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Monday, April 9th, 2012

Replay: “James Drain” Hits Cleveland

The ten story of mural of LeBron James is coming down in Cleveland. This one hurts. James wasn’t just the latest embodiment of Cleveland’s hopes, he was a local kid who, unlike so many, had stayed home in Northeast Ohio. His joining of the Cleveland exodus at a time of severe economic distress prompted Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert to pen a now infamous open letter to fans:

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier…..The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor NEVER will betray you….This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown “chosen one” sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And “who” we would want them to grow-up to become….

Forty years of frustration boiled over in that letter. Gilbert is from Detroit, but perhaps that’s why he too shares these feelings so viscerally.

Cleveland’s “Big Thing Theory”

In a sense though, Cleveland’s disappointment was inevitable. LeBron James was never going to turn around the city. No one person or one thing can. Unfortunately, Cleveland has continually pinned its hopes on a never-ending cycle of “next big things” to reverse decline. This will never work. As local economic development guru Ed Morrison put it, “Overwhelmingly, the strategy is now driven by individual projects….This leads to the ‘Big Thing Theory’ of economic development: Prosperity results from building one more big thing.”

These have all failed, now even “King James”. The trend lines haven’t changed, even where the individual projects have done well. But often even that hasn’t happened. For example, the Flats, a once-thriving entertainment district in an old warehouse district, now resembles, as one local comedian put it, a “Scooby Doo ghost town.”

Combating “James Drain”

James’ departure also fits the narrative of generalized anxiety around “brain drain” and cities losing their best and brightest of each generation. As lots of people really have left Cleveland, this is understandable. But the real story is much more complex. A look at IRS tax return data shows that in reality Cleveland doesn’t have especially high out-migration. Its metro out-migration rate* in 2008 was 28.02. Miami’s was 40.34 and for even the boomtown of Atlanta it was 38.95. Not only is Cleveland not losing an especially high number of people, you can actually argue it is losing too few. A big part of the problem in Cleveland’s economy is that too many people are stuck there.

Conversely, a real migration problem is that too few people are moving in. As local attorney Richard Herman noted, “New York City and Chicago, like most major cities, see significant out-migration of their existing residents each year. What is atypical is that Cleveland does not enjoy the energy of new people moving in.” The Cleveland metro in-migration rate was only 22.19. Miami’s was 30.36 and Atlanta’s a robust 51.91.

Cities need new blood. Cleveland isn’t getting it. Its circulatory system is shut down. Cleveland needs more natives to leave and more newcomers to arrive. Both sides win. Those Cleveland departees will move on to be part of the new energy other cities so desperately need. James is going to get to live the high life he wants in South Beach, but somebody else will be fired up to get the opportunity to play in Cleveland.

Selling Cleveland

But that begs the question, what’s going to get more people to move to Cleveland? The fact is, James wasn’t getting the job done, and never would. Nor will amenities like the Cleveland Orchestra or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.

The mistake Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities make is that they are too worried about the likes of LeBron James moving to Miami. For people with the means and the desire to choose a place like South Beach, Cleveland simply can’t compete. And let’s not forget, James snubbed Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles too.

Rather than trying to take on the Chicagos, Miamis, and New Yorks of this world at their strongest points, Cleveland would be far better served ceding that market and fighting where it can best compete. Believe it or not, not everyone wants to live in a huge global city. There are plenty of people who might choose to live in Cleveland, if the city focused on the basic blocking and tackling of city services, quality of life, and business climate instead of splashy grands projets. As Anthony Bourdain said this week:

I think that troubled cities often tragically misinterpret what’s coolest about themselves. They scramble for cure-alls, something that will “attract business”, always one convention center, one pedestrian mall or restaurant district away from revival. They miss their biggest, best and probably most marketable asset: their unique and slightly off-center character….Cleveland is one of my favorite cities. I don’t arrive there with a smile on my face every time because of the Cleveland Philharmonic.

In short, Cleveland needs less South Beach, less Chicago Loop, and more American Splendor. Ultimately, my bet is Cleveland will end up missing Harvey Pekar a lot more than it will any multi-millionaire sports star.

Shooting the Messenger

Who is going to get that message out about Cleveland? After that sendoff, it sure won’t be LeBron James. That’s a shame. As Jim Russell has richly illustrated, people make migration – and investment – decisions based on knowledge, not just information. Nobody picks a city to live in by entering reams to statistics into a sixteen tab spreadsheet. They’re more likely to move to be near family, friends, or places they know. That knowledge comes from first hand experience – and trusted recommendations.

Until the switch flips on Cleveland’s brand, it needs to be out earning that trust of prospective residents. The people who’ve left aren’t Judases, they’re your field sales force – or at least they should be. James could have been a missionary “Witness” for Cleveland in a foreign land. Instead, Cleveland blew an enormous opportunity, and left itself with little more than soured memories and a partially demolished mural as an ephemeral reminder of yet another failed Next Big Thing.

* Tax return exemptions migrating per 1000 overall tax return exemptions in the base year.

This post originally appeared at New Geography on July 14, 2010.

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

How Demolition Came to Mean Stabilization by Rob Pitingolo

[ Since I know the bulk of my readers have no interest in a bridge project in Louisville, I'm also running a full slate of regular articles this week, making this perhaps the biggest week ever at the Urbanophile.

