Author: Smart City Memphis

John Charles Wilson is a breath of fresh air.In an interview with The Commercial Appeal, the president of Agricenter International admits what others there have refused to face for years. The facility’s founding vision and...

Memphis is in trouble.There, we’ve said it. Please tell us we’re wrong. We have traditionally been dependable cheerleaders for Memphis, but right now, we’re hard-pressed to feel like our team is even in the major leagues, much...

Primary elections are about a candidate identifying a base and talking about the red meat issues that its members care about. The general election is about broadening the base to appeal to more than the true believers....

Everybody’s all for government acting more businesslike until it affects their special cause. This comes to mind when we listen to some of the arguments from grassroots leaders who insist that Libertyland and the Mid-South...

They won’t get headlines in the newspaper or be tonight’s “big story” on television news, but nonetheless, some national programs recruited to Memphis and transplanted into Memphis City Schools are producing “stop the presses”...

The following column is from Otis White’s Urban Notebook. Otis is a regular contributor on Smart City each week, and his daily missives are instructive to anyone who cares about cities. This one on multi-modal centers and...

Memphis Magazine, in its 30th anniversary issue in April, began a new monthly column, City Journal. Here’s the inaugural installment by our colleague Tom Jones:City JournalIt was 1976, and the decline of Memphis had ended....

When we try to “Imagine” a better future, our ambitions are much more down-to-earth than John Lennon’s. We could be content with a world where Tennessee taxpayers are as powerful as roadbuilders.Over the years, no special...

Memphis Councilman Tom Marshall’s comments about changes in the PILOT program elicited an immediate response here: “Amen.”Like only a few members of our local legislative bodies, he has seemed to understood...

I went to another Bob Dylan concert last night, this time, in Memphis at the Orpheum Theatre. It’s been 40 years since the first one – February 10, 1966 at the old Ellis Auditorium on the other end of downtown – when I took my...