Michigan

Register now for the 2011 Land Bank Conference in Detroit, MI

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In many places across the country, land banking is becoming an integral part of community revitalization efforts, especially as America’s cities and towns have struggled to keep ahead of the foreclosure crisis and the resulting economic impacts over the past few years. Today more communities than ever are developing and strengthening land banking efforts to increase affordable housing, create market-based development opportunities, and implement alternative land reuses.

The Center for Community Progress invites elected officials, business owners, developers and anyone else interested in land banking issues to the 2011 Land Bank Conference from June 5-7 in Detroit, MI. The conference will help participants identify how land banking and tax foreclosure strategies can catalyze development of effective solutions to unlocking the value of vacant, abandoned and problem properties. Highlights of this two-day event include training seminars, breakout sessions, bus tours and networking opportunities.

The conference attracts hundreds of professionals from across the country and from diverse backgrounds including: elected officials, land bank staff and board members, for-profit and non-profit developers and the real estate industry, community foundations, greening initiatives, neighborhood and civic leaders, and local and state government officials.

Click here for registration and more information.

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SGA Asks: What can cities like Detroit do to rebuild their local economy?

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Each week Smart Growth America poses a question to our readers to encourage discussion about smart growth ideas in neighborhoods across America. You can engage in the dialogue by commenting on our Facebook page or through Twitter with @SmartGrowthUSA. If you’re not already a fan or a follower, sign up to participate.

The 2010 US Census data released this week revealed that Detroit, among other cities, lost more residents than initially thought. This week, SGA asks: What can cities like Detroit do to rebuild their local economy?

The New York Times’ Room for Debate debates this issue in depth, with eight experts weighing in on revitalization opportunities presented by increasingly vacant cities across America. Among the points they raise:

  • What if the government used a fraction of the billions it spends to subsidize home-building on ‘unbuilding’ projects instead?
  • The record of top-down schemes to revive cities by remaking neighborhoods is littered with disastrous unintended consequences.
  • The key to restoring a shrinking city’s health is to cut costs of doing business and ensure access to quality education.
  • Build vegetable gardens and parks, but also consider tax incentives.
  • We need to get over our tendency to throw out damaged goods; instead we need to retrofit them.

Which of the authors do you agree with? Disagree with? What role can abandoned property revitalization play in reviving a city?

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Detroit business owner: "It is almost impossible to recruit to Michigan"

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Andrew Basile, Jr., a patent lawyer in metro Detroit, is fed up with Michigan’s sprawl. More specifically, he’s fed up with Michigan’s ongoing loss of talented workers who are leaving the state in the thousands. Basile’s law firm has been directly affected by the trend, hard pressed to find employees locally and unable to entice qualified workers from other places to move to Michigan. And in a letter to Michigan Future published on Streetsblog earlier this week, Basile explains why he believes this is happening: “People – particularly affluent and educated people – just don’t want to live here.”

Basile correlates his law firm’s labor shortages with Detroit’s “poor ‘quality of place,'” a term he uses to describe the area’s spread out development patterns. He points to a lack of transportation choices and missed opportunities to invest in downtowns as reasons, at least in part, why so many Detroiters have left the area. As Basile describes his frustration with Michigan’s failure to innovate and the toll it takes on his business, it’s hard not to sympathize with him:

I noted sadly the other day that the entire Oakland Country government complex was built in a field five miles outside of downtown Pontiac. I find that decision shocking. What a wasted opportunity for maintaining a viable downtown Pontiac, not to mention the open space now consumed by the existing complex.

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New profiles provide a closer look at state transportation investments

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A new report out today from Smart Growth America analyzes how all 50 states invested their flexible transportation funds from 2009’s American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The report examines what projects each state used its funds for, and whether those projects created as many jobs as possible.

Transportation projects create jobs in the short term but can also create the foundation for a stronger economy in the long term – particularly if those projects repair existing roadways or create public transportation options. As Newsweek’s David A. Graham explains:

It’s not enough just to inject money into infrastructure, because not all transportation funding is created equal—or at least, it doesn’t create jobs at an equal rate. As any infrastructure policy wonk can tell you, money spent on fixing up existing systems or building mass transit delivers more jobs, and faster, than building new highways.

