Read here what one Buffalo woman misses after moving to Florida.
-KG

Take a look at this CNN article about a Chinese firm with plans to build a “Chinese-style mega shopping mall” in Milwaukee.

“The cost of doing business there is very low,” Wu Li, president of Toward Group told CNN. “The people are friendly, the environment is peaceful and the pace of living is slow. It is a good place for Chinese enterprises to go abroad.”

The story explains Wu’s company recently purchased a dormant shopping complex in northwestern Milwaukee that was built in the 1970s, for $6 million. It will open the mall, renamed AmAsia, in August, according to CNN, part of a growing trend of Chinese investment in US real estate. That trend has mostly been in cities outside the Rust Belt –until now.

Cleveland residents,
The Great Lakes Urban Exchange is hosing its third annual conference in Cleveland this year.
The group, which aims to share ideas and best practices for revitalizing Great Lakes cities, has a survey about how how the conference can best be used for “ACTION, rather than agendas.”
The group is “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.”
Find out more and …

It seems everyone who’s interested in cities has an opinion about Richard Florida.

I’ve always had it in for him, since he wrote, “Who’s Your City?,” a book which instructed readers which city they should live in based on personal characteristics, as if that was a rational way to choose a place to live.

When I was working at a newspaper in Toledo a coworker of mine began researching “Who’s Your City” for an article because Toledo was listed as the 12th (13th, 14th?) best mid-sized city to be a committed gay couple. The story had to be killed midway through, however, because the margin of error on the statistic was approximately 50 percent.

Well, Florida is gearing to go to the presses again in April with, “The Great Reset,” in which he argues that the recession has fundamentally reshaped the economic landscape. This tome may be more controversial because of its premise that the new economy will divide the country into geographic winners and losers.

It also happens that many of these “losers” paid Florida a hefty fee to explain how their cities could be made Meccas for the hip, highly-educated population that is so essential to prosperity, according to Florida’s teachings.

President Obama will visit this Ohio community on Friday.
Hear more about what Lorain is -and was- on this in-depth radio piece from WKSU news.
When Obama visited during the 2008 campaign, he spoke quite a bit about jobs and trade.
I imagine jobs and the economy will be on everyone’s mind there now as well.
-KG

Take a look at this column from the Gary Post-Tribune.

This Indiana city has had casinos since the 1990s, and yet they haven’t really brought the economic development that was promised, this writer believes.

“The Gary casinos haven’t been a complete flop. They have provided jobs and tax revenue of up to $25 million a year to the city,” he writes. “But, the economic development hasn’t followed.”

And keep in mind…Gary is just a short drive from the metropolis of Chicago. And one of those casinos had the Trump name on it, according to the story.

Rust Wire readers know that Detroit frequently makes headlines for all the wrong reasons - crime, corruption, poverty, the list of negatives is long.
But this story from the Dallas Observer lavishes praise on at least one aspect of The Motor City — its farmers’ market, Eastern Market.
Having been to farmers’ markets across the Midwest, I can say that Detroit Eastern Market is unparalleled — it basically encompasses a whole neighborhood and is full of bustling market stalls, shops and restaurants.
The Observer article is bemoaning the state of farmers’ markets in …

The road to recovery begins in Youngstown, Ohio.

That was the take, at least, from Reuters reporter Nick Carey in a special report on national economic recovery.

“Today, the city immortalized by Bruce Springsteen’s 1995 Rust-Belt anthem ‘Youngstown’ is moving on,” Carey writes.

“Among other things, it has created an incubator to attract the types of small businesses that are expected to drive future growth. Despite the thousands of vacant homes that serve …

We’ve all heard and read plenty about how Rust Belt cities can use their vacant lands as space for urban farms and community gardens.
This article from the Los Angeles Times says some folks believe they could even make a profitable investment. Michigan native and financier John Hantz has invested an initial $30 million of his own money toward purchasing equipment and land in Detroit, according to the article.
-KG

Michigan led the nation in one-year population loss, dropping below 10 million residents for the first time in nearly a decade, according to this article from The Toledo Blade.
Michigan lost nearly 33,000 residents this year as its economy suffered in a recession that was particularly brutal for the US auto industry.
Still, over the past decade, Michigan has gained a total of about 31,000 residents, owing mostly to births and foreign immigration.
-AS