by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Downtown Revitalization | May 17th, 2013 12:08am CDT | No Comments
In June, 2006, we posted a commentary about the FedEx Forum as the controversy about its construction and financing continued even after the new arena opened. It’s hard now, almost seven years later, as the city basks in the victories of the Memphis Grizzlies, to remember the depth of the controversy back then over almost [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 15th, 2013 9:24pm CDT | 5 Comments
John Willingham died a few hours ago at the beginning of what was the equivalent of barbecue’s holy week in downtown Memphis. It seemed like an appropriate to bid farewell to a man as unique and authentic as the city he passionately loved. Adding to the irony, Corky’s founder Don Pelts also died yesterday. It [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Civil Rights, Economic Development | May 14th, 2013 12:01am CDT | 1 Comment
Research being done at Ohio State University is particularly relevant to Memphis, particularly when you think about the white vs black economic segregation, the wealth gap, and the disparity between white/black small business receipts in Memphis. Also, it begins to offer some documented insight into attitudes of some whites in Memphis who are against a [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Downtown Revitalization, Livability, Parks and Greening | May 10th, 2013 12:29am CDT | 2 Comments
Jeff Speck is a city planner and architectural designer who, through writing, lectures, and built work, advocates internationally for smart growth and sustainable design. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he oversaw the Mayors’ Institute on City Design and created the Governors’ Institute on Community Design, [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government, Criminal Justice | May 7th, 2013 3:30pm CDT | 2 Comments
It appears that Memphis police officers are nearing success in their crusade to get their 4.6% pay cut restored by Memphis City Council. Now, with some help by the Council, perhaps, Memphis taxpayers might find success in the right-sizing of Memphis Police Department budget. In fact, it seems even more essential now if the money [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Downtown Revitalization, Livability, Transportation | May 3rd, 2013 12:43am CDT | 4 Comments
This is the month when we all get to see what a better Riverside Drive could look like – two lanes of traffic driving slower on a safer street with more parking than presently exists in the two parking lots marring Tom Lee Park. In fact, the ugly parking lots could be moved completely out [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development | April 30th, 2013 12:09am CDT | 6 Comments
We are all excited about the progress that’s being seen in pockets around our community, and while we should take the time to celebrate them, we should be clear-eyed about the challenges ahead of us and double down in our ambitions and our efforts. Despite new momentum and some modest milestones of progress, we have [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Planning and Urban Design, Transportation | April 26th, 2013 12:55am CDT | 14 Comments
We almost said that the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s decision to change its name would be one of the dumbest decisions it’s ever made, but then, we had to remember who we were talking about. This is the organization that is one of the most unbalanced, unrepresentative MPOs in the entire United States. This is the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Livability, Parks and Greening, Planning and Urban Design | April 24th, 2013 12:58am CDT | No Comments
The following was a guest post on the blog of the Mid-South Regional Greenprinting plan: There are few things in American life that we can approach with a “build it and they will come” attitude. Greenlines and bike lanes are two exceptions. That was a message delivered by city planner and architectural designer Jeff Speck in [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Livability, Trends and Issues | April 22nd, 2013 12:41am CDT | 2 Comments
More and more, Memphis is becoming a city with a green ethos. It’s encouraging that people and organizations from all parts of the community have joined in this movement and remarkable progress has been made in only six years. Unfortunately, an organization that should be leading this movement – Agricenter International – is once again [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Planning and Urban Design | April 18th, 2013 12:48am CDT | No Comments
If Memphis was a real estate business, we would say that it suffers from a low occupancy rate. If we ran a shopping center with this problem, we could spend some money making it more attractive and offering special leases, we could lose money and suck it up, or we could raise rents, but if [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government, Planning and Urban Design | April 17th, 2013 12:12am CDT | 4 Comments
In light of recent conversations and media coverage about ending City of Memphis’ long-standing policy of aggressive annexations, we’re reprising a post from June 16, 2009 that was a continuation of a discussion about shrinking cities and deannexation that was raised first on this blog: We can cure you but we may have to kill [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government, Taxation | April 15th, 2013 12:54am CDT | 11 Comments
Forget the conventional wisdom, forget the talking points, and forget the comments on newspaper websites. The real question is this: What if City of Memphis government is efficient and productive? Yes, we know that it’s more accepted to presume that city budgets are expanding wildly, that city government is bloated, and that money is wasted [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Downtown Revitalization, Livability | April 12th, 2013 12:24am CDT | 13 Comments
While we are disappointed in the poor design decisions that have marked Beale Street Landing as of late, we want to make it clear that we aren’t interested in joining those who look for any reason to dismiss and vilify the project in its entirety (none of these applies to the commenters to our recent [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Education | April 11th, 2013 12:17am CDT | 5 Comments
There is nothing quite so magical as watching toddlers explore their world. There are times when it almost seems that we can hear their brains whirring as they learn new things, they investigate their environment, and they seek to understand the world around them. And yet, as magical as this is, one thing is certain: [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Downtown Revitalization, Shelby County government, Uncategorized | April 9th, 2013 12:53am CDT | 15 Comments
It’s hard to think of anyone who has more strongly supported Beale Street Landing than us. But these days, we look at the project and mostly think of what might have been as a result of a series of decisions that have weakened Beale Street Landing’s impact and destroyed its urban design integrity. It’s hard [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government, Taxation | April 4th, 2013 12:16am CDT | Comments Off
More often than not, local government budgeting has become all about hitting a target. It’s about forcing budgets to conform to a property tax rate that is often agreed upon before budget hearings even begin. As a result, budget meetings are about hitting the property tax target rather than discussing what kind of city Memphis [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government, Tennessee Legislature | April 1st, 2013 12:09am CDT | 1 Comment
In Tennessee, county governments are legal extensions of state government. However, you’d think it’s the City of Memphis government, based on the continued interference by the Tennessee Legislature into its affairs. Nashville legislators have produced a level of legislative intrusion that’s been unseen in a century in Tennessee, and there’s little hope that it will [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development, Talent | March 28th, 2013 12:35am CDT | 2 Comments
From Memphis magazine: At a time when more than 60 percent of a city’s economic success is linked to its percentage of college-educated workers, Memphis has to step up its pace in the race for talent if it is to jump start a stronger economy. Few topics have been discussed as much in the past [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development, Taxation | March 27th, 2013 12:01am CDT | 1 Comment
For the first time in the 25-year history of PILOTs in this community, the process has been doused with a healthy dose of transparency. For this, we can all thank the city-county economic development board EDGE, which is in the process of posting on its website all the records associated with every tax freeze, and [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Economic Development, Taxation | March 25th, 2013 12:31am CDT | 1 Comment
EDGE has taken roughly a year and a quarter to get organized and bring coherency to the incentives doled out to businesses, but so far, it feels a lot like business as usual. More than anything, EDGE reliably churns out approvals of tax freezes under the PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) program, and it has even managed to [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) City of Memphis Government | March 22nd, 2013 12:01am CDT | 1 Comment
Memphis Mayor A C Wharton and Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland have waded into the renaming of three Memphis parks who were stripped of their Confederate provenances. Regardless of their good intentions, they should leave well enough alone. Rather than listening to a few Civil War-obsessed people, they should talk to young people and visitors [...]
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.
