diverging great lakes cities

Two outstanding regional blogs (which are often amazingly updated multiple times daily) which should be on your daily schedule to read are Null Space and Cleveburgh Diaspora.

From a recent post on Null Space:

"News is that Pittsburgh's [regional] unemployment rate is up to 5.8% in November, up 3/10ths of a point from the month earlier. Detroit's [regional] unemployment rate jumped a full percentage point, from 9 to 10%, between October and November. Cleveland's rate inched up a bit from 7 to 7.3%."

"The city of Detroit already has an unemployment rate over 16%, compared to the city of Pittsburgh which has unemployment measured at 5.5% for November.

That is remarkable if for no other reason than that our urban core has lower unemployment rate than the region, the opposite by far from Detroit's pattern which is probably more typical of other big US cities."

wow, that is amazing.

but also notice how the regions in Chris' graph have diverged over time as well from their near similarities around the turn of the decade. Sure, unemployment rate is just one statistic, but it certainly paints a picture of the relative strength of each of those three regions.

and from yesterday's post at Burgh Diaspora:

"I'm ringing in 2009 with a reinvention of this blog. Burgh Diaspora was born on June 1st, 2006. I set out to explore the economic potential of Pittsburgh's diaspora network.

Along the way, I learned a great deal about the geographic mobility of talent and the anachronistic means of developing a local labor pool. Also, I discovered how many other Rust Belt cities shared the same set of problems. I morphed the blog into Cleveburgh Diaspora, an attempt to build a larger identity geography. My aim was to grow the Tech Belt between Cleveland and Pittsburgh into a coherent economic region.

I'm betting that any kind of successful mega-regional project will depend on Pittsburgh's fate. The biggest drag on the Burgh's most recent renaissance is the lack of people with certain skills.

The goal of R2P: Return to Pittsburgh is addressing this shortcoming."

looking for a place to track all the blogs discussing Youngstown?

while we are in the middle of a complete site rebuild for www.intheyo.com, this page is now updated as soon as any local writer posts a story.

it might be a good place to bookmark if looking everyday for the latest information.