Retraining Manufacturing Veterans in Toledo

What does it take to retrain middle-aged factory workers?

NPR takes a look at the process in this story about a Toledo-area couple, both in their 50s, who are back in high school learning algebra and training for their first white-collar jobs.

The effort paid off for Jim Buford, who recently got a job installing solar panels.

How to Live in the Suburbs…Without Cars

A bike shed in Vauban, Germany

This is an interesting article from The New York Times about Vauban, Germany- an experimental suburb with few cars.

It is home to 5,500 residents, according to the Times, all living within a rectangular square mile. The community “may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life,” according to the story.

Lessons From Greensburg?

What if your entire town was virtually wiped off the map in a single afternoon?

That’s pretty much what happened in Greensburg, Kansas, two years ago when it was hit by a tornado. (Not the Rust Belt, I know. But maybe we can learn something.)

Since then, the town has been rebuilding in a greener and more energy-efficient manner.

Deconstructing Youngstown

Youngstown’s Tyler Clark has a blog post today about a deconstruction forum that took place in Youngstown yesterday.

This process was first piloted on a large scale in Cleveland, with the support of the Cleveland Foundation. The best synopsis I’ve read was in this New York Times article last year.

Rather than demolishing vacant homes at a considerable cost to the municipality, a former architect named Brad Guy had the idea of taking apart homes nail by nail and scrapping the parts. The process has been attractive to many Rust Belt cities in two ways. First, it requires lots of workers in soft job markets. Second, it creates value out of what was formerly thought of as a total loss. In an added benefit, reusing building materials is green, green, green.

Cleveland even has a store that sells unique items salvaged from city homes. It’s called A Piece of Cleveland. Buffalo has Buffalo ReUse.

Urban Advocates in Youngstown have been pushing to bring the tactic there. The city has been demolishing about 500 homes annually at a cost of more than $1 million.

Unemployed Steelworkers and Environmentalists Unite for Ad

The Environmental Defense Fund has launched a new ad with Braddock Mayor John Fetterman, claiming carbon caps could offer relief to former steel towns.

Wow.

Green Jobs in Michigan

Novi, Michigan, a Detroit suburb, will be home to the state’s first wind turbine manufacturing plant, a facility which is expected to create 250 manufacting jobs, The Detroit News reports.

Global Wind Systems Inc. will be investing $32 million in the maker of delivery-ready, large-scale wind turbines.

A new state law that will require the state to draw at least 10 percent of its energy from alternative sources by 2015 helped spur the investment. Since its passage last year, more than two dozen alternative energy companies have emerged across the state, according to the article.

The state of Ohio also recently passed a similar law.

Detroit: Schools, urban farms, and a conversation

I’ve been meaning to post several Detroit-related items this week:

First, earlier this week, the Detroit papers reported that the city’s public schools are in serious trouble – even more serious trouble than usual.

http://www.freep.com/article/20090401/NEWS01/90401134

“After months of financial projections, independent audits and declarations of financial emergency, the state-appointed financial manager for Detroit Public Schools submitted a report to the state today that paints a historically dire problem,” the Free Press reported.

It gets worse – “DPS will have to cut thousands of jobs and close as many as 50 schools over the next two years because the district has accumulated a $305-million deficit. And it should have seen the problem coming months ago, said Robert Bobb, the financial manager. The crisis could lead to more cries for mayoral control of the school system, a solution advocated by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.”

It’s a pretty depressing state of affairs. The health of cities is completely intertwined with the health of their public schools systems, plain and simple. And everything I read about the Detroit Public Schools (and many other urban school systems) paints such a terrible picture it is hard to imagine anything ever getting better. I know that’s a bad attitude to have; obviously the schools didn’t get this way overnight. But it’s still so overwhelming to think about.

So after that depressing item, here is something more hopeful:

http://www.freep.com/article/20090402/BUSINESS04/904020370

A Detroit businessman has put forth a proposal that would “convert hundreds, even thousands, of vacant parcels in the city into urban agriculture,” the Free Press reports.

“Detroit already is home to hundreds of smaller community gardens. But Hantz’s proposal is the first to envision large-scale commercial farming.”

The article goes on to detail how foreclosed city, county, and state-owned properties could be used. Not everyone is in favor of this. One community-garden advocate pointed out that smaller gardens to a lot to bring communities together, as opposed to a large, commercial operation. But it’s an intriguing idea, and I hope we haven’t heard the last of it!

Thanks to Rust Wire reader Claudia Raleigh for bringing this item to my attention!

Finally, I want to plug an event that is happening in Detroit on Wednesday evening.

The magazine Next American City is hosting a conversation about the economy and how Detroit is working to reposition itself. It is part of the magazine’s Great Minds Great Cities Urban Nexus series.

It’s open to the public if anyone is interested in going. I can’t make it, so if any of you Rust Wire readers in Detroit want to go and report back what happens, it would be much appreciated! For more details on the when, where, and who, click here:

http://americancity.org/index.php/urbanexus/detroit

-KG

The Case for Carbon Caps

Politico argues that the carbon caps proposed by Obama’s budget will be good for the Midwest, despite the resistance from manufacturers.

A study by the Environmental Defense Fund identified 1,200 companies in 12 manufacturing states that would grow and create new jobs under a federal cap and trade system.

Read about it at lesscarbonmorejobs.org. 

Michigan company Dowding Industries is hiring laid-off auto workers to build wind turbine components. In Pennsylvania, blacksmiths are finding jobs constructing parts for windmills, the article reports.

The Obama Administration sees an opening for cap-and-trade legislation in Congress via these stories and when the policy is cast as one that could generate a job swap — trading a dying industry for one Obama views as the future: creating environmentally friendly products.

Some people think this notion of “green jobs” is far-fetched. But I know for a fact that in Toledo, Ohio they are manufacturing solar panels. The plant looks just like an auto plant. Last I heard, First Solar was still hiring.

Ohio is the new Houston, Y’all! Ok, that might not be true … but we can hope.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19405.html