Michigan Municipal League Home Page Urban Shapers A conference focuses on the study of urban magnetism Poster for CEOs for Cities' US Initiative in Detroit For the past decade, CEOs for Cities has been building a national network of urban leaders working to define and catalyze the next generation of great American cities. The nonprofit, best described as a civic lab for urban innovation, is working to foster and amplify four factors its leaders have identified as most critical to the success of cities: talent, with a focus on how to develop, maximize, attract and retain it; connections, or how people with ideas can be linked to talent, capital and markets; innovation, addressing the need to create a culture of entrepreneurship; and distinctiveness, the notion of making local differences a point of appeal and capitalizing on unique economic opportunities. CEOs for Cities' latest project, The Us Initiative, aims to redefine the American Dream by exploring five key elements of it in a series of five multiday challenge events. The event kicked off with a presentation by Dr.
Michigan Land Use Institute :: Bold Solutions for Michigan's People and Places City Studies Enablers as the Good Guys | Economics of Place The art of creating vibrant places is a bit different today for local government officials than it was a generation ago. I see three overarching reasons why this is true. First, local officials today have much less capacity and fewer resources than their predecessors, especially in economically challenged core cites. Lower tax rates, falling property values and a breakdown in traditional funding partnerships with state and federal governments have all contributed to an aggregate decline in city revenues and services. Second, technology has opened up all sorts of opportunities for local governments to change their traditional service offerings. Lastly, creating vibrant places is different today than it was a generation ago because what is needed to make communities vibrant has evolved. I believe that the communities and regions that most effectively reinvent their service delivery systems and approaches will have a real leg up on the competition moving forward.
Panethos | All cultures, all inclusive. Value of place - Crain's Detroit Business - Detroit News and Information A city is more than the sum of its buildings, streets and parks. The passion that residents have about where they live is an "X" factor that can be measured and studied over time. Economic planners and policy shapers agree on this: When residents are more engaged in a community, economic investment follows. How to apply that principle is something many cities around the country, like Detroit, are grappling with. "The more attached citizens are to the community -- and attachment comes from things you may not view as economic -- the more folks see and observe each other caring about one another ... the more residents see parks, playgrounds and a beautiful landscape, the more folks see are an inclusive community -- these are not things we are conditioned to see as economic," said Rishi Jaitly, Detroit program director for the Miami, Fla. The Knight Foundation's Soul of the Community study measured just these factors. Detroit is a place with passionate advocates.
What's Working in Cities: Placemaking Michelle Bruch | Thursday, October 13, 2011 Pittsburgh Editor's Note: What's Working in Citiesis a monthly series in which we take a closer look at people and organizations in cities across the country that are transforming neighborhoods and driving change in urban areas. Before Detroit's Campus Martius Park opened in 2004, many of the historic buildings around it had emptied. "Nothing was there," says Bob Gregory, president of Campus Martius Park. To turn it around, the mayor's office established a task force that studied the best public spaces in the world and quizzed the locals on how they would use a new park. The strategy that built Campus Martius is called "placemaking," and it's a development approach gaining momentum across the country. In the case of Campus Martius, the locals pressed for a park they could use all year long. Kent has consulted with 3,000 communities in 42 countries. Economy Drives Placemaking "In a way, the economy is helping us," Kent says.