Behind a bicycling boom: Governance,cultural change and place character in Memphis,Tennessee

Abstract

Drawing on theories of place, new political cultures, and idio-cultural perceptions, this paper examines the case of recent place character change in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 2009, a burgeoning bicycling culture has taken root in the city alongside a massive increase in bicycling infrastructure. We analyse how these changes are paralleled by shifts in governance emphasising amenity-based urbanism that favours themes of creative class-centred economic development. Changes also highlight the ability of contemporary urban governance to make place malleable by upending negative conceptions of the city and providing for new alternatives. Implications centre on how place may be more malleable than previously theorised, but recognise that changes serve only some populations, namely creatives and pre-existing power structures, while maintaining traditions that exclude others and contribute to racialised gentrification.

Keywords

bicycling creative class Memphis Tennessee new political culture place

Introduction

With almost no dedicated bicycling infrastructure as recently as 2009, Memphis, Tennessee, USA added more than 90 kilometres of bicycle paths from 2010 to 2013, a figure government officials say will double by 2016. Prior to these installations, Memphis was identified by Bicycling magazine in 2008 and 2010 as one of the three worst cities in the nation for bicycling, amplified by its status as one of the most sprawling, auto-centric cities in the United States. In 2012, however, the same magazine reversed course by rating Memphis the most improved city for bicycling. The New York Times and other national and local media have published stories about expanding cycling infrastructure, its growing political support, and the added investment in cultural amenities in a place typically characterised as one of the nation’s ‘most miserable cities’ (Callahan, 2010) and one of its ‘most sedentary’ (Ruiz, 2007). Historically, the city’s orientation to investments in transportation and logistics infrastructure, which now supports the world headquarters for FedEx and one of the busiest cargo airports in the world, has contributed to unhealthy lifestyles by paying scant attention to the needs of cyclists.

The recent bicycling boom in Memphis raises important questions about place distinctiveness, place-building, and urban development. We take up those questions by analysing shifts in governance and arguing that these shifts can create changes in the city’s place character (Clark et al., 2002; Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011; Molotch et al., 2000). We show how this new progress in bicycling culture in Memphis is empowering a new set of actors who draw on themes of improving their city as well as on generic creative class frames. We analyse the implications of an urban development regime premised on the central importance of bicycling by drawing out how changes in place character may be effective only for some populations, namely growth-minded government leaders and amenity-focused citizen-consumers (Clark et al., 2002). The uneven benefits of bicycling as a development strategy point to the political capital accrued by government officials, the belief among economic elites that business stands to reap rewards, the amenities enjoyed by socioeconomically advantaged residents, and the inability to challenge deeper inequalities. Therefore, we argue that place character is malleable in cities today, thanks to changes towards post-industrial governance structures, their discourses, and their strategies; paradoxically, these changes indicate continued place distinctiveness because they perpetuate inequalities in who has power and for whom that power is used.

We use a case study method to analyse these changes in Memphis related to bicycling. Connecting literatures about new political cultures (Clark et al., 2002) to those on place distinctiveness and tradition (Molotch et al., 2000), we show how newer work emphasising the malleability of place occurs in cities (Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011). This extends the framework of Kaufman and Kaliner (2011) by shifting the unit of analysis from American states to cities, and by showing how post-industrial governance shifts create systematic mechanisms of change, especially given the post-industrial turn in cities to a symbolic economy of consumption and spectacle (Harvey, 1989; Zukin, 1995). It also ties literature about governance change to the specific instance of bicycling infrastructure and culture, an understudied aspect of urban development favoured by creative class proponents (Florida, 2012; Stehlin, 2014).

Place tradition, cultural shifts, and place character change

Place denotes how mutually reinforcing features such as ‘geographic location’, ‘material form’, and ‘investment with meaning and value’ serve as ‘… not merely a setting or backdrop, but an agentic player in the game …’ (Gieryn, 2000: 464–466). The agentic power can be more closely designated as place character, defined by Paulsen (2004) as how diverse realms of urban life, from economy to culture to politics and more, ‘combine and endure … encouraging or discouraging different patterns of action’ (Paulsen, 2004: 245). Much of the current literature on place focuses on the accomplishment of place (Gieryn, 2000; Molotch et al., 2000; Paulsen, 2004), especially how residents, politicians, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs actively engage with established character and tradition; or the commodification of place, usually the branding or re-branding of place to make cities more culturally attractive and economically competitive for wooing tourists and luring members of the creative class with cultural, leisure-based amenities (Clark et al., 2002; Florida, 2012; Greenberg, 2008; Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011; Zukin, 1995). Both perspectives are compatible with theories of the growth machine, which view urban development as being led by a coalition of local business and government leaders focused on interurban competition (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Nijman, 1997). The pursuit of neoliberal economic interests, as defined by growth coalitions, is ‘entangled’ with place distinctiveness, its durability, and those who defend it (Greenberg, 2003; Houghton, 2013). In other words, pre-existing place attributes both enable and constrain future place-building activities, thereby producing a ‘rolling inertia’ and maintaining ‘tradition’ or ‘character’ over time (Molotch et al., 2000: 819; Alkon and Traugot, 2008).

