by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government, Taxation, Transportation | February 29th, 2012 12:40am CDT | 3 Comments
Two articles in Sunday’s Commercial Appeal could have been “tombstoned,” which, in the parlance of newspaper journalism, means the headlines and stories are side-by-side. Of course, in journalism, tombstoning is not a good thing. Tombstoning is no good for Memphis either, and it’s tempting for a tombstone to [...]
by Mark James (RSS) Arts and Culture | February 28th, 2012 3:09pm CDT | 4 Comments
Growing up in Memphis as a fan of off beat independent film, I was often envious of the venues of our peer cities. The Belencourt in Nashville, The Plaza Cinema in Atlanta, Zeitgeist Multi- Disciplinary Arts Center in New Orleans. These are all non-profits that are dedicated to showing off beat, independent, foreign films many [...]
by Steve Bares (RSS) Economic Development | February 27th, 2012 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
I have to say, it is great to see cranes, cement trucks and construction on the UT-Baptist Research Park. The great recession that brought about the national quagmire in the banking and commercial real-estate sectors, made it very difficult for the construction industry in Memphis. Perhaps a symbol of a return to normalcy, a lot [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Taxation | February 27th, 2012 12:37am CDT | 1 Comment
Nothing is quite as confusing as government financing, and that’s never been truer than now. There seems to be big numbers every where – the $30 million for The Pyramid, there’s the idea of a new convention center likely to cost at least $500 million, there’s the tens of millions of dollars for Liberty [...]
by SCM (RSS) Economic Development | February 24th, 2012 1:54pm CDT | 2 Comments
From JonathanFields.com: I was recently giving a keynote before a room full of entrepreneurs and from the audience a voice yelled, “why are you telling this to us? We’re not the people who need to hear this. This is a waste of time.” Pin drop… Beyond the fact that a good percentage of the eyeballs [...]
by SCM (RSS) Planning and Urban Design | February 23rd, 2012 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
We’ve made such a mess of the suburbs we constructed in the last fifty or so years that one wonders whether they can ever be made into something more sustainable. Strip malls, traffic jams, cookie-cutter subdivisions, diminished nature, almost no sense of outdoor community. We all know the drill: there are nice places to be [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development, Education, Trends and Issues, Uncategorized | February 23rd, 2012 12:17am CDT | 5 Comments
We’ve shown up in several places lately, and we appreciate the attention. Featured in PolitiFact First, The Commercial Appeal’s outstanding PolitiFact’s Truth-o-Meter ruled that Commissioners Wyatt Bunker and Chris Thomas were not telling the whole truth when they said that Memphis City Schools always got county schools free [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | February 22nd, 2012 3:00pm CDT | 2 Comments
From Reader Supported News: Is it true that the Bible teaches peace and the Koran war? Only if you approach the books selectively, taking the gentlest of Jesus’ teachings and setting them against the harshest of Muhammad’s. Philip Jenkins’s challenging new book Laying Down the Sword shows that the Bible contains incitements not just to [...]
by SCM (RSS) Planning and Urban Design | February 21st, 2012 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Placeshakers: By the early to mid 1970s, something was wrong with rock and roll. It no longer fought the system. Worse than that, it had become the system. Bloated. Detached. Pretentious. Performer and audience, once fused in a mutual quest to stick it to the man, now existed on separate planes – an increasingly [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Taxation | February 21st, 2012 12:39am CDT | 5 Comments
Shelby County Government has been a prisoner of the past. Or more specifically, it is captive to poor decisions about public policies made as long ago as 30 years, policies that set county government off in directions that produced so many of the problems that handicap it today. There is change afoot, however. With [...]
