Author: Smart City Memphis

Surely, it’s about time to have a presidential campaign that’s about cities.So far, cities have been just short of pariahs in the endless debates that have regularly punctuated the party primaries. Candidates were asked all...

It is a perfect storm at Memphis City Schools, and that’s not necessarily all bad.There’s investigations, scandals, academic crisis, fumbling management and general lack of direction. Despite some predictions to the...

Memphis has always been a tale of two cities – black and white, wealth and need, downtown and Boxtown, golf scores and body counts. That last pairing comes from two disparate, and ultimately disturbing, reports this week. The...

Marty Sumner is the Chief of Staff of the High Point North Carolina Police Department. A decade ago, street-level drug dealing and criminal activity were rife on the streets on High Point North Carolina. The police force was...

Here’s hoping that the Memphis City Council isn’t too busy toasting its historic vote to cut school funding by $73 million to see that its work is only half-done.In the midst of the wall-to-wall media coverage of the vote on...

We were sent a copy of a letter addressed to us from Council member Wanda Halbert in the wake of our Tuesday blog post, so we’re sharing it here. As a point of clarification, the clause at the end of the second italicized...

Maybe City Slickers’ Curly was an economic development consultant, because it would be hard to come up with better advice for Memphis: “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean s—.”Forget the...

There’s just something special about Memphis, says a PGA Tour writer. Read it here.

In its decisive vote to cut funding for Memphis City Schools, Memphis City Council showed the political courage and the new thinking that are becoming characteristics of this overhauled, and dramatically improved, legislative...

Interim Memphis City Schools Superintendent Dan Ward’s good-bye lunch was held Friday at Blue Fish restaurant.When Interim Chief of Staff Thelma Crivens asked the district’s senior staff to pony up for Mr. Ward’s going away...