by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 31st, 2005 9:42am CDT | Comments Off
As a late but satisfied reader of Erik Larson’s “The Devil in the White City” about the great Chicago World’s Fair, I came across the following passage this morning… “The exposition promised to surpass the Paris exposition on every level — every level, that is, except one, and that persistent deficit troubled [Daniel] Burnham. The [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 29th, 2005 1:54am CDT | Comments Off
The chairman of the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority is quoted in the Memphis Flyer as saying that Memphis without FedEx is Shreveport. Well, music heritage, an MSA twice as large, a more vibrant business base and innate authenticity aside, Shreveport’s airport at least knows how to welcome its guests. If you doubt it, [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 28th, 2005 1:05am CDT | Comments Off
In the end, the Edgar Ray Killen verdict was nothing if not a case of justice delayed, justice denied. Four decades passed before he was finally convicted of his lead role in the hate-filled murders of three heroic civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, four decades in which he was able to live his life [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 27th, 2005 1:33am CDT | Comments Off
“Greenprints,” as Will Rogers of the Trust for Public Land said on Smart City, is a smart growth strategy emphasizing land conservation to improve quality of life, clean air and water, offer more recreational opportunities, improve personal health and contribute to the economy. He says that greenprinting is a voluntary approach designed to steer growth [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 26th, 2005 1:21am CDT | Comments Off
Maybe the Sons of the Confederacy are right. Taking the names of their heroes off Memphis parks is rewriting history. Instead of rewriting history, maybe we just need to write it right. To do this, there is already precedent for our simple compromise – add the names of African-American civil rights heroes to the names [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 23rd, 2005 1:05am CDT | Comments Off
Sometimes, listening to the defenders of our Confederate-named parks, you get the feeling that the future of Western civilization itself is at stake. It’s as if Memphis was a bastion of Southern gentility like Richmond or Atlanta. It’s all revisionist history of the crassest kind. It’s time to get real. Memphis’ main historical claim to [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 22nd, 2005 1:33am CDT | Comments Off
When it comes to term limits, we suggested earlier this month (see July 8 blog) that city and county boards and commissions – where members have served for as long as 25 years – should be included. Based on the performance of the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board, it can’t happen too soon [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 21st, 2005 7:56pm CDT | Comments Off
I did something today that I’ve never done before in my 35 years of working downtown. I felt “cool.” About 2:30 this afternoon, fighting a losing battle with a big-time case of writer’s block, I grabbed up the stake of papers that was the source of my aggravation, and I decided maybe a change of [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 21st, 2005 6:56am CDT | Comments Off
Dear N.W.A.: It’s not you. It’s me. I thought I would never have to write this letter, but I’ve changed. My needs are different, and although I thought I could deal with it, I can’t. You were there when I needed you, but over the years, we’ve grown apart. You haven’t seemed as concerned about [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 20th, 2005 2:20am CDT | Comments Off
A report by consultants writing Memphis/Shelby County’s new Unified Development Code is “must reading” for anyone who believes that it isn’t too late for our community to control sprawl, invest in the urban core and save county government from bankruptcy. The nationally recognized team of planners which is preparing the code have set out ambitious [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 19th, 2005 12:15pm CDT | Comments Off
Wendi Thomas writes that we need day care van drivers who do their job. Here’s an alternative: We don’t need day care van drivers at all. We need day care close to home, and let parents be responsible for getting their children to and from day care. How did we decide that putting young children [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 19th, 2005 1:02am CDT | Comments Off
There is the classic Buddhist parable, told in several variations, that goes something like this: There is a man running through the jungle, fleeing from a tiger. It is clear that it is only a matter of time before the tiger prevails, because although the man is out of his grasp, he is tiring. Clearly, [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 18th, 2005 12:01pm CDT | Comments Off
Many politicians secretly love reappraisal. It is a time of complicated assessment equations, mind-boggling financial and legal nuances, public confusion about the processes, and, despite rhetoric to the contrary, windfalls for government. The windfalls of course are not supposed to happen. State law espouses the proposition that there will be none, but the reality is [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 15th, 2005 1:01am CDT | Comments Off
I got homesick today for Memphis. So I took the RTA down to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in downtown Cleveland. It would be a gross oversimplification to say, as many do, that this museum “lost” this museum and it should be in Memphis. There is a mythology that feeds the notion that [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 14th, 2005 11:49am CDT | Comments Off
Coach Cal needs to tell the Memphis Regional Chamber about the dangers of “bulletin board motivation” for your opponents. As the University of Memphis head basketball coach, Calipari has warned his team that smart players don’t make comments that can come back to haunt you by motivating the opposing team. Surely, last week’s presentation by [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 13th, 2005 11:02pm CDT | Comments Off
Bill Freeman was buried yesterday. Somehow the world seems less fun. Bill was a retired Air Force colonel, with a booming voice that could keep you in rapt attention if he was merely reciting the alphabet. It was a voice that could fill a room, but it was no match for Bill himself. He had [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 12th, 2005 1:15am CDT | Comments Off
It’s a glimpse of Memphis as it could have been. The spur that connects I-40 to Highway 51 (Thomas Street) is a 1.2 mile green escape from the billboards that dominate Memphis’ expressways. On the other hand, Bill Morris Parkway (Tennessee 385) doesn’t offer as much nature, but it also doesn’t have a single billboard [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 11th, 2005 11:08pm CDT | Comments Off
Vancouver co-director of planning Larry Beasley was my guest today on “Smart City.” Vancouver is regularly named as one of North America’s most appealing cities. I wanted to know why, so I asked Larry. According to Larry, Vancouver’s transformation began with Expo ’86 when Vancouver began re-thinking how cities are developed. The city decided not [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 10th, 2005 9:18pm CDT | Comments Off
Yesterday, I took a walk around the core of downtown, the part of downtown most visitors see. Walking up and down Union, Monroe and Madison between Front and Third, I saw very few people on the street, new (and old) vacancies, and a disregard for the public realm that is beyond belief. MATA’s trolley extension [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 8th, 2005 3:22am CDT | Comments Off
If term limits are an idea whose time has come, perhaps a good place to start would be the members of the more than 150 public boards in Memphis and Shelby County. Media attention regarding terms limits concentrates on elected officials, particularly those in Shelby County Government who were limited to eight years in office [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 6th, 2005 1:28pm CDT | Comments Off
Whatever your political persuasion, as Memphians, you should be closely watching the budget moving through the U.S. Congress. It could spell big problems for our city. The political dynamics of the Capitol have been shifting from cities to states in the past six years or so, and as a result, the financial lifelines that have [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 3rd, 2005 2:34am CDT | Comments Off
Trees are the lungs of the city. That’s why the bulldozing of 150 acres of trees in Cordova by an uncaring developer is the equivalent of a pulmonary embolism for Memphis and Shelby County. The United States Forest Service says that one tree, over its 50-year lifetime, generates $31,250 worth of oxygen; $62,000 worth of [...]
by Bill Day. Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons. Cartoons Archive →
Photograph by Amie Vanderford
This ongoing series of photographs is intended to show the daily lives of these single mothers in order to invoke recognition of their similarities to all mothers, along with understanding and empathy from the viewer of the strengths that these single mothers possess within the challenging situations they face. My hope is that newfound empathy with these mothers’ lives will give people some pause before they condemn single mothers when discussing issues such as welfare and other politically charged hot buttons.
