For this video, I took I96 east from Grand Rapids towards Lansing, Michigan’s capital. It was an unusually dry stretch of weather as the region still hadn’t seen much snow to this point of the year, but like a typical winter day in Michigan, it was chilly at 40 degrees and a gray sky dominated the region. The day was Friday, December 27, 2019 at about 11 am.


We pulled into the outskirts of Lansing we were immediately greeted with the city’s worst side. This area of Michigan is on the city’s southwest side, near the intersection of Jolly and Waverly. We’ll look around here for a few minutes, and then drive into downtown proper before heading over to East Lansing and Michigan State University.

Lansing ranks 70th in America for worst crime, and in Michigan proper, it’s sixth worst, with a violent crime rate that’s three times higher than the state average.

Now we’re going to head east on Saginaw and go into downtown proper.

We’re in downtown Lansing. Originally, Detroit was the capital of Michigan when it became a state in 1837. But Detroit was really close to the Canadian border they wanted to move the state capital more away from British controlled Canada. Many cities like Ann Arbor Jackson and Marshall lobbied to be the new state capital. They couldn't decide and out of frustration chose Lansing township. Many laughed, because at the time there were only 20 people living in all of Lansing Township

Most of what is known as Lansing today is the result of the city becoming an industrial powerhouse which began with the founding of Oldsmobile in 1897. Of course, today, Michigan is still by far the nation’s leading producer of automobiles.

Landings population is currently 118,000 making it the fifth largest city in the state. Though just like other Michigan cities like Detroit and Flint, the decline in the auto industry saw Lansing’s population drop from a peak of 132,000 in the late 70s.

Today, auto manufacturing still dominate the Lansing economy, along with insurance and healthcare. GM still makes a few cars in downtown Lansing, including the Chevy Camaro.
The recent decline of the auto industry in the region has increased the region's awareness of the importance of a strategy to foster the hightechnology sector.
Lansing has a number of technology companies in the fields of information technology and biotechnology.
Mappy did you know Larry page confounder google is from Lansing
Downtown Lansing has a historic city market that is one of the oldest continuously operating farmers' markets in the United States.

This is where the single A affiliate for the Toronto Blue Jays play the Lansing Lugnuts. They’ve won two league titles.

We’ll take Michigan Avenue a few miles into east Lansing now.

The Michigan Avenue corridor is a very area here in Lansing. It’s lined with restaurants, bars, shops and places to live. The city is currently working on a $250 million dollar restoration plan to completely reshape this corridor.

Now, we’ll cross into East Lansing and visit Michigan State University.

This is the Spartan Statue, which marks a highly trafficked area on the MSU campus. Many people stop and take pictures here. This is Spartan Stadium, where Michigan State plays its football games.

Now we’ll leave Michigan State’s campus and head back west again towards downtown Lansing along Michigan Avenue again. Off to the distance you can see Michigan’s capital building once again.

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