Today, the Great Lakes Cities: Urban Laboratories conference kicks off in Cleveland. The program promises a mix of policy discussions, neighborhood tours of Cleveland and lots more.
Read what Bruce Fisher has to say about it in his column in Buffalo’s ArtVoice. He’s very enthused about “the hopeful, the engaged and the talented” who will convene in Cleveland. And he gives Rust Wire a shout out!
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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 …

Our readers know we love to beat up on Forbes magazine for their frequent lists of dead/ dying/ shrinking/ etc. cities.
But let me give credit where credit is due…this is a really interesting and cool interactive graphic that uses IRS data to show migration within the US, sorted by county. Good job on this one, Forbes!
Click on a county to see inward and outward migration and where residents moved to/ or from. I could spend a long time playing with this.
Thanks to a frequent Rust Wire reader, my Dad, for …

From Buffalo Rising: Read Urbanophile Aaron Renn‘s pep talk to Buffalo.
(Though many people in Buffalo already know how cool it is!)
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Editor’s note: This piece was contributed by Ivy Hughes, a Lansing, Mich.- based journalist. Read more about her on our contributors page. -KG

Five years ago my husband and I moved from Colorado to Michigan — by choice — for a job in the mortgage industry. We knew we were taking a huge risk, but at the time we had no idea we were venturing into a storm of opportunity we would have missed had we stayed in an economically thriving state.
Michigan is the underdog the media loves and …

“Not everyone in Detroit sleeps on a steam vent or eats racoons for dinner. Detroit is still a place were life is led. People bicycle. People enjoy a sunny day in public spaces. People love.”

So writes Noah Stevens, creator of thepeopleofdetroit.com, a series of essays and photography highlighting the colorful, beautiful people of the Motor City.

Stevens was inspired to create this website in order balance some of the negative press the city has been subject to lately, be it from Time magazine or Dateline.

“It is simply meant to examine the people who played in serrated crabgrass and never got cut,” he writes. “Too badly, at least.”

Some good reporting from Tube City Almanac on the efforts of McKeesport, PA, to demolish vacant and abandoned properties.
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A native of Indianapolis, I could always tell that there was a difference between my hometown and Cleveland, where I lived for several years. Both were Midwest, working-class types of towns, but Indy was more suburban, less dense, kind of like Cleveland without the hard edges.

According to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, The State of Metropolitan America, understanding the differences between Indy and Cleveland — or Columbus, or Pittsburgh, or Minneapolis — is a crucial part of understanding each city’s individual fix. The 172-page report, which already has received praise from mainstream pundits such as David Broder, compiles data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to paint a demographic portrait of the United States, focusing on the 100 largest metropolitan areas.

The Atlantic magazine has a special section on ‘The Future of the City.’
There’s  lot of really interesting stuff here, from local currencies to Robert Moses.
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Check out these before and after pictures of St. Louis’ Crown Square, provided by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The once dilapidated commercial plaza has been restored as part of a larger neighborhood revitalization strategy led by the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, and it’s attracting national attention.

For more than two years, this revitalization effort has centered around an eight-block area in city’s Old North neighborhood.

“The new Crown Square will be mixed-use and walkable, containing apartments as well as commercial spaces, some sensitive new