 Hi, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this morning in our discussion of local place-based economic development also known as placemaking. Placemaking is a community and economic development strategy that attempts to capitalize on existing local assets and build upon them to create appealing spaces where people want to live, work, and play. Research here at the Ford School through the Michigan Public Policy Survey has looked at placemaking efforts across the state of Michigan over the past few years and found that since 2009 there has been a significant increase in its use by Michigan local governments and an increase in the confidence in its use as a strategy by local leaders in jurisdictions large and small across the state. However, I'm sure that our outstanding guest speaker is going to give you much more information about placemaking in Michigan and what's going on in our communities when it comes to this strategy. So let me just tell you that our talk today is sponsored by the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy also known as Close Up as well as co-sponsored by the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The lecture is part of a series of talks associated with the Close Up in the Classroom Initiative. Through the current Ford School undergraduate course entitled Michigan Politics and Policy Close Up in the Classroom is working to integrate student experiences with the Center's research activities such as those with Michigan local economic development techniques. We'd like to thank the Provost's Office for its support both of the Michigan Politics and Policy class and as well as this lecture series. The Provost's Office Assistance not only lets us get U of M state and local government research into the classroom but also allows us to bring esteemed guest speakers in today like our speaker Dan Gilmart. Dan is the Executive Director and CEO of the Michigan Municipal League. MML is a nonprofit association of municipalities and municipal leaders in the state of Michigan that was founded in 1899 and it represents the mutual interests of villages and cities of all sizes through advocacy at both the state and federal level. Dan is recognized nationally, is an expert in the fields of urban revitalization, place-making, local government reform, and transportation policy. He serves as a member of the Michigan Future Incorporated Leadership Council and on the place-making leadership council. He recently served on the board of directors of the National Legal Cities and he's also a blogger, author, and radio talk show host. Please welcome Dan Gilmart. Thank you all. Good morning to everybody. I don't know if it's the stirring conversation or the free pizza that brought you out but I'm gonna assume it was the former. If it's the latter we don't we don't need to talk about it but I appreciate you being here. I appreciate close-up. One of things the league has is a great relationship with close-up and much of the work, much of the work they do from a surveying perspective of local officials is very important to us because it gives us baseline data of what mayors and city managers and council members around the state are working on and what they feel like are their biggest issues out there and it drives a lot of what we do and I know it drives a lot of what you guys are doing from an academic perspective. So a very important partner we have here in the University of Michigan. We also mentioned that we started in 1898. We're actually, what's that? First meeting was 99. So we're actually up on North Campus and up off of Green Road. So for 40 or 50 years faculty from the University of Michigan actually staffed the organization until the 1930s I believe when they decided to go off and do their thing. So now there's no direct relationship between the two organizations but it's a great working relationship we've had for a number of years. So I'm going to talk about a lot of things today and I'm going to try to leave a lot of time for conversation and for questions because it's always fun to talk to a group of students because I'm going to tell you what you all think and I'm sure some of you say yes or I think and some of you say this guy's nuts. So I welcome both of those conversations because so much of what we're doing from a city building perspective in Michigan and around the country and probably for being honest throughout the world is trying to figure out what's next. What people are looking for in communities. What people are looking for in housing. What people are looking for in experience. All those different things which really leads us to place making and some of the things that we're doing. It was mentioned about authorship. These are two books. The league is published. This is actually available out on the outside on a table. It's a tough word. On the table right outside there's only about 80 copies. In the back of the room is Matt Bach. Give us a queen wave Matt. Matt's our media relations person. So if you're interested if you're an insomniac and you need something like this to help you get to sleep at night although finals are coming up so you probably don't want to sleep after finals if you need something. If you're not able to get one of the books out there because I don't know that we have one for everybody. Give Matt your information on the way out the door. We'll make sure that we get something from you and maybe set up a time to pick them up or whatever works because there's messaging in there around again what everybody's doing and what we're trying to do as far as working together to build better communities. So I'll tell you a little bit about how the organization that I work for which advocates and educates and does research on all kinds of different things in terms of cities and what we can do to make our cities more competitive what we can do to make our cities better places to live and so we went and we