a placemaking opportunity.

The importance of getting the Elvis Presley Boulevard project right was underscored by comments by Strong Towns Executive Director Chuck Marohn during his recent trip to Memphis.  We understand that he expressed his concerns about the Elvis Presley Boulevard project being treated as business as usual.

He said creating productivity and value requires Memphis to change our standard approach to roads and streets, and the standard approach is to focus almost exclusively on moving automobiles rather than creating value for neighborhoods.

It all comes down, Mr. Marohn said, the return on the public investment must increase taxes by creating stronger neighborhoods, connectivity, shopping opportunities, and greater densities.   Otherwise, $47 million is being spent for cars and there is no reasonable potential for a payback in economic terms with the present plans for Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Doing It Right

When the Urban Land Institute and the Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team brought Mr. Marohn to Memphis, Doug McGowen, director of the Innovation Delivery Team, said his interest dovetailed with his program’s work to “accelerate economic vitality in some of our city’s most disinvested areas…fiscally sound, forward-thinking planning principles will be the keys to our success.”

He summed up the objectives for Elvis Presley Boulevard well.  The definition of its success is in whether it accelerates economic vitality, embraces forward-thinking planning principles,  or if it is just a political bone thrown to the Whitehaven community that deserves as much attention as all of us can give it.

It was January, 2007, when we first blogged that Whitehaven needs to be a top priority for our entire city.  If Memphis is worth fighting for, there is no battle line more important than Whitehaven.  The city undermined Whitehaven’s future with its long-time disregard for planning and as a result of swallowing developer’s claims that all the apartment complexes were good for the economy and as a result of the city grabbing whatever federal money was available for affordable housing even if it was ultimately a detriment to the neighborhood.

Whitehaven has so much going for it.  It has engaged leadership, good housing stock, key institutional anchors, involved neighborhood associations, and committed businesspeople, but it needs government investments that strengthen its infrastructure, reward minority businesses, reinvest in its neighborhoods, and unleash confidence that things can change.

It deserves to get this highway project done right.  It starts, as Mr. Marohn said, by committing to an Elvis Presley Boulevard that adds value and creates a strong sense of place.

But it’s not just one state. Polls show that fewer than half of Americans accept evolution. Most of us still don’t buy it. As the comedian Louis C.K. asked in a bit about people who insist that they can’t possibly be related to monkeys: “Why are you fighting this?”

Dan McAdams offers one possible, rarely discussed reason: Maybe evolution is a lousy story. Actually, McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, doesn’t think evolution is a story at all. There is no protagonist, no motivation, no purpose—all crucial elements in a narrative, whether it’s Frog and Toad Are Friends or Fifty Shades of Grey.

He mentioned this idea recently during a presentation at the Consilience Conference, which also drew researchers from biology, economics, and literary studies. Afterward, a seemingly annoyed audience member questioned McAdams’s apparent criticism of evolution, countering that it’s in fact a wonderful, elegant explanation of life. McAdams agreed that it’s wonderful and elegant. He just doesn’t think it’s a story.

McAdams’s research focus is narrative psychology—specifically, the development of a “life-story model of human identity.” As he writes in his book The Redemptive Self, “People create stories to make sense of their lives.” When you think about it, we tell stories to make sense of pretty much everything. The problem is that evolution doesn’t fit neatly into the narrative box. As McAdams puts it: “You can’t really feel anything for this character—natural selection.”

The biblical story of creation, in contrast, couldn’t be richer. Talk about drama! Characters who want things, surprising reversals, heroes, villains, nudity. There’s a reason it outsells On the Origin of Species, and it may be why scientists haven’t had more success at moving the needle of public opinion.

Jerry Coyne is one scientist who’s been trying. Coyne, an evolutionary biologist who writes the blog Why Evolution Is True, doesn’t put much stock in McAdams’s idea, adding that it’s one he’s never heard anyone else venture. In a forthcoming paper in the journal Evolution, Coyne explores why the resistance to evolution in the United States is “uniquely high among First World countries.” He looks at the data and convicts the No. 1 suspect: religion.

He cites polls like one that found that almost two-thirds of Americans say they would continue to believe what their faith teaches even if it runs counter to scientific findings. Another poll found that just 14 percent of respondents said a lack of evidence was keeping them from joining Darwin’s camp. Instead they said it’s God or Jesus or religion in general. In light of that, Coyne doesn’t think evolution’s failure as a thriller is the real issue. The only person who could conclude that, Coyne says, is “someone who hasn’t looked at the facts about why evolution is rejected.”

