Every city has a balance sheet, an income statement, and a savings account, just like your household. Most residents never get to see them explained. So when I brought the American Aspiration Tour to Memphis, I sat down with Mayor Paul Young in a newly renovated historic library and asked him to walk us through the plumbing of a city in plain English.

Mayor Young is not a career politician. He spent years inside the machinery of Shelby County and Memphis, working on planning and economic development, and it shows. He answered every question with the numbers in his head: where the money comes from, where it goes, how much of every dollar goes to public safety, and why the city chose to rebuild its reserves instead of spending them down. He also told us what he is doing about blight, including putting neighborhood groups to work cleaning up their own corridors.

I pushed him on the criticism that a mayor spends too much time with business leaders. My view is simple. A mayor is the chief sales officer of a city. Even if you want to distribute resources generously, you first have to bring them in, and you cannot do that by talking only to people who have none.

What stayed with me most was his vision for Memphis as the next great city of the South, and a story about two young boys in band uniforms who ran up to him at a parade and said they wanted to be just like him. History never feels like history while you are living it. This conversation may be one of those moments.

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