On a gloomy, December day, when “the sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine,” it’s tempting to stay curled up somewhere warm, inside, by a fire. Or to busy myself with the million things I have to do before the holidays. It’s easy to find excuses not to take a walk in the woods when it’s cold, wet, and dreary.
 
But those are often the days when I need it most, when the ordinary world is wearisome and business becomes busyness. I bundle up and go.
 

 
(The Center for Metropolitan Studies at the University of Pittsburgh invited David Mazmanian, a public policy professor from USC, to talk this past Friday. These are some thoughts on his talk on civic engagement and climate policy, and what it might mean for Pitt - though you can extend that to other GLUE cities)

The City of Detroit has announced plans to allow citizens to speak at city council meetings via Skype.
According to the Detroit Free Press, "in a city of 750,000 people, fewer than a dozen residents typically speak out during the comment period." This is such a tiny fraction, and the new Skype solution could hopefully increase the number of citizens speaking at City Council meetings.

EXACTLY, Urbanophile. "Yet too often [Detroit's] own residents feel the need to downplay it, euphemistically referring to the region as

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. . .

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. . .

Via The Political Environment, residents of Chicago

We at GLUE are big promoters of sustainability in cities. (And everywhere else.) We believe that sustainability is, in itself, an important goal, and that to be sustainable is to be successful. Still, it doesn't hurt when being sustainable provides a bit of good PR for your city, either. . .

Jarrett Walker at Human Transit writes about how transit doesn't necessarily solve congestion, and makes the case for other reasons why transit is good. . .

From Jim Russell's Burgh Diaspora comes a post saying that "the era of the Rust Belt decline is over." Russell says that very few Americans are moving right now, due to the struggling economy. In the Rust Belt, "much of the skilled labor force is still educated," while the Sun Belt does not have the same advantages and is struggling to build a workforce. . .