At the very least, though, evolution’s weakness as a story creates a PR opportunity for creationists. For example, one Christian Web site tries to fit evolution into a standard fairy-tale narrative, telling the intentionally absurd tale of an amoeba’s transformation from salamander to monkey to man, all thanks to a character called Mutation who waves a magic wand. It doesn’t read like it was written by someone with a background in biology, but it’s hard to disagree with the conclusion that evolution is a “strange story.”

Jonathan Gottschall thinks McAdams might be onto something. Gottschall is among the best-known proponents of Literary Darwinism, and in his latest book, The Storytelling Animal, he sets out to prove that the human brain is wired for story and to figure out why that might be useful. “If evolution is a story, it is a story without agency,” he writes in an e-mail. “It lacks the universal grammar of storytelling.” Stories are about a character finding a solution to a problem. Evolution has problems and solutions but no character. As a result, according to Gottschall, “it doesn’t connect as well—especially at the emotional level.”

So what to do? Coyne thinks belief in evolution will only rise when belief in God declines. McAdams isn’t sure, but he does think it’s an uphill battle regardless: “You can try to make some of these scientific theories into stories, but it is not easy to do, and science does not depend on your doing it.”

Brown University announced this week that over the next 11 years, it would give the Providence, Rhode Island, city government $31.5 million to help deal with its budget crises.  It is the latest example of a voluntary PILOT payment.

As we’ve written previously, several city governments are negotiating with their large nonprofit institutions for voluntary payments-in-lieu-of-taxes as a partial offset for the city services they receive but for which they pay no property taxes.

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras said the agreement represented “a renewal of our shared willingness to work together to make both Brown and Providence successful.”  Under the agreement, Brown will pay the city an additional $3.9 million in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, bringing to $8 million the university’s total annual contribution to municipal coffers.

As cities’ budget crises deepen, they are looking for new revenue sources and voluntary PILOT payments are getting more and more attention.  Providence and Boston have looked for its private universities for the voluntary payments, and a proposal in Pittsburgh to charge a one percent tuition tax created a political firestorm and was abandoned.

A Little Help From My Friends

Also, last week, the Providence mayor announced an arrangement with Lifespan, a local hospital system, to pay $800,000 annually over three years. In February, Johnson & Wales University said it would give the city as much as $11.4-million over the next decade.  The new payments are on top of $50 million that private colleges, including Brown and Johnson & Wales, pledged in 2003 to give to the city over 20 years.

The president of Brown University said: “Brown is deeply concerned about Providence’s financial situation and is committed to supporting efforts to enhance the city.”

Here, we all know about the oft-used PILOTs that waive $50 million a year in city and county property taxes for companies promising jobs and construction.  Less know are PILOTs paid by utility companies, including MLGW, to Memphis and Shelby County in return for its tax-exempt status.

PILOT payments for nonprofits tend to be voluntary because of the considerable influence of tax-exempt institutions like Harvard University and Yale University, which pay their local governments $5 million and $7 million respectively.  MIT, Princeton University, and the University of California at Berkeley pay more than $1 million.

Co-Pay

In addition, a number of the leading hospitals in the U.S. are making payments, such as Johns Hopkins which agreed to pay $10.4 million over four years in 2001 as an alternative to the city-proposed energy tax.

In Pittsburgh, a voluntary PILOT from University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University was increased in return for the city’s elimination of a plan to pass a 1% tax on all tuition paid by college students.  In some states, budgetary woes have sparked discussions in their legislative bodies, notably Hawaii and Georgia, about eliminating various nonprofits’ tax exemptions, but so far at least, it seems more like a shot across the bow to get the nonprofits to the negotiating table more than anything else.

The executive director of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns said: “We’re having to look at the public services nonprofits use and how we can adequately cover those costs.  We can’t give them away for free any longer.”  That said, it’s no denying that the nonprofits themselves are hurting as a result of the recession, but looking for the time when financial trends get more favorable, more cities, counties and states are at least putting the issue squarely on the table.

There was a time when Philadelphia had the most aggressive “payments-in-lieu-of-taxes and services-in-lieu-of-taxes.”  There, nonprofits owned 25.2% of city property with an assessed value of $3.1 billion, but they were exempt from $45.6 million in property taxes and $55.1 million in school district taxes.   Under a program begun in 1994, 42 “voluntary contributions” agreements were negotiated, generating $2.9 million in cash and $3 million in contributed services to city government.  The Philadelphia school district received $3.5 million in cash.    However, payments winnowed down to less than $1 million a year after a state law calmed fears from the nonprofits that their tax-exempt status was at risk unless they paid the voluntary PILOTs.

