If you read the paper (or, hey! this blog), you probably see the terms urban design, sustainability, and urban sprawl used quite a bit.

Not sure what they mean? Or just want to learn more?

The Memphis Regional Design Center will be hosting its latest semester of "Urban Design 101" Thursday evenings from April 1st to May 20th at the Center City Commission.

Along with overviews on what urban planning is and why it's important, the unified development code, and neighborhoods of choice, students will participate in an interactive workshop with South Memphis residents to re-design South Parkway East and transform a long-abandoned neighborhood car wash into a farmers' market and health information center.

The cost of the class is $200. To enroll or learn more, email executive director Chooch Pickard at cpickard@mrdcinfo.org.

New York's subway system is getting high-tech. Or maybe just tech.

The New York subway system recently installed digital L.E.D. displays to give riders real-time info on when exactly their train or bus would reach the station or stop.

From the NYT earlier this week:

Electronic arrival-time clocks, a convenience long enjoyed by users of mass transit in London, Paris and Washington, are starting to trickle into New York City’s labyrinthine transportation network, part of a recent push to bring 21st-century technology to a system that runs very much as it did on its first day more than a century ago.

Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority say the clocks will revolutionize the way New Yorkers get around, soothing the usual anxieties that come with waiting for a bus or train that might never arrive.

Though a subway tracking system and GPS-based bus timers cost millions of dollars, a potential vendor covered the cost for three pilot programs. Installation was around $20,000.

Might I suggest we figure out who the vendor is and give them a call?

The Memphis City Council's executive committee today voted to demolish most of the buildings on the former fairgrounds and create a great lawn.

"It's probably better to tell you what's remaining," said architect and former council member Tom Marshall. "The children's museum and its annex, and buildings that park services is using for storage will remain; Fairview will remain, and the women's center will remain."

Getting citizens to show up at public meetings can be dicey.

"We're required to have two public meetings a year," says Memphis Housing and Community Development (HCD) planning administrator Mairi Albertson. "We don't always get the level of participation we want, especially at the evening meetings."

Every few years, HCD prepares a three-year strategy to submit to the federal government. That plan is based on a housing market analysis, a homeless-needs assessment, and community input.

"We wanted to find a way to get a little bit more from people and give them an opportunity to share their priorities with us," Albertson says.

The result is an 12-question survey on homelessness, housing, and job creation. The survey is anonymous and will be used by the HCD to allocate future federal funding.

Each year, HCD receives 95 percent, or about $15.5 million, of its funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

To take the survey, click here. The deadline to do so is April 1st.

"The plan is due to HUD May 15th," Albertson says. "Our goal is to have all the information from the survey and the research study so we can incorporate those into our plan."

But if a public meeting is more your style, HCD will be hosting one Wednesday, April 7th, at 6 p.m. at the Benjamin Hooks Central library.

Citizens may also submit their comments in writing by mail or fax to:

City of Memphis
Division of Housing and Community Development
Planning Department
701 North Main Street
Memphis, TN 38107
Fax: 901-576-7426

Scott Morris, the founder of the Church Health Center, often says this: "The best diagnosis in the world doesn't do you any good if you can't afford your medicine."

The pharmacy currently serves Methodist outpatients and associates, but it will expand in coming months to serve Church Health Center patients, Methodist Teaching Practice patients, and then the 3,000 workers and their dependents under the Church Health Center's MEMPHIS plan. The eventual goal is to open the pharmacy to others who lack access to affordable prescriptions.

"What we bring to the table is the ability to collect donated medications," says Marvin Stockwell, the Church Health Center's PR manager.

AutoMD.com sent mystery shoppers to auto repair places in the top-50 most populous U.S. cities and asked them how much it would cost to repair the front brakes on a Ford Focus.

The site found the Memphis repair shops ranked the best for fairness and consistency of the prices quoted. Chicago was the worst.

The overall bad news for drivers and car owners is this:

"If you are one of the 88 percent of car owners who feel that they are not getting a fair shake at the repair shop** ... this report shows that you are probably right," said AutoMD.com President Shane Evangelist. "Repair shop quotes in more than half of the cities for the same job had a variance from lowest to highest of over 150 percent - with over two-thirds of the shops overall changing their price quote when presented with an industry standard price."

But did I mention Memphis was the best?

The option of trading funding for the Regional Medical Center and Memphis City Schools between Shelby County and Memphis City governments is off the table.

