Big day today in Detroit city: Bing unveils a budget plan. Yes, it’s quite important, but it’s also kind of boring– at least until budget unveiling day comes with a big party on Belle Isle.

This, however, is not so boring:

Sure, I guess it’s kind of old news now (four days old), but I somehow managed to skip over this little gem of an article by Jeff Wattrick over at MLive. He composed a wrap-up of sorts to the Rust Belt/Artist Belt Conference, responding to the overwhelming response/sentiment that all the talk of developing the creative sector meant it was outsiders doing all the cool stuff in Detroit, leaving the long-standing residents in their dust.

The short answer is that Detroit has a lot more to gain than lose by attracting outside creative sector development to Detroit. And here comes an objective explanation by Wattrick via the article I somehow missed over the last four days:

Detroit has shrunk from 1.8 million people to 713,777, a disproportionately large number of whom live in poverty. If 10,000 (or, since we’re speaking in hypotheticals, let’s say 100,000) middle-class creative professionals and artists move here, Detroit would not suddenly resemble Park Slope. The tax rolls might increase and the city could afford to operate the streetlights.

Second, when people act like they’re the industrial midwest’s equivalent of Mayflower Material or speak of Detroit’s “indigenous” population, they need to get some perspective. If Rust Belt/Artist Belt took place 60 years ago, these very same people probably would have had the very same concerns about outsiders, say John Lee Hooker and other Hastings Street blues musicians, trying to impose their crazy artistic ideas on native Detroiters. Actually, it would’ve been very different people then, but they’d have been making the very argument.

New people are good. They obviously want to be here. Why treat them as interlopers trespassing on hallowed ground?

Maybe I should have just pasted the whole article. Go ahead and read it.

It doesn’t hurt to really hammer home both the necessity and benefit of attraction to the region. In the same way that fresh eyes provide honest critique, fresh minds in Detroit can put us in new directions. Young blood can do some of the hard work, too. And with that development– whether its entrepreneurs coming to start a tech company or urban planners coming to the mecca of places to be planned– comes an influx of resources that moves the entire city forward: think streetlights as Jeff pointed out, a city-wide recycling program, or perhaps most importantly, a revenue source for the education system to improve the trajectory of kids in the city.

To boot, here’s a way that DL! is tackling this issue, recently covered by Crain’s Detroit Business. The idea, an achingly hip multimedia presentation for college graduates in the state, underscores the types of opportunity available in Detroit for young people wanting to build something. Sure. Baby steps, but it’s a start.

Let’s look at all of this development as a long-term process eventually affecting the kind of systemic change we need to see. Attraction is that push that can get the whole ball rolling.

Terry Schwarz is the director of the Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) and will be speaking on a panel at next week’s Rust Belt to Artist Belt Conference at the Taubman Center. She took some time to talk with DL! about her work in Cleveland tackling regional issues with innovative design practices while also using the CUDC as a laboratory for students to develop their design skills. Through our conversations it seems there are areas where Detroit can take some tips from Cleveland as it moves forward.

Like Detroit, Cleveland has its fair share of vacant land. What Schwarz says her group is most concerned with is first how to stabilize the land ecologically and then how to prevent it from sapping the value of surrounding properties. One particular strategy that the CUDC is implementing is using vacant land to address one of Cleveland (and the rest of the country’s) major concerns: water quality. They take vacant plots of land and use them to create patterns for organized water flow. This decreases run off and allows them to maintain tighter quality control. One would think, given the 40 square miles of vacant land in Detroit, there could be some viable opportunity to creatively use land in this way while also improving quality of life for residents.

Not all land is vacant, however, but is just overlooked or under-utilized. The CUDC has been innovatively using these spaces for temporary attractions. They use pop-up retail as a way to lure people in to under-served areas and show them how great the space can be– something that Detroit is catching on to lately with startups like 71 Pop. Or, take for example, the area in Cleveland where the lake meets the riverfront. What has become a less popular area of downtown recently but was historically significant in early stages of the city’s development, was transformed in to something of a winter playground– there were bonfires, video games to play that were projected on building walls and even a snowboarding hill.

“Hundreds of people came out in the middle of February,” says Schwarz, “and not only enjoyed seeing a part of town that usually went overlooked, but did it in a place where Cleveland literally started.”

It’s this kind of engagement with her city and the creativity she can employ in her role that keeps Schwarz in Cleveland. She is originally from Chicago and went to Cleveland originally planning to be there for a short amount of time. Needless to say, she has stayed. She is excited by the challenge and creativity she can employ in her line of work to best tackle issues that the city faces while best utilizing the tools and infrastructure that are already in place.

“Yeah, [post-industrial] cities have problems, but the work you do and the efforts you put forth are significant enough to allow you to see the city actually change. You’re able to explore and create positive change in the world. You can’t do that in New York or Chicago.”

Be sure to catch Terry speaking on a panel at the Rust Belt to Artist Belt Conference Wednesday, April 6 at 4pm. For more information on registration, please visit the Conference website.

Happy Saint Pat’s day. Lots to celebrate today and in the next coming months:

First, The Marche du Nain Rouge is this Sunday! It was easily the finest first-year event I think I have ever seen in Detroit last year, so get your dancing shoes ready. The parade is free, family-friendly and just plain fun. Dress up if you want, too. Opening ceremonies begin at 1pm at 3rd Bar (Corner of Third and Forest), with the march commencing shortly thereafter through the Cass Corridor. Everything ends with the banishment of the dwarf in Cass Park at about 3pm. The Night Move is even offering shuttles back to 3rd Bar from Cass Park for $2 a head. Deal! Read last year’s thoughts on the parade here.

Next week is the IDEA: Detroit Conference with a list of speakers ranging from Joe McClure (of the pickle fame) to Toby Barlow (of the Team Detroit and Ford fame) to Kate Daughdrill (of the SOUP fame). “Provocative thinking, shared experiences and inspired, workable business ideas are the earmarks of The IDEA Conference, a collaboration of Advertising Age and Crain’s Detroit Business.” Register to attend here.

A bit further out is the Rust Belt to Artist Belt Conference happening right here in Day-Twah April 6-7th. The idea of the conference is to examine the idea that Detroit and its fellow Rust Belters have the assets to be global centers of design and creative innovation. To make that process easier, the goal is to create connections between designers, manufacturers and creative sector business owners to hammer out what the creative supply chain in the region looks and feels like and how we can best operate together– ie, getting all the ingredients on the supply side (creative vision, production and distribution) tightly wrapped up and working together nicely. The Rust Belt is situated to provide those connections amongst its cities. An interesting list of speakers is lined up and registration for the conference can be had here.