Great Lakes Urban Exchange Conference Comes To Larimer, Sept 15-17

I have no intimate knowledge of this group which aims to bring together, grass roots thinkers and doers to share knowledge and best practices, in dealing with many of the common problems and opportunities facing Rust Belt cities.

This is the third conference and the first one held in Pittsburgh. One cool thing is the organisers felt a downtown hotel would not be the right location--so it's centered right in the neighborhood of Larimer.

From Rust Wire

After GLUE’s 2010 “Urban Laboratories” event in Cleveland, workshop co-facilitators Fred Brown, of the Kingsley Association, and Pat Clark, a community development consultant and principal of Jackson Clark Partners, worked with GLUE director Sarah Szurpicki to reexamine and retool the annual GLUE experience. In particular, they saw an opportunity to do more with the energy these conferences generated, by being more deliberate about forging relationships across racial, socioeconomic, and neighborhood boundaries.

While Pittsburgh has made great strides in becoming America’s “most livable city,” some neighborhoods – like Larimer – have not reaped the benefits of its redevelopment. In spite of this, Larimer is home to innovative, collaborative organizing efforts to make sure that its residents have a say in the future of their neighborhood. The future they’re envisioning is ambitiously green. The work happening there may be a model for how Rust Belt cities ensure that every resident benefits from the revitalization of our cities.

Most likely, Rust Wire will do at least one direct post about the event.

Of course, if someone who attended or knows more about this would offer up a post, that would be awesome. Sadly, a family emergency has come up and I will be out of town right when there all these great things going on.

GET:Larimer – Green Environmental Tourism – G20 Summit Tour

Obviously, this event has passed, but I hope to hear more.

The Post's, City Walkabout blog said the event was pretty well attended.

"Saturday update: It's exciting to report that, while many students in Oakland were just hanging out, possibly clueless, a dozen or so students among 35 people came out for the tour. On the hour-long walk around Larimer, we saw site after site that stakeholders have changed from grit to green -- community gardens and urban farms --"

While really very few people claiming to be awake, slightly informed or literate have much excuse for thinking Pittsburgh is a dirty smokey depressed city as a whole, it does have some neighborhoods, like Homewood and Larimer, which are thought to have almost no bright spots. A tour like this helps show that even this is a myth.

"GET:Larimer will be highlighting an existing community and how a group of individuals and organizations with shared vision can leverage the natural opportunities of blighted areas through sustainable economical development and social entrepreneurship to create real, positive, and lasting change.

While Larimer is a small neighborhood in the East End of the City of Pittsburgh, the solutions and ideas that will be described, demonstrated, and discussed can be applied to communities around our country and throughout the world. For this reason, GET:Larimer will also stress the idea of application of these concepts outside of the community of Larimer coupled with the knowledge that a community can be reborn through the determination of group of individuals seeking neighborhood improvement."

There should have been a lot more tours of this type during G20.