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]

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]

Via Preservation Research, the U.S. House passed H.R. 3534 (Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act of 2010) yesterday. The bill “included the first-ever full annual appropriation of $150 million to the federal Historic Preservation Fund.” The HPF matches grants for programs authorized in the 1966 Historic Preservation Act (such as “preservation planning, architectural survey, educational programs and other activities”). Local governments can apply for the funds, using state offices. Rust Belt cities can benefit specifically from these funds because because we have a lot of wonderful old architecture, as opposed to the newer buildings (with less history) in other cities across the country.

Via Pop City Media, Pittsburgh-based Public Record is an organization that creates Pittsburgh-centric audiotours. Specifically, the stories provide listeners with information about a darker side of Pittsburgh history. Many of the points of interest are centered around unique crimes and other odd stories of a bygone era, and Public Record’s website describes its subjects as “people who only barely scraped their way into history, as the perpetrator, victim, or bystander of a single transgressive act.”

The group wants to “haunt the city with their stories as a kind of poetic reckoning,” and the stories follow through on that goal. The narration utilizes primary sources and eerie background music, and Public Record’s poetry is a great way for even native Pittsburghers to explore a side of the city they’ve never been aware of.

Public Record stories are available via an iPhone app, text messages, or free mp3s on their website.

Last week, we introduced some questions about whether the Rust Belt is particularly “crafty,” particularly situated to be good at DIY’ing (doing it ourselves).  This week, we’re sharing an interview with Carrie Nardini, the founder of I Made It!, a nomadic indie craft market headquartered in Pittsburgh.  I Made It! has a unique mission to use its craft markets and the crowds they draw to support not only their vendors, but community non-profits or arts organizations as well.  By bringing their markets to different locations, I Made It! can showcase a great space, raise money, or otherwise attract attention for its host organization.

In our interview, Carrie shares the nuts and bolts of the organizations mission and operation, demonstrates the variety of causes and vendors wo are involved, and reflects a little bit on why doing this work in Pittsburgh is perhaps extra-special (I’ll give you a hint: it’s because we’re so friendly).

You can listen to my interview with Carrie HERE.

This post is part of our December Issue Focus (new posts weekly, usually on Wednesdays) on crafting and DIY culture and opportunity in Rust Belt cities.

Photo of Carrie Nardini, Camille Anna Shanahan, and Quelcy Kogel at the December 2008 I Made It! market at the Union Project, courtesy of Carrie.

Sometimes I wonder whether it is just a small, progressive bubble that I occupy and in which I think there are so many positive signs of change for our cities.  But the growth in existence of organizations like the 3/50 Project, which supports shopping local; in the number of farmer’s markets (according to the USDA, from 1,755 nationally in 1994 to 5,724 today);  and in the popularity of blogs like Design*Sponge, a crafting inspiration–these are not just my imagination.  How are these three things related?   To me, they embody a theme of being self-reliant and simultaneously supporting your local community that informed our past and must inform our future.

With that in mind, and with the holidays basically upon us (like the good Motown girl I am, I’ve had Stevie Wonder’s Christmas Collection on repeat since the weekend), I want to take a look this month into the do-it-yourself and crafting movement that I think has been building momentum in our cities (and the rest of the country) for the last few years.  I hope to give this Issue Focus some Rust Belt perspective.  For instance–are our cities good places for crafters because of the cheap real estate?  Or bad because of the market?  How do we introduce crafters to new markets for their work?  Are events like the Detroit Urban Craft Fair (last month) and Noel Night (this Saturday) informing a new vision for Detroit?  What can crafting entrepreneurs teach us about how to better support other start-ups in our cities?  Can we be leaders in DIY’ing because we’ve HAD to do it ourselves for so long?

Next week, an interview with the founder of Pittsburgh’s I Made It!  Stay tuned (for some interesting discussion and perhaps some holiday gift ideas).

Photo from I Made It!’s photostream.

Detroit has its share of historic architecture–and more than its share of vacancy and blight.  Consequently, the debates over historic preservation efforts in Detroit’s recent history have been contentious, to say the least.  And the stories about preservation here often say less about the value of a particular piece of architecture than they do about the transparency with which our city government makes decisions, the urgency of the other challenges facing the city, the possibility of re-imagining our physical landscape, and the passion of Detroit’s advocates.

