News

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I just returned from the German Marshall Fund’s BUILD event in Bilbao, Spain.  For three days, 100 Americans and Europeans on the front lines of urban innovation gathered to exchange ideas. This transatlantic engagement enables civic leaders to share best practices for cities and facilitates collaboration that improves them. As a native Michigander with limited overseas travel experience, I continue to marvel at how the language of loving cities and place translates in  other countries.

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Forbes names Detroit among America's most creative cities. 

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UIX innovator Pashon Murray is among this year's MIT Media Lab Director's Fellows cohort.

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Each year, the Media Lab selects a group of extraordinary individuals from different industries and geographies as Director’s Fellows. These people become conduits for unlikely collaborations between the Lab and the world. The first group included prison activist Shaka Senghor, comedian Baratunde Thurston, and open education expert Philipp Schmidt, among others. (These Fellows officially started in July 2013 and will continue on for a second year.) Today, I’m excited to announce nine new members of the Director’s Fellows program who will be joining us this month.

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While many on the outside are still lamenting Detroit’s fall, the city is quietly rising higher.

Entrepreneurs, philanthropists and scholars have coalesced around community projects that are forming the scaffolding for a newly-remodeled Detroit: a rejuvenated metropolitan center repairing the cracks in its social and economic structure.

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The full title reads, "Black-Owned Businesses Are Quietly Powering Detroit's Resurgence, But No One's Talking About It."

Actually, we've been talking about it for years. 

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Mashable speaks with Batch Brewing Co. owner Stephen Roginson in this video on finding the right location for your small business and how the city can help or hinder you in the process. 

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Permits. Contracts. Licensing. Zoning.

As if starting your own business and projecting sales weren't hard enough already, setting up shop in major cities also calls for an abundance of paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles, often unforeseen and potentially detrimental.

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UIX innovator Veronika Scott of The Empowerment Plan gets a nod in this Inc. article on how to hire the homeless. 

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It's the kind of topic that makes many business owners uneasy: How do you hire someone who's homeless without feeling like a sleaze?

Plenty of companies and nonprofits have already gone through the process, and more are expected to follow now that states such as Utah provide tax credits to businesses that employ people who are homeless. But there are certain things to keep in mind.

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InsideOut Literary Arts Project started out as so many other well-intended projects do: as an idea that didn't quite seem realistic enough to become reality. Until it did.

It is worth quoting InsideOut founder and director Terry Blackhawk at length here, when she explained the origins of InsideOut in an op-ed for Huffington Post Detroit...

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David Kirby and Caitlin James are out to prove there’s still a place for the traditional corner grocer.

Walk through the door of their Parker Street Market in Detroit’s West Village and you’re almost transported back in time. A wooden crate of organic apples — 85 cents each — sits on a windowsill next to a similar crate of $1.25 sweet potatoes.Standing across the 800-square-foot space, a hand-made shelf holds a plate of fresh peppers, oranges and eggplants, arranged like a painter’s still life.

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Thank you, Detroit. For the second year of the Knight Arts Challenge, we received close to 1,000 thoughtful ideas for how the arts can play a role in engaging people in creative play, in the development of new and innovative artistic forms and in the importance of building a supportive community for artists, to name a few.

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Kresge Arts in Detroit is honored to announce the 18 recipients of the 2014 Kresge Artist Fellowships, including eight artists and one collaborative group selected in Dance/Music and, for the first time, nine artists selected in Film/Theatre. The Fellowships, funded by The Kresge Foundation and each consisting of a $25,000 prize and professional practice opportunities, are awarded annually to metropolitan Detroit artists for their exceptional commitment to artistic achievement and strong contributions to their respective communities.

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In the middle of the Recycle Here! workshop hangs a giant clock counting down the hours left during the Red Bull Creation challenge.

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The secret’s out. Entrepreneurs, engineers and investors – even those without any prior connections to the city – are packing up and moving to Detroit to be a part of the magic that’s happening here. I frequently have the opportunity to chat about the city’s appeal, the state of the business environment, and why so many entrepreneurs and investors have decided Detroit was the place to be.

Why Detroit?

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First things first: Beth Niblock has no control over the parking meters.

And yes, the city's new chief information officer has received her share of parking tickets since moving to Detroit from Louisville, Ky., in February. More than half the city's meters are broken, which made paying for parking in the middle of the polar vortex a challenge.

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A few miles north of the Shinola Midtown store, where Detroit grit is polished, assembled and sold at breathtaking premiums, the Rev. Faith Fowler is pioneering her own authentic take on Detroit retail.

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