Banking On It

Although payments are voluntary, city governments are certainly in a strong position to encourage them since they have authority over zoning, permitting, and code enforcement.  Meanwhile, the nonprofits are consumers of public services, including roads, fire protection and law enforcement.

According to a report by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, nationwide, the tax exemption for nonprofits could total as much as $32 billion.  The report – the most comprehensive account of PILOT programs in use – said that since 2000, 117 cities and 18 states have used PILOT programs to increase their revenues.  While PILOTs remain a revenue source worth pursuing, it must be methodical and justifiable, correcting processes that have been haphazard, secretive and ad hoc.

Remember the anecdote about prolific bank robbery Willie Sutton being asked why he robbed banks.  His answer:  “Because that’s where the money is.”  That too is why cities are targeting hospitals.  Although they make up only 0.6% of the nonprofits registered with the IRS, hospitals account for 40.2% of the revenues and have 24.3% of the assets.   By way of comparison, higher education makes up 0.4% of nonprofit organizations, generates 10.9% of revenues and holds 17.9% of assets.

Accompanying new interest in voluntary PILOTs for nonprofit hospitals is a renewed interest in determining if they are meeting states’ charitable standards.  Already, this has produced rules in Utah requiring charity care plans, for publicizing the opportunity for charity care and for providing charity care commensurate with the value of their property tax exemptions.  In a few places, there have been questions about why nonprofit hospital executives are making seven-figure salaries, but so far, that’s been a minor theme.

Tax-Exempt

The momentum behind this new interest in taxing nonprofits comes from city budget officials who face bleak options for the future.  The National League of Cities reports that pessimism about meeting city fiscal needs is at its highest level and budget shortfalls are expected to worsen through 2012.

According to the Lincoln Institute study, nonprofits in Memphis have 1.9% of the total property value in Memphis, which seems low to us and we’re trying to double check it.  The report characterized it as a rough estimate.  We suspect it is low, but the bigger issue for City of Memphis is the vast areas of Memphis that do not produce any property tax revenues, the combination of tax waivers for businesses, nonprofit hospitals, and universities and colleges.

It’s getting harder and harder to balance City of Memphis budgets, and the fact that about 30% of Memphis is tax-exempt only compounds the degree of difficulty.

The case in support of the PILOTs is pretty direct: nonprofits should pay for the public services they consume.  Based on the lessons of several cities, it seems that a carrot rather than stick approach could yield the best results.  There’s little question to us that most of the nonprofits here that would qualify for a PILOT payment have well-developed civic consciences and an appeal to community responsibility is the best way to raise this subject with them.

“The Grizzlies are in the playoffs, and we’ve come together as a community to cheer on the home team. During the playoffs, we’ll evaluate the players, break down their stat lines, and hope that Zach Randolph scores a lot of touch downs and that Tony Allen pitches a no-hitter.”

If the second sentence seems a tad off to you, you might now have an understanding of what it is like listening to some of our community discussions about the city of Memphis’ budget.

Too often, we can’t have a focused discussion, because we don’t understand the rules of the game.

Rule 1: The city of Memphis has two budgets. The first is the General Operating budget, which funds the daily cost of running the city. That includes your fire employees, your police employees, and all other city employees. All are paid out of this budget. This is the budget that will have a direct impact on your property-tax rate.

The other budget is the Capital Improvement budget, aka the CIP. This is where the city issues long-term obligations in the form of bonds to fund higher-cost, long-term improvements to the city or capital improvements such as new police stations, sewer repairs, and vehicle fleet purchases. This is comparable to a home mortgage or car payment.

In the operating budget, $1 million means $1 million. Borrowing $1 million for projects in the CIP equates to an annual debt payment of $80,000, paid out of the operating budget.

Rule 2: Your tax rate hasn’t gone up. The frequent lament that politicians are alwaysraising our taxes is simply not true. The fact is: Your tax rate was higher in 2007 than it is today.

While the council discussed a tax hike last year, it was never implemented. We are not “always raising” your taxes. But as every business owner knows, costs have gone up from 2007. The city must pay these increased costs, too.

Waste and inefficiency must be tackled head on, but as the cost of providing services rises, either this higher cost must be borne by spending more revenue or the service must end or be reduced. This means parks, libraries, community centers, golf courses, etc.

We can no longer pick and choose where to spend our scarce tax dollars based on our personal preferences or our pet projects and services. Sacrifice must be shared by all.

Rule 3: There are no sacred cows. By far the largest area of the budget is public safety. The operating budgets for our fire and police departments comprise more than 60 percent of the city’s entire operating budget. If we spent every penny of our property-tax revenues on police and fire alone, we still wouldn’t have enough money to cover those budgets.

