Cleveland residents,
The Great Lakes Urban Exchange is hosing its third annual conference in Cleveland this year.
The group, which aims to share ideas and best practices for revitalizing Great Lakes cities, has a survey about how how the conference can best be used for “ACTION, rather than agendas.”
The group is “issuing this preemptive survey to help us plan conference activities that will be immediately actionable, useful, and effective in answering the needs of the ‘do-ers’ who are making Cleveland a healthier, more sustainable, more equitable and successful city.”
Find out more and …

It seems everyone who’s interested in cities has an opinion about Richard Florida.

I’ve always had it in for him, since he wrote, “Who’s Your City?,” a book which instructed readers which city they should live in based on personal characteristics, as if that was a rational way to choose a place to live.

When I was working at a newspaper in Toledo a coworker of mine began researching “Who’s Your City” for an article because Toledo was listed as the 12th (13th, 14th?) best mid-sized city to be a committed gay couple. The story had to be killed midway through, however, because the margin of error on the statistic was approximately 50 percent.

Well, Florida is gearing to go to the presses again in April with, “The Great Reset,” in which he argues that the recession has fundamentally reshaped the economic landscape. This tome may be more controversial because of its premise that the new economy will divide the country into geographic winners and losers.

It also happens that many of these “losers” paid Florida a hefty fee to explain how their cities could be made Meccas for the hip, highly-educated population that is so essential to prosperity, according to Florida’s teachings.

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 …

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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Don’t let the sunshine in the photos fool you.

It was a cold one in Tremont on Sunday, as temperatures in the low 30s heralded winter’s tightening reins on Cleveland. But the weather didn’t deter over 100 cyclists and pedestrians from rallying in support of a path to connect them to downtown. United States Representative Dennis Kucinich made an appearance, pledging his word for a path with a letter to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.

From the neighborhood on Cleveland’s west side, a leap over the milky Cuyahoga River, bikers rode and walkers strode to the lawn at Carnegie Avenue and Ontario Street. The broad swath of concrete is one of the largest intersections in the city, linking downtown to I-90 and I-77.

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), …

Great Lakes Urban Exchange is bringing its “I Will Stay If” campaign to Cleveland tomorrow.
If you’re in the Cleveland metro area, stop by Speakeasy Bar, 1948 West 25th Street, between 5:30 and 8 p.m. Hear from speakers Lillian Kuri, Randell McShepard, and Matt Zone. Connect with like-minded urban advocates.
Also, tell local leaders what you want from your city.
Here’s mine: “I will stay in Cleveland if the city finally coordinates its traffic signals and takes down the 300 that are completely unnecessary.”
-AS
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Creative urban planners, like University of Virginia’s Dr. Timothy Beatley, are seeing green innovation in smaller nooks and crannies—alleys, façades, neighborhoods—that can spur urban makeovers. The movement is dubbed “green urbanism”.

Dr. Timothy Beatley, author and University of Virginia’s sustainable communities professor and guru, shed his light on a packed house at Cleveland’s Natural History Museum Friday night (Nov. 14).

Invoking examples from mostly European cities that have embraced green innovation in dense urban pockets—Copenhagen, Melbourne, Freiburg, Stockholm—Beatley submitted that “a city ought to be

Next April is going to be a very bad time to be a transit-rider in Cleveland if RTA moves forward with proposed service cuts. For a system that’s been devastated with fare hikes and service cuts over the past few years, this might just be RTA’s nail in the coffin.

Something particularly important that caught my eye in the Plain Dealer story is this quote from RTA’s general manager, Joe Calabrese:
“We will spread the cuts among the seven days,” [Calabrese] said. “The staff feels it is more detrimental to have any …