Smoke Signals

Unlike San Francisco, people still smoke in Cleveland. Some Clevelanders smoke and put on lipstick while walking at a brisk pace. (Technically, she's also giving me the finger, but I think it was inadvertent.) That's not easy to pull off. I really like this city. (Click photo to enlarge.)

Sign of the Times

Can you symbolically capture the decline of Rust Belt cities with these two signs, located just a few feet apart in downtown Cleveland? Is there a simpler way to illustrate the transformation from industrial might to service industry servitude?

Greetings From Cleveland

A street cafe in Cleveland's latest hope for the future — the Warehouse District — on a beautiful fall day. This is my attempt to avoid being one of those out of towners who walks around taking photos of vacant buildings.

I'm in sunny Cleveland covering the Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference. It's a gathering of urban planners, advocacy groups, government officials and academics to discuss solutions to shrinking cities and economic decline. As you can imagine, it's a non-stop PAR-TAY! (That was a joke.)

Although I'm happy to see Flint's old Hyatt/convention center converted into student housing, I can't help thinking this is one conference that Flint could have landed, in addition to the Michigan Scrabble convention Michael Moore covered in Roger & Me.

I'll be here for three days, so urban planning wonks get ready for some of the posts you've been dreaming of. (Also a joke...sort of.)

The lobby of the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Cleveland, where I'm forced to blog because it has free WiFi and my hotel charges $3.95/15 minutes. I don't mind.

Cleveland hyjinx

Kimberley Sirk at Kent State Magazine reports on Cleveland's efforts to have a little fun despite the city's declining population:

"Terry Schwarz, a senior planner with the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, has embarked on an ambitious set of projects to prove, in a playful and whimsical way, that shrinking cities can retain expansive hope.

"A Pop-Up event is, as Schwarz explains, a temporary use of vacant land or buildings. The intent is to highlight the different kinds of potential in vacant sites in Cleveland, and to develop a sustainable business model for others who want to try their hands at similar festivities. The events, or installations as they are sometimes called, are envisioned to include outdoor markets, restaurants and shops, art installations, concerts, landscape interventions and other fun, yet thought-provoking events."

Not sure how well this sort of thing would go over in Flint.

In Search of a Cure

Flint may turn to casinos to cure its economic ills, but the The Economist points out that hospitals might be just what the doctor ordered. (Sorry for that tortured healthcare metaphor.)

All this is an extreme example of a growing phenomenon. After the 20th-century factory town, such as Flint, Michigan, comes the 21st-century hospital town. Rural hospitals are often the main employers in their communities. Even Flint is trying to re-position itself as a medical hub. But a select few cities have entered the era of the mega-hospital. The most dramatic are Rochester, a medium-sized city where Mayo has long been a star business, and Cleveland, Ohio, a rustbelt city that has seen its hospitals boom and one, the Cleveland Clinic, become a new economic force. Each hospital is a behemoth: Mayo's revenues in 2006 totalled $6.3 billion, Cleveland's $4.4 billion.