Look out, Silicon Valley.
Read the report from Brookings here, which notes the success Rust Belt cities have had in attracting skilled immigrants.
The report notes:
“Perhaps most notable is the very high concentration of high-skilled immigrants in older industrial metro areas in the Midwest and Northeast such as Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Syracuse. Detroit, for instance, has 144 high-skilled immigrants for every 100 low-skilled immigrants. Immigrants in these metropolitan areas tilt toward high-skill because they blend earlier arriving cohorts who have had time to complete higher education with newcomers …

Very interesting story in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal about the difficulties of consolidating local governments and local government services.

It focuses on Michigan and Governor Rick Snyder’s push to consolidate some of its many units of government (1,773 municipalities, 609 school districts, 1,071 fire departments and 608 police departments, according to the story).

Though mergers might make fiscal sense, they aren’t always popular, as the story explains:

It’s that time of year again, guys! That time of year where I have an uncontrolled aneurysm as the result of the stupidity of Cleveland Magazine’s anticipated “Rating the Suburbs” issue.

Every year this plastic-surgeon-supported pamphlet makes a list of the most car-centric, culturally vapid, soulless tract-housing white-people ghettos in Northeast Ohio. Whichever suburb is the whitest, with the most big-box stores, is generally the runaway favorite for top prize.

Case in point is this year’s winner: Richfield Village. Does anyone want to guess what the racial makeup of this community is? Come on, guess! At the last Census, the village of Richfield was 96% white and 2% African American. You’d be hard pressed to find a whiter place in the region.

More than 50 US cities are competing to win a $1 million prize if they increase their number of college-educated residents.
The Talent Dividend Prize will be awarded by CEOs for Cities to the metropolitan area that exhibits the greatest increase in the number of post-secondary degrees granted per capita over a three-year period, the organization announced recently.
Competing cities include: Akron, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago; Cleveland, Dayton, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Rochester, St. Louis and Youngstown.
Read the complete list of competing cities and more details here. Is your city on the …

The answer is: ‘Yes.’ That’s according to MinnPost writer Steve Berg in a column about a proposed Minneapolis gaming venture.
He writes:
“aside from Las Vegas, a fantasy island built on gambling and tourism, I’m unaware of any U.S. city that has built a casino for any reason other than desperation. Failing Rust Belt cities build casinos. Detroit and Pittsburgh have them. Cleveland and Cincinnati are joining the list. Saginaw and Lansing, Mich., and Rockford, Ill., want to build them.”
I’d also add Milwaukee; Gary, Indiana and Erie, Pennsylvania to that list. I’m sure there’s …