March 10th, 2010 12:24am UTC
There are times when it just seems that Memphis can’t get its economic development strategies into the 21st century.
It’s as if we just don’t want to compete in a knowledge economy in a global marketplace. Our economic development strategies are caught in the commodity trap, stemming from our background as an agricultural center and continuing [...]
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Sometimes, something takes on so much symbolic power that it comes to define something much broader.
For Memphis city government, that something is auto inspection.
The unconscionable waste of the only thing that really matters – time – and the silliness of a system that has no data to justify the monumental inconvenience in the lives of [...]
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Smart City Memphis' Recent Posts
More posts by Smart City Memphis
Smart City Contributors
March 9th, 2010 4:39pm UTC
3 Comments
In my last post, I helped guide you on a tour (real or virtual) of South Parkway from the southwest corner of the Memphis parkway system at Martin Luther King-Riverside Park to its southeast corner at Airways. Now, buckle up your seatbelts because we’re ready to turn left onto what is undoubtedly the most traveled [...]
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March 7th, 2010 5:59pm UTC
1 Comment
“Green Shakespeare?”
When my Rhodes College students mention to their friends and family that they are taking a seminar in this topic, they are often met with incredulity: what on earth does the Bard have to do with environmental studies? The incredulity sometimes reveals a skepticism towards any apparently trendy topic in literary studies, but more [...]
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March 4th, 2010 11:18pm UTC
3 Comments
Thanks to Ms. Dorsey of Echoing Green, I finally have a name for what ails me: a “wonderful obsession” with building Memphis into a City of Choice via talent retention, entrepreneurialism, and creativity.
Although obsession normally implies a need for behavioral therapy, an effective cure in this case is simple support, encouragement, and money. (Yes, I’m [...]
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March 2nd, 2010 12:47am UTC
13 Comments
On Smart City Memphis, many of us make things sound easy. Let’s just build dense, walkable neighborhoods. Let’s just remove bus fares and make the routes go here or there. Let’s tear down the rest of the public housing and humanly integrate “those people” into “normal neighborhoods”. We know why things are messed up, how [...]
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March 1st, 2010 12:45am UTC
22 Comments
A Forbes rebuttal: Mapping the healthy trends in Memphis is also part of the regional story. There’s more going right than meets the eye.
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February 27th, 2010 8:43pm UTC
1 Comment
I recently had the opportunity to attend the Organization of American States (OAS) meeting in Puebla, Mexico on initial and basic education for
indigenous and rural children. Puebla is a beautiful and thriving city; and I look forward to returning soon, with my family in tow.
Additionally, the conference was an eye-opening experience in [...]
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February 25th, 2010 12:35pm UTC
No Comments
I positively detest the cold. I’m simply not constituted for it. Winter makes everything brown and grey and nothing blooms. All those extra clothes and hats and mittens and scarves and coats make me look like that kid from A Christmas Story. And did I mention . . . it’s cold!
In summer time, I revel [...]
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February 23rd, 2010 1:29pm UTC
30 Comments
Finish Beale Street Landing, review the process and let the battle on the Mississippi begin.
Over the last few months a debate has been brewing about the future of the Downtown cobblestones. The problem of the area’s deterioration has been on full display. Solutions have been presented. Problems have been revealed and changes have been made. [...]
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February 21st, 2010 12:49am UTC
1 Comment
“If the local television stations start showing good news, then I know things are getting bad.”
That’s what my old boss used to say and he should know. Jim Redmond was the chair of the University of Memphis Department of Journalism and a long-time anchor in the Denver market. Like all teachers and practitioners of journalism, [...]
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February 18th, 2010 12:04am UTC
14 Comments
Planning in the Memphis area is being done, in some cases at a high level and by everyone. Chambers, governments and community groups. Mayors, business leaders and developers. Everyone has a plan for something. But what is guiding these plans to ensure they are complementary? Who is coordinating efforts to ensure they don’t conflict?
Aerotropolis is [...]
