Buzz

Maybe Obama was on to something when he said he planned on increasing America's exporting potential. According to a new study by the Brookings Institution, Detroit is ripe for a boom in export.

Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:

From auto parts shipped to Canada to a soccer stadium designed for a South Korean city, metro Detroit firms are among the nation's leaders in exporting goods and services to other nations.

A study to be released today by the Brookings Institution, based in Washington, D.C., ranks metro Detroit ninth among the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas for the dollar volume of its 2008 exports, $26.9 billion. Detroit ranks fifth in export-related jobs, with 239,910 area residents producing goods and services for export, the study said.

Detroit's exports are heavy with auto parts, but increasingly include professional services. As Detroit struggles to reinvent its economy, the potential for service exports to contribute is enormous, said John Austin, a member of the state Board of Education and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution who contributed to the report.

"It's easy to see car parts moving around the world. We're doing great in Brazil, and GM's doing fine in China," he said. "But we don't see this growth share of our exports to the world in high-end knowledge services -- medicine, design, accounting, deal-making.

"The fact that Detroit is really one of the top places and punches above its weight shows the future of an economy."

Read the entire article here.
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Sunday, behind the Temple Bar in Detroit's Cass Corridor, the city's first ever chicken race took place. Yes, chicken race. Detroit chicken owners brought their hens to the stretch of pavement behind a bar and showed why Detroit is no ordinary city.


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What do you say about this ordinance that will require property owners to be more accountable for their vacant property? Bravo? Or... it's about time? Either way, this is good news. Let's hope it's enforced.

Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:

Detroit is battling its ongoing problem of vacant homes and blight with a new law that holds property owners more accountable.

The Detroit City Council approved the Vacant Property Registration ordinance this month, joining hundreds of municipalities nationwide, including Grand Rapids, West Bloomfield and Dearborn, with similar policies.

The ordinance -- sponsored by Councilman Kwame Kenyatta with support from Karla Henderson, the city's Building Safety Engineering director -- requires the owners of vacant properties, from individual owners to lenders, to register them with the city for a $25 per structure annual fee.

The registry is expected to allow city officials to better track property owners, to consistently levy fines and to hold owners accountable for their properties before and after they become blighted. The city already required rental homes to be registered.

"We do know that there are some good property owners," Henderson said. "We'll leave them alone and start going after the ones that aren't."

Read the entire article here.
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This is good news, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said that a Woodward Light Rail Project from Hart Plaza to 8 Mile "is going to happen." Better news, however, would be seeing the ground break. Words are great, action is better.

Excerpt from mLive:

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says the $425 million Woodward Light Rail Project -- which will run from Hart Plaza to 8 Mile -- "is going to happen" and that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood should be in town soon to announce additional backing.

Bing made the announcement Thursday during a "big four" round table discussion hosted by Paul W. Smith of WJR-AM 760, suggesting the line could help reverse economic and population trends.

"I think it's about more than just transportation," he said. "It's about economic development. Cities that I've been in that have a light rail system, you've seen all kinds of businesses pop up around the system itself -- whether it's the young people that are living in that area, whether there's entrepreneurs that come to the area."

Read the entire article here.
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What's biking in Detroit look like from a non-Detroiter? Check out this blog post.

Excerpt from the blog Urban Adonia:

Detroit has become a laboratory for people curious about urban farming, architecture, decay, rebuilding a localized economy, and shifting away from cars. Living here seems hard in some ways, for instance the center city suffers from a lack of services. If you are alternatively minded, though, the opportunities for creative solutions to survival overflow.

The city's wide avenues work well for bicycling, especially because density is a hard thing to find here. The only crowd I've seen so far had gathered around a high school football game. I knew something must be up, cause I was riding along an otherwise empty street and came upon lots and lots of parked cars. Then I saw the game, which explained the people.

Bicycling here feels very free in some ways. The painted lines of the street seem irrelevant on a four lane street with nobody else around. I can turn in wide arcs instead of sharp darts. Oops, missed the turn; make a big ol' U turn, no problem.

Read the entire article here.
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Freep writer sits down with Jack White to talk about his latest musical endeavors. They get on the subject of Detroit near the end and though White's answers aren't glowingly positive, they are truthful and worth a read.

Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:

Q: When you express this, are you sad about the state of Detroit, or sad in a personal life trajectory sense, and putting it all into that one big picture?