This one is a follow-up to the 60 Minutes segment on demolitions in Cleveland by urbanist blogger Rob Pitingolo - Aaron. ]

Yesterday’s lead story on 60 Minutes was about vacancy and abandonment in Cleveland. This is an issue that hits close to home for me.

I started studying the problem in 2008. Back then the pressing question was how to target HUD money to strategically knock down blighted houses. The amount of money that HUD had to distribute wasn’t nearly enough to take down all the vacant and abandoned houses, so using it wisely was key, and it still is.

I want to emphasize that even though 60 minutes may have opened a lot of eyes to demolition in Cleveland, it’s not something that’s new. The idea of knocking down houses as the means to saving neighborhoods may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s been the prevailing strategy for several years now. Detroit has been following a similar strategy as well.

I do want to add something to the 60 Minutes analysis – a piece of the story that I don’t always feel gets told. Foreclosures may have fueled vacancy in Cleveland, but foreclosure is not the only reason why it’s such a big problem.

When homes go into foreclosure, they should get taken by banks and sold at auction for the price they’re worth, allowing investors to pick them up and rehabilitate, or allowing new buyers to own a home for a price they can afford. But banks themselves are walking away from these homes, because they’re literally worth zero dollars. When you look at it at the scale of the metro area, you realize that there is a big glut of housing supply on the market that’s driving down prices across the board, and in these extreme cases, all the way down to zero.

Believe it or not, the house I lived in before I moved to DC went through foreclosure. In 2008, the bank holding the delinquent mortgage sold it for $23,500 to an owner who rehabbed it, and then sold it the following spring for $96,000 (these numbers are all public record, in case you were curious). This is what should happen in a healthy market. Foreclosure shouldn’t necessarily mean vacancy, but too often in Cleveland, it does.

The Cleveland metro area is made up of the five counties around Cleveland – Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga, Lorain and Medina. Between 2000 and 2010, two important but divergent trends emerged:

• The population of the Cleveland metro area fell roughly 3 percent.
• The number of housing units in the 4 counties excluding Cuyahoga grew more than 13 percent.

In other words, homes kept getting built between 2000 and 2010, even as people were fleeing the metro area. And most of these new houses were getting built in the suburban fringe counties. If you want to understand why there’s an oversupply of housing in the Cleveland area, look no further than these counties.

The fact that there were more houses but fewer potential buyers created an imbalance. When houses started to go vacant, no potential buyers stepped up because there were no potential buyers out there. If there had been potential buyers, houses might have gone through the process that my former house did. Many instead became vacant, because folks looking to buy a house had plenty of areas to look, and the weakest neighborhoods were obviously the first to go rotten.

But there’s more. Now that the bulldozers are starting to demolish houses and even entire blocks in the name of stabilization, it’s creating a metro area where tons of vacant undeveloped land is being created in the urban core, while developers are simultaneously building on greenfields in the fringe counties. Slowly but surely, it’s creating a “donut hole” that will make the entire metro area weaker.

Getting urban neighborhoods stabilized should rightly be the top priority, and Cleveland has decided that demolition is the best way to accomplish it. Unfortunately, years or sprawl and overbuilding, fueled by a foreclosure crisis, has created this reality. Further sprawl isn’t going to make the situation on the ground any better.

This post originally appeared in Extraordinary Observations on December 19, 2011.

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

60 Minutes: There Goes the Neighborhood

A few weeks ago (I think, based on the date of the page), 60 Minutes did a segment on the housing crisis and especially how it is affecting Cleveland. The video is embedded below, but for those of you in Google Reader or a similar platform, it probably won’t show up, so if it doesn’t, click here to watch it.

What I find most disturbing about this video is how banks and institutions have walked away from these homes at the same time that whatever residual value is left in the neighborhoods is provided by those families who are underwater and financially struggling, yet see paying their mortgage as a debt of honor. In other words, just how everyone else used to look at things.

I’ve seen a lot of writing about how the financial crisis, the Ponzi schemes, the insider trading deals, the special favors and cronyism are eroding the “high trust” nature of our economy in ways that could affect its functioning for a long time to come. It isn’t hard to see this happening. Sooner or later the people who operate on traditional good faith principles of deal making are going to realize that such a high percentage of America operates on purely the personal cost/benefit calculus of the now that anyone who does things “the old fashioned” way is a chump. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Are Food Deserts Exaggerated? by Angie Schmitt

Much has been made of the food desert phenomenon afflicting the industrial Midwest.

GOOD Magazine, Dateline, NBC and countless others have weighed in on the apparent market failure that causes grocery stores to shun cities like Detroit and Cleveland like a bad case of head lice.

Detroit’s grocery stores, or food markets

This whole storyline reached a fever pitch earlier this year when it was widely circulated that the city of Detroit — all 140 miles of it — lacked a single grocery store. This was, of course, patently false. A quick Google search shows that there are dozens, even hundreds, of foodsellers populating Detroit’s neighborhoods.

What type of grocer does business in down-and-dirty Detroit? One example is the Honey Bee Market, a family-owned business that has been operating in the city for five decades. It carries a wide selection of Central American ingredients, in addition to plenty of fruits and vegetables. The store was voted “most fun” by Detroit’s Metro Times.