It is important to note, however, that the compensation package for fire and police is lower in Memphis than in many cities of a similar size. Our citizens have the right to live in a safe city, but the cost of safety is something the public must be willing to pay for.

Rule 4: There are no fringe players. You often may hear politicians and members of the public demand that the city cut or eliminate a specific area of government, as if that cut alone would solve our budget shortfall. For example, I’ve heard the drumbeat to cut Mayor Wharton’s 400 appointees. Keep in mind that every librarian and city attorney is a mayoral appointee. It is a myth that the majority of those jobs are political-patronage jobs.

I’ve also heard demands that perks that cost taxpayers’ money should be eliminated from government; that expenses for food and travel are unnecessary. Truthfully, I agree and I have consistently voted to reduce these frivolous expenses.

But let’s not kid ourselves. When faced with a $47 million deficit — or even a $10 million deficit — these cuts wouldn’t come close to solving our budget problems. Cut them all, and you are still left with the real issue: How much in government services are taxpayers willing to pay for?

The citizens of Memphis are the highest-taxed people in a low-tax state. This clearly must change on a systemic level. But that also means we must have a real discussion about government priorities. We all can have different opinions about how to balance the city’s operating budget, but, to start that discussion, we all must be working with the same facts.

Shea Flinn is a member of the Memphis City Council and was last year’s budget chairman.

A few months ago, as part of our occasional posts called Urban Indifference, we had a discussion here with several readers about the way that sidewalks are blocked with seeming impunity downtown.  The poster child for this problem was the Hickman Building, across the street from the downtown YMCA on Madison Avenue and closed since 1971, and collapse of 118 Madison which kept the street blocked for more than six months.

As for the Hickman Building, John commented: “The Hickman has ridden out the wave of unprecedented residential development, the lowest interest rates in history, the highest condo prices in history, the development of a $72 million ballpark across the street, a new elementary school next door, 400 new(ish) neighbors and the introduction of the trolley. Its current owner has outlasted this and two city mayors, three county mayors and three downtown development agency administrations. During this time 20 year tax abatements, subordinating low interest loans and historic preservation tax credits have all come and gone. Granted, its across the street neighbor is in a similar state… just with the lipstick in mural form… but surely the residents, visitors and employees of this area deserve a better effort than a fence?”

Urbanut added: “Seeing as a common element and practice of owners that are incapable of maintaining their properties is to simply erect a chain link fence to absolve themselves of the risks inherent in the structure, I would propose the city enact a hefty right-of-way fee be enforced where any structure requires the closing of a sidewalk or street (or any public right of way) due to negligence or lack of maintenance for the property owner’s structures. If a daily fee is assessed for these situations we might see owners take more interest in their properties. Simple maintenance would be far cheaper than the daily fee and a lack of fencing would risk a lawsuit should someone be injured by these properties.”

Because of these nuisances, Downtown Memphis Commission President Paul Morris weighed in with his support for such authority.

That’s the background.  Here’s the good news.

Councilman Harris has introduced an ordinance amendment that will make owners of blighted property pay fines for blocking the public right-of-way.   The amendment will be on the Council agenda Tuesday, and it will clarify Section 14-4-36.  It will call on property owners to pay the costs of closing adjacent streets and sidewalks and authorizes the city treasurer to assess the special tax against the property.

The amendment gives property owners 14 days to mitigate the problem, or after that time, a daily fine of $200 will be imposed. The city can also take any other actions allowed by city ordinance.

We appreciate Councilman Harris’ attention to this nagging problem, and if you want to express your support, please email him at Lee.Harris@memphistn.gov.

Meanwhile, in a recent meeting of City Council, Mr. Conrad called for more attention to one of our biggest pet peeves about downtown – the pathetic condition of Main Street with its damaged grates and the patchwork of plywood repairs.

Councilman Conrad said that he had an out-of-town guest in Memphis and it was impossible in a walk downtown to ignore the sad state of Main Street.  In response, he asked Mr. Morris for his attention to the problem.  It’s our understanding, however, that City of Memphis Division of General Services is charged with responsibility for Main Street maintenance, but as far as we know, no one has asked for an assessment of the cost for getting downtown’s main drag up to a standard expected of a major city.

There’s no question that it helps in City Hall to have a Councilman’s interest in solving a problem, so Councilman Conrad’s attention is greatly appreciated.

It’s time to get these repairs on city government’s agenda, because it’s a problem long overdue for action.

