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.

Looking good Cleveland! Katherine of Chicago took this photo of Cleveland’s public square on a sunny day last summer. Considering how hot it’s going to be in Cleveland these next few days, you might even see some GLUEsters in that fountain soon!

GLUE is heading to Cleveland next week for its Great Lakes Cities: Urban Laboratories Conference. The Urban Labs Conference will be held next Thursday-Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Made a reservation yet? There are still a few openings, so make sure to register for the conference here. Registration is limited to 100 participants, so if you’re interested in attending the Conference, register soon! For more information about the conference and to inquire about scholarship opportunities, email glueteam@gluespace.org.

With summer vacations to the Lakes just around the corner, the sixth annual Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest is accepting submissions from May 20 to July 18, 2010. Through the 2010 Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest, photographers can help defend the Great Lakes with their cameras—and get noticed throughout the Great Lakes region.

Amateur and professional photographers are invited to enter their best Great Lakes photographs that exemplify the unique landscape of the Great lakes and the communities that live on the shores. Submit your photos of the diverse wildlife and natural areas, cities and cultures that make the Lakes unique. Six finalists will be chosen from the pool of hundreds of submitted photographs and win great prizes from Budweiser.

Unfortunately there’s no free beer involved, BUT grand prize winners will get their photo on beer coasters (!!!!). Last year, the winning photos were printed on more than 120,000 beer coasters that were distributed to all eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces.Not only does this contest highlight the talented photographers in the Great Lakes area, it also works toward making residents aware of the problems the Great Lakes face and engage them in protecting this vulnerable and valuable natural resources. Submit your photos to Great Lakes Forever for consideration, and add them to GLUE’s flickr pool as well!

he Landmarks Association of St. Louis will hold its annual meeting on June 13th, 2010. Since 1958 Landmarks has been the primary advocate for the region’s built environment. Today, Landmarks draws its strength from a broad-based membership. The more than 1300 regional dues-paying citizens include architects, attorneys, developers, consultants, historians, neighborhood leaders, bankers and community volunteers who contribute expertise and participate as advocates. Over the years they have supported Landmarks, even in the face of controversy. At the annual meeting on June 13th you can learn about Landmarks’s progress and help make important planning decisions for the next year.

The meeting itself is at 3:00pm at the St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church (3135 Meramec), but an in-depth tour (1 1/2 hours) of St. Anthony will take place at 12:30 p.m. prior to the annual meeting. An abbreviated tour (20 mins.) will be offered immediately following the meeting at approximately 3:45 p.m. To reserve your spot at the annual meeting, call 314-421-6474 or email Landmark@stlouis.missouri.org

Spring brings renewed hope for rebuilding the Rust Belt. In Cleveland, we had a trifecta of victories for sustainable land use. First, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District voted to form a stormwater agency, and will start charging an assessment on property using a sliding scale based on the size of impervious surface on your lot (hello Big Box parking lots). $40 million a year to restore natural systems and deal with the flooding issues of decades of haphazard, low density development patterns. In addition, Cleveland, at the center of the donut, will begin exploring locations for catalytic projects as defined by the ReImagine a More Sustainable Cleveland project, an innovative framework for regenerating vacant land. ReImagine also includes 58 pilot projects where Cleveland residents are being given an opportunity to temporarily convert vacant land into gardens, pocket parks and experiments remediating soil with plants. While the pilots only occupy 15 acres of total land, in a city that has reached 7% of its total in vacancy, they are a sign that Mayor Jackson is ready to invest in what he calls Cleveland’s ‘self-help economy’.Next up? Cleveland has formed eight committees who will match plans for greenways, urban agriculture, and maybe entrepreneurial ventures to generate renewable energy with large swaths of vacant land.  By May city will announce locations for proposed green interventions, and find partners to either buy or lease the land. It’s not just pie in the sky greenie stuff here. The committees involve city planners and technical experts from EPA to local agriculture heroes at the Ohio State University Extension urban agriculture program. In the mix is a newly formed Cuyahoga County Land Bank, which will begin taking control of foreclosed properties this spring.Perhaps our cities are ready to move beyond a predictable, rationalist discussion of solutions. Is ReImagine the bold next act for Cleveland? The cynics look at the new green movement forming from the ashes of a central city eviscerated by wealth flight and decades of mismanagement and, well, lose the forest for the trees. We cannot know what catalytic projects will do for the concentrations of poverty festering in the inner city, but some recent initiatives show that uncertainty doesn’t have to equal complacency.  For instance, if the Garden Boyz in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood are any indication, when you give boys from the projects who would otherwise get dragged into drug gangs a good job, that is, a chance to grow and sell their own food, something wonderful happens. As Sharon Glaspie, the Garden Boyz’ coordinator, says, these 13 to 17 year olds who have few choices finding work are suddenly learning to name the plants they’re growing, harvesting their first bunch of collard greens and taking them to market, making change, and walking home with $50 in their pocket, which one young man used to buy his brother shoes for school.  Some of the Garden Boyz bring home some fresh veggies for their family and others are cooking meals for their workmates. If we can replicate that small success by the tens of thousands, the future looks bright indeed.