So how did the Wall Street Journal, Dateline and NBC get it so wrong about Detroit? I argue that it is all about semantics, along with a large dose of cultural relativism.

The argument about food deserts seems to be premised on the assumption that supermarkets — suburban-style, big-box, corporate chain stores with plenty o’ parking — are inherently superior to walkable, family owned food markets that serve low-income populations. The media portrays these corner markets as liquor stores or “discount” stores carrying little fresh produce and lots of Hostess cupcakes.

While there is certainly a class of convenience store that lacks healthy food options, many analyses have completely ignored the presence of small, family-owned food markets and their important role in feeding urban populations.

The USDA — which recently released its “food desert locator” to wide fanfare — admits to using “supermarkets and large grocery stores as a proxy for sources of healthy and available food.” Mary Reardon, a spokesperson for USDA said, “We define supermarkets and large grocery stores as food stores with at least $2 million in [annual] sales that contain all the major food departments found in a traditional supermarket.”

“We do not address smaller outlets that have fresh food,” she said. But she added that there are some local studies that have examined the issue. Here definitions are important. One of the two studies cited by the USDA [PDF] showed that depending on which definitions are employed, between 17 and 87 percent of New Orleans is a food desert.

To say that food sellers who do more than $2 million in business provide fresh food and those who sell less do not is a rough estimate to say the least. In fact, in my experience, it’s false. According to the locator, I live right on the border of a USDA-defined “food desert.” The thing is, I’ve never had better access to food in my life. The corner market by my house is exactly the type of place the USDA or CNN would ignore. The Deli, as it’s called, is kind of shabby looking from the outside and there’s no way it’s more than 10,000 square feet. But I love it.

The Deli in Cleveland is a small food seller, but it carries all the essentials. Photo: Angie Schmitt

It’s run by a family. They sell fresh-sliced cold cuts, fresh fruits and veggies. They have everything you’d need on a day-to-day basis, at prices I think are more than fair. I know because it’s helped me many times in a pinch. You can get eggs, potatoes, grapes, cheese (real cheese), sardines and even even pulpo (octopus) in a can. And of course you can also get essentials like band-aids, cheap beer, good beer, baby formula, toilet paper and macaroni and cheese. I have a recipe that calls for Jiffy corn bread mix and sour cream. They have them both.

It’s not the only market within a short walk from my house; there are literally half a dozen. There’s a Vietnamese market that I’ve grown to like for its unusual baked goods, selection of fish and exotic produce including escarole. There is Stockyard Meats, a family-owned butcher and general grocery, where you can order a whole pig for roasting. Right next door is a Save-A-Lot, which is a grocery in every other sense than the USDA/CNN definition. It’s no Whole Foods, but it has produce, meat, canned goods, frozen foods at prices that are appropriate for the neighborhood’s median household income ($25,000 at the last Census).

Just over a mile away is a “traditional” grocery store, by USDA definition, with a fish counter and a dairy aisle. It’s an easy trip by bike. But most of my neighbors, the low-income folks that that these types of studies are generally concerned with, don’t drive and don’t bother making the trek. And why would they? You can get everything you need in a short walk.

What the USDA fails to realize is that if food stores are located very close to your house, they needn’t be as large. You can pop in many times a week and pick up a light enough load to carry. That’s what many of my neighbors and I do. As a result, we don’t need SUVs. We don’t need acres of asphalt. Our neighborhoods are more livable thanks to corner markets.

What The Deli lacks in selection, it makes up for in accessibility. I’ll take walkability over 50 kinds of cereal and 14 kinds of peanut butter any day of the week.

Women haul groceries on foot in near west Cleveland. Photo: Angie Schmitt

As for the claim that that small food stores are unfairly exploiting their consumers, even the USDA’s analysis doesn’t support that conclusion. A 2009 study by the agency [PDF] found that those in the lowest income bracket (those that make between $8,000 and $30,000 annually) pay just 1.3 percent more than those in the next highest income bracket for food. Factor in the fact that many of these folks don’t need to pay for gas, car insurance and maintenance, and suddenly walkable food markets start to seem like a bargain.

Why does all this matter? The food desert problem, at least the way it’s been framed, seems to make a strong argument for cities to offer tax incentives for suburban-scale grocery stores to enter the city. Indeed the Obama Administration has offered $400 million to help expand food access in American food deserts. But if a big, corporate supermarket gets an unfair, taxpayer-funded boost, what will that mean for The Deli or Stockyard Meats?

There is a very logical, business explanation for why this hasn’t occurred already. The new grocery store would have to be within one-half mile to serve people who don’t drive, which is a significant part of the Cleveland market. The city simply doesn’t have the density to support so many large, walkable groceries. Instead, small markets fill that niche.

Without small markets like The Deli, food access and malnutrition would be a much bigger problem in Cleveland and many other cities throughout the United States. Rather than dismissing these businesses, the USDA should study these stores, how they make their stocking decisions and what room there is for improvement. Large grocery stores may offer a wide variety of fresh produce, but they come with a built-in deficit when it comes to accessibility for car-free people.