But, global flows of people and ideas bring disruptions to the continuity of social life (Hannerz, 1992; Rushing, 2009). These processes can be partly understood utilising theories of idio-culture and place. Kaufman and Kaliner (2011) employ Fine’s (1979) concept of idio-culture which illustrates how a group’s ‘… system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and customs …’ is actively drawn on and referred to as a means of sustaining interaction and generating common understanding (Fine, 1979: 734). These understandings may help facilitate an ‘imagined community’ occurring in distinct places (Anderson, 1991). Kaufman and Kaliner (2011) stress how like-minded migrants and place makers use their idio-culture to either reinforce place stereotypes and images or renegotiate place character, especially discursively. These divergent paths of change and stability are demonstrated by examining longstanding place tradition in New Hampshire and distinguishing it from the change in once-similar Vermont. In Vermont, local residents as well as migrants renegotiated place by utilising shared common cultural interests to ally with ‘progressive’ political constituencies and create distinctive social spaces and cultural amenities (Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011). Media, both local and not local, also shape idio-cultures by projecting place character to outsiders and residents alike that can deeply affect perceptions of place (Greenberg, 2000, 2008; Immergluck, 2009; McCann, 2004; Rodgers, 2013). Within bicycling circles in particular, advocacy groups and internet communities contribute to these imagined communities and mediate ‘understandings of bicycle culture, translating them into concrete initiatives’ (Stehlin, 2014: 27).

We argue that the malleability of place character can be seen in this idio-cultural’ influence on new place-building strategies, even as elements of place distinctiveness remain unmoved. The primary idio-cultural lens behind these new place-building strategies comes from the ‘new political culture’ (Clark et al., 2002). The new political culture puts the ‘citizen-consumer’ (who is perhaps best personified as a creative class worker) as the face of a new form of governance in cities that also includes traditional growth machine advocates in business and government (Clark et al., 2002; Florida, 2012; Rich, 2013; Rosdil, 2011; Tretter, 2013). The place-building strategies pursued by this coalition focus on amenities as the key to economic and social vitality, intertwining the culture and economy of cities (Harvey, 1989; Strom, 2002; Zukin, 1995). Ideas about economic sustainability and profitability, tied to support for amenities enhancing the liveability of the city, further advance bicycling infrastructure as a means of promoting the symbolic economy of enjoyment (Stehlin, 2014: 22).

Implications of place character change

These governance changes, juxtaposed with place character shifts, can have implications with varying paths. One such path draws on themes of social preservation, where gentrifiers are conscious of their position as gentrifiers, while still assiduously organising to preserve local place character (Brown-Saracino, 2009). Similarly, agents of revitalisation may not be exchange value-minded pioneers in the vein of Smith (1996), but instead may be what Brown-Saracino (2009) calls social homesteaders, who are ambivalent about their position as gentrifiers, but who do not organise around preserving place like social preservationists (Douglas, 2012; Ehrenfeucht and Nelson, 2013). In either case, Rich (2013) illustrates how creative class changes can be informed by and geared towards current residents instead of migrants, thereby partly reorienting its benefits.

From another viewpoint, Zukin (2010) proposes rethinking the notion of authenticity as a way beyond the crises in cities stemming from the rise of consumption-based city culture and the corresponding governance changes. She posits that claims for authenticity can be effective ‘if we redefine it as a cultural right to make a permanent home in the city for all people to live and work’ (Zukin, 2010: xiii). Bicycling specifically is hypothesised to empower socially conscious modes of citizenship (Aldred, 2010). With the practices of social preservation and the case for authenticity, we can see that the malleability of place character can actually lead to it being reimagined and retained in a way that is constructive for places and inclusive of their residents.

The path most commonly cited in the literature, however, weaves a tapestry of gentrification, loss of authenticity, and a displacement of holistic governance strategies. Zukin (2010) details how post-industrial shifts towards a consumption-oriented symbolic economy destroy the authenticity of urban places, make possible the ever-increasing construction of upscale developments and, relatedly, encourage gentrification and exclusion (Bridge, 2006; Langegger, 2013). The approach that Zukin (2010) critiques is often associated with the work of Richard Florida (2012), which has been further criticised in several ways. Peck (2005) argues that the creative class policy prescription sponsors governance strategies that not only complement the neoliberal turn, but also ignore and dismiss the majority who are not creative class workers. This governance often corresponds to and advances elite cultural interests (Leslie, 2005; Miles and Paddison, 2005). Others contest the validity of creative class measures and their primacy in economic development (Hoyman and Faricy, 2009; Reese et al., 2010).

