Author: Smart City Memphis

Vancouver co-director of planning Larry Beasley was my guest today on “Smart City.” Vancouver is regularly named as one of North America’s most appealing cities. I wanted to know why, so I asked Larry.According...

Yesterday, I took a walk around the core of downtown, the part of downtown most visitors see. Walking up and down Union, Monroe and Madison between Front and Third, I saw very few people on the street, new (and old) vacancies,...

If term limits are an idea whose time has come, perhaps a good place to start would be the members of the more than 150 public boards in Memphis and Shelby County.Media attention regarding terms limits concentrates on elected...

Whatever your political persuasion, as Memphians, you should be closely watching the budget moving through the U.S. Congress. It could spell big problems for our city.The political dynamics of the Capitol have been shifting from...

Trees are the lungs of the city. That’s why the bulldozing of 150 acres of trees in Cordova by an uncaring developer is the equivalent of a pulmonary embolism for Memphis and Shelby County.The United States Forest Service says...

The familiar journalism aphorism is that a dog biting a man is not news, but a man biting a dog is. With that in mind, you could almost argue that Rusty Hyneman mowing down a forest in Cordova isn’t really news at all. It’s...

It’s a battle of goliaths: Can you hear me now vs. Not in my backyard. More than 500 cell tower disputes have already ended up in court across the U.S. and as the towers become as ubiquitous as the phones themselves, look for...

The Rameses statue standing in front of The Pyramid is an exact copy of one found broken, lying in the sands, at the site of the dead Egyptian city of Memphis. The committee studying future uses for the Memphis icon hopes its...

The following testimony was presented today on Capitol Hill by Carol Coletta on behalf of CEOs For Cities to the Saving America’s Cities Working Group, comprised of a group of House Republicans who support cities....

Heard in Washington National today from a harried Northwest gate agent: “Folks, I hate to tell you that we’re still not going to Minneapolis. A window in the cockpit is broken and maintenance personnel are looking at...