This post originally appeared in Streetsblog on May 10, 2011. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

The Problem With Boosterism by Angie Schmitt

[ Thanks so much to Rust Wire for permission to repost this piece - Aaron. ]

I’ve always had this aversion to boosterism. I can barely stand to follow the Cleveland chamber of commerce’s Twitter feed. When Forbes said Cleveland was the most miserable city, I was annoyed, but mostly because I felt like there was really no need to point out that Cleveland has some pretty pervasive problems.

Sometimes, living in Cleveland, and being part of a social network that is defiantly pro-urban, I feel like I am being inundated with the opposite message–that Cleveland is great. This perspective screams that Cleveland is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “foodie” restaurants and arts venues. Among this group, there seems to be an honest belief that those from outside the city who would question its greatness have some kind of agenda, or are misinformed. Like it’s all a giant conspiracy theory against Cleveland.

It’s making me tired. Now, I understand, that Cleveland gets a lot of bad press and some of it may be undeserved. But I think we need to be honest with ourselves.

The poverty rate in Cleveland is 26 percent. The median household income is $25,000. Last year the police discovered 11 women’s bodies decomposing in a house on the East Side.

Here’s the thing. I live in Cleveland. I have a good life. My neighbors are amazing. But I didn’t grow up here. I didn’t go to the public schools. 50,000 kids got to the Cleveland public schools. Only 54 percent of them graduate.

These statistics didn’t come from Forbes. They are the reality of life in Cleveland. And life in Cleveland is very hard for many people whose prospects for the future may be very dim. I think we, even as urban boosters, need to acknowledge this.

I guess fundamentally, I think it is a bit disingenuous to ignore these glaring realities and claim without qualification that outsiders are wrong to point out Cleveland’s dysfunction. Worse, even, I think this blind boosterism, this knee-jerk defensiveness, becomes a sort of defense of the status quo—and the status quo in Cleveland is indefensible.

Cleveland is famous across the country for its ghettos. We have miles and miles of neighborhoods that are the exact definition of ghettos—95+ percent black, 90+ percent poor. I’m talking about East Cleveland, Hough, Mt. Pleasant, Glenville, Central, Kinsman, this list goes on. These neighborhoods have been this way for decades. In fact, for the most part, they have continually been getting worse.

I don’t see what good it does for Clevelanders to shout about how wonderful the city is when anyone who is being honest with themselves can see that Cleveland is a place where something has gone terribly awry. Segregation. Sprawl. Disinvestment. Corruption. Cleveland could be a case study in any of these problems.

These are the issues urban boosters should be focused on in Cleveland. Instead we all seem to be focused on the few glimmers of hope—the cool new coffee shop in the gentrified neighborhood, food trucks and community gardens. And when a small businessman is killed in a robbery, we don’t dwell on that. We don’t dwell on the thousands of children who fall through the cracks each year in the public school system. We don’t dwell on the smart and talented people that, acting in their own best interest, move away every day.

Urban boosters in Cleveland are in a difficult position. Maybe for us it’s just too overwhelming to try to think about tackling so many problems. I know people think, ‘Maybe if we focus on the positive, we will somehow win back some of what was lost.’ I know they are well meaning.

I don’t think boosterism is fooling anyone though. I think we’re only fooling ourselves. Worse, I think we’re giving a pass to the power structure that has aided in, and continues to propagate, this fundamentally unjust environment.

This post originally appeared in Rust Wire on February 2, 2011.

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

The Cleveland Comeback: Version 5.0 by Richey Piiparinen

[ Here's a piece that originally ran on the great blog Rust Wire. I'm pleased to be able to bring you occasional selections from their great Rust Belt coverage - Aaron. ]

Every decade or so in Cleveland the headlines reappear like locusts—a Renaissance, a Rebirth. In fact the city has been remade in the visions of its leaders over and over. But today, we are still poor, still municipally cash-strapped, more vacant, and shrunk.

Today is 2011, and the reality is not what was envisioned in the late 80′s and 90′s—or that Cleveland heyday of being high on the renaissance hog. After all, the leaders had been building new stuff: the Galleria (’87), Key Tower (’91), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (’95), the Great Lakes Science Center (’96), Jacob’s Field (’94), Gund Arena (’94), and Tower City (’91). And new stuff means things will inevitably get better, a comeback for the “Comeback City” yo.

At least that was the belief being fermented by the civic booster of the time, the New Cleveland Campaign. And the belief eventually made its way into the PD with headlines like: “Cool! Cleveland’s hot — they like us! they really like us! City basks in the glow of national admiration” (1995). And national admiration there was: “The Mistake Wakes Up, Roaring” (New York Times, 1996). And even the academics were feeling it. Here’s a bit from a 1997 article entitled “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Cleveland” from the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science of all places: “Cleveland has enjoyed a….renaissance and has swiftly moved from backwater to the forefront of contemporary urban change”.

It’s apparent, though, that we receded to being “backwater” again. Why?

It boils down to method. And the renaissance method back then (and one which still dominates today) was about big, stand alone projects that will either attract tourists (e.g., Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) or the suburban diaspora (e.g., downtown malls like the Galleria). The thinking was to get a critical mass through splashy—if non-unique—development so as to increase the tax base through sales and other spin-off projects. That is: city investment was being catered toward non-residents and away from neighborhoods, no doubt an acquiescing of sorts that the immediate future of the Rust Belt city was not through its neighborhood real estate. And it was a strategy that perhaps pushed back the immediate future of Cleveland even more far off.