looked and we tried to figure out sort of where we were at. So our whole issue started about or our whole campaign if you will start about seven or eight years ago and you know this slide talking about the way we were and the way we are who knows what sorry you got a little thing who knows where that is. No. No. Packard plan. Free book for that man back there. And a free slice of pizza too. They're probably both gone so we'll get you back. That's the old Packard plan Detroit. So again if you look at Michigan the economy we're built on. Let me step back. How many are from Michigan? How many not? Okay so maybe half and half a little more from Michigan. So I'll talk a lot about Michigan here because really about our focus but our focus then works out around the around the country and literally around the globe. So for the better part of a hundred years you could have an eighth grade education and walk into a place like this and do work paying you above the national average. First to get health benefits first to get retirement. You can live in a community. You could fish and hunt up north. You could live the American dream if you will and this is what you could do and this is how we built our cities and this is when you look at our infrastructure and everything else we built around. Sort of who we were as a state and I would say that a lot of the quote unquote Rust Belt states were built in the same fashion. East Coast states as well. So that's how we were. How are we now? And you look at what's happening in Michigan now with 32nd and per capita income in 2015. Since 2000 that's a drop in 16 spots. So if anybody here is a is studying economics and it's familiar with statistics and looking at those types of issues you know one or two or three spots in a decade is a solid trend. But to go from a relatively from the top third in the country in terms of per capita income to the bottom third in terms of per capita and well under two decades is pretty amazing and that's the manufacturing industry in this state literally falling off a cliff over the last 15 years. As it reinvents itself there's a lot of good things happening with the corporations but one thing they're not doing is hiring people back as we all know. So again you look at those people in the background and they're not having those jobs come back. We're now 39th in GDP per capita. We're 34th 34th in taxes paid per capita. 42nd in employment as a share of population and Michigan's two biggest metropolitan areas Detroit and Grand Rapids ranked 38th and 49th out of 52 metropolitan regions of the country in terms of our per capita income. So those are all really bad numbers and then you can trace that across unemployment across per capita income and all kinds of different things. We like to look at per capita income because it kind of wipes everything else aside. No it doesn't adjust all the time for cost of living but you know unemployment is unemployment. Alabama and Minnesota have relatively the same unemployment but the Minnesota quality of life is a lot better and we're looking at about 12,000 difference in per capita income. So we try to hang our hats on that one a little bit where we can look a number of different ways. So basically we had a manufacturing industry here in this state and all of a sudden people want something complete not all of a sudden but people want something completely different from their communities in terms of how we were building them. So again as I said manufacturing as we know it is gone. Manufacturing is still vitally important to Michigan but it's a different kind of manufacturing. In most factory jobs now you can't get hired without a college degree. They're very technical jobs. If there were two or three thousand people working at a Ford plant in 1960 chances are that Ford plant's gone but the Ford plant's still there. There's probably not 400 people working there most of them working from a technological standpoint. So the sort of brawn labor that we were famous for in Michigan is not there and even as the car companies are coming back and posting record profits they're still not hiring people back. So that way of life if you will is completely different. It gets back to how we build our communities and what people want. So as you talk about the recovery rate there as well we're recovering and we brag about oh we're creating jobs in this state but we're you know we hammered so many we're creating back at a very very low average so we've got to figure that one out. That's the Packard plant not that that's the Packard plant now. Whoops sorry my fault. I did that to you. So a little bit different in terms of the picture you just had a little while ago which was sort of held up there as a great Americana. Who knows where that community is? Anyone? 20 miles from here? Northville? No? Just happens to be where I live. I don't know how I got a slide gun on there. So what do we know? So we get back so my organization 79 years ago City or Dead in Michigan the picture that Packard plant had become who we are in this state and I would argue the state's sort of a canary in the coal mine not a one-off as people like to play because people like to look at Michigan and some of the other cities that are suffering. So we look around the country look around the world why are we getting beat by Portland by Austin by Boston by Seattle by Chicago Minneapolis here in the Midwest why are those cities region states doing much better that's Massachusetts by any measure out there they're doing they're doing well. How many of you have a friend who's recently graduated moved to one of those places you know lots of you and if you're when you graduate if you stay in Michigan in your friends as my colleague Alison up here who's recently hired into our organization knows they say what are you still doing in Michigan you should be one of these places that's what's happening. So when we try to figure that stuff