It’s hard to think of another American city — except, perhaps, New Orleans — that feels quite as fragile and quite as resilient as Memphis.

For much of its history, Memphis has acted as a pass-through. An old river town and a global logistics hub, Memphis has always been a place where people, commerce and ideas move through, but don’t necessarily stay. This is not a negative — healthy urban economies are built on healthy degrees of churn. Yet, this legacy of pass-through, where movement leaves imprints but never quite coalesces into a comprehensive development arc, has left the city’s social, cultural, economic and physical fabrics loosely wound.

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The resilience of Memphis is most evident through its cultural might. Robert Gordon’s observation of “vectors pointing toward Memphis” captures the almost magical quality of the seemingly endless supply of talent that flows through and emanates from the city. Despite limited support systems for cultural economy, Memphians have consistently excelled in creating, producing and exporting their art. Mayor Paul Young’s emphasis on Memphis as “Culture City,” marked by the recent creation of the Office of Creative and Cultural Economy, demonstrates how policy can structure and sustain this resilient cultural legacy.

Just as Memphis is learning to harness its cultural assets to maintain resilience, the city must now develop strategies to address its fragility. A different way of looking at another abundant Memphis resource — its land — may hold the key. A land-value tax (LVT), an old idea gaining new currency to unlock the potential for more equitable development outcomes, could be the catalyst for revitalizing underutilized areas across Memphis.

Much of the city’s vulnerability is embedded directly in its form, a landscape that, outside of Downtown and the Parkways, quickly devolves into placeless sprawl. The toll of this sprawl on Memphis’ economy, social fabric and public health has been well-documented and is still being tallied. It costs a lot to maintain infrastructure across such a large landmass with a relatively small, static population — even more so when disinvestment and depopulation, as seen in much of North and South Memphis, leave large areas blighted without proper resources to tend and to keep.

Land-value taxation sounds wonky, but it’s not. First articulated by the 19th-century economist Henry George, it simply works by taxing the value of land itself, rather than the buildings or improvements on it. The basic premise is this: Land is fundamentally finite — no one creates it, yet its value appreciates through the investments and improvements made around it, whether through public infrastructure, institutional anchors or neighboring development.

Traditional property taxes create a perverse scenario where this publicly created value is captured by passive speculators while active development is penalized. This is particularly stark in low-income areas where speculators can acquire land cheaply, pay minimal taxes while letting properties deteriorate, and wait for others’ investments to drive up values.

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LVT reverses this dynamic by taxing the land’s value rather than improvements upon it. Since land cannot be hidden or moved, the tax burden falls directly on landowners, discouraging speculation and encouraging productive land use. While landlords might initially attempt to pass some of this cost to tenants, the increased housing supply and density spurred by LVT would likely stabilize or even lower rents throughout time. Landowners are incentivized to develop their property to its highest potential to offset their tax burden, which can result in better-maintained neighborhoods and more equitable development patterns.

This approach could be particularly transformative in Memphis neighborhoods experiencing conflicting market trends. Take Speedway Terrace or Peabody Vance, where new construction and rehabilitated homes often carry significantly higher valuations than older properties or vacant lots nearby. An LVT could serve as an equalizing force, ensuring steady development with equitable access opportunities rather than perpetuating a patchwork of development and blight.

To implement LVT in Memphis, city officials would need to work with the state legislature to pass enabling legislation or create a special tax district, potentially starting with a pilot program in select neighborhoods. This sounds like a tall order given current politics, but LVT, often called “the perfect tax,” appeals across ideological lines, satisfying conservative principles of economic efficiency and market incentives while advancing progressive goals of equity and shared prosperity. Cities like Detroit, facing similar challenges of managing blight and uneven investment, have already begun advocating LVT legislation toward state adoption.

By encouraging higher density and more efficient land use, LVT could help Memphis grow in a way that is both sustainable and equitable. For a truly ambitious approach, the increased tax revenue from newly activated land could even fund a dedicated stream for MATA, enhancing mobility options and connecting more Memphians to jobs, culture and essential services.

LVT presents a chance to reimagine how Memphis uses its land — and how that land can work for the benefit of all Memphians. Memphis’ innovations in culture have made it resilient. Shouldn’t its innovations in policy make it less fragile too?