All Eyes on Cleveland for Urban Revitalization Efforts at Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference

These days, the only positive press about Cleveland comes out of Detroit. That's right, our neighbor to the north has some pretty good things to say about our city while the rest of the country continues to bash it. Today, the Detroit Free Press highlighted the Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference being held in Cleveland, and commended the city's efforts at revitalization.

Last week, more than 900 of the nation's urban gathered in Cleveland for the third annual Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference. All eyes were on Cleveland, and not just because it was the conference's host, but because of the outstanding job that Cleveland has done and the strides that its' made.

Here is a clip:

To be sure, Cleveland still suffers its full load of urban misery, including five years in a row of at least 11,000 foreclosure filings, and a loss of population and industrial jobs roughly equal to Detroit's in percentage terms.

So why has Cleveland sprinted ahead in its revitalization work? Robert Brown, director of Cleveland's City Planning Commission, suggested this week that size plays a part. Cleveland is about half Detroit's population and square mileage.

"Cleveland is a smaller city so I think the problems are a little bit more manageable," Brown said. "We can get our hands around it better than Detroit, which is a much larger city."

But Dan Kildee, the former Genesee County treasurer and president of the Center for Community Progress, which organized this week's conference in Cleveland, suggested that Detroit's fractious leadership is holding back its revitalization efforts.

"It's a leadership question," Kildee said. In Cleveland, "leadership (has) not all been dependent on public elected officials. It's pretty clear that there have been more consistent nongovernment voices here in Cleveland keeping the flame alive on this subject."

Read more at the Detroit Free Press.