I know Cleveland and Detroit are trying to remake themselves as artist Meccas. And the low cost of living is certainly a selling point.

But I still think Cleveland is a hard place to be an artist, even though we have some great organizations that are trying to change that. We’ve got a great symphony and the art museum, but I think even their most dogged supporters would admit, those aren’t the kind of institutions that driving the contemporary art scene.

New York, LA and London, those were the cities that gave rise to the street art movement, the most important contemporary art movement of our generation, in my opinion. I see that influence every time I travel to a bigger city. And it kind of concerns me because I don’t see a whole lot of it (and by that I mean graffiti, the good kind) in Cleveland.

I’ll admit it: I love the Chrysler ad campaign “Imported from Detroit,” which debuted in February’s Super Bowl spot starring Eminem.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for hometown pride. I was born about 60 miles downriver from the Motor City in Toledo, Ohio, a town sometimes known affectionately as “Little Detroit.” I remember when it was considered treasonous to drive a foreign car.

That’s the brilliance of these ads. They appeal to our inner urge to root for the underdog, our nostalgia for simpler days. Those flashes of a grand-looking Woodward Avenue. The water tower that proudly shouts “Birmingham, Michigan.”

Horse race journalism! Not even non-journalist bloggers without advertisers can resist it!
All kidding aside though, if I was a national political observer I would be watching Issues 2 and 3 in Ohio’s election tomorrow with interest.
Issue 2 seeks to repeal Governor Kasich’s Senate Bill 5, which restricts the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers.
I am going to go out on a limb here but I would bet my Netflix subscription that this one is going down in flames. Governor Kasich and his henchmen in Columbus could write a law …

Cleveland’s Mayor Jackson needs to be given credit in that he is at least talking to the talk. That is, he wants to design Downtown down to human scale. Part public space design, part pedestrian-level connectivity, the Mayor’s vision rightly understands that stand alone projects are just that: stand alone. No better than having telephone poles lining a street without the benefit of wires.
Parsing, the city’s philosophy of connectivity—and in a meta sense: vitality—seems to be that of the circulatory variety. In other words, you got a heart, you got lifeblood, and …

In honor of Halloween, some images. Call it a pictorial poem of what Clevelanders saw at night when they closed their eyes and shivered.
1952 was the big fire on the Cuyahoga, not the 1969 blaze.  If a river is a city’s life blood then consider for a moment that the populous’ veins were burning.

In 1966 Cleveland’s ghettos were in flame. The Hough neighborhood is pictured below with shadowy silhouettes in fireman’s gear appearing small in comparison to what was before them.
Obviously by the 70′s Cleveland needed a leader. What they …

The American psyche has been killing our cities.  Now it’s killing our inner-ring suburbs. Soon the exurbs will be next. It has gotten to the point that planning and development means pushing our problems around wherever investment isn’t, constantly, then, leaving trails in the landscape with ruin.
I think a bit of psychology here will help. In fact I have been writing for a while now that what city building needs is less zoning and more emotional insight into why we rationally plan our own irrational consequence.
In psychology lit there is the …

Cleveland can be a defensive city, vehemently so.
Write a silly article calling the city “Most Miserable,” it will be the top news story for weeks. Blogs will be started. T-shirts will be printed. The visitor’s bureau will pay a communications firm to develop a video response.
Should a sports star decide to leave, the whole thing will begin again. He will be called a terrible person. Spoiled. Dead to all those who reside in the region, except as a source of derision and mocking. The disdain will be unanimous, universal, unquestioned.
The …

It can be argued that the heart of American hip hop has been shifting to the Rust Belt for some time now. While Detroit is the anchor, both the Pittsburgh and Cleveland scenes have been taking off of late. Given that rap is a creation particularly driven by an artist’s attachment to place, I think the energy of a Rust Belt city’s rap scene is an underrated source of social capital and civic pride.
Take Pittsburgh’s Wiz Khalifa for example. His song “Black and Yellow” blends the iconic colors of the …

By Karen Lillis
On October 15, I marched with Occupy Pittsburgh, the city’s first action in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. I watched excitedly as the crowd grew throughout the day, building from a modest gathering when my partner and I arrived at Freedom Corner at 10:00 a.m., to a rally in the low thousands by the time the march reached Market Square at 1:00 p.m. In sharp contrast to national anti-Occupy jeers against the “dirty hippies” and stereotypes of …

When I was a graduate student in planning, a lot of people encouraged me to get a concentration in economic development. And I probably should have.

“Economic development” is the universally acknowledged highest priority in Northeast Ohio and it’s well funded. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County spends roughly 20 percent of its budget on economic development, or about $100 million dollars. The state of Ohio has made it a top priority as well, pledging $700 million to its Third Frontier technology-based economic development program.

Somehow I couldn’t get excited about the idea of being an economic development professional in the state of Ohio, though. I guess its because so much of what the economic development community does in Ohio I find to be counterproductive, or worse, morally reprehensible.