February 28, 2026

Flip: Building Permits, Mapped, At Your Desk Top

by Keith Schneider0

The New York Times, my favorite newspaper, today published on its Web site a very useful and remarkably up to date online interactive map and directory of building permits issued by New York City. The building permit feature is a collaboration between New York City, the Times, and Google and represents another vivid display of the Internet’s capacity to store, organize, and disseminate useful land use and economc data in a way never possible previously. I can imagine all …

Read More

In Cleveland, The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes

by Keith Schneider2

  CLEVELAND — I.M. Pei’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a masterpiece of glass and steel on Lake Erie,  is a great pyramid playbox for people who love the music, the messages that changed the world, and the men and women of my generation who, unlike nearly all of us,  lived as far out on on the creative edge as it is possible to be. A lot of the very best didn’t dwell there long.  This weekend I visited the Hall for the first time and came away …

Read More

Banning Coal Power Plants in Ontario; Promoting Them in Michigan

by Keith Schneider5

  The Canadian province of Ontario, which lies across Lake Huron from Michigan, and is home to about the same number of people (10.3 million there, 10 million here), has supported one of the planet’s active conversations on the ties between a strong economy and a clean environment. Much of the dialogue centers of global climate change and the province’s coal-fired power plants, one of which, the Nanticoke plant on Lake Erie, is among the largest on the …

Read More

Blissfest: Things Michigan Does Well

by Keith Schneider1

  BLISS TOWNSHIP — There are a few things that Michigan still does very well. Its three big universities — Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State – and network of smaller public colleges and universities, are terrific. Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Traverse City compare with anyplace in America as great places to live and do business. And we have Blissfest, the affirming, heartening folk/blues/acoustic music festival founded in 1981, and ever since has held the second weekend in July, on a …

Read More

While Lansing Sputters and Fumes, Grand Rapids Excels

by Keith Schneider4

  There still isn’t much to be happy about when it comes to the political conversation in Lansing, our state capital. Though she won more than 50 counties in the 2006 election, more than any Democrat running for any state office in Michigan history – she also delivered a Democratic-led  House;  Republicans hold the state Senate by a slim majority – Michigan’s governor hasn’t done anything with her influence. Politics is a full contact body sport.  Ms. Granholm, …

Read More

Green Neighborhood Grant Act in Illinois

by Keith Schneider3

Illinois, our neighbor to the west, has been doing a lot of things right of late for its residents, environment, and economy. It makes a Michigan resident a bit jealous. The Center for Neighborhood Technology and Bethel New Life, for example, convinced the Chicago Transit Authority to rebuild rather than tear down the elevated Green Line in the 1990s, helping to promote the revival of the city’s West Side. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley turned a tree-planting campaign …

Read More

Low Great Lake

by Keith Schneider3

It’s an odd sight to venture to the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan’s upper peninsula and see dry dirt where there used to be water. Lake Superior, which holds 14 percent more water than the four other Great Lakes combined, is 18 inches below normal, lower than it’s been since 1926. We’re sort of used to low lake levels out here in the upper Midwest. Not long ago Lake Michigan was so low that …

Read More

Two Conversations on Energy in America; and Everything Else

by Keith Schneider2

You may have missed this little note out of Wall Street last week but many of the renewable and alternative energy funds are doing very well. The New Alternatives fund is up nearly 37 percent the last 12 months and 20 percent so far this year. The Guinness Atkinson fund is up 17 percent and 27 percent while the Wilder Hill funds, which launched last fall, are each up about 11 percent this year. By …

Read More

Apology: A Little Crash

by Keith Schneider4

So just in case you’ve been wondering where I been, you need look no further. I spent Monday night and half of Tuesday in the Munson Hospital ICU recovering from taking a pretty nasty spill — that I do not remember — off my road bike. The details aren’t grim. I apparently hit a patch of sand and went down hard enough for my helmeted head to bounce. A friend and witness who owns a …

Read More

The Unforeseen: A Terrific Movie

by Keith Schneider1

Earlier this month I attended the New York opening for The Unforeseen, Laura Dunn’s new documentary about the clash of values and struggle to protect Barton Springs in Austin from the consequences of sprawling exurban development. I also met Laura and her husband, Jef Sewell, a well-known executive for an entrepreneurial fulfilment company that serves entertainment Web sites.  [youtube]24-6U5FK470[/youtube] David Brancaccio, the host of PBS’s Now program, also has taken an interest in Laura and the film and …

Read More