Bicycling in particular is an increasingly prominent element of urban change that may be associated with unequal social outcomes. Research examining burgeoning bicycling infrastructure highlights the remuneration possible in adjacent properties (Immergluck, 2009; Kang and Cervero, 2009; Loughran, 2014), and the implications of social and cultural difference in bicycling changes (Cupples and Ridley, 2008; Hoffman and Lugo, 2014). Hoffman and Lugo (2014) find that creative class frames specifically are a prominent mode of bicycling advocacy in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. However, little research foregrounds bicycling as a primary development strategy and the attendant governance changes (Hoffman and Lugo, 2014; Stehlin, 2014).

In sum, new governance regimes create the possibilities for changing place character in cities. Theoretically, this article shifts the focus on place distinctiveness (Molotch et al., 2000) towards place malleability (Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011) by focusing on a new political culture (Clark et al., 2002; Harvey, 1989). It extends the framework of Kaufman and Kaliner (2011) by applying it to a different unit of analysis – cities – in an effort to consider particularly influential mechanisms – governance changes – with which place character can be made malleable. It focuses especially on the implications of this amenity-driven place character change, whether early place character changes in Memphis proffer the possibility of social preservation and renewed authenticity or of inauthentic creative class change that sustains or extends inequalities. Finally, we conduct our analysis based on the specific example of bicycling, a core creative class quality of life amenity in urban development (Florida, 2012) that is understudied in discussions of governance shifts (Stehlin, 2014).

Methodology

We employ a case study method to analyse the bicycling boom in Memphis. Case studies provide a holistic social environment for conducting inductive analysis and building social theory (Feagin et al., 1991). Particularly, we draw on the subjective accounts of local residents by looking at public materials that highlight the strategies and discursive frames deployed by these actors (Paulsen, 2004).

This case study draws on a wide range of materials. First, we searched three major local newspapers for news articles covering bicycling infrastructure and culture in Memphis. These newspapers are the city’s primary daily newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, a weekly local business newspaper, the Daily News, and an alternative weekly, the Memphis Flyer. We used four search terms: ‘bicycling’, ‘greenline’, ‘greenway’, and ‘Harahan’. Articles were selected if they appeared between February 2007, when a prominent public meeting related to greenways was held, and September 2013, three years after the opening of the Shelby Farms Greenline; more recent articles about the Harahan Bridge are incorporated as well. We examined these articles for their explicit relevance to our research interests and selected ones for analysis that described how bicycling infrastructure developed, discussed local neighbourhoods in conjunction with bicycling changes, or conveyed opinions about bicycling and its relation to Memphis culture. We selected 475 articles: 353 articles from the Commercial Appeal, 62 articles from the Daily News and 60 articles from the Memphis Flyer. Our analysis used an inductive approach that was specifically interested in sequences of events and with discourse and strategies of bicycling advocates. We reviewed online sources including websites of bicycling projects, parks, blogs, and formal associations related to bicycling. A petition in favour of bicycle lanes along a major thoroughfare, Madison Avenue, that garnered 1301 signatures and more than 500 comments was evaluated. Finally, we visited the sites themselves – the bicycling pathways, restaurants, sidewalks, and streets.

Place character in Memphis

Memphis is often defined as a crossroads, a place where flows of people, culture, and goods converge and diverge. These crossroads have generated both astounding achievements, from the birth of rock ‘n’ roll to having the world’s second busiest cargo airport today, as well as profound inequalities, based in its history of the confluence of race, migration, and politics. The difficulty of the rural migrants of twentieth century Memphis in an urbanising setting, as well as poverty and racial conflicts, created social and political tensions culminating in and exacerbated by the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Like many American cities, Memphis was changed spatially and socially by two federal programmes – urban renewal and the interstate highway system that fuelled white and middle class flight and urban disinvestment (Rushing, 2009). For decades, the city used annexation to offset population loss to the suburbs, but between 2000 and 2010, the city experienced its first population loss in more than a century, losing 3211 residents, a decline of 0.5%, despite a 2002 annexation that added 35,000 residents (Charlier, 2010a, 2011a).

The current economic downturn has taken its toll in Memphis. The poverty rate for Memphis is 26%, and the poverty rate for children living in Memphis is 40%, almost double the national rate. Nationally, and in Memphis, middle class and working class African Americans have experienced greater economic losses in recent years due to higher rates of unemployment and a disproportionate share of foreclosures (Powell, 2010). Almost one third of blacks in Memphis are below the poverty line, compared to 14% of whites. Memphis, a city of crossroads, sits now again at the nexus of difficult social issues: historical city–suburb tensions, ongoing racial inequality, and population stagnation (Rushing, 2009).

