Volunteer Portraits

May 3, 2003: The Memphis Summit

If It Takes 10 Years To Change A City, What Are Today’s 13 Year-Olds Thinking?

Action Greensboro sent 11 young professionals to a national summit in Memphis on May 1-2, and last month we promised to report to you what they learned.

The summit was hosted by Professor Richard Florida’s organization and designed to develop a manifesto for cities that want to become magnets for the “creative class”. Florida contends that corporate profits and economic growth will increasingly depend upon the “creative class”, a highly mobile, well-paid segment of the workforce that engages in creative problem solving and uses standard approaches in unique ways. Creative centers are places where newcomers are accepted quickly and where people can find opportunity and be themselves.

First Row (seated): Ty Daugherty. Second Row (left to right): Terry Noel, Anadri Chisolm-Noel, Jenny Stokes, Doug Delieto, Kate Shugart, Ivan Canada, Amy Lytle, Tracie Leonard. Third row (left to right): Jay Kirkpatrick, Erik Albright, Allison VanLaningham, Tracey King, Matt Crossley.

Well, wouldn’t you know those 11 young’uns would bring us back questions rather than answers? So would you please give these questions some consideration and tell us what you think? 1. If “cities will prosper by creating the conditions that allow leaders and their ideas to flourish,” as Andrew Medd says, then what are those conditions, and how are they created? 2. If great universities are vital to creative places, what are the necessary ingredients of a great university? 3. How does a city discover its essence and capitalize on its authenticity? 4. If we shouldn’t count on the future to simply evolve from the past, but “anticipate discontinuities”, as Walker Smith says, then what possible discontinuities should we be thinking about? 5. If people live in places where their views are validated, as Bill Bishop says, then how is a new view introduced in communities? 6. How is technology altering places, and what are the related public policy issues? 7. Ten years from now, what is likely to be the biggest difference in the character and texture of community life in America? 8. What factors can propel a city into a “golden age”?