Author: Smart City Memphis

Walking through downtown Memphis, memories of Tokyo often come to mind.In one of the largest cities in the world, regardless of the neighborhood or part of the city, the streets are immaculate and the sidewalks are clean. That’s...

Sometimes, it’s the petty corruptions accepted as part of the every day workings of government that are the most amazing. We thought of that yesterday in light of the way that one assistant county attorney surfaced in a variety...

From the Washington Post:By Carol Coletta and Joseph CortrightMonday, February 13, 2006Recent headlines about the latest census data on U.S. cities have had city leaders –most notably D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams —...

Some major cities, notably Portland, OR, and Minneapolis, have traced much of their competitive success to their multi-county taxation authority. In these places, rather than joint taxing being a divisive force, it is a unifying...

Forget the out-of-date notion about the three grand divisions of Tennessee – West, Middle and East. According to the University of Tennessee Center for Business and Economic Research, there are actually 10 distinct regions in...

New market tax credits, a little-known development tool for low-income areas, is making a high profile appearance in Memphis as part of the Bass Pro Shop financing package at The Pyramid.That revelation was made to the Memphis...

From the CEOs for Cities blog:Simon Anholt was a recent guest on “Smart City.” Simon, perhaps the world’s premier place branding expert, has just launched the Anholt-GMI City Brands Index, a measure of the...

To follow up the last post, Memphis has been ranked the third most dangerous of 330 metropolitan areas, following Detroit and New Orleans. In an interesting footnote, as a city, Memphis ranks 16th among 369 cities. It’s as...

We have now officially entered the political season. The attorney general’s office has expanded its “No Deals” program just in time for the election, and press conferences are being held that treat garden variety drug dealers as...

A little over a year ago, United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke at the oldest Sephardic synagogue in New York City, Shearith Israel. He noted that in Europe, religion-neutral leaders almost never used the word...