Few policies have affected American society as deeply as those related to the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education. Now, 60 years later, segregation persists along race and class divisions. This case study analysis of a merger that took place between 2010 and 2013 in Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee, one of the most politically contentious ones undertaken in the post-civil rights era, reveals a great deal about processes that sustain patterns of inequality. A new generation of Memphis leaders gives its perspective on education, social equality, and the future.

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.

At present, globalization research on complex technological and financial processes takes priority over studies of place and locality. A few cities, namely those described as “Global Cities,” receive special attention as centers of “command and control.” But most studies overlook less “essential” places and ignore the impact of local places on globalization processes. This research explains how tensions between global processes and local practices create paradoxes of place and confound predictions that globalization processes create “generic” outcomes. It focuses on Memphis, Tennessee, a less well‐known and underresearched Southern “regional” city that serves the region and the nation as a vital link in the global economy and a site of cultural innovation.

Perceptions of the American South as being no place for a feminist continue to affect and inform decisions about research and activism in the region. By taking a closer look at Memphis and the American South, and by questioning longstanding assumptions, stereotypes, and omissions about the region, we create additional opportunities for further discussion about the complexities of feminism, intersectionality, and place. I challenge two common assumptions about the South. The first is the assumption that southern feminists are rare, or nonexistent, and have had little influence on developing feminist perspectives or pursuing social activism as local initiatives. The second assumption involves the concept of the Problem South and the propensity of scholars, journalists, and activists to fall back on old ideas about southern exceptionalism, and to emphasize continuities between the Old South and New South while minimizing discontinuities. In challenging these assumptions, I review the significance of intersectionality and suggest that paying attention to region and place offers an additional level of complexity and explanatory power for understanding social phenomena, including gender, sexualities, and social movements, as well as southern feminism and the Problem South.

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