Park(ing) Day will hit metered spaces all over the world in two weeks, on Friday, September 17.  A DIY affair, it’s your chance to demonstrate that public spaces may have a higher calling that cars.   The concept: to occupy a metered space for an hour or two (whatever is legally allowable) with a temporary park.  Take your favorite houseplant out for an afternoon on the other side of the windows, set up a couple of lawnchairs, and interact with your community.

Lots of info about participating can be found on the Parking Day Network.  Let’s Save Michigan is hoping to keep track of Michiganders who get involved.  And I’ve seen Park(ing) Day Flint on Facebook (note: they are celebrating on Wednesday, 9/15, instead of the 17th). Even if you don’t want to run a temporary mini-park, find one near you and stop by to say hello!

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. 

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]

GLUE has gotten a lot of great photos of the Great Lakes’s architecture recently. Here are a few of the submissions we’ve got from all over the region, check out more on our Flickr Pool.

From the top: Dustin Phillips of St. Louis, Farmer Freund of Milwaukee, icolorinthelines of Rochester.

Also, Daniel J. Hogan and Michael R. Allen each have a series of photos on Flickr that show off their cities’ architectures (Lansing, MI and St. Louis, MO respectively).Thanks to everyone who is submitting photos to the Flickr Pool. See you next week!

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. 

Some drove, some flew, some came by bus, and some biked. Michael Allen of St. Louis traveled to GLUE’s annual conference in Cleveland by bus, and took this picture of Cleveland’s Greyhound station at the conference. Cleveland’s transit system has evolved tremendously in recent years, and today Cleveland runs over 700 buses (with their own bus lanes), a downtown bus loop, and four rapid-transit rail lines. They’ve even brought back their trolley lines, which you can ride around downtown for free! At the conference GLUEsters got to see Cleveland from nearly every point of view; I got to walk, drive, and ride trolleys, buses, and light rail trains. Whether you’re looking to get into, out of, or around the city, Cleveland is making transit easier. GLUE’s cities are all trying to make it easier to move people efficiently, and it was refreshing to see Cleveland making such progress. Thanks for your photo, Michael, and thanks to everyone who is submitting photos to the Flickr Pool!

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

DJ Denim–a.k.a. Heath Harris–recently took this photo of St. Louis’s arcade building, which he writes is “awaiting its second life in downtown St. Louis.” This historic building has sat vacant and crumbling for decades and now sits in the hands of a bankrupt construction company, waiting like so many Great Lakes buildings to be revived. Although the Arcade is idle, it’s in a prime spot for redevelopment. The MetroLink (St. Louis’s light rail line) rides just past the Arcade, and nearby Old Post Office Square is currently being rehabbed. For now though, the Arcade is languishing in glacially paced courts in both New York and Missouri. As one of St. Louis’s most historic downtown buildings, hopefully the Arcade can welcome visitors again someday soon. Thanks, Heath, for sharing your photo of St. Louis’s Arcade building, and thanks to everyone who is submitting photos to the Flickr Pool!

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

Friend of GLUE The Center for Michigan recently unveiled its new website.  The Center is a “think-and-do tank” (“thinking without doing is pointless, while doing without thinking is folly”), founded in 2006 by Phil Power.  The Center aims to “develop and execute comprehensive, long-range and, in some cases, radical policy solutions to transform Michigan’s business, economic, political and cultural climate.” They believe that Michigan’s political sector has largely failed the state and needs a new, bipartisan, aggressively solutions-oriented approach.
The Center aims to make progress towards a better state by changing the political system. They want to build a “citizen movement” of people willing to work with both—or all—sides on an issue. The new site makes the Center’s products more accessible.  You might especially want to check out the 10,000 Voices Citizen’s Agenda and the 2010 Michigan Scorecard.