The “heart of Detroit” is a common marketing shtick attempting to show the importance and purported hip-ness of a given location. Sometimes that location is a new development and other times it is a historic place marker.

Thanks to Aaron Foley’s 2012 Mlive article on this very topic and some more recent google searches, there is nice list of locations assumed to be the “heart of Detroit” and with wide geographic variation.

“My inner cartographer wants the “heart” of the city to be the Dexter/Davison/Linwood near Central High School, which is, uh, central to almost everywhere in the city.” – Aaron Foley

Heart of Detroit:

• Midtown
• Downtown
• Capital Park
• Barry Subdivision
• Belle Isle
• Central High School
• W. Grand Blvd.
• Linwood and Gladstone
• Diack Park/Playground
• New Center
• Corktown
• Brush Park
• Woodbridge

Anyone can claim the “heart of Detroit,” but how can we determine the true “heart” or center? Mathematically we can calculate the geographic center of Detroit.

Media mentions are nice and the geographic center is helpful, but it is no mystery that Detroit is a very large area with random clusters of population. Using more math we can calculate the mean “center of population” for Detroit. It seems that Aaron Foley’s “inner cartographer” is spot on!