out we try to say why are they losing because in Michigan like other places and we just got through a presidential campaign with so we talked about we talk about economic development we talk about taxes then we talk about government regulations and the conversation stops and we don't lose in Michigan on that stuff anymore our taxes used to be relatively high no they're relatively low and all the places I just mentioned many of them have much higher taxes have lousy regulations I mean how many of you have friends that are working in Chicago a lot of MBAs tending bar in Chicago rather than taking a job with a with a CPA firm in Detroit or in Grand Rapids because they want to be in Chicago and then for people that are going there how many of your friends come out and say hey I'm going to move to Chicago and the reason I'm going is because the taxes are low and the regulatory environment is wonderful I mean the next person says that to me the first person who ever said that so all we're ever hearing from state government and from the feds and in the media is we got to work on taxes we got to work on regulations lower than Minneapolis lower than Massachusetts lower than Boston you know some if you look at regionally or city-wise so that wasn't working so we started like what is working why these places beating us and we started to see some themes develop that was very early on into this sort of conversation in this movement there are people like Peter Allen in the back of the room engaging it and others germane who was with Mitch to where's germane over here over there we're sort of getting our arms around this trying to figure out what it all meant we know that when it comes to building great communities improving people's quality of life including improving the experience of the place we know that knowledge-based jobs matter and knowledge-based economy matters the good jobs now where people think not necessarily where they do education counts degrees matter now you can say we have a tendency to talk about talent you mentioned the Michigan Michigan future which talks all about talent Lou Glazer if any of you have walked into him and talents defined as four-year degrees and higher now we all know that just because you have a four degree doesn't mean you're talented and if you don't have one doesn't mean that you aren't but it is literally one of those few statistics out there where there's a one-to-one nexus between having a relatively educated population and high per capita income the two go together right now more than anything and I think for those of us that have been working on this a while you know when I first got into sort of looking at how to improve job fronts how to how to improve economies how to improve cities the thought was always it's either business or quality life because again it was a Packard plan let's let them pollute let's let them take up whole blocks let's create big wide roads and things that don't make sense for sort of the human experience but that's what drives our economy so it was always sort of a zero-sum game and we found now is really it's the same game quality life is where people are going it's certainly where people with means and where people with entrepreneurial spirit and where people with access to all sorts of different things are going so it's one in the same now about creating that great place in terms of creating a great economy technology allows people to work anywhere yet they're choosing cities this is something the futurists got wrong so 23 years ago now as a Netscape browser in 1993 is that right the whole all cities were going to empty out everyone was going to live on a mountaintop and you know email their stuff and probably fax it in then or whatever it was didn't happen right we're now more urbanized as a people than we've ever been people are going to cities and metropolitan areas they're not going to rural places and I think what we found out is two things number one is we forgot that human beings are social animals and when given a choice they want to be around other human beings and number two from an entrepreneurial spirit there's something about the churning that happens in an economy that can't happen if you're sitting alone on a mountaintop now I'm sure someone discovered a fortune 500 business sitting alone on a mountaintop so that happens but in the in the in the totality of it all having places like Ann Arbor quite frankly where you get a lot of turning going around a lot of smart engaged entrepreneurial thoughtful people working on particular issues that's where you get real changes that move move people forward so something we got wrong because I think if we were sitting here 20 years ago saying what's the future would be like wow you know we got to close down these cities and do whatever it is we're doing somewhere else populations are more mobile than it's ever been and again something that is very different it used to be jobs would follow or people would follow jobs and again if you maybe some of your parents or grandparents worked at Ford Motor Company in 1965 and they said you're getting transferred to Knoxville Tennessee you went home and threw for sale sign up and grab the spouse and the family you're gone and nowadays it's how many of you are going to look for a place you want to live before you look for a job you know most of you if we know that so and and we now have numbers and figures and statistics that prove that out so we've got this hugely mobile population no one expects to work somewhere for 40 years anymore and retire so that comes into play in terms of what we're doing to attract okay so we're not doing a mid-term exam but if we were just right down place attracts people and repeat that like nine times when asked by your professor and you will pass this course because that's what really matters it's about the place that's what this is all about people are going to places people