The two featured cities in our upcoming documentary release, After the Factory, have been prominently placed in two recent “2012″ lists worth noting.

First, Lodz was featured in the New York Times’ “45 Places to go in 2012” feature. It made it in at number 43, with a sub-headline reading “The Hollywood of Poland reclaims its industrial past.” Lodz gets touted as an up-and-comer via its innovative use of old factory shells for new developments– namely a studio being built by famed director David Lynch (who is head over heels for Lodz, by the way), and the Lodz Arts Center, a former textile factory itself that is now an arts incubator. Here’s a secret: The latter and its director are subjects in the film.

Second, Detroit was listed as one of “The Top 10 Emerging Sustainable Cities to Watch in 2012“, which was an interesting choice, especially given absence of the usual suspects: San Fran, Portland, etc. The article’s author Leon Kaye tells the world to nevermind the lack of light rail or our political instability– it’s the people that matter most. And further, it’s the people who are ultimately at the forefront of re-defining the urban and rural landscapes. The piece ends with a basic (and sort of bold with the use of “thrive”) statement: “Watch for urban farming, social enterprise and the creative arts to thrive.” We’ll take it.

So, here’s to the success of our cities, and to the film really. See the trailer if you haven’t already and get your tickets for the premiere at the DIA’s Detroit Film Theatre on Thursday, February 2 at 7pm.

The quick update on the film: We’re almost at picture lock (being done with the film), we’re looking at premiere venues and we’ve settled on a title.

In terms of editing, we’re nearing the final stages, just swapping out shots here and there and making little tweaks to get the piece finalized. We’ve arranged for coloring through our friends over at Ringside Creative, which we are really excited about. After that’s done, we’ll do the final sound mix and then this thing is ready for the big screen. It’s kind of crazy, January 6th will be the one year mark when this project first came to mind– the day I got an email from a guy named Michal in Lodz, talking about his city was just like Detroit. He would become our producer in Lodz. Now, just shy of one year later, the film is shot and we are nearing the final cut stage. That’s something to be proud of.

We’ve settled on a title– “After the Factory.” Simple, straightforward and indicative of what the film is trying to wrap its arms around. What next? What can we do? What can two cities in the same position learn from one another?

We are hoping to announce a premiere soon. “After the Factory” will play first in Detroit and Lodz, that’s for sure. We will then be taking it on a screening tour, all of which is currently in the works. We’re really pumped though, as a lot of groups on both continents are interested in helping us get the film out there. All the while, we will be sending it off to film festivals. So, lots of good stuff ahead.

Once again, a hearty thanks to readers who were a part of our Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. None of this would be happening without you. When you are sitting at the premiere watching it, I hope that if even for just a few seconds you can kind of feel like this film is your own.

Monocle is a global publication discussing international affairs, business, culture and design. They recently came to Detroit to film a piece on DETROIT LIVES! for a segment they produce on Bloomberg TV (AT&T U-Verse Channel 222, Comcast 178, DirecTV 353, Dish Network 203). All in all, the piece is great, sandwiched between reports on arts and culture from Munich, Berlin and Tokyo– not too shabby being in the mix with those powerhouses. The piece discusses DL!’s efforts as a new type of socially driven creative company to create momentum through our clothing line, public art and community engagement. The piece will air again on Bloomberg’s cable station on Saturday, February 26. Check local listings for the time as it plays a few times throughout the day. Alternatively, by clicking the image below you can see the segment. The Detroit bit appears just after the 1-minute mark at 1:10.

One step further on the topic of press coverage, Ann Arbor’s SHEI magazine did a piece on DL! discussing future plans five and ten years down the road, what’s going to move the city forward and what makes Detroit a fun place to work in. Check out the article here.

What does Malcolm Gladwell, the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania and Rudyard Kipling mixed in to an idea blender create?  A new future for rust belt cities like Detroit.  Here we go, baby.

In a recent article in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell argues the importance of social activism and why things like Twitter and Facebook will not really be involved in revolution or large-scale systemic change.  It’s part a knock on social media, but also part breakdown of the sorts of things that make social media functional– for the purpose of this commentary, as tools for establishing networks and communication portals.  As Gladwell points out:

Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose.

This structure makes networks enormously resilient and adaptable in low-risk situations. Wikipedia is a perfect example. It doesn’t have an editor, sitting in New York, who directs and corrects each entry. The effort of putting together each entry is self-organized. If every entry in Wikipedia were to be erased tomorrow, the content would swiftly be restored, because that’s what happens when a network of thousands spontaneously devote their time to a task.

