Refugees In The Rust Belt
While the USA wrestles with the politics and policies of immigration and refugees, Belt presents nine moving essays about refugees living throughout the Rust Belt…
Visiting Gritty South Bend & Glitzy Notre Dame, Two Sides of the Rust Belt
By Matt Altstiel If you’ve ever watched Parks & Recreation, you’re familiar with the dichotomy between run-down yet plucky [...]
Will The Water Crisis Finally Secure More Than Band-Aids For Flint?
On a rented yellow school bus ambling east on I-69, Hudie Langston shifted in his vinyl seat, turned toward the two women chatting nearby, and said what a lot of people in Flint have been thinking for months.
Before It Was Hingetown
Hingetown was born as a branding exercise in 2013 on the warm corpse of Cleveland’s queer scene. Anchored by the brick Striebinger block at West 29th and Detroit Shoreway, and extending down West 25th...
Some Surprising Numbers From Cleveland
There were fewer people living in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood in 2013 than there were in 2000. That is one of many surprising facts in The Cleveland Foundation's The Pulse: A Look at Greater Cleveland by the Numbers.
Where The River Burned
On April 22, 1970, schoolchildren from around metropolitan Cleveland sat in their classrooms and wrote to Mayor Carl Stokes. Over the next few days, hundreds of letters poured into City Hall ...
Pittsburgh’s Ace Hotel Markets The City’s Past To Its Future
The first person John Brewer saw when he entered the YMCA in the 1950s was not a receptionist as you see when you enter the same building today, but a security guard.
An Interview with Matthew Desmond
One-third. For more than 100 years that’s been the standard measure for figuring housing costs in the United States: you should pay no more than one-third of your income in rent or mortgage payments.
How Michigan’s Municipal Policies Led To Crises In Detroit and Flint
Michigan has the most decrepit cities in the United States...It’s not just a result of neglect. It’s a result of policy.
East Cleveland Abandoned Wasteland
A video drive-through and commentary of East Cleveland, Ohio by Jamal Collins, a visual communication design instructor, providing art education at Cleveland's Boys and Girls Club.
Cleveland’s Recovery Never Happened, Report Finds
Cleveland is the most economically distressed large city in the country, with three out of four residents living in zip codes with high rates of poverty, joblessness, and vacant housing.
Up In The Morning & Off To School In Detroit
On my first day of sophomore year in 1982, I transferred from St. Martin DePorres High, a very small, very focused, very caring Catholic high school, to Northern Senior High School, a very large, very chaotic, very cold public school.