want to be able to experience things in a place that they live where they work where they play where they learn and if we're not providing that stuff at a high enough number that we're going to continue to hemorrhage people out of the state and cities like us around the country will do the same thing you know I said earlier young people two-thirds of them two-thirds of college educated people under the age of 35 choose where they want to live first then look for work so I want to be in Chicago and I'll figure it out when I get there I want to be in Portland I'll figure it out when I get there maybe somebody went with an offer but more often than not they don't they know they want to be somewhere and that again is fundamentally different than where we were before and by the way all the companies know where it was going they know who lives on the street more than the mayor does in terms of who's there what skills they have what degrees they have whether or not it's a place to sit your your company and I always tell a story about I tell two stories about this number one was VW Volkswagen of North America used to have its headquarters in Auburn Hills anybody from Auburn Hills anybody from somewhere they can drive to Auburn Hills on a relatively short commute okay it was then Governor Grant home so it's been a few years but it was a big thing VW said they were going to go to the coast and they wanted to go to the coast because they felt like they needed to attract a different type of employee they felt like their their their market if you will was more coastal in terms of people looking for a better driving experience and some of the things they want to do as a corporation and they decided they were going to go off to the coast and I remember Governor Grant home came in and offered every possible tax advantage they could offer and they said no that's where we're going and they left behind I think 100 or 200 call center jobs that's a nice little Sia to Michigan which may or may not still even be here so that's something of people deciding where they want to go the other one was I was contacted by a software engineer or who was or a software company who was doing gaming computer gaming again one of the more I would imagine I'm not in that field but I would imagine it's one of the more technically competitive fields out there in terms of games change every day it seems like and there are new things coming out and this individual has gone from 50 employees was on their way to 200 they're expanding rapidly and they were considering considering Seattle or Detroit at the time Seattle's college educated adult population is 53 percent Detroit's at that time was 11 they can't choose Detroit you know because they're going to look to get the best people in to to literally compete with people and businesses and countries that none of us could even find on the map and they couldn't choose Detroit in that situation so again taxes and incentives that stuff doesn't even matter at that point in time might matter if you're putting a big manufacturing spot in the field but ain't there so and again we're in the sort of whole global initiative and global hunt for all this stuff a lot of times people will challenge us and say this place making stuff is all feel good but here's the publisher of Forbes magazine a few years ago said the most valuable resource in the 21st century is brains smart people tend to be mobile watch where they go because where they go robust economic activity will follow and we see this time and time and time again where people decide where they want to be and again when I asked earlier where you guys what you guys are thinking you've probably got ideas about where you want to go when you're done with your educational experience and you'll figure out the job stuff later and that's something we continually see so we've got to do a better job here in the state of working on that because we're losing big time on that stuff so I'm talking to students here but there are not not everyone in this room is a student so here's a little here's a little bone for everybody else the dirty little secret about creating great places is is that their baby boomie baby boomie baby boomer mothers and fathers want the same kinds of places to live in as their millennial children millennial children do which is interesting so when you talk about this this is from ARP 90% of the 45 plus population indicated they want to stay in the community for as long as possible and it's important for them to remain near their family and friends and to be able to access the services they need and when you start talking to the retiring boomers and I'll get a second to what we really believe from a place-making standpoint makes a city attractive it makes a city competitive you'll find the same types of things is what older empty nesters are looking for in terms of what they want out of their lives and what out of the places they live as their millennial children which is really interesting so you're talking about walkability and culture activities and a whole bunch of other things transit now there's Saturday nights probably look a little different right but the concept that there's a lot of options and a lot of ideas are things that they're looking for although we just have anecdotal information at this point in time we probably we probably it's probably more than anecdotal at this point I just don't have that information but we were seeing the last few years is it used to be everyone would say oh yeah kids move away you know and they go have their fun in Chicago and then they have then they get married and have kids and they move back here to be with grandma and grandpa and that apparently happened for a long time you know what grandma and grandpa are moving to them now it's like you want to come back to Sterling Heights or should we go get a condo and in Wrigleyville and enjoy ourselves and have fun and