Then, we build it cleaner, bigger and better -- all the way up," said Branch, who is also an artist-in-residence at the Flint Public Art Project. "The first step in rehabbing our city is paint.

Photographer Dan White in his studio in Kansas City's West Bottoms ... the '60s and '70s," says White. “Flint was a blue-collar town but it also had great art and culture.

But as architects and developers begin to put pencil to paper, the best public art projects draw on the spiritual side of that renewal. Flint, Michigan’s inaugural Free City Festival ...