What makes Cleveland a Next American City?

It was an honor to write about Cleveland’s growing land-based, self-help economy in “Cleveland’s Comeback: ReImagining the city from the ground up,” a feature in the spring issue of Next American City, a national magazine. The experience confirmed for me that Cleveland is truly on the vanguard, at least in the Rust Belt, for tweaking the old model that says bricks-and-mortar development is always preferred, no matter if the demographic trends point to the city shrinking for some time to come. Where some cities in the Midwest are still struggling to admit that they are shrinking, and that vacant land is an asset to be used to help its current citizens access healthy food and perhaps improve their economic situation, Cleveland—where adapting to a post-industrial economy led to decades of painful disinvestment—is learning to “ReImagine” a more sustainable use for land and natural resources, and bring the city in balance with nature.

Online, Next American City published three excellent companion pieces to the Cleveland article. In “Land Bank Legislation Poised for Passage in Ohio”, Mara D'Angelo explains how a push by Cleveland leaders to form the state’s first countywide land bank (in Cuyahoga County) has spurred legislation that would bring land banks (and, perhaps with it, some regional land-use planning) to 41 of Ohio’s 88 counties.