Author: Smart City Memphis

These are exciting days in U.S. cities as they embrace “green strategies” from retrofitting public buildings so they use renewable energy to green construction codes to the major expansion of parkland to the purchase of energy...

Before 2006 gets too distant in the rear view mirror, we offer our take on it in the form of good news, our bad news and news that’s still up in the air:Good News· PILOT Changes – City Council approved changes in the blindly...

If losing weight is one of your New Year’s resolutions, you may want to consider moving. According to Reid Ewing, a research professor at the National Center for Smart Growth, where you live may have a lot to do with how...

Almost lost in Shelby County Board of Commissioner Henri Brooks’ latest rant was a sound idea by her fellow commissioner Mike Carpenter — to bring in experts with national credentials to conduct an in-depth, internal...

We’re trying not to overreact to Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton’s annual New Year’s bombshell, this time saying that his priority for 2007 is, of all things, a football stadium. After all, if history repeats itself, by the...

The way we live is influenced by factors we are often only barely aware of. Take land use, for instance. Few of us think about us. Fewer still understand how it works and how it is influenced.But that’s not the case with...

In light of all the media and political pundits’ speculation about Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton’s plans (or non-plans) to run for another term, we post this commentary about great mayors. The U.S. is in an era of...

In the current issue, USA Today reports on an encouraging trend in some cities who don’t see population decline as reasons for panic, and instead, treat it as a chance to redefine themselves. As we’ve mentioned,...

Can the very thing that plagues a city also be the solution to its problems? Steven Johnson may have that answer. He is the author of the new book The Ghost Map that details the mystery of the Broad Street cholera outbreak in...

It was encouraging to see that the Memphis Regional Chamber held a meeting last week that spotlighted Memphis’ potential as an aerotropolis. It’s a topic that deserves serious attention here for a variety of reasons....