This article was written by Alex Abboud. It originally appeared on his blog and was reprinted with permission.
They’re going to be making steel in Youngstown again. Taken in isolation, this is great news, pointing to progress in an area that has struggled economically for the past 3-4 decades, and – as the story linked above – points out, lost half its population since 1950.
The steel mill, however, will be producing parts to use in hydraulic fracturing, fracking for short. This process is gaining support in the …

Yesterday a bunch of folks in Cleveland got together to discuss a topic that is near and dear to Rust Wire’s heart: civic boosterism.

The discussion mainly focused on whether this is a good or bad way to discuss Cleveland (also with some devolution into is Cleveland good or bad). There were a few harsh exchanges and no clear consensus, so it was a little disappointing from that perspective.

I have permission to post a few responses from the peanut gallery (for those 4 people who are not 100% sick of this whole discussion at this point).

I didn’t so much grow up in Cleveland as I did into Cleveland — like a vine wrapping around a brick. My thoughts and interests became tied to its physicality, to its familiarity, and of course with the familiar comes the longing for nostalgia and the way things used to be: that city of my childhood — the buttermilk at the Market, my grandma’s garden along the fence near the alley.

That’s the plus side of staying where you grew up. The downside arises from the stark reality that the past can’t exist intact, and this is particularly true in the Rust Belt.

To be a Clevelander is to be used to a certain amount of rejection and disdain from the rest of the country — to be widely regarded as the “Mistake on the Lake” is urbanism’s equivalent to being the fat kid in gym class, and it can leave one just as scarred as too many dodgeball hits to the face.
I didn’t leave Cleveland because I wanted to be one of the cool kids, though.  I’ve always had a restless and independent streak, and by the time I hit adolescence …

Living in the Rust Belt one becomes accustomed to what many find shocking. Example: in a period of a few weeks I saw the façade of an abandoned brick building fall out of itself on fire and into the street. Firemen and neighbors gathered around to look. Nobody was surprised really. It was more communal than anything.
Then not a few weeks later I went for a jog and came upon a skeleton of twisted metal that had its insides sunken in. It was quiet. The smell was of …

As you may have heard, Detroit’s excitedly awaited Woodward Light Rail was nixed last week by Mayor Bing and Federal Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood in favor of a 110-mile regional Bus Rapid Transit System. Officials expressed concern that the original 3-mile light rail plan wouldn’t connect Detroiters with suburban jobs, which is odd because the original proposal (which was awarded federal funding) wasn’t about connecting people with suburban jobs at all. It was about holding a carrot out to private developers so as to develop Midtown Detroit into a truly urban neighborhood. It wasn’t about connecting what already exists, but about building the transportation framework for what could be.

We pulled this video off a website called The Detroit Journal.
The site features a bunch of beautifully produced trailers exploring what life in Detroit is like for ordinary people.
This first one is called “William Foster is a Good Man.” It shares one man’s story of addiction and redemption.

I actually wasn’t able to find a ton of information about this project, but it is very intriguing. I met a man once in Youngstown, who was from Detroit, and he told me a similar story — being exposed to heroin before his …

This post originally appeared on Streetsblog.
Cincinnati — you really just can’t give this town enough credit. The Queen City and its streetcar coalition can’t be stopped, despite the best efforts of Ohio Governor John Kasich to stamp out all traces of a passenger train in the Buckeye State.
Network blog Urban Cincy announced yesterday that the city received word that the Cincinnati Streetcar project has been awarded some $11 million in TIGER III funds.
The city had sought to replace more than $50 million that was yanked by Kasich in April. Meanwhile, …

A demand for urban living is helping Cleveland’s downtown achieve something like vibrancy. Whether it reaches its promise will depend on whether or not we can find people enough places to live.

Historically, the problem with Rust Belt cities is that we created policies that emptied their cores. The result is we spread ourselves out too thin—and through our dispersal we have nullified the inherent advantages of the city. Said Economist Ryan Avent:

But what makes a city a city and a not-city a not-city is the fact that a city is dense and a not-city isn’t…

And when it comes to economic growth and the creation of jobs, the denser the city the better.

We’ve taken shots at Troy, Michigan on this blog before. The most popular post we’ve ever run was about how the depressing sprawl in Detroit suburbs like this one is repelling talented individuals, and killing the region.
Well these things are cultural. Remember our friend Andrew Basile said metro Detroit’s leaders “must live in a different cultural universe” than the in-demand, young talented people that are flocking to San Francisco?
I don’t think Troy Mayor Janice Daniels has gotten the message. You will remember Daniels was the one who embarrassed herself in …