A boom in bicycling

Prior to 2009, lack of infrastructure and cultural support created an inhospitable environment for bicycling in Memphis. In 2008, Bicycling magazine identified Memphis as one of the three worst cities in the US for bicycling (Charlier, 2008). In 2009, Memphis ranked next to last in bicycling commuting among the United States’ 70 largest cities (League of American Bicyclists, 2010). The small number who did commute by bicycle grumbled about the culture surrounding it; as an owner of a local cycling shop, in response to the Bicycling magazine rankings, put it, ‘We believe it. It’s not very user-friendly for cyclists’ (Charlier, 2008). In Memphis, bicycling was an afterthought.

Beginning in 2009, however, a shift in bicycling culture and a new emphasis on bicycling infrastructure produced dramatic transformations. The first major project is the 11 kilometre long Shelby Farms Greenline (SFG), which opened in 2010. Efforts began nearly a decade earlier when a small group of bicycling advocates investigated the possibility of creating a ‘rails-to-trails’ project. They focused on a 21 kilometre stretch of railroad from Memphis suburbs to the middle of the city, abandoned by the CSX railroad corporation in 2002. After several years of legal wrangling, insufficient funds, and little political support, bicycling proponents in Memphis won their first major victory by collecting a few major anonymous donations, amounting to nearly half of the $5 million dollars needed to purchase 11 kilometres of the property; they also utilised $1.5 million dollars from a federal surface transportation grant, a donation from a local foundation, and a relatively small sum from county government. The SFG runs from Binghampton, a disadvantaged neighbourhood near the geographic centre of the city, to Shelby Farms Park, on the eastern boundary of the city limits. Connecting racially and economically diverse neighbourhoods, the SFG is managed by the public–private Shelby Farms Parks Conservancy, which provides a precedent for public–private management in the city, a characteristic strategy in the symbolic economy (Madden, 2010; Zukin, 1995).

Immediately after opening, the SFG became immensely popular. It is the only non-road connector to Shelby Farms Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States. Colloquially known as ‘the greenline’, the SFG connects tens of thousands of Memphians to a huge park and is widely used, as is easily observable in temperate weather, and through estimations that approximately 400 people per hour enjoyed the SFG in the first few months of operation (Branston, 2011). As one initially doubtful Memphis City Council member put it:

On a scale of one to 10, I think the [SFG] turned out to be a 12. I’ve never been so wrong in my life. Two years ago, I didn’t own a bicycle. Nobody in my family owned a bicycle. (Dries, 2011)

In votes for ‘Best Memphis Success of 2011’ in the Memphis Flyer’s Best of Memphis rankings, the SFG was number two, behind the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team who had just won their first postseason series; the SFG finished ahead of the third place tie between Mayor AC Wharton (who won ‘Best Memphian’) and President Barack Obama’s commencement address at a local high school (Memphis Flyer, 2011). The small group of individuals who created the SFG accomplished an astonishing feat of raising millions of dollars to complete a long greenway in one of America’s most sprawling cities without relying on popular support or the precedent of other bicycling infrastructure. The rapid acceptance and popularity of this innovation challenged the ‘rolling inertia’ of traditional place characteristics and improved the city’s image.

Governance changes behind the boom

Beginning with but especially following the popularity of the SFG, two major shifts could be seen in the politics of bicycling culture and infrastructure in Memphis. First, a change in governmental leadership in Memphis propelled new public dialogue about bicycling infrastructure. In 2009, AC Wharton won election for Mayor of the City of Memphis after having served previously as the executive of the county government, where he had advocated funding for the SFG. The city’s second African American mayor, Wharton was re-elected by a landslide in 2011, and recruited many other government officials to the cause of bicycling as a change agent in Memphis. Along with other examples outlined below, Wharton demonstrated his interest in bicycling by taking many of these partners to visit the Netherlands in 2012, with the goal of better understanding local bicycle culture in that country (Siracusa, 2012). Wharton’s ascension to the Mayor’s office signalled policy changes favouring bicycling infrastructure and projects supporting symbolic economies.

