Author: Smart City Memphis

From Otis White’s Urban Notebook at www.governing.com. He is featured weekly on our syndicated radio program Smart City:Not all things were better in the past, but one thing in cities was genuinely better 30 years ago:...

A few weeks ago, in response to our post about the contract with the Memphis Grizzlies to build the FedExForum, we had a spirited conversation with readers about whether the agreement was a victory for Memphis (we voted yes). As...

Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman Matt Kuhn might have shot at the right target, but his aim is way too low. In the end, he and others in the leadership of our local political parties tend to gag on gnats while swallowing...

The topic this week on Smart City is growing our communities in ways that are economically and environmentally smart is today’s imperative. This week’s guests, which include the author of the Unified Development Code...

The Metropolitan Planning Organization, commonly known as the MPO, appears to be at the center of two federal reviews – one about the FedExForum garage and another about Homeland Security.Being asked in both cases is whether...

The ugly underbelly of Memphis politics was exposed this week after a whisper campaign against Tennessee Senator Steve Cohen by some African-American political leaders burst into the open.For weeks, some well-known...

We’ve written before about the need for nonpolitical prosecutors whose actions have no place for ego or self-promotion or special rules for special people. In light of the election of the district attorney general in the...

Our subject is sprawl and development this week on Smart City.For the past 50 years development in America has been sprawling away from the old urban cores into ever farther suburbs and exurbs. Why did it happen?Our guests this...

Here are my nominations for things to do now in downtown in priority order:1. Do whatever it takes to remove panhandlers.2. Clean up. That means maintenance and trash removal.3. Green up. That means plant and maintain.4. Develop...

There is no place more near and dear to our hearts than downtown Memphis, as evidenced by the fact that a couple of us have worked or lived here for more than 30 years apiece. There is nothing that we’re more passionate about,...