Author Archives: Alex B. Hill

Map: Existing and Proposed Detroit People Mover Expansions

The Detroit People Mover was part of the Urban Mass Transportation Authority (UMTA) Downtown People Mover (DPM) program. The program received 35 proposals, and four cities were selected: Cleveland, OH; Houston, TX; Los Angeles, CA; and St. Paul, MN. Detroit had applied, but was able to pursue the DPM with other funding along with two other cities (Miami, FL and Baltimore, MD) bringing the total to 7 DPM approved plans.

Only Detroit and Miami followed through on constructing their DPM system. Miami eventually demolished their DPM. The Detroit effort was started by the Southeast Michigan Transportation Authority (SEMTA), which would later become the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART). SEMTA sold ownership of the system to the Detroit Transportation Corporation (DTC) in 1985 and the DPM launched in 1987.

Elevated rail was noted as the most viable option in a 1918 Barclay Parsons Clapp (later Parsons-Brinckerhoff) study and it was again proposed in a 1979 study of rapid transit options for the Detroit region. The rail line was proposed to run underground as a subway from Downtown to Grand Boulevard and then run as elevated rail from Grand Boulevard to McNichols, finally running at street level until I-696. The 1979 study of rapid transit plans included the early analysis for the Downtown People Mover project as well.

A proposed housing development in 1983 near where Orleans Landing was finally built noted the Downtown People Mover project and noted the possibility of expansion eastward to accommodate senior citizen mobility needs while also connecting people to the riverfront. Ideally, this could have been an elevated rail line that eventually connected to Belle Isle, possibly even looping around the island.

The single largest expansion of the Downtown People Mover was in 2007 when David Curry and Marsden Burger proposed the Detroit People Mover 2.0 with key connections to the Medical Center and Henry Ford Hospital. The elevated addition would have run as its own separate line connecting to the DPM loop near Comerica Park. Many similar stops exist along the Qline route, but the convenience of elevated rail could not be made more apparent by the current failures of the Qline curbside routing.

The current DPM technology is outdated, but I can’t help but think of the possibility of add on elevated lines to the North, East, and Southwest that utilize the DPM as a hub like The Loop in Chicago. Maybe the RenCen should be Detroit’s newest transit hub where all the elevated rail lines get routed.

Map: Police Response Times and Project Green Light 2019

The Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) took a deep dive into the controversial Project Green Light (PGL) camera program run by the Detroit Police Department. The now ubiquitously blinking green lights dot every commercial corridor, the inside spaces of public and multi-family housing, and the inside of some businesses (with no blinking light). Concerns about the technology abound as the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) attempts to monitor all 256 cameras and facial recognition contracts get renewed by City Council.

The PGL program has no evidence that the program has had any meaningful impact on crime although it does often tout unverifiable statistics when working to get more businesses to install the technology. One assumption is that police response times might improve based on PGL locations, but the map included in the report shows there is still an obvious disparity in response time regardless of PGL use or non-use.

Event: Detroit in 50 Maps at Troy Public Library

WHEN: Tuesday, July 19th @ 7pm

WHERE: Troy Public Library

WHAT: Detroit in 50 Maps

Whether you are a Detroiter, a fan of the Motor City, or a lover of maps, this program has something for you. Join cartographer and anthropologist Alex Hill for a discussion of his bestselling book, Detroit in 50 Maps, as he brings Detroit history, culture, and public policy to life with his fascinating collection of Detroit maps.

RSVP: Event Link

Map: Living New Deal in Detroit

New Deal projects touched nearly every corner of the United States. From 1933 to 1942 hundreds of thousands of projects modernized our country and many are still in use today; roads, schools, theaters, libraries, hospitals, post offices, courthouses, airports, parks, forests, gardens, and artworks were created in a single decade.

The Living New Deal’s purpose is to make that enduring legacy visible. Our team is building a national database of information, documents, photographs, and personal stories about the public works made possible by the New Deal. And it is all just a click away on our national map of New Deal sites. The late California historian and State Librarian, Kevin Starr, likened the Living New Deal to a WPA project from the 1930s in its ambition and scope.

Check out the Living New Deal map

Map: The Eviction Machine in Detroit 2019 – 2022

Linked to the foreclosure crisis, and the $600 million tax over-assessments, the scourge of eviction in Detroit can be found in every corner of the city.

