Category Archives: Real Estate & Development

City as Canvas: Exploring the potential of Detroit

Craftsman Home, McLean Street Highland Park MI by pinehurst19475 A few weeks ago, the Chicago Reader had a great feature saying there’s nowhere in America quite like Detroit right now. You should read the whole thing but here’s a taste: They say when the country catches a cold, Michigan gets the flu. Projects that started [...]

the evolution by buckshot.jones

Here’s a guest article from buckshot.jones’ excellent Detroit Journal. Here’s the process of prairiefying a city: A city is built on the river, allowing for trade and commerce and irrigation of farms. The city prospers and more people move in, the city expands. Farms on the edge of town are converted to housing, forest further [...]

M is for Monday … and Midwest, MCS, Michigan Agriculture and MORELS!

Morels ! by cedarkayak The latest issue of Midwest Living feature on the Best Midwest Food Towns served up a platefull of restaurants in our region that might entice the culinary tourist. Their editors selected Traverse City as the #2 town and Ann Arbor #3. Also featured were a collection of recipes from Traverse City [...]

Downsizing Flint … on purpose

Abandoned building in Flint – Colors by Derek Farr ( DetroitDerek) The New York Times has a great report titled An Effort to Save Flint by Shrinking It that begins: Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods. [...]

When Ice Attacks: Saginaw Bay homes damaged

Embedded video from CNN Video Weird Wednesday already? Nope. Huge piles of ice were pushed by NE winds into homes along Linwood Beach (just north of Bay City), forcing evacuations and causing damage. Linwood Beach residents return to find ice piled around, inside and atop their homes from the Bay City Times begins: “I was [...]

Counting Tuesday: Two states, three cities and a final four

One of Those Moments by MAGICDUDE PHOTOGRAPHY The New York Times reports that 30 states are looking at running out of funds to pay unemployment compensation in the next few months. Two states have already run out. One is Indiana. One guess as to the other: Michigan, which has been borrowing money from the federal [...]

Forward-Thinking Monday

the creative big three by vanessamiller (John Howkins, Charles Landry & Richard Florida) We’ll lead off with a quick plug for an upcoming conference and a look back at one from the recent past. The Conference on Michigan’s Future takes place in a few weeks (Nov 14-16) at Crystal Mountain with a focus on peak [...]

Building Green in Michigan

grand rapids art museum by chadâ„¢ When the topic of ‘green building’ comes up many still think of images such as earthships, built from recycled materials including used tires. Although efficient and intelligently designed, they didn’t necessarily appeal to the maintstream home owner or developers. Today green buildings appear much like any other home or [...]

Five things you need to know for Thursday, March 27, 2008

Welcome to a special Michigan Homes & Real Estate edition of Five Things you need to know about Michigan. Before I dive in I wanted to say a little something about our month themes. We got the word that a) you like them but b) you would like them to be not so loud so [...]

Michigan Neighborhoods: Kalamazoo’s Historic District

Henderson Castle, Effets de Neige by John Clement Howe The homes in the neighborhoods of Stuart, West Main Hill and South Street in Kalamazoo reflect both the individuality and also the economic status of their original owners. There are a variety of architectural styles examples here from the the turn of the century. The most [...]