William Graves

Gentrification as Corporate Growth Strategy: The Strange Case of Charlotte, North Carolina and the Bank of America

ABSTRACT: In keeping with calls for gentrification research to show greater sensitivity to contextuality, this article uses Charlotte, North Carolina as a case study to illustrate a geography of gentrification in which motivations to gentrify and stage trajectories do not quite fit traditional expectations. In this mid-sized Southern city, gentrification was first introduced in the early 1970s when corporate leaders recognized the importance of revitalizing central city space in a manner that would enhance their corporate identity and advance their strategic goals. Early stage gentrification in Charlotte was characterized by the production of gentrifiable space in one of the city’s most deteriorated districts, the absence of marginal gentrifiers and traditional urban pioneers, unconventional profit motives, and significant deviations from traditional stage theory. Beyond providing an analysis of gentrification at a level of the urban hierarchy (and in a region) that has long been overlooked, the article contributes a critical and contextual perspective to our understanding of gentrification’s causality and process.

The Geography of Mutual Fund Assets

Mutual funds are the primary investment vehicle for individual retirement savings, but the spatial aspects of mutual fund investments have not been examined. This paper discusses the characteristics of the mutual fund industry and compares them to other financial industries. Previous studies of the financial industry and quaternary location theory are used to formulate three hypotheses predicting the distribution of mutual fund assets: (1) mutual fund assets will concentrate in the largest urban centers; (2) mutual fund assets will become increasingly concentrated in financial centers over the 1986-1996 period; and (3) the distribution of mutual fund assets will be similar to the distribution of other financial activities. Examination of mutual fund asset data from 1986 and 1996 did not fully support any of the three hypotheses. These findings suggest that the standard elements of quaternary location theory may need to be reevaluated.

The Corporate (Re) Construction of a New South City: Great Banks Need Great Cities

Charlottes emergence as a major financial center has triggered the rapid and comprehensive revitalization of its urban core. The citys sleepy Southern image and sprawling suburban development pattern made it difficult for expansionary corporate interests to attract the human capital necessary for growth. In response to this challenge local banks and government formed a unique partnership that facilitated the remaking of Charlottes city center in order to create a new urban image more palatable to financial sector workers. In Charlotte, leading and extended corporate involvement, an absence of conventional gentrifying pioneers, incumbent resident upgrading, the production of gentrifiable space and unconventional profit motives all combine to challenge theories of revitalization developed in other systematic or regional contexts. Beyond providing an overview of Charlottes under-researched and inadequately understood restructuring processes, this paper contributes to a broadened understanding of the New South and addresses a level and region of the urban hierarchy that has long been overlooked.

The Southern Culture of Risk Capital: The Path Dependence of Entrepreneurial Finance

The U.S. South has experienced remarkable job growth over the past quarter century; however few of these jobs were endogenously created. While the primary economic development strategy in the region has been to rely on branch plants to create locally-owned spillovers, recent efforts have shifted to the promotion of entrepreneurship via industrial district spillover (e.g., North Carolinas Research Triangle Park). Despite these efforts, rates of entrepreneurship remain low throughout the U.S. South. This research identifies elements of the dominant regional culture which contribute to this entrepreneurial weakness in North Carolinas Research Triangle Park. A series of interviews with regional venture capitalists were conducted to identify the role of culture in their industry. The significance of regional culture on this form of entrepreneurial finance is identified via inter-regional comparisons and surveys of entrepreneurs. Finally, the iterative effects of Southern culture are traced through the four phases of entrepreneurial finance.

CHARLOTTE'S ROLE AS A FINANCIAL CENTER: LOOKING BEYOND BANK ASSETS

Studies of financial activities generally focus on the location of assets. Charlotte is often revered as the newest and second-largest banking center in the U.S. in terms of the total assets held by the locally headquartered banks (Bank of America and First Union). Deeper evaluations of financial activity reveal that despite the magnitude of the local asset base, financial employment and wage levels are close to the national average. In terms of the percentage of total employment in the FIRE sector, Charlotte ranks below similar-sized cities such as Jacksonville, Richmond, or Columbia. Examination of the relationship between bank assets and financial-sector employment suggests that the Charlotte banks have a smaller local economic impact per dollar of assets than other regional banks. These results suggest that the high visibility of the banking industry in Charlotte may overshadow the diversity of the areas economy and overstate the economic contributions of the citys most prominent employers.

Reevaluating the Position of Southern Exports on the Global Stage

Export-oriented manufacturing is often viewed as an important element of economic development. In recent decades, many states across the southern United States have made concerted efforts to attract exporters and promote this type of industrial policy. This paper uses an evolutionary economic geography perspective to examine recent export trends for several Southern states, across several measures, since the implementation of NAFTA. Overall, the analyses suggest that most Southern states have export intensities that are above the national average, yet positive relationships with state-level incomes are unclear. Additionally, Southern states were found to be remarkably heterogeneous in terms of state-level export performance, dominant export composition, and destination markets, but also point to an overreliance on traditional economic development perspectives which may lead to future difficulties in adapting to inevitable shifts in the global economic system.

