Resources & Research

Is your community ready to represent Michigan in the Strongest Town competition?  Nominations are open now through February 20 in this international competition hosted by our friends at Strong Towns.  The competition highlights “towns and cities who are doing the hard work of becoming stronger, putting in place the processes,...

Last year we released our second “Enabling Better Places” guide with our partners at the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) and MEDC’s Redevelopment Ready Communities program (RRC). These two guides provide a strategy for communities of all sizes to examine their zoning and development codes, finding and removing common barriers...

The Michigan Municipal League’s 2021 Convention is taking place in person later this month and this year’s focus is around the Community Wealth Building work the MML started last year. The Convention, happening Sept. 22-24 in Grand Rapids during ArtPrize, centers on helping our local leaders spark a community revival...

“Last mile broadband” is a hot topic as we look back at the last year of widely varying connectivity experiences. Who had access to it, and who didn’t, made a big difference in our ability to keep up with jobs, schooling, vaccine scheduling, public meetings, contactless grocery shopping, etc. Smaller...

“That might work in Minneapolis, but you know we have winter here, right?” someone once objected. I think we were talking about bike commuting, but we could have been discussing any number of quality of life or placemaking ideas. That Minneapolis’ winter temperatures are colder than Sault Sainte Marie’s mattered...

The division of “business” and “social service” is an unnecessary one, says a category of organizations that choose to marry the functions. Whether they come to it from a business perspective that recognizes the importance of the community fabric, or as a nonprofit looking for sustaining revenue streams, social enterprises...

“Do you remember back in March, when school announced it was closing for three weeks?” I asked my wife recently. Obviously, few of us had been pessimistic enough about the protracted impact of Covid-19 on our lives. The breathless announcements of that time about the end of commuting, and how...

This guest blog comes from Ted Howard, co-founder and president of The Democracy Collaborative. As our nation continues to suffer a staggering health crisis, the unprecedented economic shutdown induced by the pandemic is leading to a shattered economic landscape. Shattered with it is the possibility of returning to the status...

A lot of us have been spending a lot more time at home lately, either laid-off, furloughed, working-from-home, or caring for family. This has drawn acute attention to the way that community wealth hits closest to home for people: whether they have an appropriate, affordable, accessible place to live. The...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what role that I, and the financial choices I make for my household, play in the local economy. For years, I’ve participated in the Buy Local movement; First Fridays events; subscribed to farm shares; dedicated most of my monthly eating out budget to...