Author Archives: Alex B. Hill

Map: Disconnected Youth in Detroit 2014

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The National Equity Atlas has released new indicators and data visuals at the Census Tract level. One of their new indicators is on “disconnected youth” (16-to-19-year-olds who are neither working nor in school).

The site lets you select data for 2000 and 2014. In 2000, “disconnected youth” in Detroit were more clustered, but the 2014 data shows more dispersion. 

The project explains why that matters:

Ensuring that youth are educated, healthy, and ready to thrive in the workforce is essential for economic prosperity, but too many youth—particularly youth of color—are disconnected from educational or employment opportunities. Not accessing education and job experience early in life can have long-lasting impacts including lower earnings, higher public expenditures, lower tax revenues, and lost human potential.

Event: DETROITography Pop-up Gallery

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If you’re at the University of Michigan or just visiting Ann Arbor, be sure to check out the DETROITography pop-up exhibit at the UofM Institute for the Humanities as part of their year-long theme on the “Humanities and Public Policy.”

Detroitography

Nov 1 – Dec 15, 2016, Institute for the Humanities Common Room, M-F 9am-5pm

This exhibition features maps of Detroit from Detroitography, an organization whose focus is on democratizing map making and refocusing data for people-centered innovation. The maps include ones other people make about the city as well as their own maps of Detroit.

Map: Detroit’s Inner City 2016?

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The current presidential election has renewed the regular use of veiled racism in language. In particular the use of “inner city” has often been used as a negative term for communities of color. In a recent report, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) has defined nearly all of Detroit as “inner city:”

ICIC defines an inner city as a set of contiguous census tracts in a city that have higher poverty and unemployment rates than the surrounding metropolitan area and, in aggregate, represent at least five percent of a city’s population. These neighborhoods also must have a poverty rate of at least 20 percent, and unemployment rates at least 150 percent of metropolitan area unemployment (or a median household income that is 50 percent or less than median income for the metropolitan area).

Note: Windsor, Canada has also been consumed by the Detroit River.

Map: Devil’s Night only in Detroit

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This map comes from Joshua Katz, a PhD student in statistics at North Carolina State University, who’s 2013 project to visualize data from the Harvard Dialect Study went viral on the New York Times.

Detroit and Michigan are the only places in the US where the night before Halloween has infamously become known as “Devil’s Night.” Recent efforts under Mayor Dave Bing have reintroduced the night as “Angel’s Night,” but it may be too ingrained to rebrand. In all 11% percent of respondents called it Devil’s Night while 70% respondents across the country had no name for the night before Halloween.

 

Map: Reimagining the Riverfront 2012

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Lars Graebner of Volume One Studio and the UM Taubman College submitted this entry to the “Detroit by Design” competition in 2012 with a radical reimagining of the Hart Plaza/Downtown Riverfront area. His conceptual drawings create a modern and ecologically focused series of islands that help to maximize use of the waterfront.

AIA Detroit Chapter’s Urban Priorities Committee just launched their Detroit by Design 2012: Detroit Riverfront Competition, which is open to students and professionals world-wide. The project site consists of the area between Cobo Hall and the Renaissance Center and between Jefferson Avenue and the Detroit River.

Digital rendering:

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Map: Land Abandonment near Heidelberg Street in Detroit 1951-2014

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Jason Hackworth, a professor of planning and geography at the University of Toronto., has been examining the change in rust-belt cities. Specifically, he has been looking into “demolition only” policies that have cleared more land than during the entire urban renewal period.

“[…] demolition-only is not the progressive effort to rebuild struggling cities it is being billed as. It represents a collapse of policy imagination, public resources, and serious concern for the underlying causes of blight. Whatever the intent of its proponents, the past 40 years have seen extensive house demolition in the region, and it has not spontaneously generated revival—it has just removed a large number of houses.”

Map: Cass Corridor Land Owners 2016

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In comparison to the 1971 map based on similar data, this map of the 2016 property information posted on the Detroit Open Data portal shows changes over time and space. The data that was mapped is based on the tax payer address for each property and some properties are held by the same tax payer or “owner.”