Risk, Finance and North Carolina's Post-Industrial Future

While innovation is generally seen as the engine of modern economic development, geographers have paid scant attention to the role of finance as an element of the innovation infrastructure. This study explores the availability of venture capital (a type of finance vital to the creation of modern firms) in North Carolina. The data reveal that North Carolina receives below average amounts of venture capital investment despite its remarkable success in creating human capital and transferring research from universities into firms (best exemplified by the Research Triangle Park). The scarcity of venture capital has forced the state to continue to rely on branch-plant facilities for economic development, a situation that compounds the capital shortage by extracting locally earned profits from the states economy.

Financing Flexibility in a Global Market: The Metropolitan Distribution of Equity Investment1

As firms increasingly rely upon intangible assets such as human capital, innovative capacity, and brand equity, they are less able to tap traditional sources of capital such as bank or debt financing. Equity finance (the offering of ownership shares through public stock markets) is frequently the only means of finance available to knowledge-based firms or firms with few fixed assets. The intent of this research is to chart the spatial patterns of equity investment growth in the U.S. metropolitan system using the market capitalizations of 7,926 U.S. firms. Given the necessity of capital for economic growth, these patterns are of obvious importance to geographers. It is shown that volumes of equity investment are both highly skewed towards large firms, the service and FIRE sectors, and a core of metropolitan headquarters sites. Equity capital was found to flow away from Manufacturing Belt cities and towards cities dominated by smaller firms. In addition, it was found that changes in the volume of equity investment in locally headquartered firms is positively correlated to changes in personal income, population, and total employment.

Evolving Growth Prospects?: Assessing the State of the South in the Global Economy

Despite rapid population growth, parts of the southern United States often lag the nation in measures of productivity, wages, and wealth. This paper revisits evaluation of Southern economic readiness for the global era in order to assess the regions contemporary adaptation to the global economy. Moreover, it explores the geographies of economic evolution within the South by measuring relative changes in population, productivity, poverty, education, and foreign direct investment. With the exception of population growth and high school graduation rates, these analyses suggest that the region has regressed relative to the nation in many measures. The findings intimate that this economic decline could be tied to region-wide policy regimes that are reliant on maintaining low wages and present a structural obstacle to economic evolution.Resumen:A pesar del rápido crecimiento de la población, algunas partes del sur de los Estados Unidos a menudo se quedan rezagadas con medidas de productividad, salarios y riqueza. Este documento revisa la evaluación de Glasmeier y Leichenko de 1996 sobre la preparación económica del Sur para la era global con el fin de evaluar la adaptación contemporánea de la región a la economía global. Además, explora las geografías de la evolución económica en el Sur, midiendo los cambios relativos en la población, la productividad, la pobreza, la educación y la inversión extranjera directa. Con la excepción del crecimiento de la población y las tasas de graduación de la escuela secundaria, estos análisis sugieren que la región ha retrocedido en relación con la nación en muchas medidas. Los hallazgos indican que este declive económico podría estar vinculado a regímenes de políticas regionales que dependen de mantener bajos salarios y constituir un obstáculo estructural a la evolución económica.

Notes on the Inconsistency of Subcounty Scale Demographic Data: A Comparison of Five Data Vendors

Business geographers spend a large portion of their time developing new models to answer complex spatial questions. Although these models of economic systems are frequently innovative, they often fail to produce useful results (Colander et al. 2009). Inconsistent and inaccurate input data are a primary source of error in these models and the location analysis process as a whole (Rando 2014). The willingness of professional and academic geographers to take the accuracy of subcounty demographic data for granted exacerbates the problem of model inaccuracy. The sluggish update cycle of U.S. Census Bureau data forced professional geographers to rely on spatial demographic data provided by third-party vendors for model construction and application. Frequently these data are packaged with analytical software such as ESRI Business Analyst or Alteryx or accessed via an online subscription model. These vendors generate their small-area data by applying proprietary algorithms to base-year census data to extrapolate contemporary data (ESRI 2014). These data are expensive—the high price simultaneously serving as a signal of quality as well as a barrier to evaluative comparisons between vendors. Accuracy assessments are further impeded by the lack of significant metadata or historical data. The result of pricing, opaque sourcing, and the common genealogy of third-party demographic data is users must blindly accept whatever data source is purchased as the best available (Graves and Chabot 2015). The purpose of this article is to directly compare five sources of basic spatial demographic data to reveal the variation that exists among them. The goal of this evaluation is to illuminate sources of error in the location analysis process and discuss the problems that data inaccuracy poses for the discipline of applied geography.