what’s your deal with over-personalization/attacks ?

and what’s telling is that YOUR ATTACKS are allowed to remain on this website, which shows that Memphis hasn’t joined the rest of the United States and still lives in the shadow of the worst state in the Union…Mississippi.

you MUST be from MISSISSIPPI….lol, or is it AR-kan-sas?

Using Miami as a model for Memphis for historical preservation or anything else is not viable .

Miami knows it’s a Global City..a true destination. That history was acted upon 100 years earlier. Port cities bring trade, people together, cultural interaction, thereby a certain awareness. Memphis has no such similar awareness.

Miami and its residents believe in their being special, being different, being coastal, being deisrable. This emanates in part from the physical environment upon which Miami built its reputation (initially).

Miami built its reputation deliberately..and somewhat dangerously, but it has paid off. Miami marketed itself globally….but not through shallow self-aggrandizing empty promotion, but by using what was in their faces…i.e. the coastline, the beaches, the entertainment, the fabulous food choices of global fare, the celebrity, the exclusiveness, the partying, etc.

And yes, the ‘danger’. I hate to admit it, but the series “Miami Vice” did wonders for the city…bad and good. The intrigue about Miami was worldwide. That was marketing extrodinaire, aided by the miracle of television.
Hell, the intrigue surrounding the drug trade even promoted Miami..lol…but a real negative longterm…it took a few years for Miami to shake that negative image for sure.

Miami was awash with money, cash…legal and illegal, and most times you couldn’t tell the difference…lol. A city with a lot of cash can do a lot with the cash (good and bad).

Memphis might be wasting its time trying to extract too many lessons from Miami, FL. Memphis is closer to a city like Jacksonville, FL and that’s not a very good comparison either for modeling in my opinion.

Memphis is unlikely to become or be regarded as an international city such as Miami…it doesn’t have the attitude found in the same groups…..no way. People make dynamic cities, right ? Just look around here in Memphis, listen closely…then go to Miami and feel the energy and the attitudes through culture. It’s like night and day.

If an Asian has a problem with being correctly refered to as ‘Mongoloid’, that’s their problem. If a dark-skinned person of sub-Saharan ancersty has a problem with being refered to as ‘Negroid’, that’s their problem.

It’s not like you’re mis-categorizing anthropological groups within mankind.

By the way, just about everybody in Florida, especially Miami with a broad and diverse Latin culture already knows the origin of ‘negro’ the word..it’s in our own Spanish and/or Portuguese languages, and of course it means ‘black’.

In French speaking cultures, we say ‘noir’, we certainly don’t say something anywhere close to ‘African-anything’.

For years leaders like Martin King clearly used the nomenclature of ‘Negro’. That’s clear as a bell. Hell, many people used the word ‘colored’…which is fairly accurate in most societies. Since when is ‘people of color’ inaccurate ? Well, it’s not inaccurate in the least.

Many people if color aren’t ‘black’ as we know it. However all dark-skinned people are ‘colored’ or ‘people if color’.
Caucasians aren’t colored or people of color.

For unknown reasons, the art of naming dark-skinned American citizens has morphed into some bizarre politically correct, and massaged ‘zone’ after ‘zone’.

Black, Negro, African, African-American, Colored etc etc….not to mention crazy ‘slang’, like ‘brutha’, ‘dawg’, ‘mynigga’, and a host of other, hardly understood labels used internally and externally. Caucasioans, and Mongoloids have not gone through that sort of ‘search’ for ‘labeling’ for a lot of reasons.

Memphis TN is NOT some bastion of cultural/ethnic diversity. That’s crazy to remotely suggest that viz language, food, family history, etc when comparing Memphis to MIAMI. That’s absolutely nutty.

Let me give you a real example. Blacks in Memphis are really nothing like many of the Black found in Miami….nothing. Dark-skinned residents in Miami emanate from various parts of the GLOBE (not Miaaiaaippi or Eastern Arkansas for godsake). Many dark-skinned Negroes in Miami are Latin..from Dominican Republic, Cuba, Colombia, Brazil and all over the islands. Other dark-skinned Negroes in Miami have long heritages in Africa (Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Sudan, etc etc) and a huge amount from Haiti. If you think these strong cultural and educational backgrounds are analogous to the cultural and educational backgrounds of those dark-skinned residents of Memphis, TN, you are one stupid individual indeed.

A similar comment could be made about the Anglo/white population in Miami. They, too, come from all over the world, not just Europe (Miami has tons of Italians, tons of Canadians, south americans, Jews, and a ton of New Yorkers from several ethnicities…LOL.

There is no city in the United States (or really the world) like MIAMI, FLORIDA and surrounding area. Memphis TN is not even in the same universe (culturally speaking)..Miami is in its own LEAGUE. Most any fool can see that on just visiting once, and you don’t have to live there as I did to conclude that. Memphis is primitive by comparison…in architecture, style, flavor, culture, diversity, language, and by most every other metric I can think of. That’s not good or bad, it’s just that different even to the untrained ‘eye’.
Miami is 24/7, 365…good or bad. It’s vastly another reality, a reality that reflects globalizaton….something Memphis TN knows really nothing about now or from a historical perspective.

Miami is a dynamic, fast-moving coastal/ocean PORT city..Memphis is an overgrown river town with paddle-wheel and barge ‘history’.

The differences however should be respected, not conflated.

If 60 languages are spoken in Memphis TN, I would ask how many posters here actually are at least bi-lingual. My bet is probably less than 2%. I certainly speak more than one language but my experience in Memphis is that is not commonplace and usual in any part of the Mid-South/Mississippi unless you count ‘Ebonics’.

Smart City Memphis will be putting up another post later this week, also about Miami, that you might appreciate more. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear about how you think public access to amenities and management of those amenities might be improved in Memphis vs. your experience in Miami. I am curious if you think there is value in historic preservation efforts and if existing efforts could have been better using a Miami approach. How does the scale of Miami’s historic destinations like South Beach differ from those in other cities and Memphis? How do the suburbs differ in scale and how do they relate to the strengths or weaknesses of the core city in Miami vs. Memphis vs. other cities?

I do think there is extraodinary truth in the comment about international culture. I would like to see a future post about Memphis’s need to move from a bi-cultural to a multi-cultural society. This is likely going to be a huge economic development driver in the future, in addition to just making cities more interesting and at times politically easier to navigate.

“they are Negroes, certainly not Caucasions for heaven’s sake”.

So does everyone in Miami call them “Negroes” or were you the only one stuck in the 1870′s?

I can’t think of another US city that is so much past Memphis, TN than perhaps Miami..certainly not in the South !

Have you seen the faces ?? hear the languages ?? See the beauty all around you ?? Heck, even the people of Miami, especially the women are about 20 times more attractive and in shape than 95% of the people of Memphis, TN !

I’ll give you this : you have a LOT of nerve making ANY comparison on any level…architectural, societal, cultural, entertainment, world class food, language, finance, or anything else.

Are you a native MEMPHIAN ? you must be, because nobody from Florida or for that matter a place like Atlanta would dare speak of memphis, TN and Miami in the same paragraph…..

Amazing, but I did get a laugh

ON THE BEACH

South Beach and Memphis TN should not be in the same sentence. I lived in Miami, then Boca….and in east memphis then Germantown.

What MAKES Miami is its PEOPLE, and the distinct international culture, rooted in Latin families…language…..food…..custom…awareness..lifestyle….water environment.

As a Floridian even now, I find any comparison quite stupid, having experienced both for years and years…and I’m sure my Miami spouse may laugh at you, or be quite insulted indeed.