Colleagues have found this process, the eviction machine, to be a business model used by many nefarious actors in Detroit to generate profit. Nine in ten evictions that took place during the pandemic were at properties that were not up to code. Rental properties in Detroit have long existed in a kind of vacuum where the city was unable to consider or maintain enforcement of health and safety standards. The old axiom that “possession is none-tenths of the law” follows the legal process of eviction where the court expedites “summary proceedings,” prioritizing the landlords claim of ownership.

The Eviction Machine project catalogues data from the 35th District Court’s online Register of Actions system, which are then linked to City Assessor data and Certificate of Compliance data in Detroit’s Open Data Portal.

Use the data tools and learn more: https://www.evictionmachine.org

Map: Detroit Public Schools Facility Master Plan 2022

This map is … something. It’s hard to follow the various dotted lines and arrows – maybe better serves as a metaphor for how confused parents are feeling about the proposed changes.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) is planning for widespread renovations, a number of closures and what appear to be consolidations, and a few demolitions. The master plan includes building 5 new schools, but its unclear at what cost as 4/6 of the demolitions are estimated to cost over $1 million each.

Map: Detroit Tube System 1926

“Detroit is at a critical transit period. It must add rapid transit to its city transit agencies. It is best to begin right.” – City Planning Commission (Free Press, Tube system planned to serve 92 per cent of workers, August 18, 1926, page 8)

Well, we missed our critical moment to add rapid transit to the city. Rooting for rapid transit in Detroit is like rooting for the Lions. Voters approved rapid transit plans twice (see also Woodward Ave Subway 1915), but the financing could never be figured out. A story we’ve heard before in this region.

The report generated in 1926 proposed underground passageways, but was not a true subway rather a “tunnelway” system. The plan outlined in the map presents 4 mostly underground 2-way rapid transit lines. A Detroit subway will just have to live in fantasy, after fantasy, after fantasy, after…

Map: Detroit’s Historic Buildings, Places and Landmarks

The HistoricDetroit.org site by Dan Austin is an internet gem. I was so glad to wander back and find he’s added a map function to search for historic buildings by location. There is a strong focus on the urban core to the historic building locations, but that follows the city’s growth and development. Indian Village on the city’s Eastside is the other dense segment of historic building lore.

Map: Detroit Eviction Cases Filed in 2017

Stout, a recognized leader in civil legal aid, was commissioned a $1 million study the economic impact of evictions by the Rocket Community Fund, the philanthropic arm of Rocket Companies. Stout analyzed 30,000 evictions in 2017 from the 36th District Court and found 4% of tenants had representation compared to 83% of landlords. Stout estimates an overall $58.8 million cost saving and economic benefit from implementing the “right to counsel” program for Detroit.

The map include in the report highlights that eviction case filings are uneven across the city and it is well known that many unofficial evictions take place that never get filed with the court.

Event: Friends of Novi Library Kaleidoscope Program: Detroit in 50 Maps

WHEN: Wednesday, May 18th @ 7pm

WHERE: Novi Library

WHAT: Kaleidoscope Speaker Series

Alex B. Hill creates maps that reveal so much more about Detroit, a city in transition, than typical street maps, tour guides or headline news could ever do. His blog, DETROITography.com, uses maps to illustrate concerns and accomplishments of the city’s residents and businesses. An anthropologist and a self-described “data nerd,” Hill will be presenting a program you won’t want to miss!

RSVP: Event Link

Interactive Detroit Bike and Trail Map

The Detroit Greenways Coalition has a new interactive bike map that compliments the print version they published a few years ago. Todd Scott has been leading on bicycle data collection, adding bike lanes to Google Maps, and sharing bicycle information for over a decade.

Click to view the interactive map

Map: Detroit’s Original Chinatown

Parking lots. As is the Detroit and Downtown way, much of the city’s cultural heritage was razed for car infrastructure – be it freeways or parking lots.

The discussion of Chinatown in Detroit is usually limited to the decorative marker at Cass and Peterboro that disappeared and then a new one was installed reminding us that Chinatown once existed. However, the Chinatown we think we know was a failed attempt at relocation after the original Chinatown was condemned and demolished for the Lodge Freeway project.

