Author: Smart City Memphis

It was the quote that caught our eye. “For every dollar that comes into the city and county coffers, $1.57 will have to be paid in social costs,” argued Bill Wheeler, executive director of Families First, in his opposition to...

As a followup to yesterday’s blog about the influence of development interests over county school site decisions, this article from the Montgomery (AL) Advertiser indicates that some places are coming to grips with the...

Sadly, the city school board members blinked, never seeming to understand it was because the county school board’s finger was in their eye.Instead of ushering in a badly needed “new day” for school location decisions, in the...

In our blog of October 12, we bemoaned Memphis’ tendency to be cautious and ignore trends until they’re commonplace everywhere else, and then rush to copy them here. The subject on that occasion was Wi-Fi, which is being...

It’s now been 10 months since the special Shelby Farms Park Advisory Committee agreed on its recommendations for the 4,500 acres of parkland in the heart of our county, but so far, only one of the recommendations has been acted...

Since Hurricane Katrina, we’ve written about the lack of a cohesive, well-coordinated disaster plan for the Memphis region and about the confusion over the powers of the Emergency Management Agency and the regional...

For a generation, the proposed highway through Shelby Farms Park has been political quicksand that trapped county mayor after county mayor. Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton – with the considerable help of Tennessee Department of...

Every day, the population of Memphis swells by 102,743 people who flood into the city to work. In fact, the percentage of population change that is due to commuting – 15.8 percent – is one of the highest for cities with...

Here’s the mantra for Shelby County. Let’s all say it together: Sprawl is bad and density is good. But if you ever wonder why high density has such a bad name in Memphis, it’s because some developers are just dense when it comes...

Soon, the Shelby County Election Commission will decide what kind of voting machines it will buy to replace the geriatric Shouptronic machines that have been used here for two decades.The Election Commission needs about 1,500...