The failures rested heavily on two faults of the investment: product type, and placement. Regarding product, the development in the 90′s was for the most part layered on top of the city’s history and culture as opposed to being built through it. Copycatting a suburban, glass-built mall as a means to recapture retail market is a prime example of being what you’re not, and the signal this sends works at cross-purposes to your intent, i.e., “you love the suburbs so much we’re bringing it into the city for you”. But it’s much easier to stay in the suburbs to buy your coat. And so people did, and now both Tower City Center and the Galleria are both cash cow liabilities emptied of cheerleading, not to mention coats.

And then there are the splashier tourist attractions like the Rock and Roll Hall. Here, the concept is more unique to the Cleveland identity but the look and experience of place effectively vanilla’s the shit out of the opportunity to differentiate the city by making a Rust Belt Chic stamp on the landscape. In fact, whatever you think of I.M. Pei this does not exactly sing the Kinks or WMMS. It’s rather every big-ticket building on every city’s waterfront and is thus lost in the non-imagination of everyman’s mind’s eye. (Note: Below embodies WMMS. And I still remember their efforts at rallying the city to give Cleveland the Hall of Fame nod. That said, the Rock Hall in an adaptive, industrial reuse would’ve been killer.)

Making matters worse is the obvious: the developments for the most part are islands. And given that Downtown Cleveland is an expansive CBD with expansive streets (I was shocked walking the Philly and Boston CBD as I was so used to the swaths of C-town’s avenues), the effect was to make it a one-trip wonder for the suburban diaspora or an unwelcoming field of streets for the out-of-town would-be pedestrian. Moreover, if you want to start a fire—or in this case: a mass—you don’t do it by starting the ends of disparate sticks. You do it through strategic placement and flow. And in a city like Cleveland where you only have a few matches, you better sit, think, and make strikes on the matchbox count.

Hopefully this time they’ll count, as with a grip of new projects in the pipeline—namely the Medical Mart and the casino—we are at it again, with the voices of the renaissance reaching a crescendo both locally and nationally (hell, even the White House believes it). And whether or not we’ve learned from past mistakes is uncertain, yet there appears to be some proof that this is the case, at least relating to placement and connectivity.

Said Joe Marinucci, CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance: “Where we may have failed is we haven’t connected those investments properly in the past.” And so connectedness—or hemming the places of investment with public paths to be interspersed with revamped public spaces—has been a large focus. In fact the task was delegated by the Mayor Jackson to a newly-formed Group Plan Commission. Some of their recommendations to breathe circulation in Downtown are as follows:

• Creating a new pedestrian bridge from the east end of the revamped Mall (which is Cleveland’s rather inert piazza as well as the site of the new Medical Mart and underground convention center) to isolated past investments along the Lake. This is needed, as the entry points crossing a dividing Route 2 are limited (Est. cost $13 mill).
• Complete street policies–referred to in the plan as “Healthy Streets”–would be put into effect along the East/West streets of Lakeside and St. Clair. Bike lanes would be added filling a multi-modal gap between the Euclid Corridor and various bike-laned bridges heading into the western neighborhoods. As well, Rockwell Avenue—currently a small wasteful street along the southern edge of the Mall—will be closed and turned into a greenway with bike lanes connecting Public Square to the new investment (Est. cost $6 mill).
• Public Square, Cleveland’s other grand public place but with actual humans mostly smoking smokes or swisher sweets and eating hot dogs from the vendor (pretty Cleveland really), will be turned into two sections from four with the closing of Ontario (Est. cost $40 mill). The idea is to inject life with the creation of an urban forest designed by Field Operations.

Now, regarding product type there is room for debate. Because as was stated, the problem with big ticket development is that it usually comes from the idea of some other success story and is then layered on top of a city’s topography like a toupee covering the internal dynamics of balding. Shave it, get tats: that’s the Cleveland way. And so if we are going to have a casino, at least make it Cleveland and not some night- club-lame, multi-colored neon egg that is this rendering for Phase 2. Make it more like Phase 1: historically accentuated, subtle, stone—and facing out into the winds of Erie.

As well—as far as branding—I think Gilbert and Harrah’s really missed an opportunity to create a Rust Belt Chic brand through the gritty, rock and roll culture that is Cleveland. Instead, it’s the Horseshoe brand. It could’ve been a really unique dynamic between the Rock Hall and the casino, complete with Kiss slots.

As for the Medical Mart, I for one am optimistic. First—and perhaps most importantly—it’s a development through the Cleveland lineage, the concept an amalgam of Cleveland’s health care and manufacturing histories. Second, it acts as a legitimate counterpoint to the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals along the bus rapid transit axis that is the Euclid Corridor. Now if we can only make it run like a BRT, i.e., rapid, and get a criticial mass to and from these endpoints, then I feel increased movement along Euclid can serve to create investment into Cleveland’s forgotten East Side…

You know what—eff it—maybe 5.0 is where it’s at. Maybe we have perfected failure to the extent where we are coming out the other side: coal into diamonds. Cleveland: we’re back baby!