Here’s what we’ve written previously:

“We’ve noted before how city government’s idea of repairing Main Street is to affix plywood over it…with apparently little intention to ever do anything else.  Recently we took inventory.  We walked down Main Street from Poplar Avenue to Peabody Place.  There is not one block without one of these ugly plywood repairs, and the block with the most — 18 — just happens to be the one in front of City Hall.  And that’s with several places where the grates were damaged and left unrepaired.

“It’s hard to be a downtown worker, resident, or visitor and not take notice of these reminders of urban indifference.   The message they send is clear – no one is paying attention to the details, quality urban design means nothing to us, and city government is a major contributor to the eyesores that we have come to accept as business as usual.

“Here’s a number that startled even us.  From Poplar to Peabody Place, there are 59 plywood patches passing as repairs to broken grates on Main Street.  And some of the plywood patches are eight feet long.”

Quicken Loans is branding itself and completely repositioning Detroit’s image.  The company is doing it without insulting anyone else, sounding pitiful, begging or apologizing for a thing.  Plus, it is just an extension of what seems to be a Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is policy.

Look for the new Quicken Loans ads on television.  They are examples of awesome corporate citizenship.  In addition to selling their product, they are setting a tone of civic success that is subtle but powerful.  In “The Proposal”, there are views through the penthouse restaurant windows revealing a strong city skyline.  Initially I thought it was Toronto (my wife loves it when I play the guess the skyline game).  But a closer look reveals Detroit’s Comerica Tower.

Also look for “Quicken Loans Careers: There’s More To Us Than You Think”.  Seriously.  Look at that ad!  The Detroit Chamber of Commerce should fire their entire marketing department and just start running with this.  This is a creative place.  This is a technological place.  This is a place with other great people.  It is also a diverse place and a proud place and seems to be overflowing with opportunity.  I felt all of this in a one-minute commercial.

I don’t think that feeling came from the requisite rooftop coffee break scene, ping-pong table conference space or casual work attire that has been popular since, well, a couple bubbles ago.  I think that feeling came from a subtle hint that these people might really believe what they are saying.  Maybe because the one and only vague reference to Detroit was tying the bow on some of the most fantastic imagery ever put into an employment ad.

The ads inspired me to do a Google search of Quicken Loans Detroit.  The first result was the official company site.  Second was company careers.  Third was the Wikipedia entry.  Then it got interesting.

The next entry was a news story about Quicken welcoming Chrysler to Downtown Detroit.  Chrysler has just leased 20,000 square feet in the heart of the Motor City.  This equates to less than a floor and a half in Memphis’s One Commerce Square.

The fifth result was a news story about Quicken topping the list of top workplaces for the second year in a row followed by two stories about the company hiring 1,000 more Downtown workers this summer and an 8-minute “Discovering Downtown” video.

Come to find out, Quicken has moved 4,000 to 5,000 employees into Downtown Detroit over the last year or two.  More if you count the affiliates that came along with them.  Quicken Chairman Dan Gilbert recently purchased the 500,000 square foot Chase Tower.  This is one of several Downtown properties housing the Quicken empire.

No new construction.  No greenfield development.  No parking lots.  No fences or gates.  Only restoration of building after building built for companies who moved on to pastures leaving the city behind.

I then contrasted this with a Google search of Chrysler Detroit.  The first result was the Eminem Superbowl ad.  The next two were the Clint Eastwood Superbowl ad followed by the Imported from Detroit ad.  Then the official company site and four stories about the 20,000 square foot move Downtown.

I have never liked the Chrysler ads.  I find them condescending to outsiders and degrading to those in Detroit.  Why?  Because I don’t believe them.  It’s hard to explain.  They feel contrived.

That is why I took notice of Quicken Loans.  I think I believe those ads because they aren’t selling me on Detroit or trying to sell me something from Detroit.  They just happen to be in Detroit.  I think the top-down mentality is one of success… success in Detroit.

“Detroit is going to be on the cover of TIME magazine three, four, five, ten years from now as a miracle city.  It is all because of what we do.”

Dan Gilbert said this not to customers, clients, suppliers or prospects but to his employees… the real Detroiters.  He said it after moving thousands of people into the city and buying over a half million square feet to grow into.  I think they believe it and it just comes across in other things they do.

It sounds for some people like the beginning of a story that ends in a punch line: John Willingham and Buckminster Fuller were on a panel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Yes, it was that John Willingham – political gadfly, professional baseball player, bass player, inventor, and barbecue king.

Yes, it was that Buckminster Fuller – Renaissance man, systems theorist, philosopher, futurist, and inventor of the geodesic dome.

They were on the panel in the early 1970s when Willingham was a Nixon appointee overseeing a new program for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.  Already, he had received a patent for the “T Mobile Pre-Cast Concrete Molding Machine and Sub-systems,” a new building construction process.

