| Vol. 1, Issue 4 | 
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| Bruce blog Welcome to the Bruce blog—a weekly update on news, events and issues affecting life in Cleveland. Reporting as it happens on transit, development, planning, environment and arts & culture. Basically, we write about creative ideas forming, talk to the people who have an inside track on the issues, and sometimes offer a commentary of our own. (For disclosure purposes, Bruce blog is a local, independent writer who also works part-time with nonprofit organization EcoCity Cleveland. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of EcoCity or any other organization). January 18-24, 2004 Damage control after losing bike lanes in Euclid Corridor?
Bruce blog wonders if it’s coincidence, or is the city of Cleveland looking for ways to cover its backside while ODOT jettisons its promise to paint bike lanes in the Euclid Corridor? Apparently, the city is showing new interest in something called a "Sharrow," which is basically a road stencil that consists of a bicyclist symbol surrounded by an arrow indicating direction. While Sharrows haven’t been selected to replace the bike lanes on Euclid, yet, they are seen by some bike advocates as a fair compromise to last week’s announcement that ODOT plans to back out of its promise to put bike lanes on Euclid Avenue. Introduced in Denver (picture at right), Sharrows are “a constant reminder for drivers to share the road and for bicyclists to ride in the right direction,” according to one local bike advocate. To read more about Sharrows...
CH & UH to reconsider school levy The Cleveland Heights-University Heights school levy is going to be back on the ballot in March 2004. Early polling is under way to determine the support levels in the community. James and Mary Swindal are once again leading the pro-levy campaign. No word yet on the millage increase that the schools will need to support basic services. Meanwhile, underscoring the importance of passing school levies and the repercussions of last Fall’s failed levy, the CH-UH School District recently announced that it cut its Instructional Mathematics Helping our Teens Excel Program (IMHOTEP), a math achievement program for minority students. IMHOTEP was started in 1991 by two Heights math teachers, Raymond Spottsville and Mark Wessels, who were responding to the fact that less than 10 percent of African-American students at Heights were in Advanced Placement math classes, according to Max Sgro, a student reporter with school paper, The Black & Gold. To email
a support letter for the CH-UH school levy Bruce blog's quotes of the week Bruce blog is awed and encouraged by the voices for change appearing in area print publications. Kudos to the Free Times for a strong issue last week. Bruce blog has two favorite quotes from the issue. The first is from a preview of Pittsburgh punk band Anti-Flag: “The first people that turn around and say that young people are jaded and don’t care about the state of the world generally don’t listen to young people,” says bassist Chris. “And so to us, [The Death of a Nation Tour] is a gathering of the voices saying that the death of the nation is not the young people; the death of a nation is the militaristic society that we live in.” The second is from a well-crafted article from local writer John Ettorre about the state of things in Cleveland. Ettorre suggests, among other things, that an emerging group of independent journalists and activists will offer hope for Cleveland’s future: “…if this more sensible, more sustainable and more democratic regional landscape has any chance at all of taking root and flourishing, we’ll need a smarter, more knowing local media. A media better able to take the community’s pulse because of its closer, more authentic connections to average people and to grassroots movements. A media with a better grasp of the region’s history, and thus with a better sense of its future possibilities. A media that can somehow treat its audience as citizens at least as much as mere consumers.” Continuing to raise the volume on the need for media to be more responsive to social and environmental issues, an excellent letter to the editor appeared in last week’s Crain’s Cleveland Business from local restaurateur Parker Bosley. Bosley responded to editor Marc Dodosh, who blamed the tainted beef crisis on the media’s flippant way of covering the first case of Mad Cow disease discovered on U.S. soil. Bosley, the owner of a bistro in Ohio City known for purveying local and/or organic food, grew up on a small, family farm and says the problem goes way beyond one case of Mad Cow. He writes: “Implying that the Mad Cow crisis has been overdramatized suggests that all is well with our system of food production. This is absolutely not true. Food-borne illnesses and deaths continue to increase. Obesity and the early onset of diabetes among children are now referred to as epidemics. Rural communities and their local economies are being eroded as small-scale producers are unable to compete with the government-supported factory farm system. "There are folks all over our state whose lives and communities have been devastated by industrial agriculture," Bosley continues. "Where is the outrage from our media and especially Crain’s Cleveland Business?"
Quotes of the week, part two An interesting quote that puts the issue of urban sprawl into some national perspective comes from the latest Urban Land Institute newsletter. In it, Robert Fishman, professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in Ann Arbor, argues that not everyone will decide to pick up and move to the suburbs, rather, a sort of natural selection is occurring between suburbs and cities throughout the nation. To add a point to Fishman’s, where people are given choices, they will live in the city or the suburbs, depending on their personal preferences. Here’s the passage from the article: “The revitalization of many downtown areas, combined with growth in the suburbs, has created two radically different forms of urbanism—‘the urbanism of density and pedestrian life, and the fragmented urbanism of deconcentration,’ Fishman said. Rather than working against each other, he said the two forms of growth appear to be 'balancing each other out,' with the downtown living and working environment drawing certain residents and businesses, and the outlying living and working environment drawing others. "'The movement back to the core is bringing more balance to growth in outer areas…both (the downtown and fringe) are benefiting and are more stable,' Fishman said. 'The challenge for the 21st century is to put an edge to the urban region—not a line or a boundary—but an edge that reflects economic and cultural logic.'"
Calendar events January 20 January 20 January 22 January 28 Attendees are invited to submit comments orally or in writing at the informational meetings. Comments can also be submitted by e-mail or by surface mail to the LEC, 1 Maritime Plaza, Toledo, Ohio 43604. Comments will be accepted through February 18, 2004. The
draft documents are available here. Actvist alert According to the latest Ohio
Environmental Council newsletter, Ohio Governor Bob Taft's selection
to head the state’s mining oversight commission has a serious
conflict of interest, and should not be allowed to pass. To email a comment or a tip to Bruce blog Receive email updates of the Bruce blog |
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