The Complications of Our Deteriorating Inner Ring Suburbs
When controversy erupted in August over the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, race was at the very center of it all.
From Carpet Cleaning To Urban Living: The Forty-O-Five Place
Don Hallum called Ohio City his home years before the breweries settled in, and decades before foodies flocked to West 25th Street for Sunday brunch. He moved to the neighborhood on Cleveland's near west side in 1978.
The Slumlords We Love
Ken bursts through the front door of the Bel-Aire office wielding a can of wasp spray. The woman who ran in just before Ken is, to understate matters, distressed, and both are screaming at each other.
Cleveland Heights and the Problem with “Used to Be”
No place is what it used to be. Yet many places do have a lasting identity. But Cleveland Heights has more than a single identity, it has diversity.
Attention Would-Be Urban Homesteaders: Think Before You Buy
Fixing up a cheap house in a Rust Belt town is tough -- and a well-meaning buyer can end up doing more harm than good. What qualities do the right buyers have, and what's the value of land banks?
Sticking With Flint
An excerpt from Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City
In Detroit, Working Writers Get a House
The Write A House project attempts to turn empty housing stock into a strength.
Foreclosure: A Personal History
How the good green grass of Maple Heights became vacant lots.
A Tale of Two Foreclosures
Where do people go after they’ve lost their homes?
Cleveland’s Teardown Runaround
A few months ago, I was riding around on my bike from my old neighborhood near the Collinwood rail yards on Cleveland's East Side to my apartment in suburban Lakewood.
A Rust Belt Revival Is Beyond Black and White
City analyses often fall prey to black-and-white narratives. The Rust Belt is either “dead” or “reviving.” Residents are either suburbanites or city dwellers, gentrifiers or natives, boosters or negative nabobs.