Building a Better Bluff City: Using human centric design techniques to rebuild Memphis’s inner city neighborhoods – cheaper, and faster

Memphis is aptly named “America’s Distribution Center.”  It has the infrastructure to warrant the claim.  Major transportation corridors in the form of interstates and US highways turn Memphis’s street grid into distribution arteries for the nation.  This is problematic, as they should instead be less ambitious veins connecting neighborhoods.  The worst offender is a railroad infrastructure that haphazardly slices the city into disjointed and far-flung neighborhoods.  The end result is an inner urban core made up of neighborhoods that are dilapidated, poverty stricken, unwalkable and externally disconnected.   These neighborhoods form the makeup of a city that as a whole fails to provide the sort of urban services and experiences that attract the nation’s youngest and brightest talent.

In keeping with the trend towards urban renewal in today’s major US cities, Memphis is trying to keep pace.  The city recently painted bike lanes down some of its most busy streets - East-West arteries that extend for a dozen miles free to all those brave enough to share the roads with a population not accustomed to the driving behaviors necessary to make roads pedestrian friendly.  And like most US cities, it is aggressively promoting, and even succeeding, in revitalizing its downtown corridor.  But around that slowly growing downtown, is an urban center that is one of the nation’s poorest.  With a poverty rate of 19.1%, the Memphis metropolitan area was ranked in the most recent census the poorest among US cities with a population of over one million people. Statistics back up the claims.  According to Atlanticcities.com, a website devoted to urban issues, Memphis is the country’s 3^rd least fit city, its 4^th least Bohemian, and its citizens deal with the 6^th worst work place community.  Its walkability score – a popular metric by which to rate a city’s livability in modern terms, is a 39.4 out of 100, good enough for 42^nd among America’s top 50 metropolitan areas. 

Something isn’t working.  Memphis needs revitalizing.  It needs to become more urban.  As a native Memphian, I possess a devotion and affection for my home town.  I want it to succeed and I see its potential – which is probably why I find the current state of affairs so frustrating.  But how best to revitalize a major American city isn’t the question.  Memphis is trying the traditional approaches – best practices even.  It is experimenting with major development projects such as a new riverfront and extending trolley lines north and south of downtown.  But its city government isn’t exactly awash in cash.   And these projects take time and cost money the city frankly does not have.  So the question is instead, how do you revitalize a major American city quickly, and cheaply? 

As my paper topic, I would like to explore the role human centric design can play in this process.  But seeing as how that’s a bit nebulous, given that human centric design is a key protein the makes up the DNA of all modern urban planning techniques, I’d like to instead explore the creation of a specific process, a series of design thinking tactics and tools strung together in a logical and coherent way, intended to help cities identify neighborhoods ripe for investment.   And unlike typical real estate development feasibility studies that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take years of planning and execution just to determine a project’s investment worthiness, this tool would emphasize the quick and inexpensive, though no less effective. 

The process, as I envision it, involves the following three key components:

§  Generative Research with citizens and a deep dive into the past to fully understand a neighborhood’s history and culture to develop insights into its “essence.”

§  Using the Business Model Canvas to convert a neighborhood’s historical and cultural strengths into actual models to attract the right kinds of “customers.”

§  Leveraging inexpensive urban solutions, commonly referred to as “tactical urbanism,” to physically prototype neighborhood renewal and investment plans before committing valuable financial resources. 

 

Generative Research

Struggling neighborhoods are nothing new, nor are the tactics used to address the underlying issues causing urban decay.  But generative research is not a community workshop.  It is not a police department “reaching out to concerned citizens” to discuss strategies for combating crime.  At their worst, such endeavors are venting sessions on crime.  At best, they go one step deeper into typical socio-economic issues such as “a lack of opportunity,” “education,” or “the degeneration of the family unit.”  But these are cultural American problems – they aren’t a neighborhood’s problems.  Neighborhoods are living breathing organisms.  People know each other, and a neighborhood’s problems are specific to its history, culture, and identity.  That same history, culture, and identity also speaks to a neighborhood’s strengths, assets, and partnerships, elements that will be important for the business model canvas.  By swapping out the local community organizer with individuals trained in generative research and adept at picking up on insights, a neighborhood’s specific problems will begin to emerge.  At this point, those insights can be used in the next step, the business model canvas, to develop neighborhood specific solutions. 

Business Model Canvas

Generative research uncovers a neighborhood’s history, culture, and essence.  Together, these form a value proposition for potential “customers.”  As the main initiator of the canvas in this instance would be the city, it would in essence have two different “customers” – citizens, and businesses.   This multi-platform pattern may not be the only one available for a particular neighborhood.  Indeed there are likely situations where, depending the value proposition and other elements of the canvas, a neighborhood could pursue any one of the patterns outlines in business model generation.  Channels could perhaps be thought of as the physical infrastructure itself – roads, public transportation, bike lanes and other methods of bringing people to a particular neighborhood.  Even key partners have a place, likely in the form of existing neighborhood organizations such as churches or civic clubs.

Prototyping

Tactical Urbanism is a common practice used by individuals to improve the walkability and urban feel of city blocks.  It includes things such as painting parking spots on a four lane road in the middle of the night, reducing the road to two lanes, or blocking of sections of streets and turning them into impromptu parks, cafes, or markets.  The benefit is that it allows you to cheaply and quickly, often in only a few hours, simulate fully functioning urban environments.  In terms of research, there is an entire movement centered around tactical urbanism, with three separate editions of a “handbook” to provide examples of inexpensive and easy to replicate solutions that in this instance would serve as “prototypes” for a neighborhoods proposed investments.  Rather than forgo thousands of dollars in subsidies for new businesses to move to a neighborhood without prior validation of success, cities can instead run a series of experiments that recreate the proposed environment, such as a block of cafes, restaurants, or bars.  There would be no need to waste money on graphic renderings that are only so useful in selling potential business owners, as they instead can come and see the activity on a small, but no less powerful scale first hand. 

The benefits of such a model, were it to prove actionable and successful are huge for city governments.  Rather than commit hundreds of thousands of dollars to development feasibility studies on just one neighborhood that often lead to only more feasibilities studies, it could spend far less and evaluate far more neighborhoods, prioritizing them accordingly based upon an expected rate of return. Timelines once measured in years can be reduced to months, and possibly even weeks.

Though the outline above is an actual idea, the true merit of which could only be tested through execution, I intend for this paper to be an opening attempt to refine the idea to a point where it could be tested on an actual neighborhood, preferably in Memphis itself.  Though the steps in the process would be specific, the paper would investigate existing examples, research, and best practices to justify the process. IDEO recently used generative research to help a struggling Kansas City neighborhood rebrand itself.  The project, called “18^th and Vine,” involved creating a comprehensive strategy to help the neighborhood reinvent its struggling business district.  It also has a “Smart Spaces” practice with toolkits of its own that will likely prove useful.  But not every city can afford to hire IDEO to address the growth prospects of every neighborhood within its jurisdiction, so the goal is for the method above to be a low cost alternative that is just as effective.  Theatlanticcities.com, a website devoted to urban planning, design, and renewal issues, has a wealth of information on existing best practices.  Even the most recent US census uncovered a treasure trove of city data. 

My main concern with the topic is, not surprisingly, scope.  Seeing as how human centric design and urban planning today are so intertwined, one would be hard pressed to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.  It is why I have chosen to focus outlining a specific, somewhat linear process, so that the topic has, as much as is possible, a finite beginning and end.

I love Memphis.  For years I have been torn between a desire to not be there, given its problems, and a desire to change those problems.  I would like for this paper to be my first attempt at contributing something of value to where I am from.