we're seeing that happen now so again I don't have start hard statistics on that but we see it who reads fast company magazine who's familiar with it okay a little bit used to be cool magazines are like nightclubs they go like whoa and then it's like that's not cool anymore so fast company is sort of the forbs of the new generation of businesses I would describe it and then you can say if I'm wrong it's sort of half lifestyle half entrepreneurism they're trying to find the next Google they're trying to find the next Microsoft you know we like to see they're out there doing exposes on guys sitting in his mother's basement is underwear blogging who's going to be a billionaire next year perhaps you know this gentleman and I'm sure we all do so they do they try to find those fast companies again one of the things they do every year is they pick fast cities best places to do business around the world so they do big cities and small cities they've done Chicago one one year London one one year other places and then a couple years ago they did something where the smallest city was 2,500 people I think the largest one was San Francisco so we're literally going from little tiny places like Norfolk which I just showed up into the big metropolitan regions and they picked nine I believe yes right nine different places now I don't have the communities up here but this is what why they chose them it's a business magazine right where are we going to do business how are we going to prove our economy what are we as a business as a business publication putting out there as being a top place to do business these are the reasons they chose them farm fresh food venture capital mindset Renaissance neighborhoods car sharing smart energy all this kind of stuff now is that taxes is that regulations no it's not that stuff so when you hear taxes and regulations going along with good places to do business that's not where it's at anymore and it's not like go raise taxes everything we better that's not my message but the fact that we we focus almost from a hyper standpoint Leslie especially in the political environment on that stuff these are the things that matter this is why you want to live somewhere stuff like this maybe not everything appears your bag but this is where they say cool cool stuff was happening culture open source government these are where people want to live so again and through all our studies and the book we have here and it's out front for people again you can check it out this is the second book which is more of a of a look that's actually Zingerman's is in here and some other Ann Arbor programs that you can check out but this is more of sort of a case study of a number of different places they've been doing good stuff the first book was more explaining sort of what I'm talking about here which we learned from people all over the world so we've created something we call our eight assets when we go and try to figure out what actually makes a community move forward the nexus between strong economies between communities looking to the future between communities being more competitive for people for jobs came down we thought broke down into these eight particular areas so it's the physical design and the walkability of the place you know think about the human scale when people ask me what is place making I say place making is improving the human experience you know everybody else probably had I know everybody a lot of people have different definitions of it some are really long Peter you teach a course do you have a definition one you want to share no it's good it's good all right so so much for audience participation huh I'll do that but I mean everybody's doing that kind of stuff and saying you know it's this it's that it's the context and the it's a lot of but different things but it's about knowing you know it's sort of like you know it when you see it you know for those of you from Michigan when I talk to groups of Michigan I say if we're going to decide on the five best communities in Michigan right now think about it we'd have consensus in five minutes ten minutes they had this stuff have some history have some architecture have some cool downtown feel have kind of a neat vibe to it some neat businesses some um some forward thinking some is probably some some waterfront maybe somewhere I mean all those types of things that's what we describe but 95% of Michigan doesn't look like that it's it's five and six and seven lane roads and nothing's walkable and it's built for sort of a different type of a place so we've we've done city buildings since 1950 for a different culture set around autumn will be on all of us some people are saying wait a second no if I have a choice in this matter I'd rather enjoy my everyday life and that's the type of place I want to live in so physical design and walkability matters an immense amount green initiatives you know completely 20 years ago being green was sort of uh okay fine you can do that and people look at your cross-eyed it's a value it's a value that an entire generation has grown up with so again when I talk about when people say it's all about environmental regulations and those types of things that hurt us from an economic standpoint I'd say ask a young entrepreneur she'd rather be put her business in a community with a relaxed environmental policy or with a long-term commitment to sustainability she'll choose the latter you know 99 times out of 100 unless she's in the landfill business or something like that and that I can tell you that goes completely against some of the things we talk about at city hall we talk about at the state government level we talk about in Washington cultural economic development what what distinguishes you a little bit differently from where you're at I mentioned Northfield it's an old Victorian town with some sort of a neat Victorian story to it Ann Arbor's a college town it's got a whole bunch