A: I don't know. It's kind of tough to say. That's been the problem with me all along, I think that's what that poem was all about — it's the idea of what does it mean to you? What is your environment — how much of your environment is you, how much of Detroit is me? Whether I like it or not, whether I'm positive or negative about it, or I feel it's positive or negative at certain times, how much of it makes me who I am? I don't know the answer to that question.

It's hard to talk about your environment, because people are all looking at it from a different angle. A lot of people look at Detroit from a suburban angle, from living in the suburbs. They don't even really know what it's like. Sometimes I feel like, hey, those are my kids, you know, I can call my kids ugly, but you can't call my kids ugly, because I'm from Detroit. So there's that kind of aspect, too.

But it's very difficult to determine how much of it is your own personal journey and how much is the city itself, in the bigger picture. I wish I had a clearer answer, and I don't.

Read the entire article here.
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OK. We couldn't resist this article. (And it does have some relevance to Detroit moving forward.) Kevin Smith is bring a production to Detroit. It's a movie about hockey based on a song by Warren Zevon and the lyrics were written by Mitch Albom. This is the reality folks.

Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:

A lot of (the film) is going to take place in the '70s. Detroit looks like it stopped in the '70s, so we literally don't have to set-decorate or set-design. We just turn on the camera and there's an old building. It's a great place and hopefully we'll do it justice.

It's almost like, for me, the closest parallel to it is "Forrest Gump" and not in terms of we're gonna have all these amazing special effects in it. It's just you follow one very simple person in a life that just touches everything throughout history and the sport, so it's kinda like that. It's ambitious, we're not gonna be as good as "Forrest Gump," but it's ambitious.

It's funny, but it's not the comedy that I do. Like right now, honestly it's still PG-13, there's no cursing in it.

Read the entire article here.
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Whether it's Motown or garage rock or techno, Detroit is a place where musicians and producers find inspiration, even in some of the more uninspired parts of the city.

Excerpt from the New York Times:

Mr. Banks works out of a recording studio that originally housed a labor union on East Grand Boulevard, several blocks from Motown's origins. He counts car designers from Ford, General Motors and Chrysler among the fans who come to the building to buy vinyl.

"There have been times at our small store here in the basement of the building that some rather odd customers will come through," said Mr. Banks, an avid Chrysler muscle-car enthusiast. In 1991, his label released "G-Force" as an homage to Detroit drag racing. "These people aren't your average dance floor D.J.'s that usually buy our products. They are young automotive designers. They listen to our music so as to inspire progressive thoughts of what automotive transportation will be in the future."

He added, "I'm proud they come to us here in one of the most depressed neighborhoods in a massively depressed city for inspiration of what could be."

Read the entire article here.
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Neighborhoods are finding ways to promote themselves with garden tours and home tours. North Rosedale is one of those neighborhoods, and here's a Freep article to prove it.

Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:

As Detroit neighborhoods struggle against foreclosures, blight and crime, many, like North Rosedale, East English Village, University District and Boston-Edison, are promoting their neighborhoods this summer with home and garden tours and other events to attract new residents and retain existing ones.

Most important, North Rosedale residents and city officials say these events have a significant impact on neighborhood stabilization efforts that could serve as a model throughout the city.

More than 125 people preregistered to attend the tour and luncheon -- a fund-raiser for the North Rosedale Park Civic Association -- at $15 per ticket, said Meredith Drain, co-chair of the North Rosedale Park Garden Committee. The group advertised the event in newspapers and on the radio.

Drain, who has lived in the neighborhood 34 years with her husband, Wayne County Circuit Judge Gershwin Drain, said the event shows "that we're still a very vibrant, wonderful neighborhood."

Read the entire article here.
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Looks like all the business over the Banksy might actually yield tangible results, maybe. The company that owns the Packard Plant, where a Banksy painting was removed, is suing the gallery that snatched it. This, in turn, could help the city force the demolition of the blighted, empty, potentially dangerous, and often on fire Packard.

Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:

Lawyers for Biosource, which claims to be the 3.5-million-square-foot plant's owner and lists land speculator Romel Casab as its president, contend that the Banksy work was removed without its permission and could be worth $100,000 or more. But Detroit officials say it could help them force Biosource to tear down the structure, which has been a magnet for illegal dumping as well as drug users and students of industrial blight. Demolition costs could exceed $20 million.

