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 SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | May 14th, 2013 3:20pm CDT | No Comments
From citiwire.net: Is there such a thing as a “right business climate” to draw offices, industries, jobs – and in their wake, prosperity – to a state? Judging by the number of organizations that add up and then score and compare taxes, regulations and labor costs for each of the states, one would have to [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | May 10th, 2013 3:00pm CDT | No Comments
From Inc.: Exceptional leaders differentiate themselves by doing a few things better. Here are six things you can learn from them. What makes an exceptional leader exceptional? This was the topic I had the fortunate opportunity to discuss recently with a class of graduating university seniors. Many of the students believed that future business leaders [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | May 7th, 2013 3:06pm CDT | No Comments
From Atlantic Cities: The early history of the Christian church is primarily an urban history, and this makes sense: Want to spread the word of a new religion? Your best chances likely lie in those places where would-be believers already densely congregate together. The Apostle Paul made this strategic decision in the First Century A.D., [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | May 6th, 2013 3:01pm CDT | No Comments
From Governing: A couple of months ago, the city of San Mateo, Calif., finished a small experiment. Planning to renovate the playground at one of its most popular community parks, it put a set of proposed designs online for a month and invited public comments. Some 130 people from around the city batted ideas back [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | May 3rd, 2013 3:00pm CDT | No Comments
From Governing: The top 25 programs among this year’s applicants for Innovations in American Government Awards were announced today, and among them are many that are embracing the kinds of technology-enabled creativity that our new Harvard Kennedy School initiative, Data-Smart City Solutions, stands behind. Crowdsourcing, data collection and analytics, and smart infrastructure, in particular, cropped [...]
by SCM (RSS) Arts and Culture, Uncategorized | April 23rd, 2013 3:00pm CDT | No Comments
From MemphisConnect.com: In a modern building on the edge of Cordova, Ballet Memphis‘ company of dancers prepares their performances for Memphis audiences, in quiet isolation as they tighten the screws on their art. When MemphisConnect visited last week, the company was hard at work in rehearsal for their April 20 and 21 performances [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | April 22nd, 2013 3:13pm CDT | No Comments
From Governing: A new tool gives administrators and policymakers crucial benchmarking data they need to make the voting process fair, accurate and convenient. President Obama and leaders in both parties, in calling for improving American elections, point to long lines at the polls last year as a significant problem that needs to be solved. And [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | April 18th, 2013 3:00pm CDT | No Comments
Look at the center of this map, at the little red dot that marks Kansas City. Technically, Kansas City is at the edge of Missouri, but here on this map it’s in the upper middle section of a bigger space with strong blue borders. We don’t have a name for this bigger space yet, but [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | April 15th, 2013 3:14pm CDT | No Comments
From Memphis Flyer, by Jackson Baker: In which our friend Mary Loveless takes a first-amendment stand against what she sees as second-amendment zealotry. Periodically, there is a gun show in Memphis at the AgriCenter on the eastern fringe of Shelby Farms, and it never lacks for customers. On Saturday, December 22, last year, there was [...]
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 SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | April 2nd, 2013 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Welcometoloudcity.com: When I actually went to the FedEx Forum this Wednesday, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong about their fans. From time to time, I venture to the territory of the enemy. That is, I visit opposing arenas and rate them from a Thunder’s fans perspective. Oklahoma City likes to boast that [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | February 14th, 2013 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Governing: The political world of late has been gripped not by speculation about who will run for president in 2016, but rather by the possibility that several states could change the way they allocate their electoral votes — a move that could significantly change how the nation elects its presidents. Currently, every state [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | February 13th, 2013 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Citiwire, by Neal Peirce: It’s the most overt effort to rig elections for president of the United States that I’ve seen in a half century of analyzing and writing about our electoral college system. Perhaps you’ve seen the news – the bids, recently mounted in Virginia and Pennsylvania and being widely discussed in Michigan, [...]
by SCM (RSS) Economic Development, Taxation, Uncategorized | February 12th, 2013 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Burgh Diaspora: People move from high-tax states to low-tax states is a popular theory. This hypothesis is rational. Lower taxes spur economic activity which attracts prospective workers. Job opportunity drives migration. Without much rigorous analysis, the theory is an excepted fact of life. The conclusions reached are what Daniel Kahneman terms “System 1″ thinking: SPIEGEL: [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | February 4th, 2013 3:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Citiwire: By Neal Peirce WASHINGTON – We’re in a new age of celebrating America’s cities, no longer disparaging and fleeing them as we did through the pre-crash, suburban expansion era. But who are the cities really for? Are they for waves of young professionals drawn to glitter and opportunities? Or for America’s seniors, [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Criminal Justice, Uncategorized | January 16th, 2013 12:23am CDT | 19 Comments
We guess when you have drifted as far away as Agricenter International has from its founding vision, it’s takes little effort to justify the almost monthly gun shows taking place there. But the decision by Agricenter to defend the gun shows because they are revenue-producing was instructive. More than anything, it summoned up the old [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 31st, 2012 12:38am CDT | 8 Comments
Tim Sampson is one of our favorite writers (not to mention one of our favorite people), and we are reminded of it whenever he writes The Rant in the Memphis Flyer. Mr. Sampson, former editor of the Flyer and now communications director at Soulsville Foundation, is one of the best at finding just the right [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 24th, 2012 3:07pm CDT | Comments Off
From Atlantic Cities: Let’s begin with basic market economics for Dick or Jane: prices affect individual consumption behavior. Let’s next add to basic economics of building a city’s infrastructure for Dick and Jane: ribbon-cutting prices affect behavior. In the former case, Dick or Jane chooses to purchase or not purchase a good based on the [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Downtown Revitalization, Economic Development, Uncategorized | December 12th, 2012 12:05am CDT | Comments Off
Published as City Journal column in November edition of Memphis magazine: Pyramids in ancient Egypt ushered the entombed into the afterlife, but in Memphis’ case, it’s The Pyramid itself that’s headed to its next life. Egyptian pyramids contained the supplies needed for a boat journey through the underworld on the way to the afterlife. Memphis’ [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 10th, 2012 12:20am CDT | 4 Comments
Four consecutive Shelby County Trustees since 2004 have been as eager as teenage suitors in romancing the City of Memphis for its delinquent property tax collections. It appears that current Trustee David Lenoir has finally convinced city administration officials to get engaged, and now it’s up to the Memphis City Council to determine if the [...]
by SCM (RSS) Poverty, Uncategorized | November 15th, 2012 3:17pm CDT | Comments Off
From The Atlantic: As I wrote in The Atlantic in 2003, the traditional family—one breadwinner and one homemaker—has been replaced by the “juggler family” with either two working parents or a single parent who works. Nine years later, the nation no longer clings quite so tightly to the ideal of the 1950s family, but policies [...]
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.
