by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Memphis City Schools | December 28th, 2008 11:22am CDT | Comments Off
These comments were made recently at the “Race and Education” forum sponsored by New Path and Memphis Urban League as part of their important series of honest conversations about race and Memphis: If urban school districts like ours had a dollar every time somebody said, “Children are our future,” they’d never have a funding problem. [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 27th, 2008 9:31pm CDT | Comments Off
2008 was a great year for cities until the economic crisis overtook us all. On Smart City we talked to more than 100 of the best thinkers and doers who are working to make cities great. To close out the year, we’re reprising some of my favorite guests to share their wisdom on how to [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development | December 24th, 2008 12:41pm CDT | Comments Off
Continued from yesterday.In the past, economic development programs like Memphis 2005 – the much heralded answer to solve our structural economic problems and to revive our economy at the close of the 20th century – have received widespread support from the private and public sectors, but in the end, their real impact was limited. The [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development | December 23rd, 2008 5:54pm CDT | Comments Off
The Memphis economy has reached the moment of truth.Languishing in the lower rungs of the economic indicators that matter, we have reached the point where we either snap out of it or we sink into the abyss with Detroit and Cleveland.It’s that serious, and the choices are that stark. In the family of cities today, [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development | December 21st, 2008 3:18pm CDT | Comments Off
Memphis is in trouble. There is no doubt that if the future is merely an extension of the present, our city is destined to fall off the economic cliff. Too many trends are running against us. The middle-class has abandoned Memphis. We are not attracting or retaining college-educated 25-34 year-olds. We are doing nothing to [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 19th, 2008 5:35pm CDT | Comments Off
This guest post is by Aaron Shafer, research scientist and the creator of Skatelife Memphis, and an always entrepreneurial thinker about Memphis: Smart City has long been advocating that a successful city builds on its existing assets and strengths. Fred Smith, our local founder for FedEx, recognized the geographic placement of Memphis as a potential [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 18th, 2008 11:59pm CDT | Comments Off
We’re going bi-coastal on the show today with stories about education and eating. First from New York: What would it take to change the lives of poor children? Not one by one, but in big numbers, and in a big way. That’s the question that led Geoffrey Canada to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development | December 17th, 2008 12:25am CDT | Comments Off
The Greater Memphis Chamber – whose renaming apparently takes off some of the pressure to lead regionalism by removing “Regional” from its name – celebrated all that is right about Memphis last week, featuring some of our city’s most recognizable celebrities and boosters. The goal was to create a new current of optimism in and [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Taxation | December 14th, 2008 9:21pm CDT | Comments Off
Memphis City Councilman Bill Morrison is right. He has proposed for Memphis City Council to end city government’s funding of the Health Department. The logic is similar to the courageous – and completely logical – cut of $66 million in school funding: Shelby County Government, according to state law, is mandated to provide health services, [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 11th, 2008 10:16pm CDT | Comments Off
How do you preserve a magnificent national landscape by promoting city living? That’s the mission of The Cascade Land Conservancy, which is working to make Seattle appealing so that sprawl doesn’t consume the Cascade Mountains that surround the city. We’ve got two guests from the Conservancy who will tell us what it does, and how [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 9th, 2008 11:49pm CDT | Comments Off
The burgeoning green ethos that’s bubbling up from grassroots Memphis is gaining ground, and it can’t come too soon. The downturn in gas prices may lull our city into a false sense of security, but we’re confident that the various forces for change – the evolution of cycling from a group of enthusiasts into a [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 7th, 2008 8:33pm CDT | Comments Off
It seems more than passing strange that at a time when local government is considering a lawsuit against the predatory lending that contributed to Memphis’ foreclosure catastrophe, some members of Memphis City Council would try to defend the predatory lending that is the underbelly of our personal finance businesses – pay day loan companies, title [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 4th, 2008 10:04pm CDT | Comments Off
This week on the show, we’re kick starting the holiday season with a program about celebrating the holidays in an urban environment. We’ll speak with Cindy Gatziolas of the Chicago Mayor’s Office of Special Events . She’ll tell us about the city’s plans for the holidays, and how a city works with private organizations to [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Memphis City Schools | December 4th, 2008 1:26am CDT | Comments Off
Chair of the Education Department at Brown University Kenneth Wong, in Nashville yesterday, made a compelling case for our capital city to move toward a mayor-led school system. It’s impossible not to apply the same advice to Memphis. Dr. Wong, who holds the Annenberg Chair in Education Policy and directs the graduate program in Urban [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Memphis City Schools | December 2nd, 2008 11:38pm CDT | Comments Off
In Nashville, the election of a new city mayor and the selection of city school superintendent converged to create a growing maelstrom resulting from change – City Hall’s call for change and the educational community’s tendency to fight anything resembling change. While the tension created by a dynamic, visionary new mayor and the resistance inherent [...]
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.