by SCM (RSS) Livability | February 20th, 2012 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Metropolis Magazine: I was riding my bike home from the office on a Sunday. The downtown San Francisco traffic was eerily quiet. I picked up speed on a slight downhill section of my standard route from the Financial District to the Marina, when I was suddenly pitched off my bike and into the street. [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Education | February 20th, 2012 12:05am CDT | 9 Comments
Nothing is more frustrating than trying to be reasonable with unreasonable people or trying to be logical with illogical people. It’s tempting to apply this principle to the town mayors, but when it comes to schools, they are more like petulant children determined to ignore the grown-ups [...]
by SCM (RSS) Transportation | February 17th, 2012 2:16pm CDT | Comments Off
In the Netherlands, bikes abound. And now, they even take kids to school. Behold, the bicycle school bus. The Dutch are bicycle fanatics. Almost half of daily travel in the Netherlands is by bicycle, while the country’s bike fleet comfortably outnumbers its 16 million people. Devotees of [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Politics and Government | February 17th, 2012 12:43am CDT | 3 Comments
Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but often, the men making religious decisions seem to come from an entirely different universe. Or maybe they just have a chronically tin ear when it comes to women’s issues, a deafness intensified by fundamentalism and an obsession with [...]
by SCM (RSS) Transportation | February 16th, 2012 2:09pm CDT | Comments Off
With a House like this, what advances can American transportation policy make? Actions by members of the U.S. House over the past week suggest that Republican opposition to the funding of alternative transportation has developed into an all-out ideological battle. Though their efforts are unlikely to advance much past the doors of their chamber, the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Arts and Culture, Leadership | February 16th, 2012 12:44am CDT | Comments Off
The most exciting things happening in Memphis these days aren’t in the halls of power or among the power brokers. Instead, they are produced by a burst of entrepreneurship unseen here in 30 years However, this time, the energy comes from a special breed of entrepreneurs – social entrepreneurs. It shouldn’t be surprising that [...]
Here’s a program worth borrowing — Pittsburgh’s Experienced Dreamers: Pittsburgh is looking for Experienced Dreamers™ – people with a bit of experience under their belts and a desire to do something different with their lives. And the Experienced Dreamers™ contest is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to win $100,000 to move here and realize your dream! Pittsburgh [...]
by SCM (RSS) Neighborhoods, Uncategorized | February 14th, 2012 2:07pm CDT | Comments Off
From Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles may be the land of the freeway, but it is notorious for its bad sidewalks — buckled, cracked and sometimes impassable. By the city’s own estimate, 42% of its 10,750 miles of pedestrian paths are in disrepair. Now a series of civil-rights lawsuits against Los Angeles and other California [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government, Livability, Parks and Greening | February 14th, 2012 12:43am CDT | 3 Comments
It’s not the official City of Memphis name for its newest division, but for us, it will always be the Division of PLACE. PLACE: Parks, Libraries, Arts, and Cultural Enrichment. We’d like to claim credit for the name, but it was suggested by David Williams, executive director of [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Downtown Revitalization | February 13th, 2012 2:00pm CDT | 1 Comment
From Atlantic Cities, a great idea for Memphis: In response to last week’s story on the curious art or urban wayfinding, reader Andy Little pointed us to some cool guerrilla wayfinding going on in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is understandably a concept you may be even less familiar with (relative to non-guerrilla wayfinding, that is). [...]
by SCM (RSS) Arts and Culture | February 10th, 2012 2:00pm CDT | 3 Comments
From Atlantic Cities: Back in 1999, a group of Philadelphia artists known as the Heretical Society made a rather unusual demand, considering their profession. In their Martin Lutheresque tract “No More Ugly Murals,” the anonymous authors called for the “immediate cessation” of the city’s prolific Mural Arts Program, with the distribution of its funds to [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Education, Uncategorized | February 10th, 2012 12:42am CDT | 5 Comments
The Commercial Appeal reported: Jim Mitchell of Southern Educational Strategies, who conducted the municipal schools feasibility study for five of the suburbs, has consistently noted that 44 county schools were absorbed by the Memphis City Schools because of annexation since the mid-1960s. Mitchell said their research shows the city did not pay for any of [...]
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.
