This post was originally published on panethos.wordpress.com.
Kudos to Carmel. No…I am not talking about Carmel, California, which is indeed a gorgeous town overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In this case I am complimenting  Carmel, Indiana, a large suburb of approximately 80,000 residents located just north of Indianapolis. When I was growing up in Indy (way back when), Carmel was largely nondescript,  with sprawling subdivisions across cornfields. It was best known for powerhouse football and basketball teams and the Carmel movie theater (sadly no longer there). The downtown area at the time was very small …

Let me start out by saying the author of this book is a friend and neighbor of mine for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. Former Associated Press reporter and Detroit Shoreway resident Justin Glanville teamed up with illustrator Julia Kuo (who you will remember from 100 days of Cleveland) to produce this beautifully composed guide to Cleveland for newcomers, and old-timers looking to rediscover Cleveland neighborhoods.
I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book at the release party at Happy Dog last week and since …

A recent report by a group called 1000 Friends of Wisconsin shows that roads in that state are not fully paid by fuel taxes and other road user fees. The report blows a giant whole in the claim by pro sprawl lobbyists (at least in Wisconsin) that roads are fully funded with road taxes paid by road users through tolls, gas taxes and other road use fees. In truth it seems that the life line of sprawl, more and more roads, is one of our biggest government subsidies. Following is a summary of the report’s findings:

There’s no consensus in the urban planning profession — or in public opinion more generally — about how to handle declining cities like Detroit.

All sorts of solutions have been proposed, ranging from the outlandish (making Detroit a “skyscraper ruins park”) to the more widely accepted (converting vacant land into urban agriculture).

But lately Michigan leaders have seized on a strategy that may be the most promising yet: placemaking.

From newspaper columnists to business executives, from the Department of Transportation and Governor Rick Snyder, Wolverines of all stripes seem to be coming to the conclusion that creating vibrant, walkable urban places is perhaps as important to the future of the state as the auto industry was to its past.

You may have wondered, why is Ohio so screwed up?
Why are all its cities, Columbus excepted, dying?
Well one answer is manufacturing losses. The other answer is terrible, backward-looking, utterly embarrassing and depraved politics. It’s sort of a tough one to call.
Let’s examine the state’s nauseating “redistricting” process as evidence. Boring stuff! Except when told by Cleveland’s own Mike Polk, who you will remember from the infamous “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video.”

Hey why don’t they teach this stuff in senior civics classes?
-A.S.
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