"Driving Detroit: impressions of the city" (middle-class, houses)

[Tex?Il?]

I'm not sure if ever started a thread showing this, but how many of you are familiar with this project?


Driving Detroit - A Freep.com special series

The map is interesting, and the categories that reagrading condition of neighborhoods seems accurate when checked with street view.

What is interesting is that if you are going to generalize about the city, is that away from the downtown-midtown-corktown area, the northwest side of the city, seems to be in better shape.

Do you think that this is partially because of the proximity to Oakland County (the real economic center of metro Detroit) as well as possibly better housing stock (larger brick houses)?

[Remisc]

Kinda interesting. I noticed that the 'urban prairies', which the city is very well-known for, make up a very small amount of land.

[ForStarters]

Wow. This is really neat. I've never seen this; thank you for posting it.

The map really shows a multifaceted Detroit. You can really sense that Detroit is a living, breathing city, continuously in transition. While some areas continue to slide, others are on the rebound. A lot of the city (orange areas) are peppered with beautiful, well-maintained houses right next to blighted houses. There's a wild contrast of abandonment and new construction. I think that where many people see total abandonment, especially factories and industrial buildings, other people are starting to see the tremendous opportunity in re-purposing those buildings. McGraw's map will be really useful to investors who want to study different parts of the city. Seeing as this project came out in 2007, there have been quite a few changes since then. Definitely, some areas have gotten worse, while others have substantially improved, like Southwest Detroit, Midtown, and E. Riverfront.

I really hope that they follow up with this project and repeat it in 2017 (10 years later) to track the changes. I suspect that some areas will continue to decline, while areas where progress was just beginning in 2007 will hopefully be in almost mint condition. It will be really interesting to see the effects of Mayor Bing's plan to consolidate the city into core neighborhoods. His plan could radically change the landscape into a stark contrast of areas that are well-maintained and have a high population density, while other areas will become large swaths of completely barren urban prairie.

Detroit is such an interesting and dynamic place. The potential of the city is awesome, namely because it is so large and has so much stuff, but it can only happen if the right people get involved and stay the course.

[Retroit]

Here are some more maps that give a bit more detail (showing each vacant lot). They were created in March 2006, and things have gotten much worse since then.

http://www.greenwaycollab.com/images/GWI/Detroit%20Workshop%20Central.pdf (broken link)

http://www.greenwaycollab.com/images/GWI/Detroit%20Workshop%20East.pdf

http://www.greenwaycollab.com/images/GWI/Detroit%20Workshop%20West.pdf

[Retroit]

Here's a map from 1990 (a bit old, I know):

http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/map...Conditions.pdf

Here's a map which shows the percentage increase in vacant addresses from Dec '05 to June '08.

http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/map...Change0508.pdf

They come from this site which has a lot of other interesting maps:

Center For Urban Studies

[Retroit]

Another site with more current info (2/15/2010) but less detail:

http://www.detroitparcelsurvey.org/p...esentation.pdf

Maps start on page 17.

[Retroit]

If you like these kind of maps, here's another site from Macomb County that has a lot of info for the metropolitan area. Pretty fun to use!

Macomb County GIS

[errhuh]

What is interesting is that if you are going to generalize about the city, is that away from the downtown-midtown-corktown area, the northwest side of the city, seems to be in better shape

Do you think that this is partially because of the proximity to Oakland County (the real economic center of metro Detroit) as well as possibly better housing stock (larger brick houses)?

Maybe. NW Detroit was also the last stand of the WASPs in Detroit. Back in the ~50s-60s, the racial dividing line was down Livernois. Whites to the west, blacks to the east. So the middle-class held out longest in the NW. These homes likely saw more TLC before that last generation died or moved away. I assume that was also one of the last strongholds of the black middle class in Detroit as well.

Parts of the east side have been falling down for a long time. At least in my opinion.

[PGC301]

I would have thought that the City Airport area (between Van Dyke and the airport) would have been listed as "prairie"

[prairiestate]

There may not be much classified as prairie, but a significant portion of the city is "mixed", which is described as including a significant percentage of abandoned buildings. There are also two large squares of "much abandonment" on the vaunted northwest side. This map isn't exactly selling me on the city.