Tag Archives: Great Lakes

Writing about the Rust Belt – GLUE and Rustbelt Almanac

I’ve got two great projects to share with you, both are related to sharing stories about rustbelt cities including Pittsburgh.

If you have been a regular reader of IheartPGH over the years, you have probably read a few of our posts about GLUE. GLUE stands for Great Lakes Urban Exchange – a project that was started by a Pittsburgher and a Detroiter (is there a Detroit equivalent to the word Pittsburgher?). I’ve been fortunate to attend many of the GLUE conferences, the most recent conference was held in September 2011 here in Pittsburgh. Through GLUE I have had the chance to meet my blogging counterparts from other rust belt cities. Some of my fellow GLUE friends have been discussing another GLUE conference for this fall. We’ve also launched the GLUE Tumblr blog – which is open for submission. If you have a story, link, photos or video that you would like to share with fellow city lovers please submit here – http://gluespace.tumblr.com/submit

Speaking of story sharing. Meet Rustbelt Almanac – a new magazinge that will be launching very soon with a first issue about Pittsburgh. Congrats to the Rustbelt Almanac team on not only meeting but beating their fundraising goal. Check out the video below. (There is one more day to contribute – you can still donate to the Rustbelt Almanac kickstarter campaign here.)

Rustbelt Almanac Kickstarter (bloglocal.net)
Rust Belt Market seeks funding to expand (wxyz.com)
Rust Belt turns to ‘Tech Belt’ (wnd.com)
Detroit Leads the Way on Place-Centered Revitalization (sustainablecitiescollective.com)

Why Pittsburgh Party – September 17th

One of the ideas that came out of the GLUE (Great Lakes Urban Exchange) Conference back in March (see my post about the conference here) was the idea for the I will Stay If campaign – the folks behind GLUE are using this as an opportunity to talk about why people want to live in these Great Lakes Cities.

The first party was held in Detroit over the summer – check out the article about the party here (more photos here).

Some of the folks who have come together to help plan the Pittsburgh I will Stay If party have adapted the name slightly to Why Pittsburgh? – and are inviting anyone who is interested to come join the party on September 17th at the Shadow Lounge.

This is a great way to meet more people who are passionate about Pittsburgh and to connect to the GLUE network of other people who are passionate about their cities too.

If you are new to GLUE – check out Gluespace.org – follow their blog and sign up for the Gluesletter. You can also follow GLUE on Twitter @gluester. They have some really great info about cities and projects in other cities – as well as some great photo contests.

RSVP for Why Pittsburgh on Facebook here.

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Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Cities in between – GLUE Conference Day 1

Image via Wikipedia

I am in Milwaukee for the 2nd annual GLUE conference. GLUE stands for Great Lakes Urban Exchange – which is a project that was started 2 years ago by Pittsburgh’s Abby Wilson and Sarah Szurpicki of Detroit. The website GLUEspace.org has become a portal for anyone to share information about cities in the Great Lakes watershed. IheartPGH has been a fan of GLUE from the beginning (see the post from April 2008) and thanks to GLUE both great lakes city t-shirts from both IheartPGH and STL-Style made the New York Times last summer.

You can read more about the 2009 GLUE Conference here.

I just wanted to post a quick summary with some links from the first day of the conference.

We started with a tour of Growing Power, Inc. which is an urban farm in Milwaukee that has become a model and a training facility for urban agriculture around the country. They are doing some amazing work here growing food (and worms) in green houses.

We then headed over to Sprecher Brewery for dinner – which included salad made with greens from Growing Power.

The speakers after dinner were really interesting

Willie Hines Jr. is the president of Milwaukee Commons Council, he spoke about his experiences moving back to Milwakuee, working in business and government and running for office
Carol Coletta is president and CEO of CEO’s for Cities – a non profit organization that advocates for cities. Carol has lots of information and facts about cities and how to improve cities. The CEO’s for Cities websites has lots of resources for anyone interested in cities. (Carol was one of the panelists at the first CityLive PGH event back in Sept. 2007)

Sundays are Fundays at the Sunday Market

Image via Wikipedia I first learned about the Sundae Market from Carrie who is one of the great creative folks behind the Imadeit Craft Markets (see past post on IheartPGH here) – I stopped by the Sundae Market last fall and it was a perfect sunny Sunday afternoon. The Sundae Markets have returned this year and there are 2 more left this fall. The Sundae Market folks have a new website – SundaeMarket.com – They have been busy organizing markets in some other great cities like Buffalo – definitly sounds like something the GLUE – Great Lakes Urban Exchange folks would be happy to hear about.