Second, the popularity of the SFG empowered a new legion of bicycling supporters that discursively set parameters for place character and for future government action. Future organising would centre on these people, unlike the much smaller, more private effort to create the SFG. This group was already a sleeping giant: in 2007, a public meeting about greenways, featuring well-known urban planner Alex Garvin, attracted more than 1000 attendees, despite being the first of its kind held in Memphis (Cashiola, 2008). However, that success took a few years before its impact was felt in government or in non-profit organisations. As shown below in the case of Madison Avenue, the turnout of support increased sharply in many ways, and is evidenced in a burgeoning non-profit network dedicated to these interests and in the growing numbers of pro-bicycling letters to the editor in newspapers. Several organisations, including Livable Memphis and the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, became heavily involved in bicycling discussions. Other organisations also spiked in interest: the Memphis Hightailers Bicycle Club, for example, doubled its membership in 2010 by adding hundreds of new members (Devin, 2010). In government, the new position of Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator was created in 2010 to advise city government and the metropolitan planning organisation. The new governance structures of emboldened citizen-consumers and political figures emphasising project-specific cultural outlets had come to Memphis (Clark et al., 2002).

The power of these two types of actors led to stunning growth in bicycling. In 2010, Wharton announced his plan for 88 kilometres of bicycle lanes on major thoroughfares in just two years, utilising stimulus funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that would pair the repaving of city streets with new bicycle-friendly designs. The announcement preceded the opening of the soon-to-be completed SFG, and Wharton capitalised on the momentum. City of Memphis engineers, tasked with completing plans for their use of federal funds to submit to government agencies, left out the striping of bicycle lanes when they submitted their plans in early July 2010 (Charlier, 2010b). Wharton, however, then reinstructed the engineers to include the bicycle lanes, but the engineers reversed that decision, deciding that bicycle lanes were not their priority. However, just 10 days after the city engineers said they could not add bicycle lanes and that they could not revise their applications for federal monies, Wharton announced that the bicycle lanes were back after they had been ‘regrettably omitted’ (Wharton, 2010). Two days after the announcement, approximately 100 bicycle advocates rallied with Wharton and a fellow governmental advocate, then-City Council Chair Harold Collins. Wharton declared that the bicycle lanes will make Memphis ‘the kind of city it ought to be’ (Charlier, 2010c).

New place character possibilities and realities

The mutually reinforcing power of citizen-consumers partnering with government provided for a governance change that emphasised shifting discursive commitments in how to reconsider the city’s place character or, in Wharton’s words, to make Memphis the ‘city it ought to be’. Recognition for bicycling efforts garnered positive attention inside and outside of Memphis, which affects and is affected by local perceptions of place (Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011). The cultural, political, and aesthetic changes related to the addition of bicycle lanes led the local daily newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, to declare 2012 as ‘The Year of the Bicycle’ (Charlier, 2012). In December 2012, the New York Times profiled the city’s bicycling transformation, attributing much of the success to Mayor Wharton (Allyn, 2012). Bicycling magazine moved Memphis from being one of the three worst cities for bicycling infrastructure in 2010 to the country’s most improved city for bicycling in 2012 (Carroll, 2012). The city also won Green Lane Project grants from the Bikes Belong Foundation for constructing protected bicycle lanes, a recognition given only to six American cities.

With bicycling, the potential for a changed place character is taking root. Memphis has long wrangled with negative perceptions of place character, along with a history of social inequalities and injustices, particularly at the intersection of race and poverty. Bicycling advocates see their progress as an antidote to these negative perceptions. Wharton and Shelby County Mayor, Mark Luttrell, wrote an op-ed stating that Memphis is achieving a more sustainable future, citing the growth of bicycling as their exemplar case (Luttrell and Wharton, 2013). One letter-to-the-editor noted that Memphis is ‘emerging from the doldrums of negativity and nay-saying and embracing a wonderful “can do” attitude’ with bicycling as the catalyst of change (Norwood, 2012).

A common sentiment finds that the connectivity of the trails will promote a better city character. At the opening of a link between city and suburban greenways, Wharton expressed that, ‘I like to live in a community that builds trails and not fences … walls and gates, that connects and does not separate’ (Garlington, 2010). This idea of connectivity promotes a conception of the city as a more inclusive one. Socially conscious viewpoints about change can provide for the renewed strength of place (Brown-Saracino, 2009; Rich, 2013; Zukin, 2010). One advocate’s statement in a guest column sums up the feelings of bicycling advocates about the potential of this new spirit: ‘Spandex and bicycle helmets may very well be the true equalizer’ (Alley, 2010). To bicycling advocates, the equalising power of bicycling proffers a better Memphis through the feeling of inclusiveness and interpersonal connectivity on bicycling paths.

