Hundreds of Detroiters pour into an empty warehouse near the New Center section of the City and gather around tables near the floor made of milk crates and plywood boards. As more people settle in, a woman takes the stage to explain what this night is all about. Boiled down to one word, that description [...]
Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus is the official motto of Detroit meaning “We Hope for Better Things; It Shall Rise from the Ashes.” Adopted after the city of Detroit burned to the ground in 1805, Detroiters today are embracing these words and the city’s potential for and successful history of rebuilding and rebranding. ‘Detropia,’ the film [...]
Maybe one of the biggest surprises you’ll find in Detroit is the presence of a great bike culture. This is surprising for two main reasons: Detroit is the Motor City: a major part of your associations with Detroit deal with the auto industry here, and the impacts of the industry’s elite on transportation and infrastructure [...]
Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo. Voltaire. Isaac Newton. These are some of the great thinkers that probably come to mind when you think of the Renaissance. But for some of us more versed in the history of the time, architect and sculptor Filippo Brunelleschi may be a familiar name. A native of Florence, Brunelleschi is often [...]
I recently explored the bike-friendly status bestowed upon the University of Michigan and its town Ann Arbor by the League of American Bicyclists. A general consensus on their respective bronze and silver-level ratings is that there is room for improvement. An interesting way to look at the bike community in Ann Arbor is to consider [...]
Even on a university campus neatly integrated into downtown, University of Michigan students still find themselves sprawled out across the city. The University’s three Ann Arbor campuses stretch across the city: South Campus houses athletic buildings, Central Campus is home to most of the University’s academic colleges, and North Campus is a retreat for art, [...]
Kalamazoo Public Schools is the school district neighboring the Portage Public School District that I graduated from. Portage is a suburb of Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the most awful definition of that word, a small town established in 1963 because of white-flight from the city of Kalamazoo. Substitute teachers in the area, for some reason, felt [...]
The University of Michigan is a world-class university with its main campus in the idyllic small-town Ann Arbor, Michigan. Students and Ann Arbor natives often refer to their little slice of heaven as “28 square miles surrounded by reality.” The reality coming to mind now is the high poverty, crime, and population decline plaguing Detroit, [...]
The League of American Bicyclists has been working over the past ten years to “identify the DNA” of bicycle-friendly cities. The League does not simply put out a list of the most friendly cities, businesses, and universities in the nation, but provides education on the important components of that DNA they have identified. The annual [...]
A big Global Site Plans welcome to our newest blogger, Meg Mulhall from Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan. Meg Mulhall is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan. She calls Kalamazoo, Michigan her hometown but is currently exploring community organizing and urban planning efforts in Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan. Planning to pursue a [...]
Months of inspiration for government officials and urban planners are coming to a head in Detroit with the recent introduction of the Future City initiative. Next on the city council’s agenda is a decision on the proposal to sell the Belle Isle park to entrepreneurs for $1 billion. Real estate developer Rodney Lockwood has pitched [...]
Detroit’s downfall is a storied urban planning nightmare. One largely important factor in the city’s decline is the rapid population exodus it continues to experience. Population loss has resulted in vast amounts of vacant, government-owned land. But what is the solution for a bankrupt city that is the owner of more vacant lots than it [...]
