I just wrote a piece for Slate about Dan Kildee and my hometown of Flint, Michigan. Here's an excerpt:


Dan Kildee is driving with his knees and talking with his hands as his rental car pushes 80 mph on… Continue

In an interview with Flint Expatriates, Frank Popper discusses death threats, the links between deindustrialization and agricultural decline, the fate of shrinking cities, and the heartless genius of capitalism. Here's a sample:

Why are cities and regions so reluctant to
accept that they are getting smaller?

I… Continue

I've been interviewing various urban planners as part of a project on shrinking cities, and I decided to put together a series of Q & A interviews on my Flint Expatriates blog. The first is with Terry Schwarz, interim director of the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative at Kent State University and creator of the Shrinking Cities Institute. Here's an excerpt. You can read the entire interview… Continue

This is cross posted on Pittsburgh Arts Digging Pitt

Ok, I didn't know anything at all about this, but I'll go out on a limb and say this is a potential game changer for the entire history of the state of Michigan and perhaps the entire "Rust Belt".

To set the stage here, the statistics and evidence show Michigan to be in at the very least a full blown depression bringing to mind w… Continue

I've been away from the blog for a while, working to play water polo in Pittsburgh's Kingsley Assocation summer camp.

Furthermore, we've started another water polo program with the help of Citiparks in the Hill District at Ammon Rec Center's swim pool, located at 2216 Bedford Ave. We… Continue