During the MIT panel discussion, Willingham was asked about it.  As he explained the new construction method, Fuller scribbled the calculations, and when Willingham was through, Fuller said: “Johnnie, you’re not an engineer, are you?  If you had been an engineer, you would have known that you couldn’t do that.”

It’s an apt description of Willingham’s work in and outside of the political system.  When you don’t know something’s not supposed to work, it’s surprising what you can come up with.  As a Republican Shelby County commissioner, he was willing to touch the third rail of Republican dogma when he pushed for a new tax – a payroll tax.   – to reduce the overall tax burden for Shelby Countians.

Although his intent was to reduce the overall tax burden on Shelby Countians, his refusal to tow the line on Republican anti-tax dogma, not to mention his inherent independence, put a target on his back and truncated his political career.  The 10-year privilege tax would have been paid by every worker in Shelby County, but its real targets were the about 85,000 people drive into this county and earn approximately $3 billion a year.

His tax plan would have eliminated the county wheel tax, lowered the county property tax by 50-80 percent, and eliminated the local option sales tax (reducing the rate to 7 percent). Most taxpayers in Shelby County would have paid less as a result of the overhaul of the tax structure.  And yet, the political pushback on the idea was so persistent that few people in power every heard that the assumptions and projections were validated by economists at the University of Memphis.

Willingham is largely a footnote in local political history these days, but the out-of-the-box thinking continues, and once again, it challenges the conventional wisdom, not to mention science.

This time, he’s invented the Barge-mounted Portable Power Plant, and despite engineering formulas that said it wouldn’t work, it is now undergoing tests and in the process, it is rewriting the possible.  University of Memphis Department of Mechanical Engineer Chair John Hochstein, writing in his capacity as an individual researcher, said he plans to publish new research generated by the project.

“The research continues in the expectation that even higher levels of performance can be obtained from better understanding of the deceptively complicated physical interactions occurring within this seemingly simple machine,” he wrote.

His prediction is that each of the barges, with 48-foot diameter paddlewheels that harness the power of flowing water, will produce “more than 2.5 megawatts of power when moored in a flow with a velocity of 7.2 miles per hour, the measured water speed past the Memphis riverbluff in early spring, 2011.”  The estimated cost of a barge is $2.6 million.

“The river is free so there is no cost of fuel,” Willingham said.  “The carbon footprint is zero, and there is zero pollution.  It uses hydrokinetic, wind, and solar energies.”

While he thinks barge-mounted power plant production could be an emerging green industry for Memphis, what most propels his passion for the project is its potential impact in the Third World.  “Villages in Africa where children are living in really difficult situations could get electricity and it could change their whole lives,” he said.  “Also, it gives us a way to respond to natural disasters when electricity networks are down.”

So far, Willingham has received a lot of positive reactions about the project and now he’s looking for the political or business clout to move the tests from a scale model barge to a full-size barge and onto the local economic development agenda.

It’s hard to read the test results and the concepts without thinking of Fuller: It is amazing what you can do when you don’t know you’re not supposed to be able to do it.

 Previously published as Memphis magazine’s City Journal column.

When we think about borders, we tend to think of administrative boundaries. Those demarcating lines, often grown out of rivers and mountain ranges or diplomatic quirks, govern our daily lives, and that’s doubly so if we live near a neighboring country or state.

We know that these boundaries are on some level unnatural. Driving around Kansas City, where I live, makes this abundantly clear. Gas price differences aside, it can be difficult to tell which state you’re in, Missouri or Kansas, and the small street of State Line Road does nothing to make it clearer.

Samuel Arbesman is a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation and a fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. All posts »

Which cities shape musical trends, exerting the biggest influence on the geographic flow of music across the United States and the world?  A new study by researchers at University College Dublin uses online data to quantify which cities have the biggest impact on our musical tastes.

The researchers gathered data from the social media website last.fm, which aggregates the music preference of huge numbers of music listeners across the world. According to the study, the site has logged more than 60 billion individual listener-preferences, or “scrobbles,” across more than 200 large cities between 2003 and 2011. Using a statistical technique adapted from studies of leadership in pigeon flocks, the researchers were able to trace and identify which cities are early adopters and thus influence the taste and popularity of music in other cities.

The chart below (from their study) shows the “leader-follower network” for the 20 most active cities in Canada and the United States for popular music overall, indie rock, and hip-hop.

Atlanta leads in popular music overall, followed by Chicago, Montreal, and Pittsburgh. Montreal tops the list for indie music, followed by Toronto, Los Angeles, and Boston. And Atlanta leads hip-hop, followed by Toronto, Chicago, and Montreal.