Detroit Buildings and Safety Engineering director Karla Henderson says the city has been embroiled in marathon litigation with Biosource over the ownership and condition of the Packard site.

"Now that it is clear and publicly acknowledged who the responsible party is," Henderson told the Associated Press, the city will "hold the property owner responsible for this unsightly and dangerous situation."

Hats off, Banksy! Yours could prove to be a transformational work of art.

Read the entire article here.
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The images in this documentary about a fire station in Detroit are amazing and beautifully shot. Unfortunately this is just a "teaser" trailer. The filmmakers are looking to make this a full on project but lack funds. So, watch it, and if you're moved to donate, do that here.

For more information on BURN go here.

BURN Trailer from Tremolo Productions on Vimeo.

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The Grand Old Party has put together its own task force to expand urban agriculture throughout Michigan and especially Detroit.

Excerpt from Crain's Detroit Business:

The task force, which organized public meetings and tours throughout the state last summer, lays out policy and regulatory steps for the state to act upon.

In regards to Detroit, the task force calls for the state to assist the city in redeveloping abandoned property for agricultural purposes and to expand and develop tax-free agriculture renaissance zones for processing operations in the city.

The report also calls for the state to provide incentives for Detroit to adopt zoning changes that would create a lower tax rate for agriculture and to withhold a percentage of state revenue-sharing dollars if ordinance changes are not enacted.

Read the entire article here.
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How could not improving our metro and urban bus system help our live and the health of the region? Exactly... there's no downside to improving the mass transit that we already have.

Excerpt:

Thousands of Detroiters make extraordinary efforts to stay on the grind, riding the bus to suburban jobs that pay little more than minimum wage. To anyone who thinks Detroiters are lazy or don't want to work, I'd suggest walking -- or riding -- a mile in their shoes.

We can start that journey with Rashawnda Jones, a housekeeper at Somerset Inn in Troy. Jones, 25, commutes more than 21 miles from her west-side house, a trip that takes an hour and a half.

To allow time for possible missed connections or late buses, she likes to leave home early. Jones rubs the sleep from her eyes at 5 a.m., while the streets outside are still dark.

She showers, toasts a waffle, lays out her son's school clothes and puts on a burgundy smock before heading out at 6 a.m. -- two hours before her shift starts.

Jones catches the Schoolcraft DDOT bus to Woodward and Manchester. Then, after waiting about five minutes, she transfers to a SMART bus on the 460 route that takes her to Somerset Inn.

"It's hard, but I'm doing my best," Jones told me Monday, while we rode the SMART bus north on Woodward.

Read the entire article here.
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Rickshaws are coming back thanks to a few local entrepreneurs.

Excerpt from the Michigan Citizen:

Thanks to two local entrepreneurs, potential sightseers can now add the rickshaw to the list of ways to traverse between downtown Detroit landmarks.

Terry L. Walker and Michael Rosemond began Detroit Rickshaw with the idea of broadening the city's transportation profile. They met at a 2004 city council hearing while preparing separate proposals to be the first rickshaw operators in the city. They quickly realized that their interest in rickshaws converged at a point which would benefit a partnership.

"We said, let's do it like other smart folks and do it together," Rosemond told the Michigan Citizen. "We both had done our research."

Read the entire article here.



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It never hurts to look at what others are doing to improve their surroundings and see if there is something we can use here in our city to do the same. Here's an interesting story that might work as a model for various urban structures here in Detroit.

Excerpt from the New York Times:

Phone calls and visitors and, yes, dreams from around the world are pouring into the small offices of the Friends of the High Line on West 20th Street in Manhattan these days.

Detroit is thinking big about an abandoned train station. Jersey City and Philadelphia have defunct railroad beds, and Chicago has old train tracks that don't look like much now, but maybe they too...

The High Line's success as an elevated park, its improbable evolution from old trestle into glittering urban amenity, has motivated a whole host of public officials and city planners to consider or revisit efforts to convert relics from their own industrial pasts into potential economic engines.

In many of these places there had already been some talk and visions of what might be, but now New York's accomplishment is providing ammunition for boosters while giving skeptics much-needed evidence of the potential for success. The High Line has become, like bagels and CompStat, another kind of New York export.

"There's a nice healthy competition between big American cities," said Ben Helphand, who is pushing to create a park on a defunct rail line in Chicago. "That this has been done in New York puts the onus on us to do it ourselves and to give it a Chicago stamp."

Read the entire article here.
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