Cleveland Real Estate News

Thoughtful post I wanted to feature from Lev Gonick, VP for Information Technology Services at CWRU.  You can read Lev’s entire post here. He has embedded an interactive map showing other cities (of which he says there are at least 500) that have lost population as we have. And he makes the point that different cities are trying their own versions of reinvention.

Mayor Jackson said something  at his west side ‘Dialogue’ meeting a few weeks ago that stuck with me. We can look at everything other cities are doing and see if it fits for us, but he doesn’t want us to ‘be like Chicago’, or any other city, he wants us to be, well, Cleveland.  I think the value in that comment comes from knowing that what works one place may not work somewhere else.

Gonick points out that we are only about 20th on the list of most connected countries, and that broadband/wireless technologies are being utilized more aggressively in other places, or at least they started sooner. (Granted, some of these countries, like Portugal, are small)

Anyway, here is one paragraph from Lev Gonick’s post.  I strongly encourage you to read the entire post:

“…For some cities the aspiration may be to uncover the youthful elixir. For others, the rallying cry may be to return to former glory by some magic formula. There is at least one other arc of possibility. The connected-city of the 21st century may be the DNA of the ‘new city’. Population size remains relevant in the connected community but does fall victim to the demographers imperative that size equals destiny. The art of designing a connected-city, especially as part of a re-invention project, may well be one of the biggest opportunities of the 21st century. Connected-cities enables learning, participation, and opportunities to re-discover the value of human ingenuity. Connected cities and their citizens and neighborhoods can export virtues like art, education, culture, and sport over the 21st century transportation system known as the Internet. Creativity, diversity, smart and green are important inputs into the connected city allowing us to better balance economic opportunities with creating livable neighborhoods, accentuating quality of life, and a more sustainable approach to the broader eco-systems within which our cities evolve….”

Thanks for a good read, Lev Gonick.  Peace Out – 3C