Frames about making Memphis more inclusive with better connectivity – the ‘city it ought to be’ – must be considered alongside a set of other frames stressing how bicycling is integral to creative class-style economic growth. The case for the change in place character is underwritten by creative class mantras that conflate economic development with attracting and retaining citizen-consumers. Writing in the Commercial Appeal, one bicycling advocate put the Green Lane Project in context:

The Green Lane Project designation also has launched positive national press for Memphis, the type of notice that can influence business executives’ decisions about where to move a company, an individual’s decision about where to move his or her family, and can make the difference in a native Memphian’s choice to sink roots in his or her hometown. … Most significantly, Memphis’ selection is an affirmation of faith for the many Memphians who believe our town is improving. We are getting better, and the Green Lane designation is an acute example of our progress. (Siracusa, 2013)

Progress is linked to the economic development process of attracting business and migrants, as well as retaining skilled and resourced workers. Indeed, local economic development actors were major donors to Wharton’s 2011 mayoral campaign, suggesting that they found the discursive shifts towards bicycling as development as not disruptive to their agenda. Some writers in local newspapers are more explicit in drawing on creative class frames. The CEO of a local real estate firm supports the SFG as a city asset to pursue the creative class. He writes: ‘As 21st-century cities fight to lure the creative class and the educated workforce fundamental to urban prosperity, leveraging our green assets optimizes our city’s ability to win talent and stay competitive’ (Adams, 2009). Others draw comparisons to the liveability of cities like Portland and Chicago and support bicycling infrastructure as a way of emulating those cities’ achievements (Basar, 2011; Phillips, 2012). Increased tourism is also seen as a benefit. The city’s new bicycle and pedestrian coordinator hopes tourists immediately will think of Memphis as a place for travelling by bicycle (Devin, 2010).

These creative class and tourism ideas work in tandem with local perceptions of place to remake Memphis as a city known for bicycling and a destination where people want to be. These idio-cultural place character perceptions are driven by a new political culture, particularly an energetic, creative class-centric government and the many citizen-consumers on bicycles. It also highlight tensions about the beneficiaries of new place character. It further shows political and economic elites’ interest in making bicycling the centrepiece of a new urban development regime.

Bicycling boomtown in practice

To further analyse how the idio-cultural shifts play out, we examine two major bicycling projects that we believe are indicative of these shifts. The first is one segment of the 88 kilometres of bicycle lanes that generated local controversy. The resolution of the controversy evidences the power of new governance structures in shifting place character in Memphis. Proposed bicycle lanes on a 2.4 kilometre stretch of Madison Avenue in the Midtown neighbourhood, widely considered a hip, alternative locale in the city, were met with opposition from dozens of local business owners along the corridor. These business owners felt that bicycle lanes, which would come with the loss of a lane of motor vehicle traffic, would mean a loss of business. Wharton wavered on painting the bicycling lanes, opting for public meetings on the topic. These initial sympathies coupled with a huge outpouring of support from the local bicycling community provided the push to install the bicycle lanes. Bicycling advocates dominated public meetings, held multiple rallies, and sponsored ‘bike lane buy-in days’, where cyclists patronised pro-bicycle lane businesses on the street. Perhaps most impressively, bicycling advocates created an online petition that garnered 1301 signatures and was delivered – by bicycle – to the Mayor’s office.

The implications of class prerogatives are evidenced in the more than 500 comments appended to the petition in favour of the bicycle lanes on Madison. Commenters primarily made arguments based on revitalising the area. Often, they did this by stressing their personal power of patronage. ‘I live, work, play, shop, eat, etc. in Midtown and want dedicated bikes lanes available for me and my family,’ reads a typical comment. One hundred and twenty-seven comments mention their personal ability to consume on the street, specifically seeking a destination (in 25 comments), especially to shop (mentioned in 48 comments) or go to a restaurant (in 27 comments). Other comments draw more generally, on the use of personal financial capital, too; as one commenter puts it, ‘I would spend much more money on Mad Ave if I could bike there! I simply don’t feel safe biking along Madison as it is now.’ It is not just that the bicycling proponents desire the area to be revitalised or that they want businesses to be strengthened, but that they have particular preferences, such as creating a destination to eat, shop, or play, and the command of capital to back up what they say. These themes are associated with a class status higher than that of many of their fellow city residents, and also map onto typical portrayals of creatives (Florida, 2012). Moreover, among the more than 100 comments stressing bettering portrayals of Memphis through bicycling infrastructure, none made any connections or references to race and few took up issues of inequality as something that can be addressed through bicycling, despite the centrality of those issues to the city’s place character.

These comments showcase that bicycling proponents seek to improve their city, but they often use the frames of their own bicycling and lifestyle preferences, for example consumption, to make the argument for neighbourhood and city betterment. This type of consumerist framing leaves aside other aspects of the city, such as the city’s deep inequalities, that must also be improved for holistic place character change. Just two years removed from a largely private effort among a small group of individuals that created the SFG, actors such as the Mayor and emergent bicycling enthusiasts became the actors powering bicycling change in Memphis. They stressed themes of revitalising the neighbourhood – against the wishes of some business owners – by substantiating their arguments promoting amenity-based development through a consumerist discourse representative of a gentrifying symbolic economy (Zukin, 1995, 2010).

