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Why Ruin Photography Won’t Revive Cities

January 17, 2012 by Kat Friedrich
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Grist republished a feature article claiming that “ruin porn,” a genre of photography which focuses on decaying cities, can help reignite our appreciation for the Rust Belt and aid in urban revitalization. Here are a few of the problems I see with this attitude toward photographing damaged cities: Photographing poverty doesn’t end... [read more]

Imagining Cities As A Kid Growing Up In The Bible Belt

September 30, 2011 by Kaid Benfield
with 110 views
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    My friend Chuck Wolfe has written a terrific essay called “Rediscovering the Urban Eye of a Child,” on his blog myurbanist.  An astute observer of cities and a gifted photographer, Chuck traces his roots for both, recalling trips as a child to cities abroad with his father, an urban planning professor.  He... [read more]

Demographic Dividend

September 25, 2011 by Jim Russell
with 105 views
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The main lesson I learned from working on Global Cleveland's boomerang migration project is that civic leadership has an unhealthy obsession with population numbers. This is a real drag on policy innovation for shrinking cities and rural communities. We are chasing yesterday's economy instead of looking to the future. Our outlook is... [read more]

How The Hell Did We Let This Happen? Cleveland, then and now

September 19, 2011 by Kaid Benfield
with 492 views
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Cleveland's warehouse district in the 1960s:    The same district, from almost exactly the same perspective, today:    The two images come via Angie Schmitt & Kate Giammarise of Rust Wire, a website "intended to consolidate thoughtful, constructive stories about post-industrial cities across the Rust Belt."... [read more]

Keeping Urban Farmers Safe

April 20, 2011 by The Dirt ASLA
with 906 views
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Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), URS, and City of Chicago outlined how to safely farm an urban garden on top of a contaminated site at a national conference on brownfields. As Amy Yersavich, Ohio E.P.A. explained, “urban gardens aren’t going to come and go. They are here to stay... [read more]

Core City Educational Attainment

October 20, 2010 by Aaron Renn
with 320 views
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I’ve noted before how the fate of central cities and their regions seem to be linked. While again I can’t draw an arrow of causation, it’s rare to see a thriving region with a sinking central city. It’s almost a truism that one of the most important drivers of urban success is educational attainment. So let’s take a quick look at... [read more]

The Front Lines of the Blight Fight: Part II

October 20, 2010 by Next American City
with 568 views
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It was no accident that the Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference was held in Cleveland, a city that “looked like a punch drunk fighter” after the subprime lending tsunami took its toll, Chicago journalist Alex Kotlowitz noted in his keynote address to open the second day of the conference. Kotlowitz revisited Cleveland, the focus of his New York Times Magazine cover article “All Boarded Up,” which he wrote a year ago. Despite a slowdown in foreclosure filings, Cleveland and Cuyahoga County’s are about to top 11,000 for a fifth straight year. He chose Cleveland because he was a witness to a city “pushing back.” [read more]

The Front Lines of the Blight Fight

October 19, 2010 by Next American City
with 369 views
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One thousand practitioners gathered in Cleveland this week at the Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference to share what metro areas still reeling from the foreclosure crisis and the recession are doing to turn around a glut of boarded up buildings and vacated land. The latest statistics put vacated properties in the U.S. at five million... [read more]

Cleveland adopts local food incentives

April 7, 2010 by Marc Lefkowitz
with 639 views
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Today’s Cleveland-Cuyahoga Food Policy Coalition meeting shed light on Cleveland’s new policy to attract and create local, sustainable business. New legislation allows the city to offer a 5% discount to local food businesses bidding for city contracts. Since most bids are decided by 5% or less, a discount for being a certified Local... [read more]

What makes Cleveland a Next American City?

March 16, 2010 by Marc Lefkowitz
with 290 views
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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... [read more]

Who will collaborate for regional, sustainable development?

March 15, 2010 by Marc Lefkowitz
with 221 views
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HUD officials were in town last week explaining how Greater Cleveland could tap into a $150 million Sustainable Communities Initiative for walkable, affordable, green and transit-accessible development at a regional scale. But does the program’s requirement that metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) receive the funds put Northeast... [read more]

Cleveland Mayor to 'jumpstart transformation' with sustainability

March 10, 2010 by Marc Lefkowitz
with 176 views
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In his State of the City address last week, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson detailed his plans to use sustainability as an economic engine, and a hoped for path out of poverty. Jackson—who convened 700 people to create a vision for a sustainable city last summer at the inaugural Sustainable Cleveland 2019 summit—started to... [read more]