Who is benefiting from the strides being made to redevelop the city of Youngstown?
That is the question posed by Center for Working Class Studies at Youngstown State University, in a critical article titled “A Renaissance for Whom?”

The authors point out that despite the success of high-tech start-ups in the city’s downtown, the average city resident has seen her fortunes decline during the current recession. And the situation wasn’t pretty before that.
“Much has been written recently about Youngstown’s Renaissance,” write YSU professors James Rhodes and John Russo on the CWCS’s blog. …

” A long time ago, things got broken here.”

“People got sad and left.”

“Maybe the world gets broken so we can have some work to do.”

“People think there aren’t any frontiers anymore. They can’t see that there are frontiers all around us.”

-Braddock, Pennsylvania

This is the script from a relatively new Levi’s commercial.

Video after the jump.

For years, environmentalists have pushed for the development of green and energy-efficient technologies as a way to curb climate change and prevent a future ecological catastrophe.

But Thursday morning, speaking to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning D.C.-based think tank, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm said that focusing on global warming is the wrong message — if you really want to grab Americans’ attention, focus on the economic opportunities in a greener economy — especially for auto-dependent areas.

“The bottom line is, that if we’re not talking about jobs, then it’s not going to resonate across the country,” Granholm said, speaking to about 100 people in the CAP’s downtown office. “Maybe that’s just my view as a governor from the industrial Midwest.”

Reporter Peter Annin is an expert on all things Great Lakes-related: the environmental importance of the lakes and how they could be impacted by climate change, and the politics of water and water-sharing agreements involving the lakes and more.

He is the author of Great Lakes Water Wars, a book which details the political fighting and compromises surrounding the Great Lakes Compact – the agreement between the eight US states and two Canadian provinces that border the lakes and governs any diversion of lake water.

He is …

Reporting from the third annual Great Lakes Urban Exchange Conference in Cleveland …

Fran DiDonato was tired of hearing people complain about Cleveland–idly complain without trying to influence. Out of that process, the Cleveland Coalition was born.

DiDonato and fellow Cleveland resident Gauri Torgalkar became part of a team of about 11 that started thinking about how engaged citizens could affect public decision-making for the future of the city.

The group that formed is known as the Cleveland Coalition. Their strategy is to educate, collaborate and then act.

In the name of protecting water quality in Lake Erie and the state’s streams, the State of Ohio has developed a voluntary, incentive-based program for sustainable development.
It’s full of really good stuff, for example:

Identify priority development and conservation areas.
Offer incentives like density bonuses, streamlined review processes, and design flexibility for development in priority areas.
Evaluate existing zoning codes, review processes, and regulations for disincentives to desirable development practices, and set policy for correcting the disincentives.
Establish regulations that prohibit construction in the wetland and riparian setback area.
Encourage compact neighborhood development, historic preservation …

There’s a group of young people living in a boarded-up mansion in Buffalo.
They don’t pay rent. In fact, they try to avoid using money altogether.
This group is part of an ideology known as Freeganism. They live lives of scavengers, convinced that society wastes too much.

What better place, then, than Buffalo, with its surfeit housing stock?
“It has a beautiful backyard with a lot of blackberry bushes!” a young resident tells the New York Times. With a handful of other misfits, Kit lives in the three-story house, which boasts 1,224 square feet …

“Go Home Buckeyes,” was the caption in an article in The Charleston City Paper published this spring.

The command was wrapped around a brick in the photo. The subhead was “worthless nuts.”

“They have gelled hair, wear cargo shorts, vertical-lined shirts, and, if you’re really lucky, high black-and-white socks with tennis shoes,” says a “sixth generation Charlestonian.”

The article continues: “Each spring they attack the city, gumming pralines and Hyman’s hush puppy samples. Their legions are strong, and their numbers are growing. They’re called Ohioans.”

Angry Charlestonians have also created a website Gobacktoohio.com, according to the article.

Why can’t Youngstown redevelop its downtrodden neighborhoods the same way Philadelphia has?

Willy Staley asks Youngstown Community Organizer Phil Kidd this question in the latest issue of Next American City.

“The most straightforward, and obvious problem for cities in decline is the way that the Department of Housing and Urban Development doles out its funds,” Staley writes. “The grants are not competitive; cities must apply, but the size of the grant is determined by a formula.”

The formula is weighted by population, so as Youngstown bleeds population, its HUD money shrinks as well. Meanwhile, the destruction caused by vacancy and abandonment cries out for attention.

From Buffalo Rising: Read Urbanophile Aaron Renn‘s pep talk to Buffalo.
(Though many people in Buffalo already know how cool it is!)
-KG
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