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
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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 …

The Associated Press has conducted an inventory of the 128 auto plants closed by the Big Three since 1980 and the results are discouraging.
Only about three in five has been repurposed for a new use. Those that have been reopened are employing far few workers at lower wages.

“The cost is going to be borne by the next generation,” said James Rubenstein, a professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, who has studied U.S. auto plant closings and openings. “It’s the children and grandchildren of the laid-off workers. They won’t have …

We’ve all heard and read plenty about how Rust Belt cities can use their vacant lands as space for urban farms and community gardens.
This article from the Los Angeles Times says some folks believe they could even make a profitable investment. Michigan native and financier John Hantz has invested an initial $30 million of his own money toward purchasing equipment and land in Detroit, according to the article.
-KG
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Interesting article about the state of General Motors from Scripps Howard.

Despite the car maker’s highly publicized reorganization this year, GM still leads the nation in market share with about 20 percent of the total, down from 22 percent in 2008.

Consumers seem to have shrugged off the auto maker’s reorganization, according to tis article. This is particularly true of Chinese consumers who have revived the popularity of the Buick.

Meeting Chinese demand will be critical because the country surpassed the US as the biggest consumer of automobiles this year.

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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The Washington Post sent Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Michael Williamson and reporter Anne Hull to Youngstown and Warren recently to document how the recession is affecting former steel towns.
The pair found newly shuttered businesses and former industrial workers struggling to stay afloat in lower-paying, more-competitive, service-based economy.
The story begins at Uptown Gems where working class people come to sell their valuables following layoffs or pay reductions.
“At campaign time, they are celebrated as the people who built America,” Hull writes. “Now they just want to know how much they can get for …

Reading this Wall Street Journal piece about “pranksters” causing “mischief” in Detroit’s abandonded buildings totally pissed me off.
It sounded more like wanton destruction for the sake of destruction to me.
The article details how this group used sledgehammers to break down this wall and push a truck out of a fourth story window in the old Packard plant (a site we’ve previously highlighted on this blog). They even videotaped their caper.
I don’t fault people for wanting to go inside and explore these old structures – I’ve done it myself. But wrecking …

Among the theories about the cause of the demise of Detroit, this one’s one of my personal favorites.
According to this article published in The Pop Up City, auto culture, specifically sprawl, literally drained the life out of Detroit.

“The Detroit exodus began emerging right after the moment the car industry started to boom,” says writer Joop De Boer.
“Detroit’s population halved within 50 years, changing the city from a vibrant metropolis into an urban vacuum.”
“For years all over the world the economically strongest have chosen to leave the inner cities, and find …

What can Las Vegas learn from the Rust Belt? Quite a bit, according to this article in the Las Vegas Sun.
Not to toot our own horn, but this story references Rust Wire, and our own Angie Schmitt!
I thought this story was well-written, and made an interesting comparison: though many wouldn’t think of it this way, Las Vegas and Detroit are both one-industry towns – Vegas’ industry of course, being tourism.
The author definitely did his homework- and talked to a number of knowledgeable folks in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Boston and elsewhere.
I …