Author: Smart City Memphis

University of Akron President Luis M. Proenza could have been talking to us.Speaking to the convocation of Florida International University late last year, he talked about “how urban universities create a competitive advantage,”...

There’s a certain level of angst that surfaces this time each year because the football team at University of Memphis isn’t in the top 100 in pre-season rankings.As University of Memphis graduates, all of us here do care about...

In the aerotropolis sweepstakes, Detroit is the first city to take flight.There, the Detroit Region Aerotropolis has used the nation’s latest economic development big idea as a vehicle for regionalism, bringing together...

This week on Smart City Richard Florida is our guest. He predicted the rise of the Creative Class, and now he says where you live is the most important decision you’ll ever make. His latest book is called:...

Being an urban superintendent is a tough job on its best day, but a fundamental fact of life about the public sector makes it even more difficult: style can trump substance, attitude can overshadow achievements and people skills...

If the Sustainable Shelby project is looking for a symbol for its smart growth agenda, it can find in it in a most unexpected place – the Shelby County Division of Public Works.After all, conventional wisdom is that government...

Persistence is always a mandatory attitude when dealing with government, and that’s even the case when it’s a county commissioner dealing with state government officials.It’s taken Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz more than...

WWJD?Apparently, in the minds of many Memphians, He would scream, hurl epithets, demean and bully.In fact, if we’ve ever seen the antithesis of Christ-like behavior, it was in the reaction by too many Memphians following the...

Greg Fuson and Sandra Kulli are the people behind The Vine, an annual west coast gathering of creative architects, builders, thinkers and artists. Their topic at this year’s Vine Conference is the nature of...

Shelby County Commissioner Mike Carpenter continues his one-man campaign to spark a serious discussion about school funding. In fact, at a time when the fallout from Memphis City Council’s cut in school funding could conceivably...