News

Transforming underutilized land into productive urban farms was one of the many topics which were presented at the recent Kansas City Design Week.  Jerome Chou, past Director of Programs at the Design Trust for Public Space, presented his unique experience with the implementation of the Five Boroughs Farm in New York City and the impact that urban agriculture can have on low-income areas of a city.

Chou pointed out in his presentation that having the land available for an urban farm is only half of the battle. The other half involves changing local zoning laws, influencing political opinion, garnering economic support, and proving the project will have a net benefit to a community. These challenges where not unique to just New York City but also to Kansas City’s 18th and Broadway Urban Farm which was also presented at Kansas City Design Week.

Read more. 

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Greg Schwartz worked in New York at Warner Music Group as director of digital business. Then the entrepreneurial bug bit him, and he tried to turn a calendar app he had created into a business. But instead of staying put or moving to a tech mecca like Silicon Valley, he returned in 2011 to his hometown of Detroit to found UpTo, inspired by Dan Gilbert, founder of Detroit-based Quicken Loans and majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Read more.

Progress is being made toward making the City of Detroit a better place, and that progress took place as recently as yesterday along parts of Gratiot Avenue.

Detroit is a city that gets a lot of negative press, and a lot of it is for good reason. While there are several really nice neighborhoods within the city, there are many more areas that plainly look dirty, leaving a bad impression on visitors and generally lowering the morale of people who live in the city.

Read more.

Today, McDowell is part of that phenomenon. He has a hip gig at the M@dison Building, Quicken Loan’s Founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert’s remarkable transformation of a crumbling downtown movie palace built in 1917 into a high-tech incubator. McDowell works for mobile app developer Detroit Labs, one of the startups that, assisted by Detroit Ventures Partners, fill the M@dison with new, web-based businesses.

Read more. 

Derek Weaver is one of those people who keep showing up on the radar. 

First, word gets around that he's taken over management of a building meant for artists and actually filled it with artists. 

Then it turns out he's the guy behind the street murals that have gone up on Grand River Avenue just up the road from MotorCity Casino-Hotel.

And then he's on local TV news channels last fall for helping an elderly lady in Detroit shore up the abandoned houses next to her property.

Read more.

It took one of the people whom Veronika Scott was trying to help to show her a unique way to make a difference. 

Scott was in the research phase of a project for a product design class at Detroit's College for Creative Studies that was becoming more than a class project. She had been visiting shelters to find out how best to design a coat for some of Detroit's more than 20,000 homeless.

Read more.

Start-up tech companies in 2013 seem more nuanced than ever, thanks to the advent of smart phones and tablets.There are hundreds of start-ups in the United States ever-so eager to be the next Facebook or Groupon, and the quickest route to get there more often than not seems to run through an iPhone or an Android.

Read more.

Detroit is not exactly among America's top 10 tourist destinations. But a local nonprofit hopes to alter public perceptions of one of the nation's poorest big cities, where more than a quarter of its residents live below the poverty line.

Read more.

Business Insider gives their picks for the 23 coolest businesses in Detroit, from restaurants and bars to bike shops and tech startups. 

Read more. 

Excerpt: 

It’s always a pleasure when scientific studies confirm your own long-held opinions, especially when what you think flies in the face of all conventional wisdom.

For instance, who knew that chocolate éclairs and triple fudge caramel brownies actually contain fewer calories than a 12-ounce glass of skim milk? Or that every $1,000 you spend on lavish vacations before the age of 65 will, over the long run, provide you with more retirement income than if you’d stashed that same $1,000 in a savings account?

Read more.

Excerpt:

Has there ever been a city with more incongruities than Detroit?

Mayor Kilpatrick is a young dynamo who’s rebuilding the city. Wrong. He’s a thief who’s destroying it with his backroom, under-the-table antics, so he’s going to prison.

The City Council has signed a Consent Agreement with the State. Wrong. They’ve changed their minds and don’t consent on anything.

The Council hates the idea of an Emergency Financial Manager (EFM).  On second thought, they’ll cooperate with him.  Oops, on third thought they won’t. They’re bringing in Jesse Jackson to fight the whole idea.

Read more. 

Excerpt:

Even with its massive infrastructure, towering buildings and epic acreage, Detroit still has its hidey-holes or small spaces where people collect, communicate, commiserate and create.

Having a little place to call your own – a home of sorts – is essential to our human spirit. That is why the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue is the kind of place that resonates with its community members, who are desperately working to renovate its crumbling interior and exterior.

Read more. 

Opportunity Detroit is looking for innovative, creative, and inspired designs for a new building that will sit on the historic Hudson’s site, one of the most beloved locations in downtown Detroit.

Read more.

Excerpt:

As I wrote in my last post, Detroit Collision Works is a new 36-room shipping container hotel under development near the sprawling Eastern Market in downtown Detroit. Founder/CEO Shel Kimen is presently raising money through Kickstarter to build a pop-up prototype called FIRST CONTAINER that will consist of two containers near the permanent site. Like the hotel, the pop-up is designed to be a gathering place with scheduled programming where locals and visitors can gather to discuss the future of community development, food production, sustainable design, green transportation and other New Urbanism topics. Kimen’s priority is creating a place for sharing stories—a platform for people to talk about what’s important to them, both personal and professional.

Read more.

Excerpt:

As lawmakers in Washington work out an overhaul of the immigration system, the Dearborn-based social and economic services agency ACCESS has launched a comprehensive program to help immigrants open or expand businesses.