I’m going to borrow an idea from this Cleveland Scene article, which asked a number of Clevelanders what they hoped for in 2010 for their city.
Among the responses: safer streets for walkers and cyclists, more neighborhood gardens, more tourists, a sports championship and many more goals.
What do you hope for your city in the coming year?
-KG
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The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has recommended the city of Gary merge with another political entity to ward off financial shortcomings.
The recommendation comes as a new state law will lower the allowable tax rates in the state, threatening the impoverished city’s revenues.

Which begs the question, what city, county or other political entity is going to voluntarily merge with Gary, Indiana?
When are midwestern states going to stop treating their cities as enemies?
This isn’t leadership, this is negligence.
-AS
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Though we often hear that manufacturing in this country is “dead” or “dying,” this article from the Harrisburg (Pa) Patriot-News shows the lengths some states and counties still go to — offering millions in tax incentives — to land manufacturing jobs.
The author spoke to folks who said these kinds of incentives are needed to woo businesses, and others who said their time has past, that pitting one region against another means everybody loses.
What do you think?
Is this a game states, counties and cities have to play? Or should they opt …

Check out this recent column by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Brian O’Neill.

He interviews ‘burgh native Don Carter, who recently retired president of Urban Design Associates and was named director of the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

For years, Carter tells O’Neill, he has hated the term “Rust Belt.” And he’s trying to get folks to start calling …the “Water Belt.”

In place of “Sun Belt?” Try “Drought Belt.” Cities here, Carter writes, “are low-density, auto-dependent, and survive on ever diminishing supplies of

As strange as it sounds, it can happen, according to this recent story in the Pittsburgh City Paper.
“Even today, Cranberry retains some rugged rural terrain amidst the strip malls and drive-throughs. Cranberry may be a synonym for “suburban sprawl” for many, but local officials are trying to preserve those places — and environmentalists give them high marks for the effort.
Still, finding a connection with nature is a lot like my coyote encounter: If you blink, you may miss it,” the author writes.
What did the Pittsburgh-area suburb of Cranberry do? …

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.

Reading the Digging Pitt blog recently, I want to second their call to have Pittsburgh (or any other Rust Belt city, for that matter) host a Jane’s Walk – a neighborhood walk in the spirit of urban thinker Jane Jacobs.
A number of other cities have done this and Pittsburgh – or Cleveland, Toledo, Buffalo, etc. – should all jump on the bandwagon.
Volunteer guides lead tours of various neighborhoods. From Digging Pitt, “Some tours focus on heritage sites, while others explore the nooks and crannies of the city. From great hangouts …

Our friends at Great Lakes Urban Echange (GLUE) alerted me to this event: a film screening Tuesday, (Nov. 24) at 7:30 pm at the Drexel Theater, located at 2254 E. Main Street, in Bexley, Ohio.
The film is The New Metropolis, about America’s first suburbs and the problems they face. For a more detailed explaination of the film, click the link to the movie’s web site (above), or read a more detailed explanation from Cincinnati CityBeat.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion. The screening is being hosted by Greater …

Carol Coletta has an awesome post up at GOOD. I’ve been skeptical of the concept of ‘regionalism’ for quite a while. For all the hype, all I’ve seen around me in Cleveland is suburban development at the expensive of the central city, Coletta provides some much needed clarity

Regionalism can be relatively easy to impose in regions with big, dominant core cities, such as New York and Chicago. In those regions, everyone knows what’s powering the economic engine, and no one can risk killing it off. The dominant city is favored, as it should be, in regional decisions because it’s in everyone’s clear interest to do so…

But in those regions with cities of equal size

It’s always terrible to hear about people losing their jobs — but it seems even worse in a bad recession and in a place like McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
Earlier this week, a call center that employed 600 – and had received considerable tax abatements from local governments – announced it would be shutting down.
You can read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s coverage, or the excellent post by McKeesport blogger Jason Togyer.
I think some (like Togyer) would say this situation shows the folly of expecting low-wage, easily outsourceable service jobs to replace the manufacturing jobs …