What does this mean?  Networks– from Facebook or Twitter to people just getting together the old fashioned way– while quite possibly not the answer to world revolution, are a strong tool for creating a cohesive medium that can start building a portal to share agendas and ideas about, oh, say, rust belt re-invention.

Meet John Fetterman, mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania.  He’s a rough neck of sorts, his quintessential mark of devotion to his town is the fact that his zip code is very largely tattooed on his left forearm.  Braddock has a story very similar to Detroit’s: industry boomed for many years and created jobs, industry left and the bottom fell out.  Houses are vacant, illegal dumping sullies the image of many parts of the town.  Unemployment is an issue, too.  But what’s happening despite that?  Fetterman is attempting to bring creatives and otherwise in to Braddock to create more industry.  And, slowly, it’s working. Hell, Levi Strauss Co. even came in to put some money in to re-development and are using it as fuel for a socially driven campaign they are promoting via the web and a couple television channels.

So, what’s the point here?

Detroit is not alone.  Not alone at all in fact.  Cities like Braddock, Cleveland and Toledo are very similar in that they are trying to re-invent themselves.  Be it with creatives, with urban farming, with new industry; we are all searching for new ways to get ahead of the curve in renewing our cities.  Now we’ve got to band together.

British writer Rudyard Kipling once said, “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”  This obviously underscores the importance of bringing together resources for the purposes of achieving a desired goal, maybe in this case, oh, say, lifting tired rust belt cities out of their exhausted old ways and pushing them (together) towards re-invention.

So why not bring people from these rust belt towns together through the means by which Gladwell is saying social media actually becomes an asset?  Why not use the capabilities that these social media portals DO possess to unite and encourage idea sharing amongst fellow rust belt cities?  What if each town established a network of social media tools for the purposes of sharing ideas?  Then, say, an urban farmer in Braddock gets an idea that worked quite well in his neighborhood and posts a picture of it on Flickr for everyone else in the ‘ol belt to see?  What if town hall meetings in Braddock were shared over Skype video chat while citizens of Toledo listened in for ideas on how they could improve their city?  What if the folks at SOUP right here in Detroit recorded each week’s ideas and distributed via Facebook to the inhabitants of Cleveland?  What happens when all these ideas become much more visible to one another?  After all, we’re all fighting the same fight.

Time to start sharing for the sake of larger-scale renewal in the rust belt, and who knows, we all might come out on top as leaders and model examples, way ahead of the curve as American cities far and wide fight for re-invention.

OK, OK, OK. Got an update coming via wireless signal straight from the DIY Street Fair in Ferndale.  21st century here, people.  The days have involved  a lot of folding, shenanigans with Apple’s PhotoBooth, ridiculously tasty craft beer (the WAB’s Porter is still gold in my book– just sayin’), an ungodly amount of well-dressed (mostly excited and adorable) children and a lot of interesting breeds of canines.  I didn’t realize there were such things as dogs with ridge backs, companies that makee slippers and head dresses for dogs, etc.  Clearly I am a ways out from owning/caring for such a creature.

ANYWAY (Catch that? Also re-reading Chuck Klosterman’s “Killing Yourself to Live” for the 8th time over here), the point of all this was to say that in my hot hands today is the brand-spanking new DL! catalog.  You betcha.  Coming in at a svelt 42 pages in length, this sucker is packing a powerful punch.  It’s a showcase of DL! wares from tees to medallions to posters— but more than anything, its a visual meet and greet with some of Detroit’s most excited (and exciting) doers.  Think of the Loveland super-combo Mary Lorene and Jerry “Nerd Alert” Paffendorf.  Think of Roland Legget and Connie Mangilin.  Or how about Margarita Barry over at I AM YOUNG DETROIT. Then there’s Jessica Hernandez and all the biz-nass she’s got going with her swampy blues band that’s making tracks and all the talk of Detroit Soup.  Andy and Emily Linn are featured as well, the brother/sister megateam that started City Bird in Midtown. 

The catalog substantiates DL!’s claim that there’s no better place in America to be young and hungry than Detroit by showing the young people that are on the ground making it happen. And hey, it serves the purpose of showing off DL! wares, too. It should be well known that Vanessa Miller did the photography and Courtney Burgam championed all the layout. A big high five to both of them. Here’s a look at the cover in space age low resoution via Apple’s Photo Booth’inator, but hey, I’m doing this remotely from the depths of Ferndale festival’dom:

The first pressing of the catalogs are headed to foggy London town and Pareee on Monday to try and see about getting some of the gear in shops over there across the pond.  In the very near future, however, the catalog will be available via MagCloud.