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Memphis Wire
- Anti-Urban Bias Continues, Says Glaeser 3.9.10 8:34pmOnce again, Harvard professor Ed Glaeser makes a persuasive case that the anti-urban bias of federal spending and policy continues. Writing in The Boston Globe, Ed asserts that "the billions of dollars being spent on infrastructure across the nation provide an opportunity to plan for a better America, but politics-as-usual favors sprawl over city. This ...
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- Where the Work Is 3.5.10 4:21pmAll eyes are on Detroit, and so are ours. This week CEOs for Cities traveled to the Motor City to co-host the national Opportunity Dividend Summit with United Way for Southeastern Michigan, which serves a six-county area in what CEO Mike Brennan referred to as “the epicenter of the contraction.” Last year, Brennan and his 100-person staff experienced a contr...
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- States Commit to College Completion 3.4.10 6:01pmComplete College America, an organization focused on increasing college completion by focusing on state policy change, has just launched a 17-state alliance dedicated to achieving President Obama's 2020 goal of having the world's best-educated adult population. It is exciting to have states tackling this ambitious goal alongside the 17 cities in o...
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- The Oklahoma City Diet 3.2.10 11:09pmWhat is the recipe for success in this great diet? Getting the whole city involved to collectively lose weight. And it looks like it’s achieving some great results. In response to the obesity epidemic in America, Mayor Mick Cornett put Oklahoma City ‘on a diet’ in December 2007, launching this website to help people with motivation, information and resource...
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- Design Museum Boston 2.26.10 5:36pmWhat happens when you pair two designers over a slice of pizza with the back of a pizza box as their blank slate? The Boston design community gets a new museum to promote local design. But it won’t look like any other museum. The nomadic Design Museum Boston will occupy empty storefronts around Boston, bringing design to retail areas and a whole new experien...
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- Growing a Talent Dividend 2.24.10 5:39pmWhile public officials at all levels of government continue to consider a myriad of short-term economic recovery solutions, our President and CEO Carol Coletta, together with regional PNC Financial Services president Beth Wnuck, proposes a more patient and lasting response this week on Forbes.com. Bolstered by our Talent Dividend research, they call for pub...
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- The Memphis City Council's executive committee today voted to demolish most of the buildings on the former fairgrounds and create a great lawn. "It's probably better to tell you what's remaining," said architect and former council member Tom Marshall. "The children's museum and its annex, and buildings that park services is...
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- City to Ease Inspection Station Woes with New Facility 3.9.10 7:21pmSince extending hours of operation at area motor-vehicle inspection stations last month, the average wait time at the Washington Avenue station is now down to 40 to 45 minutes. "The White Station facility is about one hour. When the Washington station gets down to 15 minutes, if the line is backed up on Lamar or White Station, they alert citizens they c...
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- Housing and Homeless Survey 3.2.10 8:48pmGetting citizens to show up at public meetings can be dicey. "We're required to have two public meetings a year," says Memphis Housing and Community Development (HCD) planning administrator Mairi Albertson. "We don't always get the level of participation we want, especially at the evening meetings." Every few years, HCD prepares...
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- New CHC Pharm 3.1.10 3:00pmScott Morris, the founder of the Church Health Center, often says this: "The best diagnosis in the world doesn't do you any good if you can't afford your medicine." To help more people afford medicine, the Church Health Center is partnering with Methodist University Hospital to open a new Outpatient Pharmacy on the hospital's first f...
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- Memphis Best Place to Get Car Repaired 2.25.10 7:42pmAutoMD.com sent mystery shoppers to auto repair places in the top-50 most populous U.S. cities and asked them how much it would cost to repair the front brakes on a Ford Focus. The site found the Memphis repair shops ranked the best for fairness and consistency of the prices quoted. Chicago was the worst. The overall bad news for drivers and car owners is th...
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- Med/School Funding Swap Off 2.23.10 8:22pmThe option of trading funding for the Regional Medical Center and Memphis City Schools between Shelby County and Memphis City governments is off the table. After learning that the Med needed roughly $30 million in annual funding locally, some city council members wanted to take over the Med funding in exchange for the county taking over the city's ...
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Contributors
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- Louise Mercuro, AICP
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- Scott L. Newstok
- Smart City Memphis
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