This post originally appeared in Rust Wire on April 4, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Urbanoscope

I’m going to be on Chicago Public Radio’s 848 Monday at 9am talking transportation as part of their “Mayor Monday” series. They might even be taking listener calls, so check it out if you’re in Chicago.

Also, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on quality of place and product at an event on Building Prosperity in the Greater Akron Region on January 18th, sponsored by Greater Ohio and the Greater Akron Chamber of Commerce. There will be a lot of great speakers including Carol Coletta of CEOs for Cities, Julia Taylor of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, and Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, along with many state and local leaders. If you’re in the region and want more information, click here.

How’s this for an offer? The Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago is looking for people to host house party gatherings to discuss issues about the next mayoral race. If you’ve got a group who would be interested, let them know and they’ll supply staff and resources. If you support CNT and their policy recommendations, they’ll actually do the work in educating your friends on them.

The National Film Board of Canada created an interactive site called Out My Window showing panoramic views from residential high rises and such with 13 families living in them in various cities around the world.

Top Stories

1. Ben Schmitt: Broken windows in the Motor City: A Detroit exit journal. A reporter talks about giving up on his plan to stake a claim in Detroit’s revival, and moving to Pittsburgh. This is a really tough story. “Those people who helped me that night, as we waited more than two hours for the cops to arrive, illustrate the fight inside many residents desperate to turn Detroit around. For a while I believed in that fight. I purchased a home in one of the city’s stable neighborhoods nine years earlier because it felt real. I scoffed at other colleagues and editors who drove to work on the freeways and never spent a minute in the city they covered. But when I heard my daughters’ screams that evening, I knew I was gone. No more compromises.”

2. Gov. Ed Rendell: The NFL Thinks We’re a Nation of Wussies – Not urban related per se, but I liked this piece. – “To call off this game because of snow is further evidence of the ‘wussification’ of America. We seem to have lost our boldness, our courage, our sense of adventure and that frontier spirit that made this country the greatest nation in the world. A little snow, a potential traffic tie-up, a long trip home caused us to cancel a football game? Will Bunch, a writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, said that if football were played in China, 60,000 Chinese would have walked through the snow to the stadium doing advanced calculus as they did so. He’s probably right, and it’s no secret why the Chinese are dominating on the world stage.”

3. Ed Glaeser: America’s Revival Begins in Its Cities

4. Demography Matters pointed me at a very interesting blog called Spike Japan that talks about a side of Japan we rarely see, a side falling into Rust Belt ruin – “It may come as a shock to almost all of you living outside of Japan, and to some of you living in the center of its big cities, that as we approach the summer of 2009, swathes of the country are in ruins. It came as a shock to me, too, I have to confess, having lived for almost all of the last decade in the bubble of central Tokyo and only venturing outside occasionally to get to the airport, nearby beaches, and old friends in the mountains.”

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

The trailer for a forthcoming documentary about the infamous Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis, which was designed by starchitect Minoru Yamasaki – architect of the World Trade Center – and demolished in 1972. The trailer looks very interesting, so I’ll look forward to seeing the whole thing. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

World and National Roundup

Miller-McCune: A road less traveled – Have we reached “peak travel” in the industrialized world?

Human Transit: Do roads pay for themselves? – Jarrett Walker looks at a recent study on the matter by the liberal non-profit US PIRG.

Daily Mail: Eco-light bulb cost to triple as ban on old style bulbs kicks in – well surprise, surprise.

Jim Russell: The End of Migration

The Atlantic: Dire States – more bad news about state finances

Alex Marshall: Distinctiveness: A Big Secret to Cities’ Success

Tim Campbell: Cities on the Prowl

Ed Glaeser: Behind the population shift – He credits it to housing regulation.

Business Insider: The 11 State Pension Funds That Will Run Out of Money – No surprise Illinois is #1, but Indiana is #3, and it also scores poorly in many other pension rankings though the pension situation does not even seem to be on the radar in the state. Odd.

New Geography: Washington opens the virtual office door

City Roundups

Next American City: Interview with NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe

LA Times: In a region that imports water, much goes to waste – A discussion of how rain that does fall in LA is basically just channeled off into the ocean instead of captured and reused.

Richard Longworth: A New Year for the Midwest

NYT: Chicago to redevelop US Steel site on lakefront

Chicago Tribune: Chicago’s transportation infrastructure weakening.

Chicago Tribune: Will Chicago think big after Daley?

Chicago Reporter: Loopholes – Despite the huge investment in TIF money, central Chicago actually lost jobs.

Megan Cottrell: Did public housing destroy Chicago’s black voter base? – I’m convinced there’s a Pulitzer for the person who tracks down where the former residents of Chicago’s demolished public housing projects went. A have a friend who is a cop in Gary who says there has been a big influx of ex-CHA residents there. Dittos a friend in Danville, Illinois. And I’ve heard similar reports out of Iowa. It immediately raises the question, was demolition of the projects less about helping the people who lived there than about a deliberate deracination program?

Indy Star: New projects could boost city’s entertainment districts – Quotes Yours Truly plus Kevin Kastner of Urban Indy.

