HIGH POINT – A California professor who has made High Point the subject of many of his academic pursuits is working on a new project involving furniture city.

John Joe “J.J.” Schlichtman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of San Diego, visited here recently to shoot footage for a film about the city’s role in the global economy. Schlichtman and his research assistant, Ian Gibson, interviewed residents on how they view downtown High Point. They’ve spoken with local politicians, residents from different neighborhoods and designers from the home furnishings industry, as well as locals Gibson describes as “budding community organizers” in developing a documentary they hope will appeal to an audience beyond just academic circles.

“It is capturing what’s going on at a grassroots level at a place in order to learn broader lessons about that place and other places,” said Schlichtman, who lived in High Point from 2002 to 2005, when he was an adjunct professor at High Point University and studying the city and the furniture market for his doctoral dissertation. “I very much want to create something that brings the High Point case to a wider audience but also helps High Pointers reflect on their community.”

The professor has found plenty of fodder locally for the film’s main theme of globalization. A prime example is the acquisition last year of the majority of city showrooms by International Market Centers and the implications of that for High Point.

“When an outside firm purchases 60 percent of downtown, that speaks to the interconnectedness of places, and that’s what globalization is all about,” he said.

Another big theme to emerge from interviews is something the researchers have seen at work in cities all over the world: the feeling among some locals that serving the needs of visitors is the city’s top priority.

“Do we build the city for the residential user? Do we build the city for the marketgoer user? Is there a way to have a harmony with both? These are themes we see in High Point in interviews we’ve done so far that resonate with communities across the world,” he said.

Interview subjects’ views of IMC also have been a key point of discussion. Schlichtman said one school of thought sees IMC as wanting to keep downtown operating as a single use that is not interested in being a good corporate citizen or civic player.

Others see IMC as understanding that the market isn’t going to thrive if there aren’t other things going on downtown, he said.

“The anchor that caused the market to be here in the ’50s and ’60s is no longer here,” he said. “What really put it on the map was that this was the center of furniture manufacturing. As one person told me a long time ago, ‘People don’t come because market is here; market is here because people come.’ So that school of thought says that we need to make this a more vibrant place, and IMC realizes that.”

The project also uncovered something about what the researchers described as a sizable number of creative people in High Point who think that their talents and skills are not utilized. Examples are showroom and interior designers, architects and others.

“They lament that they’ve never been asked to give input,” he said. “They feel like there are networks missing in High Point that can see ideas from seed to tree like you have in other cities. Here, you don’t have that same incubation.”