by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 30th, 2007 11:21pm CDT | Comments Off
Little more than a week ago, we wrote about the hardening attitude of state government about the 17 high-priority schools in Memphis City Schools and prospects for some dramatic action by the governor. In response to the post, we were asked by several people what the governor could do. The answer: Pretty much anything he [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 29th, 2007 7:25pm CDT | Comments Off
Memphis never seems to have so little energy that it isn’t willing to fight an old battle one more time. The current archetype for this tendency is taking place at the National Civil Rights Museum, where, 16 years after being ousted, its former chairman of the board is still warring with those in charge of [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 27th, 2007 10:18pm CDT | Comments Off
Exploring what it means to be a Creative City has been a regular topic on Smart City. This week we’ll visit with Lynda Dorrington who is leading her own creative city movement in Perth, an isolated city on the west coast of Australia. Lynda is executive director of FORM, a craft organization serving Western Australia [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 26th, 2007 3:56pm CDT | Comments Off
In pursuing that elusive quality – vibrancy – that regularly seems at the heart of successful cities, Memphis, like many mid-sized cities, searches often for the magic of big projects and major public investments. The irony is that vibrancy often stems from small-scale, organic activities like those organized in Memphis by Lantana Projects. Propelled by [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 25th, 2007 5:37pm CDT | Comments Off
Art Wolff is a pain in the neck. As he once put it, he set out to be one and he’s gotten awfully good at it. For almost 35 years, he has upbraided mayors, disabused city and county engineers of any notion that they are godlike and lived the life of a pariah at hundreds [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 24th, 2007 6:57pm CDT | Comments Off
We’re guest blogging this week on CEOs For Cities’ blog and putting the posts here as well: Memphis Tourism Foundation is launching its first website in a few days and along with it, a new approach to improving the opinion of Memphians about Memphis. It’s a total departure, because rather than fall back on the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 23rd, 2007 9:41pm CDT | Comments Off
We’re guest blogging this week on CEOs For Cities’ blog and putting the posts here as well: Dr. Aaron Shafer represents the talent that so many cities are concentrated on attracting, but for now, Memphis has him. He’s a post-doctoral fellow working as a scientist in the labs of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 23rd, 2007 10:53am CDT | Comments Off
In response to Friday’s post about the potential takeover by Governor Phil Bredesen of 17 city schools, we were asked for a list of the schools. Here it is: Airways Middle, Carver High, Cypress Middle, East High, Fairley High, Frayser High, Geeter Middle, Hamilton High, Kingsbury High, Sherwood Middle, Southside High School, Treadwell Elementary, Treadwell [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 22nd, 2007 10:28pm CDT | Comments Off
From Carol Coletta’s CEOs For Cities’ blog: This is fun. Get your neighborhood’s walkability score here. Just log in with your address. Super simple. My current Chicago neighborhood scores a 67 out of 100 (no doubt due to too little retail in the immediate vicinity, but plenty within my walking distance — we’re only 17 [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 22nd, 2007 8:03pm CDT | Comments Off
Kip Bergstrom, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council, is one of the smartest people we know, and no one bears more listening to. “Leadership is about telling stories,” he said to this year’s class of Leadership Memphis. We were reminded of his advice in light of our past week’s discussion about great [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 20th, 2007 11:46pm CDT | Comments Off
More and more, there’s a growing question about whether the members of the Memphis City Schools Board of Commissioners are playing Nero to the district’s Rome whose smoke doesn’t even seem to be noticed by them. Bereft of positions that don’t seem to spring from a political place, the board is creating the perception that [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 20th, 2007 9:18pm CDT | Comments Off
What would you be willing to do to put 2.6 billion extra dollars into your local economy each year? Would you be willing to drive 4 fewer miles a day? That’s what Portlanders are doing, and it’s paying big dividends for their city. Joe Cortright, economist with Impresa Consulting, will tell us about the calculations [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 20th, 2007 12:48am CDT | Comments Off
We’re hard-pressed to think of any recent enterprise reporting that’s more impressive than Memphis Flyer reporter Chris Davis’s coverage of Memphis Light, Gas & Water’s troubled investment in Networx. Methodically, he has connected dot after dot until the entire the Byzantine story is coming into focus, a story of interconnected people, conflicts of interests and [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 19th, 2007 11:29pm CDT | Comments Off
We rise in defense of Sidney Shlenker. Now, we bet that’s something you didn’t ever expect to hear in this city. We do it because of a comment in the otherwise impressive reporting by Chris Davis of the Memphis Flyer in his coverage of the Networx controversy. In one of the articles, he of the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 19th, 2007 12:46am CDT | Comments Off
We have a bad case of Memphis fatigue. We’ve already overdosed on race-baiting rhetoric, style over substance, divisive posturing and election coverage more in tune with the reporting at Churchill Downs. And, the campaign season has barely kicked off. More Heat Than Light We keep hoping that someone will accidentally trip up and talk about [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 16th, 2007 5:45pm CDT | Comments Off
To continue the theme that we began yesterday on what it will take for Memphis to recruit the kind of candidate that can become a great mayor, we post this from Philadelphia’s nonpartisan America’s Great Mayors series. The program is an innovative way that the Pennsylvania city is making sure that its citizens are exposed [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 15th, 2007 7:37pm CDT | Comments Off
Every city is one great mayor away from being a great city. It’s a mantra that we repeat often in cities where we work on issues that affect their competitiveness in a highly competitive global economy. We say it because time after time, we’ve seen it play out in city after city that has been [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 13th, 2007 6:06pm CDT | Comments Off
Good urban design is central to any city’s success. This week’s guests are shaping cities in important ways by making and celebrating good design. Simeon Bruner is founder of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, a national award for urban places, and this year’s Gold Medal winner is the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum and Family [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 12th, 2007 3:22pm CDT | Comments Off
And who will investigate the investigators? More and more, it becomes a pressing question in light of the growing national awareness of how much politics plays a part in federal prosecutions. It becomes more and more a pressing local question in light of the indictment of former MLG&W president Joseph Lee. We were probably as [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 10th, 2007 8:27pm CDT | Comments Off
In the latest volley by some county commissioners in their holy war against Juvenile Court, there is another line of assault – a proposed policy to swear in every one who appears before the legislative body. Frankly, we see nothing wrong with this – as long as commissioners do it too. After all, they’re the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 8th, 2007 6:56pm CDT | Comments Off
Here’s hoping that the hiring of the interim superintendent isn’t a precursor to Memphis City Schools’ hunt for the new superintendent. So far, with the interim appointment, there’s been a maximum of political horse-trading and personal agendas and a minimum of vision, priorities and objectives. Overall, the quality of the candidates for the interim superintendent’s [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | July 5th, 2007 6:12pm CDT | Comments Off
Providence, Rhode Island, was once the manufacturing center of the nation. The legacy of that history is a magnificent collection of mostly abandoned mills that are slowly being reclaimed for new uses. Clay Rockefeller might not call himself a developer but he is the man behind two exciting mill revivals. His latest is The Steel [...]
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.