Today I’m sharing an interview with Francis Grunow, who has been long active in Detroit’s preservation circles, including participation with the Friends of the Book Cadillac and four years as the Executive Director of Preservation Wayne.  Francis has been involved in many of Detroit’s recent preservation battles, and in our interview, shares the lessons from a few.  We talked specifically in some depth about the contrasting experiences of the former Madison-Lenox Hotel, which was demolished, and the Book Cadillac Hotel, which has become, as Francis put it, the “crown jewel” of Detroit’s downtown hotels.

We also discussed the different tools that preservation advocates can use, and whether preservation fights remain isolated battles, or are slowly changing the understanding of preservation as a lens and tool for re-making the entire city.  Listen to the interview HERE.

This post is a part of our November series on historic preservation, building rehab, and the triple bottom line.  During week one, we provided an overview of the argument for historic preservation, and last week we shared an interview with preservation advocate Michael Allen, about the relationship between preservation and other urban challenges, and how the Missouri tax credit has enabled preservation is St. Louis.

Photo of the restored Book Cadillac building by Brandy Baker for the Detroit News.

On a recent trip to St. Louis, my tour guides included Michael Allen, the detective, advocate, and blogger behind Ecology of Absence, a board member of Preservation Action, and the Director of the newly-formed Preservation Research Office.  Michael’s knowledge of the built environment of St. Louis is nothing less of encyclopedic–though unlike an encyclopedia, he takes immense and obvious pleasure in the small and large human dramas whose histories are told in buildings.

Michael seemed to point out a surprising number of communities in STL that have really been brought back to life by historic preservation efforts.  A big part of the reason is that Missouri has an extremely progressive historic preservation tax credit.  While the federal tax credit applies only to restoration efforts of buildings that are income-producing, the Missouri credit can be applied to non-income-producing buildings, i.e., homes.  This makes it possible for many middle-class homeowners to preserve

Listen to my interview with Michael HERE, for our conversation about the benefits of preservation as tied to a number of other urban challenges (e.g., can restored housing be high quality affordable housing?), the Missouri tax credit and its effects, and some new possibilities on the federal level for expanded tax credits that would help us all to preserve our urban fabric.

This post is a part of our November series on historic preservation, building rehab, and the triple bottom line.  Last week we provided an overview of the argument for historic preservation, and next week we’re taking the preservation conversation to Detroit. 

Photo, courtesy of Michael, shows him guiding a tour of the St. Louis Place neighborhood during Historic Preservation Week, May 2008.

Rehab is bringing some corners of our cities back into prosperity.  And I don’t mean the Amy Winehouse version–I’m talking about the rehabilitation of the building stock that we invested in 60, 80, or 100 years ago.

Oftentimes historic renovations seem to be the result of a nebulous culture of rehabbing, or good old-fashioned individual initiative.  But cities and states can tactically choose to embrace historic preservation as a strategy for revitalizing downtowns.  To start off our series, I’m posting some thoughts from the unofficial godfather of the current historic preservation movement, Donovan Rypkema. The bulletpoints below came from his 2007 presentation, “Sustainability, Smart Growth and Historic Preservation,” at the Historic Districts Council Annual Conference in New York.  (You can read the entire speech here.)

• Sustainable development is crucial for economic competitiveness.
• Sustainable development has more elements than just environmental responsibility.
• “Green buildings” and sustainable development are not synonyms.
• Historic preservation is, in and of itself, sustainable development.
• Development without a historic preservation component is not sustainable.

Rypkema believes that, in historic preservation lies at least a partial answer to a number of challenges.  Socially: these buildings are part of the urban fabric, our culture and what make each of our cities unique.  They also tend to be located in attractive clusters that draw urban populations.  Environmentally: tearing down an historic building to build new, no matter how “green” the new building is, is less sustainable than rehabbing the historic building.  With rehab, less waste is sent to the landfill, fewer new resources are used.  Economically:  50% of the cost of a new building is resources.  Conversely, 30% of rehab costs are spent on resources, and 70% on labor.  Rehabbing equals local job creation.  Additionally, money spent on rehab is likely to be spent within the local community, rather than on parts from a factory hundreds of miles away.

Over the remaining month, we’ll explore historic preservation strategies and how a culture of historic preservation should inform our approach to urban revitalization.

This post is a part of our November series on historic preservation, building rehab, and the triple bottom line.  Next week we’ll feature an interview with historic preservationist, Ecology of Absence blogger, and St. Louis man-about-town, Michael Allen.