Next American City is carrying a very interesting story about Cleveland’s battle to return vacant land to productive use.

A collection of foundations, government agencies, nonprofit organizations and private citizens are collaborating to return agriculture to the city. What’s unique about Cleveland’s efforts, however, is the level or coordination and the overarching vision for a greener, more cohesive neighborhoods, according to the article.

The process has been dubbed, Reimagining a More Sustainable Cleveland and it has the support of the mayor, the state government and a handfull of well endowed foundations.

I’ve seen a lot of photo collections that pay homage to the city of Cleveland. Often times they focus on Cleveland’s grand monuments: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Quicken Loans Arena, the skyline over the lake. They don’t show abandoned buildings. They don’t show poor neighborhoods. These are the visitors and convention bureau’s version of Cleveland. They’re nice, but in my opinion they lack something.

That’s why I think the photography of Cleveland SGS is so refreshing. I don’t know if I’ve seen a collection of photos dedicated to Cleveland that was this honest, that captures Cleveland’s color and personality so well. If you’ve ever worked or lived in the city, you’re bound to find something that you recognize in Cleveland SGS’s 276 Flickr pages, something that has personal meaning to you, an experience you share with the community.

Rust Wire is very excited to share this newly released, original documentary by our own contributor, graduate student and photographer Sean Posey.

The past three decades have erased much of the city of Youngstown that my father and grandfather knew: An area once known as ” the city of homes” became known for widespread arson; a city once indelibly linked with steel and manufacturing became known as the grave yard of the American steel industry. Youngstown, much like Detroit, went from being
a symbol of the American dream to being a worst case example of the “urban crisis” that has engulfed so many of this country’s inner
cities.

Yet, we should not overlook the fact that much has changed for good in the Steel Valley.

The city of Cleveland’s residential tax abatement program has been a boon for the city, according to a study by researchers at Cleveland State University.

A series of tax abatements for new home construction and rehabilitation begun in 1987, jumpstarted new home construction in the city from a virtual standstill in the city. About 3,000 homes were built under the program, or 3.5 percent of the total housing stock in Cleveland. Including rehabilitations, about 5.7 percent, more than one in twenty homes, have been built or improved using tax abatements. This compared to 1980-83, when fewer than 20 new homes were built in the city each year.

Great article in the Plain Dealer about the city East Cleveland–Ohio’s poorest city–its new mayor and the seemingly impossible task of turning it around.

Gary Norton is young (37) and well educated (he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta and earned his master’s degree in public administration at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs). And that’s a big change in a city that has been characterized by political mismanagement and corruption. Former Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor was convicted on bribery charges in 2004.

Norton’s election has injected fresh hope in the largely black, inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, which has lost more than 1,500 homes to foreclosure in the past two years–about 500 per mile, the highest in the state.

You may have already seen this USA Today story on a suburban Atlanta congregation that wants to purchase a closed Buffalo church, take it apart, ship it to Georgia and rebuild it there.
Some groups say it is a great way to preserve an otherwise vacant and unused structure. (The Diocese closed the church in 2008 because of declining enrollment - an issue many of our cities have faced that we’ve written about on this blog before.) You can see the web site for the parish that wants to bring the …

Take a look at this CNN article about a Chinese firm with plans to build a “Chinese-style mega shopping mall” in Milwaukee.

“The cost of doing business there is very low,” Wu Li, president of Toward Group told CNN. “The people are friendly, the environment is peaceful and the pace of living is slow. It is a good place for Chinese enterprises to go abroad.”

The story explains Wu’s company recently purchased a dormant shopping complex in northwestern Milwaukee that was built in the 1970s, for $6 million. It will open the mall, renamed AmAsia, in August, according to CNN, part of a growing trend of Chinese investment in US real estate. That trend has mostly been in cities outside the Rust Belt –until now.

It seems everyone who’s interested in cities has an opinion about Richard Florida.

I’ve always had it in for him, since he wrote, “Who’s Your City?,” a book which instructed readers which city they should live in based on personal characteristics, as if that was a rational way to choose a place to live.

When I was working at a newspaper in Toledo a coworker of mine began researching “Who’s Your City” for an article because Toledo was listed as the 12th (13th, 14th?) best mid-sized city to be a committed gay couple. The story had to be killed midway through, however, because the margin of error on the statistic was approximately 50 percent.

Well, Florida is gearing to go to the presses again in April with, “The Great Reset,” in which he argues that the recession has fundamentally reshaped the economic landscape. This tome may be more controversial because of its premise that the new economy will divide the country into geographic winners and losers.

It also happens that many of these “losers” paid Florida a hefty fee to explain how their cities could be made Meccas for the hip, highly-educated population that is so essential to prosperity, according to Florida’s teachings.

Take a look at this column from the Gary Post-Tribune.

This Indiana city has had casinos since the 1990s, and yet they haven’t really brought the economic development that was promised, this writer believes.

“The Gary casinos haven’t been a complete flop. They have provided jobs and tax revenue of up to $25 million a year to the city,” he writes. “But, the economic development hasn’t followed.”

And keep in mind…Gary is just a short drive from the metropolis of Chicago. And one of those casinos had the Trump name on it, according to the story.

The road to recovery begins in Youngstown, Ohio.

That was the take, at least, from Reuters reporter Nick Carey in a special report on national economic recovery.

“Today, the city immortalized by Bruce Springsteen’s 1995 Rust-Belt anthem ‘Youngstown’ is moving on,” Carey writes.

“Among other things, it has created an incubator to attract the types of small businesses that are expected to drive future growth. Despite the thousands of vacant homes that serve …