I was thrift shopping the other week and ran across this souvenir Coke bottle that reads: "Memphis: America's Clean Community, 1983." What happened? In just over 25 years Memphis has went from being perceived as one of America's cleanest(according to a Coke bottle) to one of America's most crime-ridden (according to the CQ press).Many forces have obviously brought us to where we are now. One of those forces has been poor management of the built environment within the city. I was driving up Hollywood the other day and the code enforcement satellite located in that neighborhood caught my eye.
To my knowledge, mobile homes are not a valid use for land in any urban residential neighborhood in Memphis. This one is legal because the city is exempt from zoning regulations, but is this the image that the city's code enforcement office should really project? There are many vacant houses and commercial spaces in the neighborhood that beg to be adaptively re-used.
Just across the Wolf River in Frayser, there is a perfect example of adaptive re-use. The Memphis Business Academy, a charter school, is moving into a vacant big box store, formerly a K-Mart. Would we see more buildings being recycled for different uses if there were incentives in place to do so? Yes.
If Memphis wants to be perceived both by residents and visitors as a clean and sustainable city again then we have to start thinking this way. Other cities have a leg up in this arena.
To name one, Los Angeles has an ordinance in place that expedites plan approval and relaxes zoning and code requirements for developments that take place in existing buildings. Maybe this whole debacle over at Overton Square might have been avoided if these incentives were offered...
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