On Monday, GLUEsletter recipients (if you didn’t receive this, sign up over on the right side of the screen to stay current in the GLUE news) received a save-the-date about GLUE’s third annual conference.  In 2008 we hit the east side of the mega-region with three days in snowy Buffalo.  In 2009, ideas and the occasional beer flowed in Milwaukee in March.  This year, we’re bringing it to the very middle of the Midwest: Cleveland, Ohio will host the Urban Laboratories Conference on July 15-17, 2010.

Registration opened today, and is limited to 100 Great Lakes urban dwellers–so register fast to reserve your seat.

Registration instructions, and lots more info, available at www.UrbanLabsConference.com.  We’ll also be posting frequent updates about the agenda, the gems of Cleveland that we’ll be showcasing, speakers, and other details there for the next two months.

Rapid Growth has been hitting the town with a whiteboard and camera to collect I Will Stay If… photos prior to their event next week.  Grand Rapidians, don’t miss their “Not Your Average Speaker Series!” on Wednesday, May 19.  Participate in an exciting community brainstorm, and get your photo taken to contribute to the I Will Stay If… campaign!  Let your leaders know what you want Grand Rapids to be.

Grand Rapids will become the most recent city to participate in the I Will Stay If… campaign, through the efforts of Rapid Growth Media, and partnership with the Grand Rapids Young Professionals and the Michigan State Housing Authority.  Rapid Growth is hosting a “not your average speaker series” on Wednesday, May 19, constructed around some of the ideas the IWSI… campaign is built on.  In a great twist, a panel of young leaders will be asked not to expound on what they want, but to help brainstorm how to turn ideas generated by the audience into reality.

I’m excited to be heading over to GR to attend, and look forward to hearing the ideas of Grand Rapidians!

Details:

• Wednesday, May 19, 2010
• Wealthy Theater, 1130 Wealthy St. SE
• Doors at 4:45, formal event starts at 5:30
•  More info here!

The folks at updayton were good enough last month to include an I Will Stay If… photo booth as part of their 2010 summit, and the results won’t surprise anyone who’s been following the campaign.  Like many of us, Dayton residents expressed a desire to live in a place with a strong sense of community, where they can make a living, and with amenities like walkable neighborhoods and access to the outdoors.  As a refresher, GLUE’s IWSI… campaign is our effort to elevate the voices of our city’s residents about what they want their city to be.  Especially in this time when visioning and new land use planning efforts seem to be current in all of our cities, this is one small part of collecting what YOU feel is important, and telling many one-sentence stories about what can make our cities thrive.

Check out Dayton’s photos–and browse photos from Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit–here.  You can get involved by sending your photos, or finding out how to throw an IWSI… event in your city, by emailing iwillstayif@gluespace.org.

In addition, participants in the updayton summit also crafted a vision and action plan around four priorities of young people: community, diversity, entertainment and entrepreneurship.  You can read more about the projects they selected here.  Congrats to updayton for their good work, and thanks for including GLUE!

In last Thursday’s GLUEsletter, we announced that our new website will contain a feature for which we need you (yes, YOU) to produce some content.  GLUE is looking for volunteer writers from each of our 20+ cities to help us tell the insider’s story of Flint, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, and beyond.  Our in-design new website will contain City Portals–travel guides for the Rust Belt enthusiasts and civically engaged.  You can write about what trends you believe are changing Milwaukee; great green space and other city assets in Columbus; or simply give us a tour of your Pittsburgh neighborhood.  Here’s a teaser from Anthony Armstrong’s reflections on Buffalo:

Across our city, Buffalo’s majestic legacy is on display side-by-side with its steady decline.  However, the place that Frederick Law Olmstead deemed “the best planned city… in the United States, if not the world” still has its good bones–which are not just its physical infrastructure and building stock, but its people, culture, and history as well.

Compact and flat, Buffalo’s great to see on a bike, but however you get around, you need to experience:

Allentown: About a five-minute walk from downtown, this was Buffalo’s first suburban neighborhood and then its first and largest historic district.  Long a bastion for artists, stately Victorians and a bohemian commercial strip fill in this economically and racially diverse neighborhood…

If you’d like to volunteer to tell one piece of your city’s story, email sarah@gluespace.org.

Cleveland’s I Will Stay If… party in November revealed a few things to me.  Clevelanders have so many good ideas for their city that it’s easy to understand why a feeling of change pervades the city.  They also might be disproportionately optimistic about their city’s future.  Check out a sampling of smiling faces here, and be sure to visit the IWSI site to see all of the photos from the event.

