Exciting news: There will be Jane’s Walks (neighborhood tour/walks in the spirit of urbanist Jane Jacobs) in both Cleveland and Pittsburgh -along with dozens of other cities- on Saturday.
Click here for more information about the walk Saturday, May 1, in Pittsburgh in the Polish Hill neighborhood (pictured above).
Click here for more information about the walk Saturday, May 1, in Cleveland in the Ohio City neighborhood.
It looks like John Morris at Digging Pitt (a frequent RustWire  reader and commenter) helped organize and push for this in these communities, so thanks for …

As strange as it sounds, it can happen, according to this recent story in the Pittsburgh City Paper.
“Even today, Cranberry retains some rugged rural terrain amidst the strip malls and drive-throughs. Cranberry may be a synonym for “suburban sprawl” for many, but local officials are trying to preserve those places — and environmentalists give them high marks for the effort.
Still, finding a connection with nature is a lot like my coyote encounter: If you blink, you may miss it,” the author writes.
What did the Pittsburgh-area suburb of Cranberry do? …

For the last two days, Cleveland State University has been hosting Lessons from Europe: Regional Governance and Economic Transformation in Older Industrial Cities.

The workshop is being put on by The German Marshall Fund of the United States with support from the Ford Foundation. On Friday, the group will be traveling to Detroit’s NextEnergy to do the whole thing again.

I had the opportunity to sit in on a speech from Professor Dr. Valentino Castellani, the former mayor of Torino, Italy, a city that has been called the Detroit of Europe.

The city was once the industrial capital of Italy, a one-company town where the economy centered around Fiat, the Italian car-maker which is headquartered there.

The Infrastructurist has an interesting post on seven major, urban, old-school freeways that should be torn down to improve aesthetics, neighborhoods, or even traffic.
Topping the list: Cleveland and the West Shoreway. Rust Wire (and many other observers) have complained that Cleveland does a very poor job of utilizing one of its strongest assets - its Lake Erie waterfront. One big reason: there’s a highway there preventing people from having easy waterfront access.
As the Infrastructurist points out, removing a big highway has been done before, notably in Milwaukee.
Other cities of interest …

Read about this group of urban planning students and their travels (so far) to Pittsburgh and Youngstown.
They’re on the road this week and still headed to Cleveland, Detroit, and Flint!

Since meeting with approval from the Ohio General Assembly in December, the new Cuyahoga County Landbank has spurred some creative rethinking for landuse in Cleveland.

Among the proposals:

It’s kinda nice to read a story about the housing crisis that isn’t set in my backyard (Cleveland) for once.
This time, my hometown of Columbus is front and center in the sad story of houses without owners. A neighborhood in west Columbus was found to have the highest vacancy rate in the country, according to an Associated Press analysis, based on Housing and Urban Development and Postal Service data.
This is kinda unusual because Columbus is generally regarded to be the golden child of Ohio in these parts.
I know the Columbus …