Ownership in the Cass Corridor area has remained spotty with no real concentrations, however ownership within the Corridor Area has continued to be most dense for land parcels in the northern half of the area rather than the southern half. Similarly, ownership of Corridor land in the USA has not significantly changed, but there are a handful of additional US States represented.

The biggest change in ownership has been within the City of Detroit and Region. In 1971, there were strong concentrations of land owners in the neighborhoods at the north end of Woodward (Palmer Woods, Green Acres, University District) where more well to do Detroiters lived. However, in 2016 the most dense concentration of land owners is now focused around the Corridor area (Midtown) and Downtown. Additionally, the suburban sprawl process seems to have expanded land ownership to more far flung regional suburbs. For example, Ann Arbor was not represented in 1971, but now has a number of land owners. There have also been suburbs such as the Grosse Pointes that have less ownership in the Corridor area than in 1971.

Population Density Map 1925 Detroit City Census

This excellent dot map was published in “The Detroit Educational Bulletin” Research Bulletin No. 9 – October 1925. The report gave population totals for each of the 570 Census zones (now called Census Tracts).

The nationality breakdown for 1925 showed the top five groups as:

  1. U. S. White – 598,041
  2. Poland – 115,069
  3. Canada – 83,685
  4. U. S. Colored – 81,831
  5. Germany – 54,223

 

Event: Data Discotech – Community Science Fair about Open Data

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The Detroit Digital Justice Coalition (through Allied Media Projects) and Detroit Community Technology Project are partnering with Butzel Recreation Center to present a Data DiscoTech, October 15th, 11:00am – 2:00pm at the Butzel Recreation Center (10500 Lyndon St.) . The event is free and open to the public!

“DiscoTech” is short for “Discovering Technology.” The DiscoTech will offer interactive stations to demystify technology concepts related to open data and the City of Detroit’s Open Data Portal.

At the DiscoTech we will:

  • Demystify data.
  • Understand the risks of open data.
  • Understand how to use data in community organizing efforts.
  • Use data in creative ways.

See you there!

Map: Detroit River and Adjacent Country 1813

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This map based on work by a British Engineer shows how Detroit fit into a different kind of region as controlled by the British in the early 1800s.

Today we think of the Detroit region as Southeast Michigan, but for a very long time “Detroit” was all about the river as a center point and the region that it touched along the way.

Map: Detroit New Urban Configuration 1920 – 2010

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In the book, New Urban Configurations, the City of Detroit and City of Turin (Italy) are compared for their former industrial power and post-industrial decline. Turin was once called the “Detroit of Italy” and the process of mass production has had similar effect on the local economy. The authors write:

“We suggest that Fordist mass production manifesed specific spatial patterns that had profound impacts on the urban character of both cities and their capacity to adapt to changing economic models.”

In particular, the authors are focused on the impact of road network expansion contributing to the loss of manufacturing in the city (see maps below).

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Map: Ride the Green Dragon in Detroit, Route 16 Dexter

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The Dexter #16 bus route can be seen slithering and clawing it’s way north from Downtown Detroit to Northland Mall (now closed) in the northern suburbs of Southfield.

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As well as being one of the longest, Route 16 Dexter is also one of the busier routes, right behind the 3 major artery Avenues (Woodward, Gratiot, Grand River). I assume because the route passes through the more densely populated Northwest side as well as stopping at the former Northland helped increase the number of trips.

The marketing could be awesome for this route, “Ride the Green Dragon!”

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Map: Detroit Business Investment and Streetcar Lines 1915

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This map comes from the Library of Congress and depicts both the growth of industry and rail transit in Detroit. In the early days of streetcar development, real estate developers funded new rail lines to be able to link their new developments to other city amenities.

Seems the city was thinking early of “transit oriented development.”

