Check out the Great Lakes Law blog from The Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Detroit.
Here, you can read information about how invasive species (Asian Carp), global climate change and more can impact the Great Lakes.
-KG
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Editor’s note: This piece was contributed by Ivy Hughes, a Lansing, Mich.- based journalist. Read more about her on our contributors page. -KG

Five years ago my husband and I moved from Colorado to Michigan — by choice — for a job in the mortgage industry. We knew we were taking a huge risk, but at the time we had no idea we were venturing into a storm of opportunity we would have missed had we stayed in an economically thriving state.
Michigan is the underdog the media loves and …

From the Flint Journal via Flint Expatriates:
Former Genesee County Treasurer Daniel Kildee is pushing for reforms to allow local governments to sue property owners who don’t take care of their homes- the proposed system would allow the Genesee County Landbank to recover costs of cleaning and fixing up homes, according to Flint Expatriates.
I’m curious to see if this idea goes further. A few years ago, when I was writing stories about vacant properties in Lorain, Ohio, Kildee’s Genesee County Landbank was often cited as a model other cities should copy.
Kildee …

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
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Interesting post on the Next American City web site about high-tech firms in Lansing, Michigan converting old school buildings– “Thanks to their expansive plumbing systems, large spaces and impervious surfaces that allow for easy cleanup, the old schools are perfect lab settings,” one user told the magazine.

Furthermore, “Not only are these companies revitalizing the region’s economy by providing jobs, they’re also revitalizing neighborhoods. Unlike many newer schools that sit off of highway exits or in the middle of fields, Lansing’s old school buildings are smack in the middle of neighborhoods,” according to the story.

Thanks to Rust Wire reader Mark Golbach for pointing out this quirky but interesting map from the Floatingsheep blog:

What do those little dots represent? The relative concentration of listings of bowling alleys in the Google Maps directory, the Floatingsheep tells us, which are heavily concentrated in the Rust Belt. The highest index value is in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan.
Like the folks at Floatingsheep, however, I have no idea what this means. Interesting though.
-KG
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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.

Rust Wire readers know that Detroit frequently makes headlines for all the wrong reasons – crime, corruption, poverty, the list of negatives is long.
But this story from the Dallas Observer lavishes praise on at least one aspect of The Motor City — its farmers’ market, Eastern Market.
Having been to farmers’ markets across the Midwest, I can say that Detroit Eastern Market is unparalleled — it basically encompasses a whole neighborhood and is full of bustling market stalls, shops and restaurants.
The Observer article is bemoaning the state of farmers’ markets in …

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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Michigan led the nation in one-year population loss, dropping below 10 million residents for the first time in nearly a decade, according to this article from The Toledo Blade.
Michigan lost nearly 33,000 residents this year as its economy suffered in a recession that was particularly brutal for the US auto industry.
Still, over the past decade, Michigan has gained a total of about 31,000 residents, owing mostly to births and foreign immigration.
-AS
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