Black Lotus, Dragonmead, Jolly Pumpkin and Grizzly Peak. They're more than just cool names. Michigan's beer industry accounted for $133 million of the state's economy last year and, despite the current market, business is growing. Melinda Clynes chats with several of the region's microbrewers about what's on tap this season and where things are headed next.

Are you part of the Creative Class? Richard Florida has become the bell of the new urbanist ball, dividing the world into "spiky" mega regions with psychological personalities all their own. Translation: Where the nation's best talent chooses to live says as much about you as it does about them. So how does southeast Michigan stack up?

Some SE Michigan communities are determined to drop their rustbelt in favor of something a bit more au natural. But it's not trendiness that inspires cities like Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor and Wyandotte to implement the holy trinity of sustainability --wind, solar, conservation-- but rather the greenbacks they'll save by doing so.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Place matters. And that applies to retail as well. In defiance of the impersonal big box warehouse trend, companies like Borders and Whole Foods look to cultivate an environment that welcomes their customers. Enter Novi-based PPC Design, a firm that creates retail designs for likeminded businesses, large and small.

Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston do not thrive on home ownership alone. If you look at most successful cities in the U.S., a robust rental market is necessary for urban health (and attracting young talent). Here, however, rentals are what you end up with when you can't sell.  Should we rethink what it means to "live" in Metro Detroit?

Detroit author and adman Toby Barlow's one-man branding campaign for the city has a catchy slogan and important sentiment: Stop the Loathing.

The Model D Speaker Series is going green. "Building a Green City: Sustainable Urbanism in Detroit" will be the topic of the next event — to be held March 19 at the Detroit Yacht Club. It's free, but you must RSVP.

With the proliferation of personal info on the Internet today – everything from bank account access to your boyfriend's pet name – life is becoming a paperless open book. Metromode talks with some area experts who are helping to keep some of those pages from prying eyes.

"If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend." -Abraham Lincoln. 

True leaders understand the need for compromise and cooperation. Unfortunately, the state's term limits tend to encourage partisan opposition. Every year, the Michigan Political Leadership Program brings together 24 fellows of varying political stripes in order to foster a new generation of solutions-based leadership.