Map: Detroit Murals in the Market vs. Graffiti Tickets

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The city has ramped up ticketing for blight violators and that includes properties with graffiti. In some reported cases the graffiti tickets included sanctioned murals and street art, for example Eastern Market, Brooklyn Street Local (restaurant), and the Grand River Creative Corridor. Those tickets led the Mayor to apologize and dismiss all graffiti tickets for murals and signs.

As the artwork for Murals in the Market 2016 has started coming together. I started wondering how many of these graffiti offenses involved buildings in Eastern Market, where there is already a high number of sanctioned murals.

In some cases there have been buildings with both a new mural wall location and a graffiti ticket, but the majority of those have been dismissed graffiti tickets for sanctioned murals. There were 28 graffiti tickets in Eastern Market between 2015 – 2016 and 14 have been dismissed. The majority of businesses ticketed for graffiti along Division St. and Winder St. remain responsible for paying their fees, some are hosting new murals this year.

Citywide graffiti ticketing:

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Map: Baist’s Property Atlas of Detroit

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This is a section of “Baists property atlas of the city of Detroit, Michigan” from the DPL Digital Collections Burton Historical Collection. Property data had to be compiled from official records, private land claims, and land surveys.

For Detroit, this atlas took up 3 very large bound volumes in 1896. I can’t imagine how many volumes would be needed today.

Map: Detroit Expressway Knots

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Artist and web-developer, Nicholas Rougeux, first started collecting aerial imagery of “road knots” which then led him to start breaking down the world’s most interesting “spagetti interchanges.” One of these interchanges of more than 3 converging roads is in Detroit, down by the Ambassador Bridge. Did the expressways ever look so beautiful?

Check out the project, all interchanges are available to purchase as posters too!

Workshop: Data, Mapping, and Research Justice

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I’ll be teaching my workshop on data and mapping again this October 2016 with Allied Media Projects/ Co.Open.

During the 4-week course we will journey through the entire mapping process; from paper survey to digital database, basic map visualizations, and finally analysis. We will be working with free and open source software (LibreOffice, QGIS, Gimp, etc.).

Check out some of the past course projects:

Thursday nights in October (4 weeks long) 6-9pm

Sign up at store.alliedmedia.org

Map: Cadillac’s Village of Detroit in 1708

This map is a reproduction of the original “Plan From Conveyances of Cadillac” made 1707 – 1708 published in the book “Cadillac’s Village” or “Detroit Under Cadillac.” The author was none other than Clarence Monroe Burton (Burton Historical Archives).

Burton writes:

“[…] Of all these conveyances I have a complete copy, and have undertaken to arrange them in a manner to construct a map of Detroit, as it was in 1708. […]

It may be that this map is faulty. I have no doubt that it is, in some particulars. But it will do as a foundation to work from, and a better one may be constructed hereafter, when more information can be obtained from which to work. […]

In order to prove the accuracy of the map, I had it traced on the present city map, and find the lines of lots existing before the fire of 1805, many of which still serve as boundary lines of present buildings, coincide very nearly with the Cadillac conveyances.”

Map: Detroit Tipping Point Geographies

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The 331-page report titled “Every Neighborhood Has a Future … And it Doesn’t Include Blight,” was released in 2014 by the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force (an organization convened by President Obama in the Fall of 2013). Referring to blight as a “cancer,” it recommended the removal of 40,000 unsightly properties within five years.

Map: Vehicles for Commuting in Detroit 2014

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I’ve posted similar maps before, but the confusing narrative remains that people do not have cars in Detroit. It’s true many people have limited mobility, specifically those living in poverty and the elderly. The Motor City has far fewer cars than its nearby neighbors, but that doesn’t mean the majority of Detroit isn’t still car dependent. There really is no other way to reliably get around the city.

For example just 6% of households with someone 65+ living alone do NOT have a car. The most important information about transportation might not be how people are getting around, but where they choose to go and how far away they travel for things like groceries, doctor’s appointments, etc.

A good start would be to look at areas where people are commuting by car regularly and build public transit options to match in the hopes of improving access to jobs and opportunity.