In the past decade, Memphis has ended up on several lists with the adjectives, “worst” or “miserable,” attached to it, and it happened again last week.

This time, it was a list of the “50 worst cities to live” compiled by 24/7 Wall Street, which bills itself as a news site but repeatedly posts provocative and superficial city rankings in hopes of attracting more readers to its website.

Here’s the thing: while Memphis has indicators and demographic trend lines that concern all of us and we write about them often here, the fact is that no city is merely the sum of its data points, and because of it, these lists purporting to determine the best or worst cities are one-dimensional at best.

That’s not to say that we don’t have to do something about the enduring problem metrics – poverty and crime – that drag the city down on these lists, but we do need to keep them in perspective.

Our course of action on these lists is twofold: to push back hard on the simplistic notion that they provide a tangible understanding of cities and to double down on programs that can change the metrics that most skew city rankings that result from serious research – not those found in Forbes, 24/7 Wall Street, etc.

You Can’t Get There From Here

That said, a problem with these kinds of lists is that they cherry pick statistical categories, and the outcomes change based on which ones are chosen.  For example, some of the past ones included per capita income but not cost of living, a Memphis strength.

As a result, these lists are regularly simplistic and misleading, but the mainstream media, particularly the lazy journalism of USA Today, perpetuates them because of their obsession with catchy-sounding lists and other media outlets publish the listings but do no independent assessment of the methodology.

But here’s what really matters: you can’t determine if a city is a good or bad place to live based just on metrics.  “Best and worst” are value judgments.  There is no agreement on what best, worst, cool, livable, and miserable even mean, but more to the point, they can’t be fully demonstrated with raw numbers, because it is as much about the intangibles as it is about the tangibles, intangibles like vibrancy, friendliness, accessibility, creativity, and authenticity.

There are of course ways to shine light on these intangibles, but outlets like 24/7 Wall Street abhor the kind of serious research that can turn up nuanced metrics (think Joe Cortright at City Observatory), and instead, 24/7 Wall Street and others throw together some easy-to-obtain data (mostly Census numbers) and slap an overstated title on the results – worst city, most miserable city, and coolest city – that the statistics can’t possibly justify.

Good Company

As for the latest “worst cities to live in” live list, Memphis is in good company.  The list includes some of the U.S.’s most booming and livable cities, which underscores a seminal fact: all cities have problems.

We do nothing on this blog to gloss over the serious challenges facing Memphis.  For 11 years, we’ve been writing about the most graphic and negative data that point to the problems that demand and deserve concerted, concentrated attention.  Unfortunately, many of those data points have worsened in the past 10 years in the wake of the Great Recession.

As we’ve pointed out before, the Memphis economy is projected to return to its pre-Recession levels in late 2017, one of the cities with the longest recovery times.  There are indications, notably $5 billion in projects recently completed or under way, that there is new energy in the economy, and hopefully, as we move ahead, the economic upturn will allow more money to be invested in the revitalization of neighborhoods of concentrated poverty.

Priority #1

Between 1970 and 2010, the number of high poverty neighborhoods increased dramatically – from 42 to 78 census tracts.  Meanwhile, the population living in those census tracts increased from 93,712 to 104,140.

In other words, while the number of high poverty census tracts almost doubled – 87%, the population only increased 11%.  It speaks to the historic level of migration out of Memphis inner city neighborhoods, lured by the policies of county government that incentivized sprawl and essentially put Memphians in the position of paying for the decline of their own neighborhoods.

As a result, it was no surprise that between 2010-2014, Memphis was #7 in the ranking of cities with the highest concentrated poverty rates, and it was concern about the need for action led to the birth of the Blueprint for Prosperity, an actionable plan to reduce poverty by 10 points in 10 years still awaiting to be implemented.

It’s Not About Lists, But Doing Right

If you look at the most solution-defying problems in Memphis, most of them track back to the city’s entrenched poverty rate.

In the end, we have to attack poverty courageously, aggressively, and innovatively, not because it would remove Memphis from most of these negative city lists, but because it is the right thing to do for Memphis’ future.

Finally, while it’s tempting to be cavalier about these kinds of asinine lists, they can result in a narrative about Memphis when the city is attached to so many headlines about worst and miserable.  It speaks to the lack of a counter narrative that results from Memphis’ location in the middle of America where it is regularly overlooked.

We think that everyone knows that Memphis has a unique vibe and that it has performed way beyond its size in music and business, but we are wrong.  Cities in the middle of the country rarely get into the news – unless it’s negative – and because of it, it takes concerted effort to get national news coverage about exciting programs and important projects.

That’s why City of Memphis’ amped-up communications function could prove so important, because if it’s successful in stirring up positive national coverage of Memphis, we would have taken a big step in being able to ignore these irritating city lists.

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