by Jimmie Covington (RSS) Uncategorized | December 20th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
It might be called the case of the Phantom Tax Increase: The City Council voted to add 18 cents to the city property tax rate on June 21. Then council members failed to add the 18 cents to the rate when they approved the tax ordinance. The city’s news media didn’t understand what happened and [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 19th, 2011 2:01pm CDT | Comments Off
From Atlanta Journal-Constitution: By Tad Leithead When metropolitan regions across the country — and even around the world — look at metro Atlanta, they have reason to take note. We are home to the world’s busiest airport, one of the nation’s most extensive interstate systems, a large freight and logistics network, and have proximity to [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 16th, 2011 1:55pm CDT | 1 Comment
From Atlantic Cities: Christmas came early this year for retail giant Sears, which is weighing offers on whether to move from its suburban-Chicago headquarters. Ohio officials have put together a package of incentives worth a reported $400 million to convince Sears to move to Columbus, while Illinois lawmakers are offering at least $371 million for [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 15th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From New York Observer: Michael Kimmelman returned to the public realm for this week’s column, where he all but declared what appears to be his raison d’etre going forward: “We’ve been so fixated on fancy new buildings that we’ve lost sight of the spaces they occupy and we share,” he wrote in the Sunday Times. [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 14th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | 7 Comments
A study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that green spaces are linked to reduced crime rates A research team has found that distressed neighborhoods where vacant lots have been converted into small parks and community green spaces are associated with reduced crime when compared to neighborhoods with [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 13th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | 9 Comments
From Brookings Institution: Drive through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | December 13th, 2011 12:42am CDT | 2 Comments
So, what is the greater problem: the “war on Christmas” or the war on the Christmas spirit? It’s the time of the year when Fox News’ war on Christmas coverage is as evergreen as Christmas trees themselves. It’s so extreme that Fox News now treats “holiday” best wishes from a corporation as tantamount to an [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 12th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Atlantic Cities: This week, CQ Press released its annual City Crime Rankings, which purports to identify the most dangerous cities in America. Though the rankings received plenty of attention, especially in the cities that top the list—Flint, Michigan; Camden, New Jersey; and Detroit this year—they’re misleading, unfairly damaging and unworthy of any attention at [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 9th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | 1 Comment
From Atlantic Cities: Completing a major transit project is never a quick and easy process, but if any place should be able to move one swiftly through to completion, it’s San Francisco. In 1973 the city adopted a “transit first” policy that gave planning priority to modes of transportation other than the automobile. As the [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 8th, 2011 2:01pm CDT | Comments Off
From Columbia Journalism Review: The future of nonprofit news organizations has hit an unexpected roadblock in the agency that determines their tax-exempt status: The Internal Revenue Service. Nonprofit news organizations applying for tax-exempt status are running into long delays as the IRS bundles them together as “precedential” and studies whether they qualify for the status [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 7th, 2011 2:33pm CDT | Comments Off
From Atlantic Cities: Earlier this week we looked at what a large city can do to increase the efficiency of its bus service in a high-density corridor. In Manhattan, bus stops are so crowded that transit officials must find ways for passengers to board more quickly. That’s a problem, of course, but in the grand [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 6th, 2011 2:20pm CDT | 8 Comments
From Atlantic Cities: When it comes to the holy trinity of art, architecture, and religion, few buildings are more significant than the 1898 Methodist Church in Norwalk, Connecticut. Anchoring a main street, the Romanesque-style church features a stained-glass rose window designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. The founders of American Methodism preached there. Given its prominence [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 5th, 2011 2:00pm CDT | 1 Comment
From Terrain.org: What does America’s oldest city have in common with one of its youngest? The urge to define itself. St. Augustine, Florida, launched its initiative in 1715 by petitioning the King of Spain for a coat of arms. Upon his receipt, the King assumedly delegated the request to his creative services department who, [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 2nd, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
By Neal Peirce, Citiwire.net: DETROIT — “We stand with Occupy Wall Street. We’re inspired by the organizing we’ve seen… It catches the moment.” But the group PolicyLink, meeting here last week with 2,300 community organizers, policy advocates and foundation observers in attendance, had a major agenda ready to roll well before the first tents went [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | December 1st, 2011 2:08pm CDT | Comments Off
From Governing: Fresh out of Boston University and working as an admissions officer there, I showed my boss applications from four students with nearly identical credentials. Why, I asked, were three of them rejected while the one applying to the School of Education was accepted? I had stumbled upon a central problem of American public [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | November 30th, 2011 2:04pm CDT | Comments Off
This outstanding column was written by Marcus Pohlman and published last week in The Commercial Appeal: The average child in America will spend less than 10 percent of his or her life in school through the 12th grade. If we are serious about education reform, we need to understand what’s happening to our students the [...]
by John Lawrence (RSS) Uncategorized | November 28th, 2011 1:50pm CDT | 7 Comments
Memphis is filled with fools… there, I said it! When we build let us think we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone upon stone, that a time [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | November 28th, 2011 12:23am CDT | 2 Comments
The decision by the unified Shelby County School Board to reject 17 charter applications as a group is a troubling indication that the group can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. The threadbare reasons given by Superintendents Kriner Cash and John Aitken were recycled justifications given by lifers more interested in protecting turf [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | November 23rd, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
From Off the Charts Blog: Note: With Thanksgiving right around the corner, the Center thought this was a good time to look at the latest figures on various indicators of hardship. This is the first in a series of posts on this subject that CBPP will do this week. Poverty rates rose in 2010 under a [...]
by SCM (RSS) Uncategorized | November 22nd, 2011 2:00pm CDT | Comments Off
According to the latest results from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll, some news sources make us less likely to know what’s going on in the world. In the most recent study, the poll asked New Jerseyans about current events at home and abroad, and from what sources – if any – they get their information. [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | November 22nd, 2011 12:34am CDT | Comments Off
Lt. John Pike, who pepper sprayed peaceful demonstrators at University of California-Davis, is also featured in a variety of artwork doing what he does best. You can see them here.
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | November 21st, 2011 12:05am CDT | 2 Comments
There are frequent conversations in Memphis about what our city brand should be. Some people suggest that it should be about transportation, other say logistics, and some say our river heritage. Those are important assets of Memphis, but they are things. They don’t really speak directly to our community values and who we are [...]
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.