Indianapolis Business Journal: Indianapolis startup scene gains momentum

Cleveland Plain Dealer: In hard times, Cleveland blacks’ views about immigrants shifting

NYT: Trying to overcome the stubborn blight of vacancies in Youngstown

Audrey Russo: Immigration and In-Migration in Pittsburgh

Pittsblog: The New Pittsburgh

Detroit Free Press: Risky best cost Detroit pension funds $480 million and Where the Detroit pension funds went wrong

NYT: In Michigan, Hamtramck pleads for a bankruptcy option

Welcome to Cleveburgh

Chris Briem had a great op-ed piece in the Post-Gazette this week touting a super-regional “Cleveburgh” corridor running from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. If a true mega-regional concept is ever really going to take off, the first step is probably this sort of cross-metro collaboration between neighbors. Here’s Briem’s Cleveburgh map:

Will the Boondoggles Never Cease?

UrbanCincy reports that in it’s latest five year construction plan, the Ohio Department of Transportation, an agency that doesn’t have enough funds to maintain the roads it has in a state in the middle of an acute economic and fiscal crisis, has allocated $809M to extend I-74 through Hamilton County.

Huh? I can’t believe anyone would put this high on a needs list, if indeed it is needed at all. I certainly don’t think so. Hamilton County actually has fewer people today than it did in 1970s, the region is growing more slowly than the national average, and it may already have more miles of six-eight lane freeway than any peer city in America.

Here’s a great chance for new Gov. Kasich to show his conservative bona fides. He cancelled the less expensive 3C rail project as something that state couldn’t afford. (I was also not a fan of that project). Here’s another one he can kill.

I’m a big believer in building infrastructure, and yes, even in building more roads where appropriate. But even among nominally fiscal conservative governors, it’s tough to find any highway boondoggle big enough that they are willing to cancel it. Here’s a perfect opportunity for Kasich to distinguish himself and step up to the plate.

Chicago Lakefront Trail

I think Copenhagen’s bike infrastructure is great, but it’s always great to get nice videos that come from other places too. Here’s one that Joe Peterangelo put together of the Chicago lakefront trail. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

Post Script

Here’s another amazing early film, this done in 1897 by Thomas Edison of the intersection of State and Madison in Chicago. Hat tip How to Be a Retronaut. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

The Index: Michigan and Ohio

Here’s another installment of my periodic postings with archive summaries on various topics. Today, looking at posts about Michigan and Ohio.

Detroit

I’ve done quite a few piece on Detroit that have proven extremely popular for whatever reason. I’d love to claim it’s because they’re brilliant, but there’s just something about Detroit that resonates with people.

• The Other Side of Detroit – So much of what is written about Detroit focuses only on the bad – and there’s plenty of that there. But there’s another side to the story, and I tell it here.
• Urban Laboratory and New American Frontier – The most read Urbanophile post ever.
• Solitary Man – A post not by me, but by Detroitblogger John who runs Detroitblog, which is magnificent. This will give you an example of why.
• Embracing the Ruins – Taking another view of Detroit’s decaying relics.
• A Plan for Detroit – A look at my take on what the structure of a serious plan for Detroit would look like.
• Do the Collapse – My take on Detroit from before the auto-industry bailout, in which I predict General Motors bankruptcy and discuss other matters
• Not the Future of the American City – Taking on the claim by some that Detroit is the canary in the coalmine for America

Cincinnati

Cincinnati is a very under-appreciated place. It’s got its quirks, faults, and challenges to be sure – which for some people add to its charm – but also the greatest collection of assets of any city its size in America in my opinion.

• A Midwest Conundrum – I talk about all those great assets, and ask why they haven’t powered the region to better performance.
• The Neighborhoods of Cincinnati – A photo tour showing off some of the fantastic neighborhoods and architecture in the city. It can really shock people who aren’t ready for it.
• Dramatic Riverfront Revitalization Nearly Complete – Randy Simes looks Cincinnati’s riverfront transformation.
• Agenda 360 – My look at Cincinnati’s regional strategic plan.

Cleveland

It’s a struggling city, and one I’ll admit I don’t know enough about and haven’t cracked the code on yet.

• What’s Wrong? – I ask what happened to make Cleveland suffer so, when unlike Detroit there is no easy narrative such as the auto industry collapse and extreme racial segregation.
• Reactions to What’s Wrong – The post above spawned more comments than any in Urbanophile history. I summarize some of the best of them here.
• Will a Dying City Finally Turn to Immigrants? – Richard Herman’s plea for Cleveland to embrace immigration.
• “James Drain” Hit Cleveland – What LeBron’s departure means for the city.

Columbus

This capital city is one of the Midwest’s standouts in terms of demographic and economic performance. It’s a city to watch in the future. I’m putting it at the bottom since you probably saw most of these recently.

• The New Midwestern Star – My overview post on this little known but strong performing metro.
• Rebranding Columbus – A look at the city’s recent re-branding initiative.
• Downtown Mall to Be Demolished – My take on plans to replace the failed City Center Mall with a park.

Enjoy!

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

“James Drain” Hits Cleveland

My latest post over at New Geography is called “James Drain” Hits Cleveland. It’s a look at how the LeBron James decision to head to Miami is a reflection of what is ailing Cleveland and so many other places, especially the fixation on brain drain, and how Cleveland blew a huge opportunity to create a new evangelist for itself.

