In February, CEOs for Cities convened a group of urban leaders in Memphis for the Opportunity Challenge. There, Memphis leaders developed a vision for Memphis as a Venture City, a city where residents could put all of their talent to work. An article in the Commercial Appeal discusses…

Three CEOs for Cities partner cities, Cleveland, Detroit, and Memphis, will be placing a renewed emphasis on economic development in the coming months. Each one of only six pilot cities, they will be participating in The White House's Strong Cities, Strong Communities initiative, an interagency program that aims to strengthen…

The Give a Minute for Memphis campaign launched today to ask Memphians, "What skills would you love to develop professionally or put to use?" For the next month, residents can text their ideas to 901-296-0123 or post them to the Give a Minute website. It’s an easy way…

With $1 billion at stake, the Memphis Talent Dividend initiative is kicking off with speed.  Co-chaired by Kathy Buckman Gibson, chairman of the board for Buckman Laboratories Inc. and Tomeka Hart, president and CEO of Memphis Urban League and commissioner at Memphis City Schools, the initiative is creating a 100-day…

I just had to share this article from my hometown, Memphis, on County Commissioner James Harvey who, after not finishing college in the traditional timeframe, went back in 2007 and is about to graduate with his bachelor's degree at the age of 47.  Shelby County (where Memphis sits) has 132,000…

It is now accepted wisdom that federal highway funding has been a major subsidy to sprawl.  But sometimes the subsidies are so insidious that they go unrecognized for years, even by those who pay the bills. 

This is the case today in Memphis where taxpayers there pay once for City…

Loved this outlook from Cameron Kitchin, the new director of Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, about art "outreach":

"Sometimes we ask the question the wrong way.  Instead of how do we encourage more people to care, it should be how do we make ourselves into an institution that people feel…

One of the best blogs on local economic development and politics continues to be Smart City Memphis, written by good friend and colleague Tom Jones.  Today he's written another incisive post on the Aerotropolis strategy being pursued by a number of cities.

Here is the smartest analysis I've seen of "regionalism" and the way costs are divided over multiple municipalities, a city and a county.  It's from our colleague and member, Tom Jones, in Memphis. 

The Memphis City Council brought the issue of who pays for what to a head when…