The New York Times is carrying an interesting article about the city of Memphis and the shrinking ranks of the local black middle-class.
As a result of predatory lending and job loss, residents the majority-black city have seen decades of economic progress reversed, The Times reports. The article focuses on the role played by Wells Fargo, and outlines the mortgage lender’s targeted efforts to sell high-interest loans in black neighborhoods. The results are hallowed out neighborhoods and declining wealth for blacks and latinos in metro Memphis.
According to the article, the weath …

A native of Indianapolis, I could always tell that there was a difference between my hometown and Cleveland, where I lived for several years. Both were Midwest, working-class types of towns, but Indy was more suburban, less dense, kind of like Cleveland without the hard edges.

According to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, The State of Metropolitan America, understanding the differences between Indy and Cleveland — or Columbus, or Pittsburgh, or Minneapolis — is a crucial part of understanding each city’s individual fix. The 172-page report, which already has received praise from mainstream pundits such as David Broder, compiles data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to paint a demographic portrait of the United States, focusing on the 100 largest metropolitan areas.

Have you ever noticed, Obama likes to give his legislation long, convoluted names?
At the same time, this is an important one.
It might be more appropriately called Aid to Industrial Cities. (But obviously that might be politically sensitive. How does the old double-standard go again: farm aid = good, city aid = bad?) This piece of long-overdue legislation would establish competitive grants for revitalizing older industrial cities through the department of Housing and Urban Development. The Community Regeneration, Sustainability and Innovation Act would mostly help eliminate vacant housing, the profusion of …

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland yesterday signed legislation that will make it easier for cities to take control of vacant and abandoned properties.
The land bank legislation was championed by Cuyahoga County officials and urban policy advocates alike. It will allow county governments to establish land banks to clear the title to foreclosed homes and begin the process of returning the property to productive use.
Many Ohio Cities have long operated their own land banks. However, without a strong legal framework, local efforts have been challenging.
The state law is modeled after a program …

Good Magazine is reporting that four Detroit High Schools will begin training students to work at Wal-Mart.
Students will receive 10 credits for 11 weeks of job readiness preparation with the retail giant.
Advocates say it’s a good opportunity for students, given the city’s staggering unemployment rate.
Advocates for the poor say the students are being trained for dead-end jobs and lives of subserviance.

-AS

Between 2000 and 2008, large metropolitan areas saw their suburban poverty rates grow at twice the rate of inner cities, according to a new report by the Brookings Institution.
For example, in 2008, 23 percent more people were living in poverty outside the city of Cleveland’s borders than inside it. That’s a 44 percent jump since 2000, for a total of 9 percent of the suburban population. Meanwhile the number of poor in the city of Cleveland decreased, WCPN Ideastream reports.
Similar trends were reported in Akron and Youngstown.
Also of note:
-Social service …

Take a look at this column, published in Buffalo’s weekly Artvoice.
It reviews a book, Hope and Despair in the American City by Gerald Grant (Harvard University Press 2009), which examines school desegregation through metropolitan-wide school reorganization.
The premise? This work “compares the sorry recent history of Syracuse, New York with the glad success of Raleigh, North Carolina. One town tried desegregation within the boundaries of the old city and failed, and is dying, while the other town regionalized schools, and has been growing by leaps and bounds,” writes reviewer Bruce Fisher. (Fisher is …

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this Wall Street Journal article that traces the story of one home in the Motor City - and through that house, decades of history and change in the neighborhood and the city overall.
Spend a few minutes reading about 1626 W. Boston Boulevard, in Detroit’s Boston-Edison neighborhood, from its auto-industry origins to a subprime borrower.
-KG

I saw an interesting ad recently, previewing the Sundance Channel documentary Brick City.
The show will focus on Newark, New Jersey (a city that while not in the Rust Belt, has certainly had its share of problems), Mayor Cory Booker, and other city officials and residents, such as the chief of police, a gang member, and a youth counselor.
You can watch a number of clips from the show and read a bit about it on the web site.
We’ve written about Mayor Booker and his efforts to turn the city around on …

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.