If I must say so myself, this is a pretty important piece on the topic of talent, so please read it.

For those who don’t know who Harvey Pekar is and have never heard of American Splendor, see this fantastic obituary by Anthony Bourdain: Goodbye Splendor. I’d also recommend the excellent American Splendor film.

Thanks to Jim Russell for a good deal of inspiration on this one.

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Replay: The Decline of Civic Leadership Culture

Ed Morrison wrote the above about Cleveland, but he could have been describing any number of other cities. Why is it that so many cities have turned to large real estate projects to attempt to restart growth, turning away from strategies that previously made them successful?

The answer possibly lies in structural economic changes resulting from the nationalization and globalization of industry. Up until the 1990’s, many businesses, such as retailing, utilities, some manufacturing, and especially banking operated on a regional or local basis. The meant that the civic leadership of a community was heavily dominated by businessmen, again, especially bankers, whose success was dependent on the overall macroeconomic health of the particular city or region they were located in.

But with banking deregulation, we saw large numbers of hometown banks merged out of existence. Industry after industry was subjected to national or international level roll-ups as changes in the economy and regulatory environment gave increasing returns to scale.

Why is it that “real estate interests” dominate in a local economy like Cleveland? Because, to a great extent, they are among the only ones left. Consider the local industries that were not as subject to roll-ups. Principal among these are real estate development, construction, and law. This means the local leadership of a community is now made up of executives in those industries, and they bring a very different world view versus the previous generation.

Consider the difference between a banker and a lawyer. Banks make money on the spread between what they pay for deposits or wholesale funding, and what they charge for loans. This means the CEO of a bank is making money while he plays golf at 3. He’s got a cash register back at the office that never stops ringing.

By contrast, lawyers get paid by the hour for work on specific matters and transactions. The law partner is only making money on the golf course if he is closing a deal. It’s similar between many other “operational” businesses that were previously prominent in communities, and the “transactional” businesses that are now often dominant.

Additionally, even where the hometown bank or company did not get bought out, it likely escaped that fate by getting big itself and making large numbers of acquisitions or otherwise expanding. This means those institutions are less dependent on the health of the particular local market they happen to be headquartered in than they are overall macroeconomic conditions. While no doubt they want the headquarters town to be successful, not least of which so they can effectively recruit talent, they can afford to take a portfolio view of local markets.

Not only has the drying up of local and regional operating businesses led to a business leadership community unbalanced in favor of transactionally oriented firms, the loss of those local and regional operating businesses robbed many of the transactional companies such as law and architecture firms of their principal local client base. Large national businesses employ national firms for advertising, law, architecture, etc. If they use local firms, it is in a subsidiary role. (Or, if a smaller firm is fortunate enough to land a contract, it is servicing a client on a national, not local basis).

Richard Florida described this in his Atlantic Monthly article on the financial crash. “As the manufacturing industry has shrunk, the local high-end services—finance, law, consulting—that it once supported have diminished as well, absorbed by bigger regional hubs and globally connected cities. In Chicago, for instance, the country’s 50 biggest law firms grew by 2,130 lawyers from 1984 to 2006, according to William Henderson and Arthur Alderson of Indiana University. Throughout the rest of the Midwest, these firms added a total of just 169 attorneys. Jones Day, founded in 1893 and today one of the country’s largest law firms, no longer considers its Cleveland office ‘headquarters’—that’s in Washington, D.C.—but rather its ‘founding office.’”

Where then is the source of transactions these firms can turn to in order to sustain their business? The public sector, of course.

I would hypothesize that many local transactionally oriented services companies have seen the public sector take on a greater share of billings than in the past. With the old school bankers and industrialists mostly out of the picture, the leadership in our communities consists increasingly of the political class and a business community dominated by transactional interests.

When you look at the composition of this group, it should come as no surprise that the publicly subsidized real estate development is the preferred civic strategy. Politicians get to cut ribbons. Cranes always look good on the skyline. Local architects, engineers, developers, and construction companies love it. And there is plenty of legal work to go around.

This is not to say these people are acting nefariously. And nor were old school bankers and industrialists always acting purely altruistically. Rather, the difference comes from the world view and “theory of change” that people steeped in transactionally oriented businesses bring with them. But regardless of intent, their personal interest and long term community health are no longer so strongly linked. Which is why where once local business/civic leaders put money into the community, today they are more likely to be taking it out via these types of projects.

With the current financial crisis, bigness, as a strategy, is out of favor for the moment. Also, the gimmicky financial transactions that underlie much of the crisis are calling the entire transactional model into question. There’s an increasing alarm at the precipitous decline of manufacturing, particularly the auto sector. And people are questioning whether we as a country can survive simply through services, or whether we need to revitalize the concept of the operational business and actually making things. Plus, real estate deals are tougher to get done because of tight credit, and it seems unlikely that the go-go days of recent years are coming back soon.

We’ll see where this leads. But if we see more local and regional scale operating businesses start to emerge again, then perhaps the urban development pendulum will start swinging the other direction again. In the meantime, large scale real estate development will likely continue to be preferred.

This article originally appeared on July 12, 2009.

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