of things going on here those are the things that you want to you want to dig into the Detroit experience is a really interesting one 10 or 15 years ago 90 percent of the articles about Detroit were negative not 90 percent of them were positive it's it's still the same city it's changing rapidly as we all know but sort of that grittiness of a community and the history of it there and yes it needs polishing and scrubbing and rebuilding and everything else but the bones of the place are so cool keep people can't keep themselves away from it yet our entire policy of how we create communities where we fund infrastructure what our local guidelines and zoning regulations look like all look like Canton Township which is you know 2,500 square feet or 3,000 square feet on a quarter acre a lot in an undriveable place if you're a builder you can build that pretty much anywhere in the state but you can't rebuild Southview anywhere or Woodward Avenue or anything like that what does that mean that doesn't make any sense right so when people say we need more of this or more of that I we're playing different sports here you know it's like we're shooting free throws we need to be scoring touchdowns it's not a it's just a whole different animal in terms of aiming at places that people want to be in and that's something that I think we all want to see entrepreneurship you know again think back to the picture of Packard Packard will come in they I don't know how many people they employed at their at their height probably 20,000 people the automobile industry itself hundreds of thousands of people didn't need any particular training or anything like that it's the ultimate irony I say in Michigan that Henry Ford who for all of his obvious faults in my opinion goes down as the top entrepreneur of the 20th century he really literally recreated entire world around around a an industrial economy and the fact that he created a culture that's so non-entrepreneurial is sort of the irony of this whole thing because it used to be you know worked there for 40 years have the same job retire live for five years moved to Florida wear high socks and wipe out and then die and that's what everybody did right and you know who expects to do that and he went come on somebody does somebody has some guts has some guts and that's just not where we're at so now it's all about hyper entrepreneurship and it's about people doing different things nobody expects to be in the same place for 40 or 50 years let alone five or 10 years so it becomes a whole different games in terms of how we're working on that so if you're in a community that rolls up its sidewalks at five o'clock at night who here wants to work there you know coffee shop closes at night nobody drinks coffee at night the park closes and everyone goes home and nothing happens storefronts close you know you know I can give you a free building I can I can abate your taxes you aren't going there not happening so we gotta figure that stuff out as well messaging technology it's kind of obvious being welcoming this is something we do a particularly poor job in Michigan and probably if we're being honest a particularly poor job across the country has been illustrated in a number of different ways but as I like to say it especially when it comes to a different generation of people I'm talking all about most of you people here in this room because we all know how you think more than you do so feel free to to push me on that but we're all studying that but I say people used to walk down the street and see individuals who look just like them and now they kind of want to walk down the street and see individuals who don't and does your community play to that at all you know and it's not about a quons a day or something that's that's not what we're talking about here it's about are we welcoming to new ideas are we welcoming to all kinds of different ideas or are we not and I can tell you especially in this state we're not in a lot of places it's obvious in our bigger cities we have strife and a whole bunch of different levels and we can get into that if you guys want to but even in our small towns people don't want to change and and and as we say it's okay you don't have to implement this kind of stuff but if you don't and you want to complain that you're sort of not keeping up from an economic standpoint you know you can't do both you can do both but it doesn't work that way you've got to sort of figure this stuff out transit who'd rather not own a car for the next five or ten years you know a lot of people you know 500 bucks is a month for car insurance and a payment and gas and parking or more is wasted money to most young people they'd rather get transit pass and use that money on technology or booze whatever comes first and you know and so if you can't live that way in Michigan then we're not staying here and it was it was brought up to me by a few years back and had me for a hospital in Detroit wonderful hospital and they used to bring in residents people come in from all over the country from for medical residents to come to Henry Ford and they compete for the best residents the way other people do and so somebody coming in is probably interviewing in Chicago and Los Angeles and everywhere else and he said they landed at the airport and to try wonderful international airport in Romulus and there's no train there's no bus no taxi service there's one taxi service it's a single single group that's allowed on premises that's another story and you got to take an alien highway to get downtown and then there's no way to get around down there in a lot of respects I mean it doesn't matter what Henry Ford does at that point that person doesn't come you know doesn't want to come I travel a ton of my job but when I land anywhere I don't people say how you get in the hotels I have no idea there's going to be a shuttle there's going to be an Uber there's going to be some