The second project is the Harahan bicycle/pedestrian bridge project, which aims to connect Main Street in Memphis to Main Street in West Memphis, Arkansas, by crossing the Mississippi River on a 100-year-old railroad bridge. The project includes substantial investments in bicycling infrastructure in nearby neighbourhoods, particularly each Main Street, within a few miles of the bridge. Estimated to cost approximately $30 million dollars, the project will be supported with $15 million from a federal TIGER IV (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant, nearly $4 million in other federal grants, $2 million in state grants, $1 million from the county government, and large donations from local benefactors. Wharton’s leadership role has been essential to the project. When an endorsement was needed from Union Pacific railroad officials controlling the rail line on the bridge, Wharton himself headed a 14-member delegation to the corporation’s Nebraska headquarters to make their case, which proved to be the tipping point in gaining Union Pacific support (Charlier, 2011b). Wharton has identified the Harahan Bridge as ‘a number-one priority for us’ as a city, emphasising it as a future tourist attraction (Branston, 2013). ‘This is the stuff that gives a city so much identity,’ Wharton said at a public meeting about the Harahan attended by approximately 100 citizens, most of them bicycling advocates. The executive director of the Plough Foundation, which donated $1 million, said that the project will be an ‘international landmark’ that will be integral to ‘attracting both talent to the city and visitors and tourists’ (Risher, 2013).

The composition of the power players behind the Harahan and the neighbourhood most primed for development because of the project make salient the implications of place character change. The power players look like traditional growth machine elites: key figures include Mayor Wharton, millionaire investor and civic booster Charlie McVean, the president of the Downtown Memphis Commission, and a few well-placed real estate entrepreneurs. The groundswell of support for bicycling infrastructure since 2009 guarantees the Harahan’s political plausibility. The project perceived to change Memphis’ image by generating new growth also has potential benefits for elected officials’ political capital and entrepreneurs’ investments.

Further, the Harahan project’s investments are linked to places associated with revitalisation and racialised gentrification. Downtown Memphis and the South Main neighbourhood are along corridors proposed for reaching the Harahan. Both have seen a rise in recent years of new restaurants and shops, including $100 million in current development in South Main alone (Sells, 2014). Gambling on perceived potential, the developer of a 197 unit apartment complex sited for a vacant corner along the path near the bridge has obtained $4.1 million in local tax breaks over 15 years and is pushing for blight clean up by the city before beginning construction (Risher, 2013). The census tract most closely corresponding with the proposed corridor is already evincing racial and socioeconomic transition, according to the 2000 US census data and the census’s American Community Survey from 2008 to 2012. The neighbourhood’s racial composition was 54% white and 43% black in 2000, but changed dramatically to 66% white and just 14.3% black by the 2008–2012 period; both Hispanics and Asians jumped from approximately 1% of the population each to 9% each in the same time period. The area also has a higher proportion of college-educated individuals (55.6%) than it did in 2000 (42.1%) while the median income increased $6374, adjusting for inflation. These neighbourhoods experienced an increase in popularity, and a rise in amenities over the last decade; moreover, the demographic makeup of the neighbourhoods shows a sharp decrease in the black population and a rise in socioeconomic status. These demographic shifts raise questions about the association between improvements in bicycle infrastructure and the influx of white residents producing racialised gentrification, similar to San Francisco and Portland (Stehlin, 2014). That this racialised gentrification is occurring in the same neighbourhood that houses the National Civil Rights Museum, which contains the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., throws into sharp relief the politics of bicycling in changing place as well as the paradoxical inability of bicycling-as-development to tackle structural issues of inequality.

In a city that is betting the potential for place character change on bicycling infrastructure, the spectacle of a bicycle and pedestrian bridge is the quintessential creative class amenity that is perceived to attract business and people. The Harahan plan seeks to achieve changes in the image and ultimately the place character of Memphis. Without a commitment to social preservation of place (Brown-Saracino, 2009), however, the gentrification evidenced over the last decade may be furthered with the installation of the Harahan, thereby undermining the goals associated with utilising bicycling as a civic change agent. More generally, it shows the symbolic shift towards making projects like the Harahan a priority for citizen-consumers as well as traditional growth machine advocates, the latter of whom stand to benefit politically from the popularity of bicycling and to gain from the financial windfall associated with property development adjacent to bicycling infrastructure.

Conclusion

This piece has analysed the role of new governance structures in reconstructing place character in Memphis. We first studied the role of bicycling culture. Beginning with the arrival of the SFG in 2010, bicycling infrastructure boomed, largely thanks to the reinforcing powers of creative class policies from government and the rising chorus of citizen-consumers. This has translated to nearly 100 new kilometres of bicycle lanes, overcoming business opposition to some of those bicycle lanes on a key city corridor, and the proposal of a tourist-friendly pedestrian bridge across the Mississippi River, among other projects.

