Lou Glazer at Michigan Future, Inc. just released a post summing up his series of the past few weeks covering manufacturing in the United States. In this post, Glazer examines a USA Today article wherein some companies are bringing factory work back into the United States. Still, the pay is not as high as it used to be for manufacturing work in the United States, and the USA Today article points out that the number of manufacturing jobs returning stateside is a “trickle, not a flood.” Glazer points out that most jobs that have left the country are probably never coming back. At the same time, though, not all manufacturing jobs will leave the United States; there will always be some factory work being done here.
According to Glazer, the “bottom line” is that American manufacturing work in the future will be defined by “fewer jobs, higher skill requirements, [and] lower pay.” This forces some questions for industrial states in particular, including how to support former factory workers who will not be able to find work anymore and how to gain more skilled workers.
Those questions are among those considered in Michigan Future’s progress report, released earlier this year. Michigan Future analyzes Michigan’s place in a knowledge-based economy and how to improve that standing, but the report is at least partially applicable to many states that have similar economies.
[Michigan Future, Inc.]

Art Prize–a radically open public art competition–will be held in Grand Rapids, Michigan from September 22nd-October 10th. Art Prize takes three square blocks of downtown Grand Rapids and turns it into a public art fair, but one in which the public gets to decide which art is featured. Local business owners “match” themselves with interested artists (think of an online dating-type setup), and once an artist is picked up by a venue, s/he is entered in a competition to win up to $250,000. This year’s Art Prize will feature over 1,700 artists in over 300 venues.

At Art Prize you can walk the streets of downtown Grand Rapids, browsing local art and voting for your favorite artists. The top ten vote getters will receive thousands of dollars in prize money, with a first place prize of $250,000.

If you’re interested in attending Art Prize and/or voting for your favorite Art Prize artists, visit the Art Prize area in downtown Grand Rapids between Sept. 22nd and Oct. 10th. In the first week of the fair you’ll be able to cast as many votes as you’d like to get your favorite artists into the Top 10 category, and during the second week you can cast one vote for the best artist of Art Prize 2010.

A brilliant example of how there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned goofy fun to highlight the good things people, on their own, are doing in the city.  Man, do I love Detroit. (Thanks to Model D for the video.)

The federal government makes… progress?  Attendees of our 2010 Urban Labs Conference in Cleveland will be excited to know that the Livable Communities Act was passed by Senate committee last week. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rep. Tim Ryan (OH-17) introduced the bill in 2009. The bill includes Regeneration Planning Grants, part of the CRSI bill that we discussed in Cleveland. The bill will establish within the Department of Housing and Urban Development a competitive grant program for cities that are dealing with large-scale population losses, like many in the Midwest. Among the suggestions by the bill’s sponsors were using the funds to “demolish abandoned properties, find innovative uses for old structures, and create green space.”

Brown’s goal is to “make our communities places where people want to live and work – places that can attract and retain our home-grown young people.” We at GLUE believe that CRSI is an important step towards realizing that goal. This legislation, though it does not implement CRSI in its entirety, is a good start. It will be especially helpful to revitalizing the cities we live in, and has the potential to make a huge difference in the physical spaces around us (and, by extension, the communities we are a part of).
[The Office of Sen. Sherrod Brown]

The Great Lakes region’s greatest asset is–well–the Great Lakes themselves. This huge freshwater resource has literally shaped our region, our culture, and our economies. While Great Lakes residents rely on the lakes for tourism, recreation, and industry, cities like Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee pump billions of gallons of sewage into the Great Lakes annually. The Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Coalition recently published a report entitled “Turning the Tide: Investing in Wastewater Infrastructure to Create Jobs and Solve the Sewage Crisis in the Great Lakes”, which stresses that this time of economic restructuring and climate fluctuation is prime to invest in a more responsible water treatment policy. By utilizing new, green water treatment technologies we can stop–and hopefully reverse–the damage we have inflicted on our water and the Great Lakes ecosystem while creating new jobs and setting a modern example for other American cities.

Like much of the Rust Belt’s infrastructure, our sewer system can’t keep up with Great Lakes residents’ needs. Recent heavy rains and storms likely attributable to climate change routinely overwhelm sewers, forcing waste and rainwater to flow down the same drainage pipes. Over 40 billion gallons of waste annually plow into the Great Lakes this way, and as our sewage system gets older and climate change becomes more pronounced, the problems–and the costs of renovation–only get larger. Last year Congress approved the $475 million Great Lakes Restoration initiative that will jump-start sewage system rehabilitation, but Rust Belt cities themselves must prioritize renovating and greening the Great Lakes before its toxicity becomes irreversible.