Smart Growth America’s new report found that many states didn’t invest their funds this way and in doing so missed a significant opportunity to create more jobs. As a companion to that report, Smart Growth America has released state-specific recommendations for states looking for ways to improve their transportation investments.

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New report reveals smart transportation spending creates jobs, grows the economy

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In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on Americans to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world” to win the future. To rebuild America, he said, we will aim to put “more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges.”

A new report from Smart Growth America analyzes states’ investments in infrastructure to determine whether they made the best use of their spending based on job creation numbers. Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation evaluates how successful states have been in creating jobs with their flexible $26.6 billion of transportation funds from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA). Those results should guide governors and other leaders in revitalizing America’s transportation system, maximizing job creation from transportation dollars and rebuilding the economy.

According to data sent by the states to Congress, the states that created the most jobs were the ones that invested in public transportation projects and projects that maintained and repaired existing roads and bridges. The states that spent their funds predominantly building new roads and bridges created fewer jobs.

As Newsweek’s David A. Graham explains, investments in transportation create jobs in the short term and longer term economic prosperity too:

Injecting money into transportation projects, the thinking goes, is an especially potent jobs-creation tool because it not only puts construction workers and contractors to work quickly, it also lays the groundwork for future economic growth and development. Obama predicted the transportation money alone would put hundreds of thousands of workers on the job.

As “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus” explains, not all transportation projects reap these benefits equally:

[S]tates spent more than a third of the money on building new roads—rather than working on public transportation and fixing up existing roads and bridges. The result of the indiscriminate spending? States missed out on potentially thousands of new jobs—and bridges, roads, and overpasses around the country are still crumbling. Meanwhile, the states that did put dollars toward public transportation were richly rewarded: Each dollar used on transit was 75 percent more effective at putting people to work than a dollar used for highway work.

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EPA Grant Helps Right-Size Saginaw, MI

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This post is part of an ongoing series about organizations that have received grants from the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Did your organization receive one of these grants? Tell us about it!

Lapeer Ave in downtown Saginaw, originally uploaded by Ian Freimuth.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently selected 25 communities from across the country to receive technical assistance under its Smart Growth Implementation Assistance program – and one of them was Saginaw, Michigan. Saginaw was selected to receive assistance developing a plan to right-size its urban land area and coordinate its infrastructure investments. Both objectives are directly connected to improving sustainability and livability for the city’s residents and businesses.

Saginaw is a midsize, manufacturing-based city located in the heart of Michigan. Over the past decade, roughly 10% of its total population has moved out of the city limits. This population loss, coupled by an increase in abandoned and vacant properties, means nearly 5,500 properties in the city are currently unused and unmaintained. In total, nearly 25% of the city is physically empty or on the verge of demolition yet still requires a full range of public services, like sewer, water, roads, lighting, and police and fire protection.

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New report: State transportation decisions could save money and reduce carbon emissions

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Download the ReportA new report released today by Smart Growth America and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that transportation policies in every state could save money and reduce carbon emissions by making smarter decisions with state funds.

In “Getting Back on Track: Climate Change and State Transportation Policy,” SGA and NRDC found that current transportation policies in almost all 50 states either fail to curb carbon emission rates or, in some cases, actually increase emissions. This contradiction between state policies and broader efforts to reduce carbon emissions means not only that many states are missing opportunities to protect clean air; it means they are missing economic opportunities as well.

In a press conference this morning, former Maryland Governor Parris Glendening remarked:

Transportation makes up an enormous proportion of our national economy and our environmental impact: it must be front and center as we think about how to get the most out of our public investments. The states that rose to the top in this report, California, Maryland and New Jersey, are there because they are meeting the challenge to innovate.

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Quick Takes: Mid-October Complete Streets Talk Across the Country

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This week’s round-up of Complete Streets talk across the country, from the first inklings of policy development in New Hope, Minnesota to an article in Albany, New York’s Times Union on how Complete Streets are part of comprehensive cancer prevention strategy. [Continue Reading “Quick Takes: Mid-October…”]

Complete Streets

A Deluge of Policies

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In just the last nine months, 45 communities have adopted Complete Streets policies – just two shy of the record number of policies adopted in all of 2009. The sheer number of localities realizing the benefits of Complete Streets is inspiring, but it’s becoming more difficult to track. Help out by sharing your successes with us!

Complete Streets
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