This email went out this morning.  Please take the survey and forward to others!

Dear Clevelander-in-the-know:

GLUE (the Great Lakes Urban Exchange), a network of young leaders and activists who share ideas and best practices for revitalizing Great Lakes cities, is currently planning its third annual conference.  Participants in the first two conferences, in Buffalo in 2008 and Milwaukee in 2009, have said things like:

• “You have re-energized and inspired me… I can’t wait until next year!”
• “[Presenters] did an excellent job at conveying very practical information that will help us move from talk to action.”
• “I got to talk with other participants and see real ideas in action that could be brought back to my city.”
• “One of the best networking experiences I’ve ever had.”
• “I got a ton out of this and feel more hopeful and excited about my work, my city, and my generation that I have in a while.”

Now it’s Cleveland’s turn to host.

The GLUE conference is bent on continuous improvement, on providing a conference that is ever more focused on creating ACTION, rather than agendas.  This year, we’re issuing this preemptive survey to help us plan conference activities that will be immediately actionable, useful, and effective in answering the needs of the “do-ers” who are making Cleveland a healthier, more sustainable, more equitable and successful city.

Please help us design this 3-day blow-out of urban pride and ideas.

Please click here to take the survey.

Then, please forward this email (/post) to the other Clevelanders who you think would be interested in contributing their ideas.  With any questions, or more detailed ideas that wouldn’t fit into the survey, you can contact me, GLUE’s Director, at sarah@gluespace.org.

Thanks for your contributions.  We’ll see you in few months!

We’ve mentioned before that GLUEspace is currently undergoing a redesign.  Because of the work the GLUE team is currently putting into re-organizing our existing content and creating new content, January (and maybe February) are going to be a little on the lite side, posting-wise.  We’ll still be sharing photos and events weekly, but our Issue Focus is on hold, as are our GLUEster profiles and other posts.  However, I will be writing occasional posts about the HELP we need with the new site.  If you’d like to publish some writing, about your city or the topics GLUE routinely covers, contact me!  The new GLUEspace is going to be rife with greater opportunities to exchange reflections, ideas, and best practices, but you don’t have to wait for the new site to be live in order to be one of the first to help drive the conversation.  Email me at sarah@gluespace.org for more info.

In the meantime, have you checked out our podcasts over the last few months?  We share conversations with people doing great work and re-inventing our cities.  Carrie Nardini runs mobile craft markets in Pittsburgh; Andy and Emily Lin opened a crafty boutique in Detroit; Michael Allen and Francis Grunow have led preservation efforts in St. Louis and Detroit, respectively; Justin Booth started a complete streets advocacy group in Buffalo; and Sharon Feigon directs a car-sharing program in Chicago.  Interviews with these and other change-makers from around the Great Lakes region are HERE.

From our friends in Pittsburgh, a special event featuring some Rust Belt cross-state sharing:

The sixth session of this year’s Guyasuta Fellowship for Public Policy will take place on Tuesday, January 12 from 6:30 to 8:30pm at Pittsburgh City Council chambers. The session will focus on strategies for scaling green economy programs into citywide initiatives. Our special invited guests will be Mayor Dayne Walling of Flint, Michigan and Blaine Bonham of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which manages the vacant property management / green jobs development program for the City of Philadelphia. The public is encouraged to attend this special session.

The Guyasuta Fellowship is managed by Jackson/Clark Partners in partnership with Councilman Bill Peduto and the Pennsylvania VOICE organization. This year’s group of 40 Fellowship Program participants are focusing on developing citizen-driven public policy recommendations on Green Jobs, Clean Energy and Community Recovery.

While this might be a bit last-minute, if any GLUEsters from other cities (Cleveland, Buffalo, etc.) are interested, Guyasuta might be able to help defray travel costs.  Email the GLUE team for more info.

Ah, another photo from the  sunny days of the Rustbelt Road Trip. This one’s from Pittsburgh’s Birmingham Bridge, where locals have brightened the area with cool colors and great trees. The picture reminded me of how much fascinating public art is dotted around Pittsburgh, especially downtown. Murals, reliefs, sculptures, and paintings like this one give the city its personality (and helped me remember how to get around town). Thanks, everyone, for sending in photos to the Flickr pool. Keep submitting!