Healing Our Waters stresses the importance of using the existing sewage infrastructure in a more green, efficient way. By using the skeleton of the existing drainage system, city planners will be able to keep costs lower. Repairing our sewage system and supplementing it with rain gardens, vegetated roofs, rain barrels, and pervious pavement will constitute a substaintial cost to already cash-strapped Great Lakes cities, but a recent Brookings Institution study concluded that “halting sewage contamination is part of a Great Lakes restoration strategy that, if implemented, would provide $2 in economic benefit to the region for every $1 investment.” The benefits of this investment would reach longer and farther than just this project; restoring our sewage system responsibly would create a Great Lakes knowledge-base about green materials, modern building techniques, and water ecosystem restoration. As we pull out of this recession and retool our cities, a crumbling sewer system is infecting the foundation of our region. To become a national example of a healthy, modern urban network, Healing Our Waters stresses that residents of Great Lakes must act quickly to revive their waters. The expertise, jobs, and revitalized beauty of the Great Lakes region rests on this green renovation, and–as the report emphasizes–”there is no time to waste.”

One of the many site visits GLUEsters could take during our recent Urban Laboratories Conference in Cleveland was a trip to two of the city’s urban farms. Like most Rust Belt cities, vacant lots dot Cleveland’s landscape, and many of these properties have been idle for decades. The Re-Imagining Cleveland project, though, is taking about 3,000 acres of this vacant land and putting it to good use by building parks, gardens, farms, and greenways throughout the city. Both of the lots we visited were being used as for-profit farms. Although neither was larger than three acres, these urban farmers cultivated every usable inch of their soil, sometimes planting more than four different crops in a bed each year. By selling at farmers markets and local restaurants, these farmers are earning money and providing the city with more fresh, local food.These urbanites have turned what were once charred, vacant properties into flourishing, profitable farms.

Thanks to Michael Allen for taking photos of each of the farms, and thanks to everyone else who is sharing their photos. Keep posting on GLUE’s Flickr page!

Every Tuesday, GLUE highlights a photo taken by a GLUEster of his/her Great Lakes city. To submit photos to GLUE, upload them to our Flickr page or email emily@gluespace.org. 

A new Brookings video-cast with Robert Puentes discusses about the future of high speed rail in the United States. The conversation focuses more on intercity rail than intracity rail, and Puentes talks about the obstacles still in the path for the United States. He also speaks about the current administration’s efforts to implement high-speed rail.

Lost in all the news of other elections and other transit-related steps forward, Southeast Michigan voters approved a millage renewal of SMART buses on August 3. SMART provides transit for three counties in and around Detroit. If the renewal had not been approved, route and service cuts would have been inevitable. This is an important result, and a victory for mass transit. [Freep]

I Will Shout Youngstown has a great new post up with a potential advertising strategy for Youngstown (and many other Rust Belt cities). Youngstown: A Great Place to Fail articulates an old philosophy in a new way. Everybody in the Rust Belt talks about how these cities allow young people greater opportunities (e.g., lower start-up costs, greater access to space, established leaders and enthusiasm, if not capital) than strong-market cities. I Will Shout Youngstown, though, points out that it’s also easier to fail in these cities. In the Midwest right now, an individual can try out lots of ideas and fail at all of them, and still be fine; as I Will Shout Youngstown says, “you’ll be poorer, but not destitute.” If you succeed, though, the profits you collect will go farther than they would elsewhere.

[I Will Shout Youngstown]

RustWire recently put up a story about Raymond Pianka, a judge in Cleveland who has become widely known for taking bold stands against abandoned properties in his city. This time, he’s making those who own abandoned homes pay restitution to neighbors of the properties, to make up for their own properties’ loss of value. The goal is to discourage those who “flip” houses quickly, never living in the city and selling them right away.
According to the New York Times Magazine, Pianka has a history of aggressive action against people attempting to flip homes in Cleveland. In 2001, he ordered one to spend 30 days in a run-down house that the man owned and was attempting to flip. In 2007, he began trying house owners without them being present and fining them for violations on their properties. Pianka gained attention all over the country at the time, being featured on MSNBC.com. However, a higher court in Ohio eventually ruled that these trials could not continue. Pianka, at the time, told the magazine that those who are trying to protect Cleveland “just have to figure out some other ways.”
According to RustWire and the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Pianka has figured out some other ways. The justification for the restitution payments is that property owners are “spread[ing] the damage from the foreclosure crisis” and their neighbors are facing “economic losses caused by their neglect.” Next American City has also taken an interest in the proceedings, and sought out reactions from several sources. Joe Schilling, of Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute, said that the ruling “exposes weaknesses not with the Housing Court, but with Cleveland’s code enforcement system.” Additionally, even after the Ohio Supreme Court shut down Pianka’s in absentia trials for good this year, one justice pushed for legislators to pass laws that would allow Pianka to continue (which they did).
[RustWire]
[Cleveland Plain-Dealer]
[New York Times Magazine]
[MSNBC]
[Next American City]