way for me to get to where I need to go and it's probably going to be really easy for me to get to certain places like downtown the convention center the business district suburban shopping even we few years ago gentlemen who worked for us tried to get from downtown Detroit to oh boy Big Beaver, Troy Somerset Mall so big if you're not from Michigan it's a big high-end mall it took him three and a half hours on public transportation and he had to walk the last mile and a half that's how long it took him to get from downtown Detroit to Big Beaver to do shopping now if I go anywhere else in the country and say I'm a high-end shopper I want to get to your high-end mall you know the private plane come for me it's ridiculous so how you know you know and again so we can we can tell the people in Troy the people in Detroit that's a problem it's like with VW the people on Auburn Hills actually lost the business but if you're anywhere within the driving distance of Auburn Hills they don't want to be in your community either so that's where you get into sort of the regional strategy this whole thing as well we've got to figure out better ways to do with this education is important and obviously it's K-12 it's higher ed those things are all very important but it's a commitment to education and again think about the economy that we're in now and the ways in which we're committed to an educated workforce and the thing I always bring up at a number of the Ivy League schools if not all the Ivy League schools at this point in time if you're 55 and older you can audit classes for free there's a ton of trailing spouses there are professors and faculty and second careers all kinds of different things happening there you can literally go to one of the top schools in the entire country for free if you live in that county or that city and depends on on the different areas of the the different schools that offer it what does that say who wants to live there you know who would choose that from a from a value standpoint I want to be there to do that would you rather the person looking for that or somebody saying I'm going to go where the taxes are the lowest taxes are the lowest in Mississippi or Alabama by the way go there no choice no chance in the in the in the in the in the new economy lovely places like relatives in Alabama not cutting them down but they can't compete for these jobs they're going to get a whole bunch of the sort of mid-range manufacturing jobs and different things that are that are out there and they're going to be competing with places that offer even a lower scale if you will and when Michigan sort of we taught racing to the bottom when we push from our state policies to try to compete with that why are we doing that you know why are we it's back to per capita income versus unemployment if everybody's employed in an industry making $9 an hour without benefits have we done anything just because we dropped the points the the number two or three points we really haven't done that so education isn't just obvious K-12 I read those that stuff's all very important but how we celebrate that and what it means in terms of the value of a community matter a great deal Chris Lienberger who used to teach here hasn't for a long number of years right Peter so nobody here probably would have stumbled across Chris Lienberger but in addition to teaching he's also a a the president of locus which I should know what that stands for and I don't but it is a group of developers private developers who work to do infill style housing walkable housing downtown entrepreneurial stuff and this quote from Chris so that was great expecting early 19th century even mid 20th century governance structures to handle the challenges of the early 21st century is not realistic and I will submit to you that this is legal in about 99% of the land mass in Michigan 99.9 I would guess that is that beautiful gorgeous place is legal and state street isn't in 99.9% of it zero walk up no parking old that's illegal everywhere where do you want to be you want to be in there that's what all of our structures look like you know if you're going to go try to build a building you can build that that's wonderful got a little car gutter in front of it got wonderful horrible aluminum you know it's it's really kind of striking and again what what does it say you know was it Churchill said a building's tell you about people tell you about a people architecture tells you about a people what does it tell you about us we're a little bit and we're not terribly what someone come up with the word is it a free book in it no I heard one artistic artistic so and that's the wonderful edifice of the background that's sort of like the the the Eiffel Tower of this place we deserve better than this come on people we deserve better than this who wants to live there anybody know what that is by the way that we're not going to talk about it this is a little bit better but I talk about governing structures there I think the governance structure at the local level with the state level has to change to make sure we don't have those places we have more places like this so again trying to create communities that could attract and retain town and enterprise and again where people want to live is something that matters a great deal you know so again and I wanted to save a lot of time to talk about specifics when it comes to place making and how we can create these places but when we think about how this has to happen in Michigan and how this has to happen in communities in Michigan and really anywhere we talk about bold leadership we talk about I kind of feel like we're in our big short moment in the state and anybody see the film the big short or read the book you're familiar with the story these guys sort of figured out that I think it was the second quarter 2007 with the mortgage back securities we're all going to go upside down so they bought