Nadia Dolphus, 7, and Shanna Bennett, 19, hold a “Youth Grow Brightmoor” sign Shanna painted for one of numerous agricultural projects in the neighborhood. City officials see places like Brightmoor as pivotal to transforming vacant lots into productive assets.
Mayor Mike Duggan is no big talker when it comes to discussing Detroit's future. He mainly brags about how he is making the city work like most big American cities.
Yet inside Duggan’s administration, his top officials are working on groundbreaking plans that could transform large swaths of Detroit, Bill McGraw reports in Bridge magazine.
If the plans come to fruition, they could turn the city into a global showplace for how struggling cities can capitalize on shrinking populations.
Cox and his aides are drawing maps that throw out traditional neighborhood boundaries and combine largely vacant areas of the city areas with more stable neighborhoods nearby.
Led by the newly hired director of planning, Maurice Cox, a nationally known urban designer who last worked in New Orleans, the administration is quietly formulating a strategy to reimagine Detroit’s neighborhoods to take advantage of what has long been considered one of the city’s biggest problems: vacant land. It’s a “greening” strategy built on a blueprint laid out by Detroit Future City in 2013, but with a twist:
Cox and his aides are drawing maps that throw out traditional neighborhood boundaries and combine largely vacant areas of the city with more stable neighborhoods nearby. The purpose of the new districts is to take existing empty green space, refashion it, and use it to benefit both the distressed and stable neighborhoods.
“This is a very different way of thinking of neighborhood development,” Cox tells Bridge.
“It’s thinking about the vacancy (in troubled areas) in conjunction with stable neighborhoods which are right next door, and it’s all a part of one unit,” he says.
Cox, reaching for a map, pointed to Rosedale Park, Grandmont and Brightmoor, three neighborhoods in northwest Detroit. Rosedale and Grandmont are stable areas mostly filled with gracious brick homes and landscaped lawns. Brightmoor has long been one of Detroit poorest areas, with extensive blight and vacant land.
“Whenever we map the city, we never map Brightmoor without mapping Brightmoor, Grandmont, Rosedale,” Cox says.