After learning that the Med needed roughly $30 million in annual funding locally, some city council members wanted to take over the Med funding in exchange for the county taking over the city's "maintenance of effort" obligation to the city schools. The switch, in the long-term, was supposed to alleviate double taxation for city residents.

But the obstacles proved too large.

The Metro Charter Commission is enlisting LaunchMemphis — and local citizens — to help it fulfill one of its most important responsibilities: figuring out what the new consolidated government would be called.

The commission hopes to set up a way to get citizen suggestions by next week and plans to keep the process open for two to three weeks.

Following the example of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt — a.k.a. Brangelina — I think we have to go with Memphishelby.

In all seriousness, there are statutory limitations on the name of the new government. It has to be either the Memphis Metropolitan government, Shelby Metropolitan government, Memphis Shelby Metropolitan government, or something the commission deems historically or geographically appropriate.

At a meeting last night, metro charter commission members acknowledged that the choice was limited, but said the naming contest would help build citizen awareness about the charter commission is and what they are doing.

But when you think about it, it's not that limited. There are all sorts of things we could go with.

There's Wolf River Metro. Or, better yet, the Wolf Metro.

If we became the Wolf Metro area, there's no way citizens could suffer from all those feelings of inadequacy they do as Memphians. We would be Wolfians. Plus, when Forbes publishes its their most miserable places, no one would know where Wolf was. But it would sound badass.

We could acknowledge the way the world is going — corporate citizens, anyone? — and, as a nod to it, choose something such as FedExia.

Gracelandland?

Shelvis? (Bianca Phillips gave me this one. Just for the record.)

Just think of all the rebranding possibilities.

This week I wrote about a plan to basically swap funding for MCS and the Med.

The city would take on the $30 million in annual funding that the Med needs, while the county would slowly take over the funding the city has been giving to MCS.

As councilman Reid Hedgepeth said at a recent Memphis City Council meeting:

"We've got $38 million we tried to give away two weeks ago. The school board did not accept the money," he said. "We have $38 million we're going to give to someone. We want to get out of the school business."

The city and county have had a long, thorny relationship with funding their joint entities.

Take, for instance, $12 million in emergency funding for the Med.

Sometimes, here on this blog or other places on the site, we talk about preservation/preservationists.

And, in fact, the topic sometimes seems as controversial as gay marriage, abstinence-only education, and cats versus dogs.

In that vein, I thought I'd mention a recent NYT story about some preservationists trying to buy the land behind the Hollywood sign to keep development from happening there.

To make their case, they began on Thursday to drape the sign with a banner that will read “Save the Peak” in the hope that a day or two without their most recognized civic symbol will entice Los Angelenos to donate the final $5 million needed by spring to keep mansions from dotting the ridge line around it.

“This is, for us, like the Statue of Liberty in New York or the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco,” said Tom LaBonge, a councilman whose district includes the section of Hollywood with the sign. “People land at LAX and they want to see the Hollywood sign. If that mountain that surrounds it were filled with mansions, it would ruin the view and ruin the free spirit of Los Angeles.”

The Hollywood sign began as an advertisement for the Hollywoodland housing project. More than 20 years later, the chamber of commerce repaired the "H" and removed the "land." It was still 20 years after that the sign was designated a landmark.

It just goes to show it's funny what people can start to love, or what kinds of buildings and structures denote a place best. Even if they don't say it explicitly with 50 feet tall letters.

Traditionally, a school board is a body of political novices and a training ground for those with further political aspirations.

If someone wants to be the sheriff, for instance, or an elected judge, they generally need to meet certain criteria, say, a background in law enforcement or a law degree.

To be on the school board, however, the only criteria you have to meet is be able to say "The children are our future" or some similar refrain convincingly. It helps if you're a parent with a child in the system, but it's not necessary. And you generally don't have to worry about running against the A C Wharton's of the world.

But in the current funding crisis, it would help if MCS board members had more political experience.

A few weeks ago, the MCS school board voted to ask the city of Memphis to fully fund $50 million the city had promised them. The move, in effect, rejected a City Council approved plan to take $28 million from the city reserves, make $10 million in city budget cuts, and then forgive $12 million that the district owes the city.

What a waste of a discussion. Why even vote for a resolution asking for all $50 million? We get it, the school system budgeted for that $50 million and it wants it in cash, but just reiterating your position over and over doesn't help find a solution.