Three CEOs for Cities partner cities, Cleveland, Detroit, and Memphis, will be placing a renewed emphasis on economic development in the coming months. Each one of only six pilot cities, they will be participating in The White House's Strong Cities, Strong Communities initiative, an interagency program that aims to strengthen…

In The Young and the Restless, a report on the rapidly rising number of young, college educated people flocking to cities throughout the country, CEOs for Cities found that Detroit's population of 25-34 year olds with a four-year degree has increased by 59% since 2000. An article in…

CEOs for Cities partner organizations Wayne State University, The Kresge Foundation, and the Hudson-Webber Foundation are jointly sponsoring the Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program. The fellows program aims to attract, develop, and retain promising young professionals to further the economic revitalization and development of Detroit. Accepting applications through April 15th,…

I'm not much of a football fan, but I'm a huge fan of the Chrysler commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. In it, the real star isn't the car at all, but rather the City of Detroit. Not even Eminem could steal the spotlight from the city whose dramatic…

“Live Midtown,” a neighborhood revitalization project in Detroit, promotes city living for employees of three CEOs for Cities Detroit City Cluster partners -  Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System, and Wayne State University. The program, which is administered by the University Cultural Center Association, provides financial incentives…

All eyes are on Detroit, and so are ours. This week CEOs for Cities traveled to the Motor City to co-host the national Opportunity Dividend Summit with United Way for Southeastern Michigan, which serves a six-county area in…

Time leads this week with a cover titled "The Tragedy of Detroit: How a great city fell -- and how it can rise again."  It is the beginning of a year-long series on Detroit from multiple angles by magazines in the Time stable.  The piece is generally fair, blaming the…

Could the bicycle take over in the Motor City?  Could the emergence of a greater biking culture re-enliven and re-use the city’s landscape in new ways?

Toby Barlow in this article makes the case for Detroit as a biking city. “With the legendarily affordable real estate…

This story is a must-read.  Detroit's cheap housing is attracting (at least three) artists and dreamers who are then attracting friends.  "But the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished."

Detroit is a wonderfully complex city.  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet with a group of Detroit civic leaders (members of the CEOs for Cities City Cluster) who are working to bring 15,000 college-educated young adults to Detroit by 2015.  And they are focused on making Detroit an appealing…

At his always interesting blog, The Bellows, Ryan Avent poses the fascinating question, How many talented people would have to move to Detroit to create a tipping point that becomes a self-sustaining movement?  What started as a Twitter joke ("Let's all go buy a mansion for a $1.") turned…

The Urbanophile blogs about the Midwest.  Always provocative, today's post reviews the auto industry's options and what that means for Detroit.  Definitely worth a read.

One of the best blogs on local economic development and politics continues to be Smart City Memphis, written by good friend and colleague Tom Jones.  Today he's written another incisive post on the Aerotropolis strategy being pursued by a number of cities.

With creative cities strategies increasingly gaining the attention of city leaders around the world, the Creative Cities Summit being hosted in Detroit October 12 – 15 will engage leaders with ideas on how to “rethink and redesign our cities for this age of innovation, knowledge and creativity”. 

By…

Good for Detroit's suburban mayors.  They are launching an experimental venture called Millennial Mayors Congress, in which mayors and emerging civic leaders will collaboratively develop action-oriented solutions to regional challenges.  If it works, promoters believe it could break some serious SE Michigan barriers: increasing the access that young(ish) people have…

A heavy two weeks of meetings with urban leaders in cities across the country left me with several thoughts:

Urban leaders are scrambling to figure out how to respond to high gas prices, and transit is a priority for mayors everywhere. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio has made…

The $100 million New Economy Initiative is an unprecedented commitment by philanthropists to transform a community -- in this case, Detroit and Southeast Michigan. The governing council of the fund is focusing on three high leverage drivers of transformation: Talent, Innovation, and Culture.

The group has only recently begun accepting…

All eyes are on Detroit, including ours. CEOs for Cities will host our national Opportunity Dividend Summit in the Motor City next week with our partners at the United Way of Southeastern Michigan. And last week, Detroit's transit initiative, the privately funded M-1 line along Woodward Avenue, received a…

Strategy Session 2010 NYC April 20-21

What happens when 150 urban leaders come together in one place for 48 hours?  Things get done and anything can happen.

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