I had always heard or been told that the original Chinatown was at the intersection of Third and Michigan Ave and/or the site of the MGM Grand Casino. After some digging into the photo archives at the Reuther Library and combing through Sanborn Digital Maps, I was able to locate the original locations of the Chinese Cultural Building and the famed Chung’s Chop Suey.

There should, in the least, be a historic marker on the lawn of the Detroit Public Safety HQ to mark Detroit’s original Chinatown.

Map: Detroit Daffodils 2022

Slow news day. On Friday, the City released a news brief about the 2 million daffodils planted by City teams in time for summer. The reason we get excited is they also have a map!

The real question is: where is the daffodil data on the open data portal?

HT @polarbarrett

Map: Redlining compared to Social Vulnerability in Detroit

The Mapping Inequality project that has been cataloging “redlining” maps from the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) and completed this incredible project to match the mortgage security grading with the present day CDC Social Vulnerability Index (SVI).

The focus on redlining is often over emphasized and this analysis shows how the “yellow” graded areas (yellow-lined) experienced the most change. Many yellow areas (outside of Detroit) became green with very low SVI as well as the majority of yellow graded areas within Detroit became red with very high SVI.

Map: Michigan Environmental Justice Percentiles in Detroit

The Office of the Environmental Justice Public Advocate at EGLE has released an extensive and comprehensive interactive mapping tool that explores environmental justice related datasets for Michigan. The project is in draft form and currently open for feedback.

As many of these project show, Detroit is at an extreme disadvantage compared to its neighbors and compared to the rest of the state. Environmental effects, environmental exposure, sensitive populations (asthma, blood lead levels, etc.), and socioeconomic factors all are more heavily weighted in Detroit.

Map: Ultimate Detroit Taco Map

Hands down, Southwest Detroit is the absolute best, most dense, most authentic place to eat tacos.

Tacos originated from Mexico and, like many types of cultural food, has been shared across the country by peoples who have chosen to live in various communities in the US. Thankfully, Detroit is one such location. The Corktown area was well known for its growing Mexican-American population as early as the 1930s (See Mexicans of Detroit, 1979). However, recent reporting has noted the movement “Downriver” of Detroit’s Latino community, which you can see in the cluster of taco restaurants in Allen Park and Lincoln Park on the map.

This map pulls from common “point of interest” datasets, including Safegraph POI, verification using Google Places, and cross-checking with data from alltheplaces.xyz.

The map includes places with:

  • “Taco” or “taqueria” in the name
  • “Mexican” in the name
  • “El ” or “Los ” in the name (excluding churches and doctors offices, i.e. El Bethel and El Sayid)

Some taco trucks made it in the list, but its likely that some did not without a fixed location. What stood out most from the data was the ubiquity of taco chains in the metro area outside of Detroit while the local, authentic tacos are best found in Southwest Detroit.

Map: Officer Down Memorials in Detroit

I noticed small blue plaques started popping up on light poles across the city. Many of them had dates from the early 1900s, so I wondered what the source was. There is a large effort to track and map “officer down” memorials. COVID-19 became a leading cause of death for police officers across the country during the pandemic. This site keeps a record of the locations and circumstances as well as the chronic disease causes of death of officers.

The memorials appear to cluster in the Downtown area likely due to the higher rates of crime Downtown and the historical nature of the memorials (back to 1883) showing more officers killed when the city was much smaller than it is today.

Map: Southwest Detroit Industrial District 2021

A new report from Southwest Detroit Business Association (SDBA), LISC, and Detroit Future City explores the creation of an “industrial district” in Southwest Detroit. There are a high number of industrial sites and a significant number of jobs located in the area. The goal of the study and report was to set a path towards equitable economic development.

This study is focused on the industrially zoned properties that include and
surround the Clark Street Technology Park. The study area is roughly bounded
by Michigan Avenue, Livernois, Vernor Highway and I-96/I-75. The industrial
properties and their adjacent residential neighborhoods are primarily contained
within four census tracts: 5213, 5231, 5255, and 5256 (2010 Census boundaries).

Event: Mapping Whose Detroit?

WHEN: Thursday, March 31st @ 4pm

WHERE: Clark Library, University of Michigan (in-person + virtual)

WHAT: Mapping Whose Detroit?

A talk on the topic of counter-mapping, including maps from the book, Detroit in 50 Maps. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

RSVP: Event Link