In cities, changes in governance can upend long-held conceptions of place character. Previous research analysing place character change from Kaufman and Kaliner (2011) is, as the authors readily admit, somewhat idiosyncratic; they are tracing state-level place character in relatively rural areas (Vermont and New Hampshire) across several decades. By tracing quicker changes and focusing on the city as the unit of analysis, we aim to articulate a perspective that may have broader significance by naming the specific mechanisms that can enact this cultural change of place character in cities. These mechanisms occur because of shifts in governance structures which emphasise place-specific projects, especially ones with possibilities for boosting symbolic economies, like bicycling culture (Harvey, 1989; Zukin, 1995). Moreover, it is not just government or business that are enacting this process: a crucial part of this ‘new political culture’ are the ‘citizen-consumers’ who drive priorities by organising for amenity-based infrastructure (Clark et al., 2002; Florida, 2012).

These new forces will determine if the changes sought will preserve local character, maintain authenticity, and strengthen local connections (Aldred, 2010; Brown-Saracino, 2009; Rich, 2013; Zukin, 2010). We find that they offer intriguing idio-cultural discursive shifts in the conception of Memphis, but that commitment to inclusive governance is lessened by the importance of creative class frames in driving economic development. In this way, change agents in Memphis most closely approximate social homesteaders (Brown-Saracino, 2009): their desires for connectivity and inclusiveness are simultaneously bound up in arguments for using creative migrants and tourism to stimulate economic development, which in turn decreases the potential for alleviating inequality in Memphis. Further, the continued power of growth machine elites alongside pro-bicycling residents points to the use of Memphis’ changing brand as a tool to make the city more attractive to business, in addition to the political benefits for politicians and the increasing exchange value available to place entrepreneurs.

Therefore, our piece shows how changing mechanisms of governance in the city has serious possibility for place character change. This links two literatures – that on place (Gieryn, 2000; Molotch et al., 2000) with that on governance (Clark et al., 2000; Harvey, 1989) – to portray how the cultural changes of place character can occur in cities (Kaufman and Kaliner, 2011). The importance of this perspective lies in understanding what residents of a place embrace as possible for place change. The types of changes that these shifts enable have been shown to be somewhat limited: it is deeply imprinted by amenity-based urbanism as well as influenced by historical place tradition. But, that the types of changes may be a systematic type (i.e. amenity-based urbanism) is crucial for understanding how place character conditions place possibility. Finally, that bicycling is the amenity of choice for these governance structures, and its centrality to city development plans may be an especially important mechanism of place character change (Hoffman and Lugo, 2014; Stehlin, 2014).

Implications of this new path of place character are many, and, because our model includes only one case, our thoughts are speculative and should be tested in future analyses. Our most important implication is that idio-cultural change in place character can guide what actors think is possible and how they perceive place, but it may not reflect other important aspects of the city. Memphis is experiencing changes in place character, but it is still deeply shaped by its divisions along city and suburban lines, profound racial residential segregation, and stagnant population growth. This implies that place character change is restricted and may have its largest impact in superficial changes to the city’s image.

If anything, place character changes in the way we have outlined here are bifurcated: it is a place character only realised and acted upon by certain segments of the population, namely its more well-off citizens and creative class workers (Leslie, 2005; Miles and Paddison, 2005; Peck, 2005). While governance coalitions are shifting, they still favour existing power structures. However, we also recognise that in times of place malleability there is the opportunity to reclaim authenticity (Zukin, 2010), socially preserve valuable aspects of places (Brown-Saracino, 2009), or at least orient development changes towards its own citizens (Rich, 2013). We believe that potentially bifurcated place character change through bicycling is occurring with widely differing outcomes worldwide, from Copenhagen’s successful all-out assault on cars (Gehl, 2010) to Beijing’s attempts to restore its place as ‘the kingdom of bicycles’ to alleviate air quality problems associated with a spike in motorised vehicle traffic (Zhao, 2014) to the marginalisation of racial and socioeconomic minorities by creative class framing in Los Angeles and Minneapolis (Hoffman and Lugo, 2014).

With place distinctiveness as the backdrop, researchers and citizens alike need to consider how place character changes, such as those with creative class amenities like bicycling infrastructure, will come to define the city. Our analysis offers a hopeful point paired with a sobering conclusion. Place character at the city level is more malleable than previously theorised; yet, change does not automatically benefit all citizens. In fact, changes in place character of cities may play an active part in perpetuating inequalities in who has power and for whom that power is used.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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