It’s branding season again in Cleveland, so says the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In its 2012 editorial agenda, a main goal for the upcoming year is “[rebranding Cleveland] to change not only the look and feel of our region’s “capital city,”… but also the way the world and Clevelanders themselves look at it.”
But the branding of a Rust Belt city is tricky business, as you’re dealing with the prospect of putting lipstick on a poorhouse, or at least that’s how it can be perceived. For example, Atlantic Cities recently did a study examining perceptions of the country’s big cities, and the Rust Belt claimed six of the top ten spots in highest percentage of negative reactions, with Detroit and Cleveland claiming first and third place, respectively.
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It was 4:15 p.m. yesterday afternoon. Snowflakes were drifting down and there was already a line of 50 people waiting outside the North Lansing Police Precinct gymnasium in the February cold for food. Some of them had already been there more than an hour and the distribution was not set to start for another 90 minutes or so. On this Friday night, we were not celebrating the bright lights of the gridiron, but instead trying to fulfill the basic needs of the less fortunate.
I had the distinct honor of …
This post was originally published on panethos.wordpress.com.
Kudos to Carmel. No…I am not talking about Carmel, California, which is indeed a gorgeous town overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In this case I am complimenting Carmel, Indiana, a large suburb of approximately 80,000 residents located just north of Indianapolis. When I was growing up in Indy (way back when), Carmel was largely nondescript, with sprawling subdivisions across cornfields. It was best known for powerhouse football and basketball teams and the Carmel movie theater (sadly no longer there). The downtown area at the time was very small …
Let me start out by saying the author of this book is a friend and neighbor of mine for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. Former Associated Press reporter and Detroit Shoreway resident Justin Glanville teamed up with illustrator Julia Kuo (who you will remember from 100 days of Cleveland) to produce this beautifully composed guide to Cleveland for newcomers, and old-timers looking to rediscover Cleveland neighborhoods.
I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book at the release party at Happy Dog last week and since …
A recent report by a group called 1000 Friends of Wisconsin shows that roads in that state are not fully paid by fuel taxes and other road user fees. The report blows a giant whole in the claim by pro sprawl lobbyists (at least in Wisconsin) that roads are fully funded with road taxes paid by road users through tolls, gas taxes and other road use fees. In truth it seems that the life line of sprawl, more and more roads, is one of our biggest government subsidies. Following is a summary of the report’s findings:
There’s no consensus in the urban planning profession — or in public opinion more generally — about how to handle declining cities like Detroit.
All sorts of solutions have been proposed, ranging from the outlandish (making Detroit a “skyscraper ruins park”) to the more widely accepted (converting vacant land into urban agriculture).
But lately Michigan leaders have seized on a strategy that may be the most promising yet: placemaking.
From newspaper columnists to business executives, from the Department of Transportation and Governor Rick Snyder, Wolverines of all stripes seem to be coming to the conclusion that creating vibrant, walkable urban places is perhaps as important to the future of the state as the auto industry was to its past.
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