The city of Detroit is one of the only cities of its size in the country to not have a public recycling program. Thats where Recycle Here! comes in. You’ve probably seen the happy little bumble bee (designed by Carl Oxley who did the Welcome to Woodbridge mural among others) around town that they yse for their logo. So, here’s the deal. They are currently in the run for a 250k grant from the Pepsi Refresh Everything Campaign– basically, Pepsi is giving away $1.3 million PER MONTH to fund great ideas. It’s a pretty neat program to be honest. The Recycle Here! folks are trying to get recycling in to all Detroit Public Schools to reach about 90,000 kids. They currently reach about 30,000 and just simply do not have the resources to extend their reach that far. What’s great about Recycle Here!’s program is that it starts with education, teaching students what it means to recycle, what you are doing for the environment and how it helps Detroit. It’s not just showing them the green bin in the cafeteria where they can put their pop bottle. Recycle Here! needs your votes. They are currently ranked 113th and climbing where the top two vote receivers on August 31 get the money. So get clicking below, and you are able to do it once every day, so keep coming back!

This post is part of an ongoing series called “Detroit’s Re-Invention: Lessons from Other Cities.” See all posts in this feature here.

OK. I will concede I am no guru when it comes to electricity or really anything related to electrical engineering. After all, the “door ajar” light on my dashboard has been lit for some three years because of a short circuit of some kind. The mechanic wants like $500 to fix it, and lord knows I’ll be toast if I try to fix it myself. I am happy to stick with DIY projects not involving a crircuit board. The light remains illuminated.

BUT. Here’s some thoughts on electricity. Read this. It’s a diagram outlining the benefits of implementing a smart grid in the state of West Virginia. A smart grid? What the hell? I asked the same question. This document helped. In a nutshell, a smart grid overlays the electricity distribution grid that most American cities currently have with two-way digital technology that more efficiently manages energy usage, therefore reducing costs and increasing the reliability of power. Within the smart grid, digital sensors and control devices are introduced in the system to control the transmission of power much more efficiently. For example, with the use of a smart grid, appliances can be controlled more intelligently through the grid as opposed to being manually controlled by the user which often leads to waste. Clouds are blocking the sun on a Tuesday while you are at work? Appliances (like your A/C or hot water heater) on a smart grid will be adjusted accordingly to conserve resources (and ultimately cost less for the consumer). Currently, Italy is the only country in the world with a full-scale Smart Grid in place that was installed in 2005. Right now, they are seeing savings of roughly 500 million Euros per year. The project cost 2.1 Billion Euros. You can do the math and see that while there is a large cost to install such a system, the annual realized savings warrants it. After four years, the project is mostly paid off.

In the US, ten cities have at least started or initiated the process of rolling out smart grid technology— and in most cases, there was federal money (stimulus and otherwise) involved to help. Boulder, CO is probably our country’s flagship example of a functional smart grid.

So, here’s an idea, Detroit. Based on that diagram from GOOD magazine that looks at implementation in West Virginia, we could create a hell of a lot of jobs on the homefront using some of our idle manufacturing capacity to start making smart meters and then employ people in aiding with the rollout of the new technology. Not only that, but with the Department of Energy in Washington supporting initiatives like this, we could probably get some financial help to do it all. In the end, by using the West Virginia example as our model and installing a smart grid, the economic impact means jobs are created, emissions are reduced to give it some environmental incentive, power quality and reliability is increased and we rely less on foreign oil. The estimated total cost savings of all this goodness? $12.6 Billion. At a cost of roughly $2 billion, that’s about as attractive a return on investment any tycoon could desire. It’s time to get moving, Detroit.

The good folks at I AM YOUNG DETROIT did a nice write up on DL! this morning. Check it out here.

Catch DL! tonight at the Canfield Street Market from 5-9pm at Canfield and Cass outside of Bureau of Urban Living. The night will be full of good tunes, vintage goods, beer, cornhole, brand new tees from DL! and even screen printing on tote bags and tees. Bring your own to print on or pick up blank tees and totes that we will have available for purchase. Should be a good time. Hope to see you out this evening.

The trains are rolling in with active participants for the US Social Forum. What does this mean? There’s a lot to do in Detroit right now. Model D put out an article outlining a few of the possibilities here. Worth mentioning in addition to that is the Canfield Street Market, a street fair and evening throwdown by Bureau of Urban Living and City Bird. The evening will feature live music, handmade goods from Sarah Burger, vintage stuff from MillieBeas and hey, you guessed it, some new DL! stuff. We will have some new wares for sale as well as a little screenprinting setup so folks can get a hand-printed piece on site. Bring your own tee, sweatshirt, poster or whatever else you can think of and have a good time with it. There will even be cornhole available for the playing. Check it all out Friday from 5-9pm outside of Bureau and City Bird on Canfield.