Curiously, New York produces a huge amount of popular music but ranks much further down the list, as the study notes.

For us, the most surprising features of [the figure above] are (1) the middle ranking positions of some of the largest cities, such as NYC and LA in [the All Music figure] and NYC and Chicago in [the Indie Music figure] and (2) the prominent position of Canadian cities, especially in [the Indie Music figure]. While Montreal is known for having produced some popular indie bands (such as Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade), this does not necessarily mean that last.fm listeners from Montreal would be generally leaders in their taste in indie music; in any case, New York City is presumably home to more prominent indie artists than Montreal.

Oslo and Stockholm are the leading musical influencers in Europe, followed by Hamburg, Dublin, Birmingham, and Leeds – all of which exert more influence than Paris or London. Paris has the biggest influence on indie music followed by Oslo, Dublin, Madrid, and Milan.

Large cities play a much bigger role in influencing musical taste and leadership in indie music than in popular music overall, the study finds.

The study has a number of limits. Its data identify the cities which most influence other cities, not the ones that produce the largest or most innovative body of music. And its findings may reflect the cities where last.fm is more popular. The authors admit that their effort remains “a work in progress.”

Memphis International Airport is the poster child for deregulation gone amok.

When the airline industry was deregulated in 1979, the promise was more airlines, more competition, lower airfares, and better service.  It was not to be, and today, where there was once a couple of dozen air carriers, the future is to be dominated by three mega-carriers.

It’s reminiscent of the deregulation of the railroads.  The 60 railroads then are now only four – two east and two west of the Mississippi River and without direct competition.

New America Foundation – with its predisposition to fight monopolies – and Washington Monthly convened a panel discussion last week in Washington, D.C., to consider the question: Is It Time To Re-Regulate America’s Broken Airline System?

While we’re not certain what the answer to that question should be, we are sure that more of the same is definitely not in the best interest of Memphis.  The ultimate irony is that in the city where FedEx invented modern global commerce, high airfares are barriers to us connecting with the international, and even the national, economy.

Paying A Price

The panel discussion was provocative, but the most promising information for Memphis is that we are not alone.  St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh are also being abused and their economies, like ours, are paying a heavy price.

Because of it, there is an opportunity for us to do more than just form a support group for our mutual therapy.  More to the point, there is the opportunity for Memphis and these cities to work together at a national level to address the airline problems that are ice on our wings.

Here’s the thing: the Memphis region is at a pivotal point, and we need an awful lot of things to break right if we are to leap frog over our competitors and chart a more positive trajectory for our economy.  Connectivity is one of the things that is deciding which city economies are winners and which are losers.  Connecting our economy to the global economy, connecting our ideas and innovations to the international marketplace, connecting to our peers, and connecting talent to Memphis are crucial for our success.

In this way, Delta Airlines is not just creating personal inconveniences for Memphians.  It is in a real way creating a major obstacle that weakens the economy of Memphis and our regional performance.  That this is happening in a region with one of the lowest median household incomes in the U.S. only exacerbates and amplifies the risks.

Screwed

Josh Marks of the American Aviation Institute said in the Washington panel that Delta Airlines “screwed” Cincinnati “because they could,” and it’s pretty hard to see why we shouldn’t add Memphis to that sentence.  In addition, St. Louis, once an island of American aviation, is a parched desert, according to Jim Oberstar, former U.S. Congressman and former chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Although the Airport Authority’s happy talk and justifications have been frustrating, perhaps they are the wrong people to make the case in the first place.  It was said in Washington that they are doing little because they fear upsetting their largest passenger airline, and it’s really not in the culture of the Airport Authority any way.

It’s easy to reach the conclusion that the Authority members don’t see themselves as members of a public board but as members of a special club.  It’s an attitude that’s exhibited in the professional portraits of the members in glass cases, in the entry road being named for a former Authority chairman, and the approach road now bearing the honorary name of the present Authority chairman.

It’s as if the Authority is tone deaf to the problems of the public.  The honorary road sign sends the message that members are much more interested in being honored than in acting as the public’s voice for better treatment by Delta Airlines.

Memphis As Fortress

Mr. Marks suggested that Memphis is not determining what kinds of flyers it has and then  aggressively going after other airlines.  He said there are airlines that serve business travelers and airlines that serve leisure travelers, but they are reorienting to be most attractive to business travelers and even Southwest Airlines is moving in that direction.

To complicate things even more for Memphis, 50-seat regional jets are becoming obsolete and airlines are favoring high-density routes, according to Phillip Longman, senior fellow for New America Foundation.  To underscore the point, he pointed out that the cost of flying from Washington to San Francisco is half the cost of flying from Washington to Pittsburgh.  “It’s more than appropriate to have public policy to equalize it,” he said.

