Today's unprecedented economic challenges hold great promise here in Michigan as we make use of the best "green" technologies and thinking, spawn new industries and achieve urban work and leisure lives that are more sane, more rewarding and more healthy.

Real progress is being made as architecture makes a paradigm shift from consumptive to sustainable design.

Solar cell-laden shingles or wind turbines, in concert with advanced materials and construction techniques, are helping homes, schools and commercial buildings achieve energy self-sufficiency, possibly even positive energy generation, or a zero carbon footprint.

Our proud structures of an earlier day are a resource yielding on-site raw materials for new ones.

Construction materials and techniques; heating, cooling and other mechanical systems; what total uses we make of buildings and the spaces they inhabit and influence are all up for grabs.

Interestingly, we learn a great deal from looking at what needs replacing or rebuilding.

In Detroit, we have some of the best examples of 20th Century design, including Albert Kahn-designed industrial spaces that innovated with structural concrete and made great use of natural light and cost-free ventilation.

Today, we have a great example of architectural vision in Detroit's New Center Area as GM's former Argonaut Building is being made over as a second campus for the College for Creative Studies. We are saving the Argonaut Building, not tearing it down, incorporating the latest green building knowledge in the form of insulation, energy-efficient mechanical systems and energy recovery systems.

Overall, we are getting more efficient with the appliances and equipment that we use in buildings and houses, while green forms of energy, particularly photovoltaics, have become more practical in terms of manufacture, installation, maintenance and life cycle costs.

There are two keys to expanding these advantages. The first involves promoting sustainable, energy-efficient design. These efforts include everything from expanded curricula at our universities and bringing more parties into the urban planning process to necessary modernization of building and zoning codes and reasonable tax incentives for green technologies, as well as individual projects.

The second key is having the courage -- and political will -- to honestly reinvent our urban environment; employing design vision in the service of commerce, education and transportation -- everything we want to work better than it has in the recent past.

From an architectural standpoint, we are now at a major paradigm shift in how we view the built environment.

The economic stimulus package includes $39 billion for the Department of Energy and $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy, as well as permanent tax credits for research and experimentation. We believe our nation will now place its infrastructure bets wisely, favoring sustainable design and the industries of the future that they will first rely on and, in turn, foster.

The nation and our state can point the way to the future and evidence the creativity, talents, entrepreneurial spirit and elbow grease that once placed -- and can again place -- Michigan center stage as an economic power and appealing urban environment.