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  Beyond the Backyard Garden: Urban Agriculture in Milwaukee

  Dave Steele | Tue, Jun 10th, 2008 | Category: Commentary | City: Milwaukee | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, economy, green, sustainability, produce, midwest, corn, urban agriculture, urban garden, tractor | 2

  Thanks to industrialized agriculture, there’s a wide gulf between those who produce food and those who consume it. Too many city-dwellers lack access to nutritious, non-processed foods. Urban agriculture promises to change that. 

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  The New Milwaukeeans: Making Sense of Population Growth in the Cream City

  Dave Steele | Mon, May 19th, 2008 | Category: Commentary | City: Milwaukee | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, suburbs, downtown, growth, jobs, schools, immigration, population growth, populatioin, census, latino, cream city | 3

  After forty years in the statistical doldrums, what does Milwaukee make of a sudden, slight increase in population? Local expert and urban enthusiast Dave Steele reports.

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  Solving Civic Problems in a Post-Fact Society

  Dave Steele | Thu, Apr 24th, 2008 | Category: Commentary | City: Milwaukee | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, environment, infrastructure, taxpayers, pollution, sewerage, talk radio | 8

  In an age when facts don’t matter, how do cities build the consensus to make big plans? In a public sphere heavily influenced by talk radio and other media outlets, such as local blogs, where there is no clear line between fact and opinion, where outright falsehoods are presented as legitimate opinions, the billons of dollars in investment in Milwaukee’s Deep Tunnel are now deemed a massive waste. 

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  A Global Wake Up Call for Middle America

  Dave Steele | Thu, Apr 10th, 2008 | Category: Reviews | City: Chicago | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, transportation, detroit, economy, infrastructure, chicago, labor, midwest, 1970s, richard longworth | 1

  Richard Longworth wants you to know two things: First, globalization is happening and it will continue to change the world. Second, if you live in the Midwest, you’d better be very afraid about your region’s chances of competing in an increasingly “flat” world. 

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  A Bronze Fonz? A Revealing Tussle over Public Art in Milwaukee

  Dave Steele | Wed, Mar 26th, 2008 | Category: Report | City: Milwaukee | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, downtown, chicago, art, tourism, 1970s, beer, public art, picasso, fonzie, tv characters | 8

  An uproar over a statue of the 1970s TV icon says more about its city than any piece of public art could. 

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  Destination Nomination: the Obama “Change-Train” Stops in Milwaukee

  Dave Steele | Mon, Mar 3rd, 2008 | Category: Commentary | City: Milwaukee | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, hillary clinton, obama, barack obama, election 2008, change train, change we can believe in, el rey | 0

  Last week my city came down with a fever. Symptoms include: sudden feelings of euphoria followed by a quiet, zen-like sense of anticipation; sudden boisterous gatherings of young people; throngs of people in the streets carrying signs and encouraging passing motorists to honk their horns; and long lines of voters, many voting for the first time. That’s right, Obamamania hit Milwaukee.

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  Celebrities descend upon Milwaukee: Who will do their dry-cleaning?

  Dave Steele | Thu, Feb 14th, 2008 | Category: Report | City: Milwaukee | Tags: commentary, dave steele, milwaukee, condominiums, dry-cleaning, east side, celebrities, prospect avenue, halle berry, oprah, screech, brewers, high school of the arts, gold coast, university club | 1

  What do Oprah’s mom, the guy who played Screech on Saved by the Bell, and Halle Berry have in common? They either currently live, or have recently lived, along Milwaukee’s “Gold Coast:” Prospect Avenue, a row of ritzy condo towers lining the Lake Michigan shoreline. (Yes, that’s right: the Halle Berry.)

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  Environmentally-friendly development: Rust Belt to Green Belt in Milwaukee

  Dave Steele | Thu, Jan 24th, 2008 | Category: Report | City: Milwaukee | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, hank aaron state trail bike path, greenbelt, sierra club, industrial midwest, closed factories, rust belt development | 5

  

  When most people think of the industrial Midwest, “environmentally-friendly development” is not usually the first thing to come to mind. But in Milwaukee, a city built on wetlands and bluffs on the shores of Lake Michigan—a city that rose to prominence as a center of heavy manufacturing—the rebirth of Menomonee Valley shows that the terms “industrial job creation” and “environmental sensitivity” need not be mutually exclusive.

  Long before Europeans settled in Milwaukee, the…

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  The Politics of Urban Snow Removal

  Dave Steele | Sun, Dec 23rd, 2007 | Category: Commentary | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, politics of snow removal, sherman park, storm response, snow, snow storm | 0

  

  In the thick of a political season where we’re hearing a lot about “bringing people together,” ten mayors from across the United States, in an excellent collection of interviews with big city mayors on the presidential election, say the next president should function as the “mayor of America,” since it is in cities where the most pressing concerns facing real Americans are to be found, and where pragmatic solutions are favored over ideology and rhetoric.

  This is true, of course. It…

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• Columnists

  Is Bus Transit Hopeless?

  Dave Steele | Thu, Dec 6th, 2007 | Category: Commentary | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, taxpayers, bus, mass transit, school bus, hopeless, loser-mobile, county officials, congress for new urbanism | 0

  

  It’s hard to think of a vehicle more maligned in Milwaukee than the city bus. Back in high school, when my friends and I depended on it to get to school and work, we nicknamed it the “green limousine,” an ironic take on the green and white color scheme that the Milwaukee County Transit System used, from the teal stripe once painted along the side and front of every bus, to the olive green uniform once worn by every bus driver. Yes, I had no doubt back in those days that buses were not…

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  Rise, Fall, Resilience … Renaissance?

  Dave Steele | Thu, Nov 22nd, 2007 | Category: Commentary | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, employment, renaissance, strength of industry, pfister and vogel, freeway, milwaukee industry | 1

  Milwaukee’s history can be summed up in a neat, three-part narrative: rise, fall, resilience. We tell ourselves this narrative in an ongoing effort to define what kind of city Milwaukee is today, and where exactly it is headed.For those of us who came after the fall, however, such a pat retelling of Brew City’s past rings somewhat hollow. For as a thirty-something Milwaukeean whose roots in the city go back three generations, I have little firsthand knowledge of…

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  To beer or not to beer: Hops and economic development in Milwaukee

  Dave Steele | Thu, Oct 25th, 2007 | Category: Commentary | City: Milwaukee | Tags: dave steele, milwaukee, denver, miller brewing company, schlitz, headquarters, pabst, coors | 0

  A few weeks ago there was a story that received brief mention in the national business press, but which ran front and center on Milwaukee’s radar screen. Miller Brewing Company and Coors plan to merge their US-based beer making operations, in order to reduce administrative overhead to better compete with the 800 pound gorilla of American macro-brewers, Anheuser-Busch.

  This is a big deal in Milwaukee because Miller Brewing Company was born here and is still based here. It’s the only…

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