Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is preparing to launch a new, online business portal that will make it easier for businesses to operate and locate in the Motor City.
“We hear the horror stories of why businesses won’t come into the city of Detroit,” said Karla Henderson, part of Bing’s planning team. “So we know we need to change that perception.”
The $2 million system was designed by Detroit-based Compuware Corp. It is expected to save up to 100,000 staff hours annually.
Are you listening, Cleveland? Full story at Crain’s Detroit.
AS

Billions of dollars of infrastructure investment are needed to stop untreated sewage from Great Lakes cities that flows into the Lakes, according to a study released earlier this month.
From January 2009 through January of this year, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee and Gary, Indiana, discharged 41 billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm water into the Lakes, according to data analyzed by the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.
“The Great Lakes are under siege from sewage overflows,” Jeff Skelding, campaign director for the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, …

The folks at Brookings released a report Monday on the importance of exports to the economies of Great Lakes cities.
Among the findings:
- Exports support 1.95 million jobs in Great Lakes metros
- Cities in this region have some of the highest volumes (dollar-wise) of exports and the greatest reliance on exports. Out of the nation’s top 100 metro areas, Chicago ranks third and Detroit ranks ninth in total dollar volumes of exports. Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Indianapolis all rank in the top 20, the study states.
How does your city compare?
“Now …

Reporting from the third annual Great Lakes Urban Exchange Conference in Cleveland …

Fran DiDonato was tired of hearing people complain about Cleveland–idly complain without trying to influence. Out of that process, the Cleveland Coalition was born.

DiDonato and fellow Cleveland resident Gauri Torgalkar became part of a team of about 11 that started thinking about how engaged citizens could affect public decision-making for the future of the city.

The group that formed is known as the Cleveland Coalition. Their strategy is to educate, collaborate and then act.

Next time you hear about Detroit having no national chain grocery stores, consider this post from Detroit blog Sweet Juniper. It highlights the city’s Honey Bee Market and its amazing food and people.
Here’s some of his description, “while Detroit may not have any national grocery chains, we do have more urban farms and gardens than any other city in America and we boast some of the best independent grocers around,” he writes.
“Honey Bee Market, so close to downtown, has become sort of the de facto supermarket for all types of …

From Buffalo Rising: Read Urbanophile Aaron Renn’s pep talk to Buffalo.
(Though many people in Buffalo already know how cool it is!)
-KG

“Not everyone in Detroit sleeps on a steam vent or eats racoons for dinner. Detroit is still a place were life is led. People bicycle. People enjoy a sunny day in public spaces. People love.”

So writes Noah Stevens, creator of thepeopleofdetroit.com, a series of essays and photography highlighting the colorful, beautiful people of the Motor City.

Stevens was inspired to create this website in order balance some of the negative press the city has been subject to lately, be it from Time magazine or Dateline.

“It is simply meant to examine the people who played in serrated crabgrass and never got cut,” he writes. “Too badly, at least.”

I know. I know. We said these things were stupid. I’m not going to retract that statement.

However, for the sake of discussion, Portfolio has cataloged the “Top 100 Fun Cities” and there’s a few interesting items.

In their list, Chicago scores second, Minneapolis 10th, Detroit 14th, Syracuse and Rochester 15th and 16th, Cleveland comes in at 23 (just before Portland?!), Milwaukee is 25, Youngstown’s 28 and Buffalo’s 29.

So, as we’ve discussed, these things are all relative and Portfolio doesn’t provide a ton of information about their rating system.

Here it is, from Aaron Renn at Urbanophile.
Thanks to Rust Wire reader and Detroiter Claudia Raleigh for bringing this to our attention.
What do you think about the points he makes?
-KG

I have recently returned to Cleveland after several years in the “Capitol of the Midwest,” Chicago. Chicago is filled with Midwesterners from all corners, and those who have committed to living there have a mixture of disdain, pity, and guilty longing for the places they left behind. The opinion they expressed was that leaving Chicago for a smaller Midwestern city would stifle career ambitions and deprive one of big city amenities. All they saw outside Chicagoland was corn fields and closed factories. In a discussion of urban development, one economist (originally from upstate NY) asserted, “Detroit and Cleveland no longer have an economic reason for being.” When I told people in Chicago that I planned to return to Cleveland, most looked dejected and some said, “I’m sorry.”