We Love Where You Live

In our series on the 2025 Community Excellence Award applicants, we visit two Michigan communities brightening their neighborhoods—and their spirits—with creativity. The City of Hart’s resident-let “community spirit initiative” is growing its regional reputation as a destination for public art, and the City of Portage is bringing competitive holiday cheer with its annual Tricked Out and Decked Out...

In our series on the 2025 Community Excellence Award applicants, we take a look at three Michigan communities making the world just a little bit more sustainable and environmentally friendly. The Village of Roscommon and the City of Southfield created beautiful, educational spaces celebrating important wildlife, and the City of Birmingham developed an all-encompassing sustainability and public hea...

We begin this week’s show with a wide-ranging conversation with Clare City Manager Jeremy Howard and Mayor Patrick Humphrey about the city’s downtown revitalization efforts, creative placemaking projects, municipal partnerships, and more. We then turn to our legislative update to discuss our new MI Home Program proposal—a set of tools to address the state’s housing crisis.

In our series on the 2025 Community Excellence Award applicants, we visit three Michigan municipalities that strengthened community bonds through revitalized third spaces. Big Rapids and Milford breathed new life into aging downtown parks, and Mt. Pleasant turned an unpopular parking lot into a thriving new town square. 

Welcome to August with Live with the League! This week’s show begins with a conversation with Luke Forrest of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity,  discussing the new Community Growth Academy and how it can help communities navigate economic transitions.  Moving into what's happening (or not happening) in Lansing, we discussed the current state of the ever-ongoing budget proc...