Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is preparing to launch a new, online business portal that will make it easier for businesses to operate and locate in the Motor City.
“We hear the horror stories of why businesses won’t come into the city of Detroit,” said Karla Henderson, part of Bing’s planning team. “So we know we need to change that perception.”
The $2 million system was designed by Detroit-based Compuware Corp. It is expected to save up to 100,000 staff hours annually.
Are you listening, Cleveland? Full story at Crain’s Detroit.
AS

“Keep Cleveland working!”was the chorus outside a Hugo Boss plant in west Cleveland this January.
The plant had been scheduled for outsourcing by overseas executives that spring. 350 people were told they were losing their jobs, despite the fact that the plant was turning a profit for the high-end suitmaker.
The Plain Dealer is carrying a great article about the struggle to save Cleveland’s Hugo Boss factory, Northeast Ohio’s last textile plant. The story follows the leadership of two women employees in a courageous and ultimately successful campaign to save their jobs. …

The folks at Brookings released a report Monday on the importance of exports to the economies of Great Lakes cities.
Among the findings:
- Exports support 1.95 million jobs in Great Lakes metros
- Cities in this region have some of the highest volumes (dollar-wise) of exports and the greatest reliance on exports. Out of the nation’s top 100 metro areas, Chicago ranks third and Detroit ranks ninth in total dollar volumes of exports. Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Indianapolis all rank in the top 20, the study states.
How does your city compare?
“Now …

A troubling article from The New York Times via ClimateWire: Lake Superior, the largest, deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes is on track to have its warmest year ever.
“(T)he warming shows no sign of abatement,” the story reports. “This year, the waters in Lake Superior are on track to reach — and potentially exceed — the lake’s record-high temperatures of 68 degrees Fahrenheit, which occurred in 1998.”
The trend appears to be going on in the other lakes as well, the story states.
This is problematic because it …

Next time you hear about Detroit having no national chain grocery stores, consider this post from Detroit blog Sweet Juniper. It highlights the city’s Honey Bee Market and its amazing food and people.
Here’s some of his description, “while Detroit may not have any national grocery chains, we do have more urban farms and gardens than any other city in America and we boast some of the best independent grocers around,” he writes.
“Honey Bee Market, so close to downtown, has become sort of the de facto supermarket for all types of …

The Urbanophile is carrying an absolutely beautiful essay on the struggle and the purpose of remaking Buffalo and Rust Belt cities.
“It hurts. When a bigtime Harvard economist writes off your city as a loss, and says America should turn its back on you, it hurts,” writes the author of the passage, which originally appeared in Buffalo Rising. “To choose to live in the Rust Belt is to commit to enduring a continuous stream of bad press and mockery.”
But Buffalo is worth saving, the author writes.

“The idea of disposable cities is …

An Asian carp has been found in a stream 6 miles from Lake Michigan.

The voracious invasive species, which grows up to 100 pounds, threatens to destroy the Great Lakes ecosystem and its billion-dollar fishing industry.
My dad, an avid fisher, thinks it’s already too late to save the Great Lakes. The government has spent $80 million trying to kill the fish.
-AS

That’s Bruce Fisher’s question, posed in this piece for Buffalo’s alt-weekly Artvoice.
What do you think?
-KG

The New York Times is carrying an interesting article about the city of Memphis and the shrinking ranks of the local black middle-class.
As a result of predatory lending and job loss, residents the majority-black city have seen decades of economic progress reversed, The Times reports. The article focuses on the role played by Wells Fargo, and outlines the mortgage lender’s targeted efforts to sell high-interest loans in black neighborhoods. The results are hallowed out neighborhoods and declining wealth for blacks and latinos in metro Memphis.
According to the article, the weath …

Above: The party’s not over in Vegas.

Some urban thinkers thought one silver lining of the economic crisis could be a slowdown in unsustainable sprawl, particularly in overbuilt areas of the southwest, like Las Vegas.
But that appears not to be the case at all, according to this New York Times story.
Despite home prices having declined 60 percent in four years, and despite the fact that there are nearly 10,000 empty homes with 5,600 more expected on the market soon, the Times reports, “builders here are putting up 1,100 homes, and they …