Memphis 3.0
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Our Position
Memphis 3.0 is the City of Memphis’s official comprehensive plan, a “general plan designed to guide future growth and actions of a city.” It was adopted in 2019 and is now being updated. It lays out a long-term vision for how the city should evolve—guiding decisions about land use, transportation, housing, and economic development over the next 20 years.
We support Memphis 3.0 as a general plan, and we recognize the problems it creates when it gets specific. The plan itself recommends Small Area Plans for specificity, and we urge the city to follow 3.0’s recommendation.
What is Memphis 3.0?
The biggest investment most of us will ever make is in our home. Memphis 3.0 discourages owner-occupancy and encourages duplex and multi-family housing. In Memphis, the trend for absentee landlords – often non-USA landlords, has been on the rise for years. If buyers can't know the future of their Memphis neighborhoods, they'll buy in the surrounding towns. By skipping planning, Memphis 3.0 weakens Memphis housing.
Our compromise position embraces the work DPD has done at the Planning District level. We recognize the anchors that DPD and citizens have selected, and we recognize the areas around those anchors that DPD has determined will be influenced.
Instead of turning loose development in those designated areas and hoping for the best, our compromise proposes employing Memphis 3.0’s Small Area Plans in areas influenced by anchors. Study will reveal which neighborhoods need help, and where, and will avoid destabilizing areas that have achieved stability.
The compromise in a nutshell: Plan before we develop. Look before we leap.
Compromise Position: Support Smart Growth. Plan Before We Build.
MidtownMemphis.org supports the overall goals of Memphis 3.0 – such as walkability, reinvestment in urban neighborhoods, improved mass transit and smart infill, but we object when land use changes are random and not based on studies of existing conditions, and when there’s no community input at the neighborhood level.
Current 3.0 land use recommendations are “one size fits all” and risk destabilizing the city’s established neighborhoods, especially those that were formerly blighted by landlord-dominance.
We need to know what we’re changing before we change it, so the goals of Memphis 3.0 can be achieved.
