The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the Obama administration has earmarked $400 million for Ohio’s plan to link Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Cleveland via high-speed rail.
From The Dispatch:
Ohio officials are banking on federal stimulus money for most or all of the estimated $517.6 million they say they need to improve existing freight rail to passenger standards and to buy trains.

“This is some of the best news we have had in a long time,” Senator Sherrod Brown said. “If I put my ear down to the rail I think I hear …

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
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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
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I took off on a road trip across the Rust Belt this summer both because I saw it as a potential for some good stories (which you can find here) and because it seemed like a great opportunity to visit a part of the country that I knew solely through reading and conversation. I also veered a bit out of the Rust Belt’s traditional boundaries to do a story for NPR’s Latino USA (scroll down and then listen here) on immigrant urban farmers in Cincinnati.

And it turns out I wasn’t the only person with such ideas. One group of planning students from Department of Urban Planning at the University of Illinois made a similar trip, calling it “Rust Belt Road Trip.” Another group did the same thing as well. It has to be more than the catchy alliteration–there must be something in the air.

A study by a University of Michigan researcher has confirmed what we already knew: City residents pay more taxes.

“Workers in expensive cities in the Northeast, Great Lakes and Pacific regions bear a disproportionate share of the federal tax burden, effectively paying 27 percent more in federal income taxes than workers with similar skills in a small city or rural area,” according to The Atlantic.

The study asserts that city residents have higher incomes than their rural counterparts, but also contend with higher cost of living. This holds for not only pricey cities like L.A. and New York, but also Detroit.

The Toledo Blade reports the number of community gardens in Lucas and Wood counties is increasing significantly – from 30 to 81 in the last eight years.
A number of the gardens were showcased on a recent public tour. The Blade reported some gardens even raise chickens and turkeys, and feature art to add vibrancy to the neighborhood.
The article goes on to add,”Raising thousands of pounds of food, these gardens are located at churches, schools, and in empty lots. Typically grown in improved soils without pesticides or chemicals, the vegetables feed …

David Frum of the conservative American Enterprise Institute has written an interesting (albeit pessimistic) account of what went wrong in Detroit (everyone’s favorite topic).

In his National Post article “What Killed Detroit,” Frum argues that poisonous race relations and an insufficient commitment to arts and culture sealed the city’s fate long before the auto giants crumbled.

“The collapse of the automobile industry seems the obvious answer. But is it a sufficient answer?,” he wonders. “The departure of meatpacking did not kill Chicago. Pittsburgh has staggered forward from the demise of steelmaking. New York has lost one industry after another: shipping, garment-manufacture, printing, and how many more?”

This story highlights a Colorado community where a Danish company is scheduled to open the world’s biggest factory making towers for wind energy, The New York Times reports.
It is also “one of the last cities in the country where steel is poured for making rail,” according to the article.
“Steelworkers have toiled in this unlikely spot in south-central Colorado since the days of the cowboys and the railroad barons. Renewable energy, on the other hand, is a new concept, mostly on the horizon.”
It is interesting to read the comments of some …

Youngstown scored a feature story in Entrepreneur Magazine, which is raking among the top ten towns to start a small business including Atlanta, Las Vegas and Portland.
Youngstown’s highly successful business incubator for software start-ups plays center stage in the upbeat story about a down-and-out down that’s rallying for a new direction.
Check out the lede:
“Sure, Youngstown may not have the economic firepower of other cities on this list, but it has one important commodity in spades: hope.”
This is exactly the kind of coverage Youngstown has been hoping for every time some …

All you members of GLUE – Great Lakes Urban Exchange- may remember hearing (and seeing!) Will Allen and learning about his amazing urban farm, Growing Power, in Milwaukee.
In fact, we at Rust Wire featured some photos from Growing Power back in March.
Now, The New York Times has noticed Allen and the work he is doing.
For those of you not familiar with the project, Growing Power is  “14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing …