Rust Wire co-founder Angie Schmitt (me!) recently had a chance to appear on a Cleveland radio show to discuss (what else?) sprawl.
The program was about Cleveland’s Regional Prosperity Initiative, an initiative of local foundations that seeks to help the region work better collaboratively to lower taxes and improve the economy.
I thought some of you might be interested. There’s a little lead-in with a psychologist, but the conversation gets going about a third of the way in.
http://bit.ly/g0sW3G
(You have to click on the headline and follow the jump to access the hyperlink)
I …

In some ways, the semiconductor that sits in a display case at a new showroom in Cleveland’s Galleria is a more fitting emblem for this region than the foreign-made clothing that occupied this space when it was a high-end shopping mall.

Despite all the ink spilled over manufacturing job loss, Ohio’s economy is still dominated by the production of products. The manufacturing process is more streamlined, more technological, but items like the ones in this case, not the foreign-made clothing that it replaced, are still the bedrock of Northeast Ohio’s economy.

Lindsey Frick, 25, and her collaborators in the new Manufacturing Mart at the Galleria recognize that. Their mission is to help Ohio manufacturers …

Pittsburgh’s population has shrunk over the last decade, falling by 24,000 persons between 2000 and 2008. In the 2009 Democratic primary race for mayor, Councilman Patrick Dowd even made reversing population decline a signature issue of his campaign, (as you can see in this video).

We can get by without steel mills, but new residents are sorely needed to support the legacy costs of public servants employed when Pittsburgh had double the public to serve.

While Pittsburgh’s population dips, the U.S. Hispanic demographic drives American population growth and is projected to triple by 2050. Immigration accounts for recent trends, but projections also depend on higher Hispanic birth rates.

Frequent Rust Wire readers know we’ve written before about the housing crisis creating Rust Belt-like conditions in some Sun Belt cities, such as Las Vegas (See here and here).
Now there appears to be actual data to back that up, according to a study from the Research Institute for Housing America, a division of the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The Los Angeles Times explains:
“A traditional city in decline is one that has suffered a sustained population drop, leaving behind empty houses, apartment buildings, offices and storefronts. Cleveland and Detroit, for instance, …

Rust Wire correspondent Ivy Hughes recently visited Germany’s Ruhr District, a northwestern part of the country recovering from the loss of jobs in of the steel and coal industry. The district includes 53 cites and more than 5.3 million residents. The region is a 2010 European Capital of Culture, an annul EU designation awarded to a city or region for the purpose of showcasing its cultural development. As such, the municipalities within the Ruhr District worked within a €62.5 million budget to create 300 projects and 2,500 events highlighting its …

The former US Steel South Works in South Chicago will be redeveloped, The New York Times reports.
The “ambitious” $4 billion plan will remake the 470-acre site with homes, a marina, commercial space and a school, the paper reports. It is the largest undeveloped parcel in the city.
You can learn more about the history of the site here; take a look at the before and after photos from the mill’s heyday (below).

This history site notes that 20,000 people once worked at the mill, which closed in 1992 after operating 110 years. It also notes that …

Rust Wire correspondent Ivy Hughes recently visited Germany’s Ruhr District, a northwestern part of the country recovering from the loss of jobs in of the steel and coal industry. The district includes 53 cites and more than 5.3 million residents. The region is a 2010 European Capital of Culture, an annul EU designation awarded to a city or region for the purpose of showcasing its cultural development. As such, the municipalities within the Ruhr District worked within a €62.5 million budget to create 300 projects and 2,500 events highlighting its …

Rust Wire correspondent Ivy Hughes recently visited Germany’s Ruhr District, a northwestern part of the country recovering from the loss of jobs in of the steel and coal industry. The district includes 53 cites and more than 5.3 million residents. The region is a 2010 European Capital of Culture, an annul EU designation awarded to a city or region for the purpose of showcasing its cultural development. As such, the municipalities within the Ruhr District worked within a €62.5 million budget to create 300 projects and 2,500 events highlighting its …

The Wall Street Journal highlights a city in Belgium where people take tours of sites that include abandoned steel works, slag heaps and unfinished metro stations.
The attraction? The fascination of ugly things, the tour leader tells the paper.
Many thanks to Rust Wire reader and contributor Lewis Lehe for bringing this story to our attention!
-KG
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Really interesting article in this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek about Niagara Falls, New York, and some of the problems it faces despite being next to what is litterally one of the largest tourist attractions in the world.
The article details how Niagara Falls
“encompasses just about every mistake a city could make… a 1960s mayor’s decision to bulldoze his quaint downtown and replace it with a bunch of modernist follies. There was a massive hangar-like convention center designed by Philip Johnson; Cesar Pelli’s glassy indoor arboretum, the Wintergarden, which was …