Yesterday was the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year. That means that starting today, the days grow longer. Though it may be cold and cloudy, the lengthening days bring the promise of spring and all its glowing potential.

The turn of the calendar may be seen as a metaphor for the past year in the Detroit region. Things looked mighty bleak a year ago: corruption in city government, the auto industry on the brink of disaster, unemployment on the rise. We’re hardly out of the woods, but it would appear that we’ve turned a corner. A new, no-nonsense mayor and a substantially new city council have brought principled leadership and the potential for businesslike, regional solutions to the city. General Motors and Chrysler have emerged from bankruptcy with new leadership and new determination to provide a product mix suitable for Twenty-first Century conditions. Ford, already one step ahead, is now turning a profit. Moreover, the region seems to have finally realized that it can no longer rely entirely on a single industry. Hence, the New Economy Initiative aims to create as many as 1200 new businesses in Southeast Michigan in the next three years. Wayne Law hopes to play at least a small role in this renaissance, with our Small Business and Non-profit Corporations Clinic providing legal assistance to start-up companies.

But economic recovery will be slow; even if half of the new businesses flourish (a pretty good success rate), they will provide only a fraction of the jobs lost by the domestic auto industry in the past two decades. The same kind of imagination that created the industrial colossus of the Twentieth Century will have to engineer our prosperity in the Twenty-first. If the auto industry could convert to the production of tanks and planes during World War Two, we should likewise look to convert much of our production capacity to railroad locomotives and passenger cars (few of which are currently produced domestically) for the national high speed rail system envisioned by President Obama in the next decade.

Fresh water may well be to the Twenty-first Century what oil was to the Twentieth Century: a precious resource for which there is rising demand. The Great Lakes (four of which abut Michigan) contain about 20% of the earth’s fresh water supply, and we will have to invent sustainable and productive uses of this resource in order to unlock the region’s economic potential. Here, again, Wayne Law hopes to play a constructive role. Our new Environmental Law Clinic, in partnership with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, now represents a bipartisan coalition of Michigan legislators attempting to block the migration of Asian carp from the Mississippi River system into the Great Lakes, where they could destroy a flourishing fishing industry.  For background on this issue, see Professor Noah Hall’s Great Lakes Law blog at http://www.greatlakeslaw.org/.

Here at Wayne, we regard it as consistent with our mission to assist in the economic development of the region. This means making efficient, wise use of finite resources. Our progress is likely to be more steady than spectacular. As impatient as we may be, lasting prosperity is more likely to be a product of thoughtful planning, hard work, and perseverence than bold strikes and flashy pronouncements. Detroit will not be rebuilt in a day. But in the years to come, we will look back upon this time when Detroit emerged from the darkness of winter and declare it our finest hour.