Midtown : News from Detroit

Bike!Bike!, an international conference for bike enthusiasts, will be hosted by The Hub of Detroit with an expected attendance around 300.

If you could eradicate the mosquito from the face of the earth, would you? That's the essential question being asked at a forum taking place at the Michigan Science Center on September 22.

Often an afterthought in most neighborhoods, the alley is kind of a special thing in Midtown. And both Dally in the Alley and The Green Alley Gathering will celebrate these between building mini-streets.

Conditions are just right nationally and in Detroit for a startup boom, according to a Detroit Free Press article. And that's exactly what we're seeing.

Votes have been cast and the totals have been tallied as the top ten contestants in the 2016 Comerica Hatch Detroit Contest have been whittled down to the final four.

According to the Detroit News, a new "pink zone" pilot program, meant to ease zoning restrictions, could be on the way next summer.

Thousands of affordable housing and community development professionals are convening in Detroit this week for the NeighborWorks Training Institute, a symposium that's expected to generate $3.3 million in local investment.

In the program's first year, Motor City Match has awarded $2 million in grants to 40 small businesses, leveraging over $13 million in total investment in the city.

A recent article in City Lab explores the way cities, including Detroit, are creatively rethinking use of the alley.

The Detroit Creative Corridor Center wants to help figure out how best to harness the Motor City's flair for design to improve its local economy. It's launching the Detroit City of Design initiative to make that happen.

Public art is fast becoming part of Detroit's redevelopment. According to artist Nicole MacDonald, it's "all about empowerment."

The Detroit Conservation Corps provides unemployed residents in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park job training and certification in the landscape industry.

The inaugural Stadt Garten, the first of several planned pop up beer gardens this summer, will take place in the yard of an 1880s Gothic-Victorian mansion in Midtown. 

Budding entrepreneurs hoping to learn more about how to open their own brick-and-mortar locations are in luck.

The small business competition awards grant funding, design and technical support, and landlord-tenant match-making assistance.