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.

Greater Ohio and the Brookings Institutional have released their long-awaited report, Restoring Prosperity: Transforming Ohio’s Communities for the Next Economy.
Among the findings, Ohio should consolidate local governments and school districts to reduce the local tax burden. The state should redirect manufacturing strength toward new technologies and maximize federal investment.
To compete, Ohio will need to reinvest in its metropolitan regions, which account for 81 percent of the state’s population and 87 percent of its GDP, the report states.
“Ohio’s seven largest metro areas concentrate slightly more than 75 percent of the state’s …

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 …

We at Rust Wire don’t like to toot our own horn that much.
But I just couldn’t help it after seeing this recent story in The New York Times about Buffalo’s lower west side neighborhood.
The story notes that this historically blue-collar Italian section of the city has recently become home to a number of different immigrant groups, such as people from Puerto Rico, Myamar and Somalia.
In a post about Buffalo back in March 2009, Rust Wire made this observation about the area:
“Our next stop was Niagara Street, on the city’s West …

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.

Let me start by saying I’m a little bit biased because my house is on this street. But I think an impartial observer would agree that Franklin Boulevard is probably the most important historic street on Cleveland’s west side.
See for yourself:

The street runs from W. 25th in Ohio City through the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood and into Cudell. In between there are dozens of beautifully restored Victorian homes. Most range in origin from the mid-1800s to early in the 20th Century.

The most famous of these is probably Franklin Castle (pictured above), …

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

The Economist Magazine is running a cautiously optimistic story about the future of Youngstown, paying tribute to recent downtown developments and the success of the Youngstown Business Incubator.
“Youngstown’s problems have been manifold,” The magazine writes. “But now there are a few signs that things are starting to improve.”

“One example is the Youngstown Business Incubator, which provides cheap office space and other assistance to start-ups that specialize in business software.
“Founded using government seed money 14 years ago in a part of downtown where few dared to venture, let alone start a …

I spent a great Sunday afternoon exploring what is surely one of Pittsburgh’s coolest neighborhoods - the South Side Slopes.
I was there as part of the StepTrek, an annual event that celebrates the neighborhood and raises funds for improvements and projects.
For those unfamiliar with the topography, Pittsburgh is a hilly city with numerous sets of steps (which are actual legal streets) -documented in this book.
The annual StepTrek gives participants maps and suggests they walk along one of several courses- seeing Realtor open houses, neighborhood churches, memorials, parks, an art studio, …