After one hundred-twenty years, St. Louis’s city hall is still beautiful. Dustin Phillips uploaded this photo to our Flickr Pool this week. City hall really shows of St. Louis’s personality; the great French design and fantastic murals are fun and gorgeous. Thanks, Dustin, for uploading your photo. Keep sending in pictures to GLUE’s  Flickr Pool!

Join the Detroit Vacant Property Campaign (DVPC) and partners for an opportunity to listen, learn, and participate in discussions about vacant property issues and the future of Detroit neighborhoods. On Saturday, May 1st, the DVPC is hosting”Neighborhoods First: Sharing Resources and Planning Ahead” at Gleaners Community Food Bank in Detroit. This is a great chance to learn about tools and methods to help strengthen Detroit neighborhoods and contribute your thoughts about planning for the future of Detroit neighborhoods.

The event is free to everyone, but space is limited. You can register online or by phone by April 15th.

Sun, steam, and traffic barrels. In Detroit, that’s how you know Spring has arrived. Dj denim captured this cool picture–which he calls “HOT HOT HOT”–of one of Detroit’s steam vents under construction on one of the first warm(ish), sunny days. Thanks, DJ denim, for submitting your photo, and thanks to everyone else who is still submitting photos to the Flickr Pool!

Most people I know haven’t yet decided what they’re doing after the New Year, let alone in 2015, but the National Park Service and City of St. Louis are planning ahead.  They have announced an international design competition “to invigorate the park and city areas surrounding of one of the world’s most iconic monuments, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis” (from a 12/8/09 press release), with the winning plan to be implemented by 2015.

GLUEspace readers know, I love the Arch.  I love the design, the ambition and magnitude, I love the futuristic pods that carry you to the top, I love seeing it from afar when driving into the city, and I love that it was designed by a metro-Detroiter.  But it’s not hard to see that the area surrounding the Arch doesn’t quite do it justice as a staging ground.  So it would be hard for a design competition to get me more enthused.  The press release goes on to say:

The competition will invite teams to create a new design for the Arch grounds and surrounding areas with 10 goals in mind:

• Create an iconic place for the international icon, the Gateway Arch.
• Catalyze increased vitality in the St. Louis region.
• Honor the character-defining elements of the National Historic Landmark.
• Weave connections and transitions from the city and the Arch grounds to the Mississippi River.
• Embrace the Mississippi River and the east bank in Illinois as an integral part of the national park.
• Mitigate the impact of transportation systems.
• Reinvigorate the mission to tell the story of St. Louis as the gateway to national expansion.
• Create attractors to promote extended visitation to the Arch, the city and the river.
• Develop a sustainable future for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
• Enhance the visitor experience and create a welcoming and accessible environment.

The winning design will be announced in October 2010, and completed by October 28, 2015, the fiftieth anniversary of the completion of the Arch.  More information about the competition–including how to enter–can be found HERE.

Greater Ohio is screening the two-part documentary “The New Metropolis,” which highlights the efforts of some of America’s first suburbs to reverse their long decline. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about these suburban centers, their decline, and their reinvigoration. The screening will take place on Tuesday, November 24 at 7:30 pm at the Drexel Theater, located at 2254 E. Main Street, in Bexley, Ohio.

From Greater Ohio:

“Ohio’s First Suburbs are highlighted in “The New Metropolis,” a groundbreaking two-part documentary on the rise, fall and revitalization of America’s first suburbs. Produced by award-winning filmmaker Andrea Torrice, this is the first public examination devoted to the issues facing many suburban towns. Considered embodiments of the American dream, the first suburbs blossomed after World War II, bolstered by economic prosperity and government support. Now, many struggle with the same challenges as urban centers — growing poverty, white flight, crumbling infrastructure, abandonment and the continual lure of newer communities further from the cities.

The two 25 minute films are broken down as follows:
Episode 1, “A Crack in the Pavement,” narrated by actor Peter Coyote, follows the story of two Cincinnati area public officials and their efforts to keep their towns stable and healthy despite difficult times to repair and improve infrastructure and lure businesses.
Episode 2, “The New Neighbors,” narrated by actress Ruby Dee, focuses on two ordinary people, one black and one white, who made racial integration the centerpiece of revitalizing Pennsauken , New Jersey.”

The panel discussion that follows the screening will focus on the effects that sprawl has on first ring suburbs and what communities are doing to address these issues in Ohio. For information about The New Metropolis, click here.