low and they shorted everything and then it came and they went what happened nothing changed the stock market didn't move their numbers didn't go up and it was like this huge event happened and nothing went into it and they started digging in and that's where they found out the regulators were in bed with the bankers and the bankers were in bed with the builders and you know that stuff and you know the story and they created a wonderful story out of it and a great movie out of it in the book but I kind of feel like we're in our big short moment here because we build this kind of a community and we govern for it and for years we've been talking about a different kind of community right we've been talking about a community maybe a little bit more like that as a greater place so now we know empirically that this place is a much better place from an economic standpoint in terms of creating jobs in terms of living where people want to be we know that but we're still doing all this so it's sort of our big short so if we just did that we'd be there and and that's where I think it's we've got to change the entire mindset so when I talk about needing bold leadership here I think we need bold leadership at all levels of governance I think we need it in citizenry I think we need it in business we don't see that we understand where it's a global understanding of what we are again if you look at you know Canton Township 20 miles east to here next to Westland 25 miles east of here for the last 50 years they've been staring down at each other at each other at each other as competition in the economic development field for a for a Ford plant for a for a dollar store like we just saw or whatever it might be they're not in competition with one another Greater Detroit's in competition with global with places all over the globe you know you know can we come there can we attract talent can our people live in the kind of places they want to live can they can they flourish will they stay there those are the things that businesses are asking so the blue collar town and the affluent suburb and the and the gritty downtown and the cool hipster markets and the college town everything else we're all in it together using our assets of today to try to figure out how we can go forward and from a big short perspective we're still talking about 1980 and building plants and trying to steal a GM plant from Tennessee knowledge based economy higher education investment we do a horrible job of investing in higher education in this state and and I'm not one just here invest invest invest but you know I thought about this a number of years ago you're at a place that is the the economic driver the largest single economic driver in the entire state by a mile and it's not even close when you throw in the University of Michigan it's hospital and all the entrepreneurial activity that kicks out from it even close and and I can tell you and I don't know if there's any faculty here it's ever been the Lansing to beg for money it's not fun and it's an issue we have 15 public universities and 40 some private ones and they're all similar to what happens here on on different scales the MSU being similar in places like Alma College being very important to Alma but not you know too far outside of it and we just sort of turn and push and move away from that kind of thing so it doesn't make a great deal of sense if the University of Michigan were General Motors and they threatened to sort of pick up and go become you know the University of Tennessee or Tennessee Southern or somewhere and and ask for a tax abatement I can't even imagine how big of an abatement they would they would qualify for a need and get if that were the case but instead they're a public university so so we continue to push and punch on that stuff and everything I've just talked to you about in terms of in terms of education and jobs and everything makes a great deal of place quality place matters and again from regional focus if any of you are looking at government as a potential as the potential career I've been looking at local government here in Michigan I've seen Detroit's bankruptcy and some of the issues that we're dealing with everything gets talked about in terms of regionalism and to me that's sort of a cop out because there's not a lot of not a lot of regional savings from combining a police department or something like that there's some there but it's not the end of the world believe me but what we need more is a regional focus and a regional strategy of how we're going to move forward that's what I talked about a few minutes ago in terms of getting everybody to think in terms of how do we take an asset of U of M of a great international airport of a cool chic downtown like Detroit that's getting different types of people come into it that want to be part of sort of regrowing it and how we all sort of work together on those types of things is what we need to do regionally and I would offer the research triangle and North Carolina and what they did in Boston around the universities there about 20 years ago quite frankly as ways to look at that kind of stuff and how they can leverage one another to create something somewhat unique and really special so there's a nice a nice Ann Arbor picture again including people is there we've talked about that and we've talked about our infrastructure and how we get sort of everybody to think about things this is a little bit about art and it's a little bit about engagement those types of things again I would argue are very important to an economy not just superfluous or feel good stuff on the outside which they've always sort of been looked at so that ends my prepared remarks I hope I left some time yes for questions or challenges because I would appreciate both if you've got them and with that I will say thank you and ask if we have questions everybody still awake? Yeah. Yeah, still there? Thank you.