by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 31st, 2006 10:06pm CST | Comments Off
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So is I-40 at the Midtown Interchange. Just take a look at the massive concrete walls being built as sound baffles for the historic neighborhood adjacent to the interstate. But rather than simply allow concrete to look like concrete, someone at Tennessee Department of Transportation has [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 30th, 2006 9:40pm CST | Comments Off
The Memphis Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is one of those arcane groups that labor in the shadows of local government, but whose decisions fundamentally shape how our community grows. That’s because its decisions have the power to fuel sprawl or determine if the urban core can compete with new commercial areas. The Memphis [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 29th, 2006 11:26pm CST | Comments Off
From Otis White’s Urban Notebook: What is the deal with trolleys? Every city, it seems, is suddenly crazy about streetcars. On the surface, this makes no sense. They’re an antiquated form of transportation (most cities ripped up their streetcar lines by the 1950s), they’re slow (top speed: 5 miles an hour), stop at nearly every [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 28th, 2006 1:28pm CST | Comments Off
I am still puzzling over Monday’s top story in the New York Times by Edmund Andrews. Here goes: “At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring, the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extracted more than $60 billion in oil [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 26th, 2006 9:58pm CST | Comments Off
Why are these people smiling? While Memphis City Schools is developing a national reputation for innovative school reform, Shelby County Schools seemed mired in a business as usual approach to public education. This means that in the near future, the county school system will once again try to stampede approval of another questionable new school [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 25th, 2006 8:01pm CST | Comments Off
McKinsey Quarterly reports on the “currents that will make the world of 2015 a very different place to do business from the world of today.” Among those are these four with particular relevance to urban leaders: Public-sector activities will balloon, making productivity gains essential. The unprecedented aging of populations across the developed world will call [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 25th, 2006 12:46am CST | Comments Off
Finally, the tail is not wagging the dog. For the first time in recent history, Memphis City Schools’ capital funding needs are center stage with Shelby County Schools moved to a supporting role. That’s as it should be, because for too long, the political debate and decisions on public education have centered on the needs [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 23rd, 2006 10:27pm CST | Comments Off
In yesterday’s post, we questioned whether the needed changes in the PILOT program will ever get a fair hearing. We hope the same can’t be said about the proposal for a payroll tax. With about 88,000 people driving into Shelby County every day to work, exacerbating one of the most regressive tax structures in the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 22nd, 2006 9:20pm CST | Comments Off
The primary question these days about the consultants’ study about tax freezes isn’t what changes will ultimately be made in the program, but if the recommendations will ever get a fair hearing. Last week, there was the meeting of the PILOT committee of the Memphis City Council where Council Attorney Alan Wade – who also [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 18th, 2006 11:46pm CST | Comments Off
The latest study of 51 cities – the largest in each state and the District of Columbia – shows that Memphis is moving to the head of the list. Unfortunately, it’s the head of the list of the cities with the most unfair tax structures in the nation. A few weeks ago, we wrote about [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 17th, 2006 10:54am CST | Comments Off
Paul Grogan, CEOs for Cities founder and president of the Boston Foundation, was our guest on this week’s “Smart City,” and the subject was civic leaderhsip. Paul outlined the direction he has set for the Boston Foundation to fill the leadership gap left by corporate CEOs who have been merged out of business. This new [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 12th, 2006 5:44pm CST | Comments Off
County elected officials talk about the evils of sprawl, the OPD staff keeps working on planning reports and the taxpayers keep grumbling, but reading headlines ballyhooing the coming completion of Tennessee Highway 385, it’s easy to feel that the war against sprawl is over. We lost. The opening of the 54-mile suburban loop (if your [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 11th, 2006 11:52am CST | Comments Off
Featured on today’s planetizen.com are the findings of CEOs for Cities’ research that are key to Memphis’ continued downtown revital and our city’s competitiveness in the future: Economist Joe Cortright and Carol Coletta, host of Smart City Radio and CEO of CEOs for Cities, outline the findings of their recent report, “The Young and the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 9th, 2006 4:58pm CST | Comments Off
With expanding inquiries into the lobbying firms of former staff members and friends of former House Whip Tom DeLay, this post of September 26 seems even more relevant: Another unfortunate feature of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is that they have overshadowed the growing storm about the pattern of behavior by Majority Leader Tom DeLay. While [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 5th, 2006 6:43pm CST | Comments Off
When Steve Bares talks, we should listen. As head of the Memphis BioWorks Foundation, he is making things happen, effectively and methodically creating a major new industry for Memphis’ future. That’s why his recent comments to The Commercial Appeal about a study of 50 cities caught our eye. While others were crowing about the study [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | January 3rd, 2006 11:39pm CST | Comments Off
It’s becoming evident that taxpayers may have missed their best chance for getting control of tax freezes when Memphis Councilman Tom Marshall’s motion to implement immediately the recommendations of the study on tax freezes went nowhere in City Council. It seems that in the intervening weeks, as often happens, the Council’s resolve is dissolving in [...]
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
Memphian Amie Vanderford is a photographer for peace and justice. Her portfolio includes photographs from Peru, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Indian, and her hometown.