Washington Monthly editor-in-chief Paul Glastris said present air fares is like “people in Memphis having cellphones that don’t reach the rest of the country but cost three times more.”

Things are likely to get worse in the event that they’re ever going to get better. Mr. Oberstar said the future will be one with three global mega-carriers.   In the meantime, carriers like Delta will do whatever it can to prevent their “fortress hubs” from being competitive for passengers.  “It’s the power of the hub to drive out competitors,” he said.

Getting Together

The panel discussion resulted from the Washington Monthly article, “Terminal Sickness.”  “The article begins with the premise that American airline industry is failing,” Mr. Longman said.  “Shareholders lost $50 billion in the past 10 years.  We know the shared indignity of travel, but there’s a new trend with enough momentum to be very serious.  Major places like St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Memphis are cut off from the global economy because of merger and machinations.”

Airline policy has become de factor economic policy, said Mr. Longman.  “Fares have declined at a lower rate after deregulation than before.”

Back to the Airport Authority, maybe it’s unfair to expect its members to resolve this problem.  Rather, it requires a citywide response not just from Memphis, but working with other cities in the same position.  It’s the sort of conversation that has to begin at a leadership level – between elected officials and between heads of Chambers of Commerce from the various cities.  We can pool our energy and our political clout to develop a plan of action that gets attention in Washington and in Atlanta.

As a member of the House Transportation Committee, Congressman Steve Cohen needs to tell us what he can do to help with this problem.  While the multi-city political approach is aimed primarily at Delta Airlines, it also should aim at the U.S. Department of Transportation, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to add new highways and highway lanes to our region while we could really use the money to pay down the tickets for key routes.

In 2000, a group of Delta customers proved the power of collective pressure when it mounted a campaign to oppose changes to the frequent flyer program.  Most of all, it’s time to put together a grassroots social media campaign that sends the message to Delta that we expect to be treated like customers, not prisoners.

For Memphis, SC2 is working with the City on programs and initiatives to create safe and vibrant neighborhoods, grow prosperity and opportunity for all, invest in young people, advance a culture of excellence in government, and strengthen federal partnerships – a holistic approach for the planning and development of human resources and physical infrastructure.

From my perspective, this was a great opportunity to hear how our progress compared with others and to, like others, get and share ideas.  The panel was moderated by United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, co-chair of SC2.  The discussion was thought-provoking, and we were just about to enter a question-and-answer phase when we were all surprised by a guest appearance.

It was a profound moment for me and our delegation when President Barack Obama joined the meeting.  Though not formally listed on the agenda, the President arrived to make a very special announcement.

The President took the podium to deliver an Executive Order establishing a special Council for Strong Cities and Strong Communities, a formal step that strengthens the administration’s commitment to the effort.  But, what was most impressive to me about the President’s brief address was how much the President knew about our activities in Memphis and the respect he demonstrated for Mayor Wharton.  From his comments, it was clear to me that he has confidence that Memphis can and will be an example for other cities through the SC2 initiative.

In the SC2 Overview, the purpose of the federal team is described as fourfold:

1) Improve the way the federal government does business: the team is helping the City and its stakeholders to cut through red tape, understand regulations and program requirements, and navigate the maze of the federal bureaucracy.

2) Provide assistance and support: the team is working on priority projects identified by the Mayor, lending expertise, manpower, and a new perspective to issues the City faces.

3) Partner for growth: the team is helping to connect the City to best practices from across the country, bringing Memphis into the national conversation about urban policy. The team is also working to support relationship-building between the City and local stakeholders.

4) Shine a spotlight on what works: the team is helping to celebrate the good things already underway in Memphis and is sharing with policymakers at the highest levels of government the innovations happening here.

The SC2 team has a detailed workplan and meets weekly to report on progress and engage with more than 100 stakeholders. In short, the federal government has stepped forward to act as a connector, an enabler and a third-party observer for strategic thinking.

Our President has made Memphis a priority, and our city leaders have taken that responsibility and challenge to heart.  When you are sitting in a room and the President of the United States walks in, and it is obvious he knows your city leaders and your city’s challenges and opportunities, you can’t help but feel good about where we are now and our potential for the future.

POTUS and Mayors:  L to R, Secretary Shaun Donovan from the Dept of Housing & Urban Development, Mayor John Linder from Chester PA, Mayor AC Wharton from Memphis TN, Mayor Ashley Swearengin from Fresno CA, Mayor Dave Bing from Detroit, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu from New Orleans