by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 31st, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Atlantic Cities: Besides its coverage of a wide spectrum of urban issues—from mystifying crosswalks to the false economics of sprawl—TheAtlanticCities.com aims to share ideas about best practices. And for those who think about cities, one important way to do that is to find innovative ways to rank certain urban performance indicators as a means [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | October 30th, 2011 12:07am CDT | 8 Comments
If there is a poster child for political groupthink, it’s the arrests provoked by the Haslam Administration of Occupy Nashville protesters. If there is a poster child for the kind of courageous checks and balances too often missing from the judicial branch of government, it’s Nashville Night Magistrate Tom Nelson. First, groupthink, a term [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 28th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | 15 Comments
It’s hard to listen to the happy talk and the deep denial of Airport Authority officials in the face of decisions by Delta Airlines to cut flights here, but it’s even harder to listen when we’re booking a flight to Cincinnati in two weeks that will cost a ridiculous $730. That’s why an email from [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | October 28th, 2011 1:03am CDT | 11 Comments
First, new business. Joe Spake wrote: “The cobblestones are a Memphis Historical treasure. The RDC seems to be doing everything it can to keep the public away from them.” We posed his question to Benny Lendermon who heads up the Riverfront Development Corporation, and here’s his answer: “Annual vegetation occurs naturally along the cobblestone landing; [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 27th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Terrain: by Galina Tachieva Editor’s Note: This article has been excerpted from the Sprawl Repair Manual, by Galina Tachieva, with permission of the publisher (Island Press) and author. This excerpt is the book’s first chapter and introduction. Author’s Note: On IMAGE: The Sprawl Repair Manual makes a clear distinction between sprawl and suburb. Sprawl [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 26th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
2 From Sustainable Communities Collective: Just imagine an efficient scene of shuttle transit from a large parking area to your destination, a compact service district. At the end of the shuttle, medical services, a bank, food, drink, entertainment and public restrooms greet your arrival. The spirit of human activity and community are everywhere. We know [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | October 26th, 2011 12:11am CDT | 18 Comments
There are several organizations that thankfully are working on talent development and retention in Memphis, but none of the work is more important than the Memphis Urban League Young Professionals and National Black MBA Association of Memphis. One of the Young Professionals’ leaders described the group (and it’s an apt description for the MBA [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 25th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Mother Jones: Physicists are notorious for believing that other scientists are mathematically incompetent. And University of California-Berkeley physicist Richard Muller is notorious for believing that conventional wisdom is often wrong. For example, the conventional wisdom about climate change. Muller has criticized Al Gore in the past as an “exaggerator,” has spoken warmly of climate [...]
by Steve Bares (RSS) Uncategorized | October 24th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
I was recently doing an interview with Delta Sky magazine, which is covering business and tourism in Memphis for an upcoming issue. One of the topics we discussed was the growth of biomedical business in our community. That discussion soon led to a discussion of personalized medicine and this community’s competitive advantage over other areas. [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | October 24th, 2011 12:23am CDT | Comments Off
Planned Parenthood is the perfect piñata for the crowd that puts political payback ahead of a factual framework and the opinions of the majority. Last week’s action by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners was but the latest pitched battle against Planned Parenthood, but like new voter laws that are disenfranchising five million voters, this [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 21st, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From National Resources Defense Council Staff Blog: Here’s what Madoff did: He took people’s money, promising a return on investment. In other words, he borrowed it. But the returns weren’t real; the only way Madoff had to repay the investor was to borrow more money from a second investor, using the second investor’s money to pay the [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 20th, 2011 9:35am CDT | Comments Off
Two opportunities to focus on what’s important are coming up this weekend: The Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking, “A Living Movement Toward a World of Peace, Solidarity, and Justice,” and Livable Memphis’ annual confab, which this year is entitled “Wired Citizen: Using Technology to Connect Cities and Communities.“ Here’s the message from Livable Memphis: Other cities [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 19th, 2011 2:07pm CDT | Comments Off
From Education Week: From Education Week: By Jeffrey O. Newport I stepped outside the other morning, coffee cup in hand, to pick up the newspaper. The neighborhood kids were standing on the corner with their anxious mothers, excitedly awaiting the bus for the first day of school. It caused me to reflect on my history [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 18th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
By DANIEL WAGNER, AP Business Writer – Sep 27, 2011 WASHINGTON (AP) — More than half of U.S. cities have cut staff, canceled construction projects or raised fees this year, according to a report from the National League of Cities that catalogs the vast damage from shrunken property- and income-tax revenue. Cities are struggling from [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | October 18th, 2011 12:03am CDT | 10 Comments
It’s a favorite refrain these days of voters outside Memphis: If only Memphis would quit electing incompetent elected officials, the members of the white flight brigade would be willing to love the city that it depends on for jobs and entertainment. Of course, it’s all rhetoric. There’s nothing that’s ever going to be good enough [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 17th, 2011 2:14pm CDT | Comments Off
From Polis Blog: “Crowdsourced Moscow 2012: A Public Space Game” (above) was shown on Monday after a panel discussion with Adam Greenfield at the Strelka Institute. This was part of Social Media Week, a series of events focused on the potential for network technologies to strengthen democracy and participatory development in cities. The video was [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 16th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
Here’s an article from Phi Delta Kappan for our new school board: By Allan Odden and Lawrence O. Picus, Phi Delta Kappan Education budgets are imploding at the fiscal seams. A sluggish economy and falling property values are shortchanging public education budgets across the country. At the same time, there are growing expectations for improved [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | October 16th, 2011 12:57am CDT | Comments Off
A reprise from January, 2010: While Memphis has never been categorized as an old industrial city, it’s always had similarities – deep urban challenges, grittiness and demographics – that give us more in common with these cities than Sunbelt cities. We thought this again as we were re-reading a report byThe Brookings Institution about the [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 15th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
from Columbia Journalism Review: A Washington Post examination of how “peers” inflate CEO pay By Ryan Chittum Companies tend to try to pay their employees as little as possible without killing morale and suffering high turnover. But when those employees are executives (and execs are in shareholders’ employ as much as the lowliest prole is) [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 14th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | 1 Comment
From Phi Delta Kappan: By Morgaen L. Donaldson and Susan Moore Johnson, Phi Delta Kappan Few observers doubt that Teach For America (TFA) has high aspirations. Established in 1990, TFA strives to close persistent racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in U.S. public education by recruiting high-achieving college graduates to teach for two years in low-income [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | October 13th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Atlantic magazine: By Richard Florida Most of the commentary on America’s dismal economic outlook tends to focus on national statistics: an unemployment rate of over 9 percent and a flat jobs report for August. But by concentrating exclusively on the big picture, we miss an even more important story in the tremendous regional variation [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Regionalism | October 13th, 2011 12:53am CDT | 19 Comments
It’s a tale of two cities, and only a short drive is needed to come face-to-face with the telling. In Nashville, the drive takes you to Williamson County, the 11th wealthiest county in the U.S., with a median family income that’s a staggering $95,470. Four nearby counties shatter the $55,000 mark. Outside of Fulton County, [...]
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.
