This hand drawn map by the Heidelberg Project’s founder Tyree Guyton is a part of MOCAD’s new Detroit Research project. Guyton’s hand drawn map kicks off a series called “Drawing Detroit” which aims to collect personal and hand drawn maps of Detroit.
Check out the different hand drawn and hand maps that we’ve collected over the last few years.
Detroit’s “Great Fire” of 1805 is solidified in the history books as a defining moment for the city. With only the brick chimneys remaining, Detroit residents dug in and rebuilt their city. Justice Woodward drew up his inspired hub-and-spoke street plans (1806) to bring Detroit on par with cities like Paris and Washington D.C. Following the “Great Fire” Detroit saw continued progress and became one of the most well-known cities in the world for its industry.
However, Detroit has had a more recent “Great Fire,” one that began in the 1970s and is most often seen on display during Devil’s Night. As Detroit’s population declined and crime increased, both dedicated residents and criminals took to setting abandoned homes on fire. A news segment from 1975 features an interview with two Detroit residents talking about how they decided to torch an abandoned house on their block because it was being used as a drug house. They were concerned for their children’s safety.
This decades long “Great Fire” has been a result of multiple factors, but could be summed up as varying degrees of desperation.
The recent Motor City Mapping (MCM) project identified 8,641 structures with fire damage. This number obviously can’t capture the issue of arson since the 1970s nor demolition of burned down homes, but is an important marker of what the city has faced in the past and continues to confront. The Motor City Muckraker has been cataloging faulty fire hydrants and their effect on the work of firefighters and families who lose their homes. Detroit’s second “Great Fire” may finally be waning, but significant infrastructure issues need to be addressed in order to ensure the safety of residents.
This map comes by way of the Detroit Historical Society. It is not a typical map, but provides an incredible look into the past at businesses located along Woodward Ave. and Jefferson Ave.
I’m teaching the “Data, Mapping, and Research Justice” workshop again with Co.Open/ Allied Media Projects. Last Thursday we had a full class of people eager to learn about and make maps to help them better advocate and bring resources to people in Detroit.
We started off the workshop with the hand map exercise and participants were asked to “map their Detroit” and the values and experiences they have gained from Detroit. Each of the participants had a different story; different sets of experiences, yet everyone spoke about the importance of people and the need to focus efforts on getting people what they need. I could never do justice to explain the details of every person’s hand map, so I will just summarize a few key points:
This gem came to us on Valentine’s Day from George Vidas of SignifiersSigns. Even though Valentines is over, this neon seems appropriate everyday for our heightened love of Detroit maps.
Credit: George Vidas. Detroit, I Love You, But Youʼre Bringing Me Down (Where Are My Sister Cities Tonight?). 2014. Neon & salvaged plywood.
“Abridged backstory: Willie’s (the Shinola sister store) has a big ol neon USA border, mounted on plywood. This planted the seed for doing a neon Detroit outline. But it’s not an accurate border if you don’t represent the negative space of Hamtramck and Highland Park. How do you portray the relationship of Hamtramck, Highland Park, and Detroit? Well, it’s complicated.Feel free to publish / share / print out and use to dry your tears.”
This map is included in William Bunge’s book co-authored with R. Bordessa, “The Canadian Alternative: Survival, Expeditions, and Urban Change.” The Doctorless Zones map is one among a series that highlight the divisions between Bunge’s idea of three cities: rich, workers, and slums. He calls the the City of Superfluity, the City of Need, and the City of Death. As can be seen on the map, the inner city (City of Death) is seriously lacking health services.
There is a similar problem today where large areas of Detroit do not have any primary care or family doctors available, infant mortality is high, and there aren’t even easily accessible urgent care centers.
The new open data portal for Detroit didn’t have as many exciting datasets as I had hoped, but this was one that peaked my interest. Driving all around Detroit on a regular basis you will often run into signs stating that certain traffic signals are under study for removal. I’ve been surprised to see quite a few of these, but when looking at this dataset it appears as though the city has very few traffic lights. Downtown and Midtown are well saturated with traffic lights and the major North-South and East-West roadways are well traffic-lit. What is most odd is the very empty Northwest corner and Far Eastside where the highest population densities also are present. Why so few traffic lights in populated neighborhoods? Is it a function of Detroit’s growth history? Infrastructure? Are more people involved in traffic accidents in those areas?
EDIT 03/09/15:
A commenter on Facebook noted that these appeared to only be City of Detroit traffic signals because there are more County roads in Northwest Detroit. This can also be seen by locating Woodward Ave., which is a State of Michigan trunkline highway, and noticing that there are blank spaces where traffic signals would be located (same with Grand River Ave./ US-16 or Gratiot Ave./M-3). Therefore this is in no way a representation of all traffic signals within the City of Detroit, but rather the traffic signals that are managed by the City.
Almost half the “datasets” that the City of Detroit released are simplified duplicates of larger datasets or visualizations. In truth the city released about 46 datasets, about half of the “over 90” datasets that were announced. Out of the 46 actual datasets released, only 28 are new datasets that couldn’t already be found at the old City of Detroit GIS page, Data Driven Detroit (D3), or DetroitData.org. This is still an incredible gain for open data. I just don’t understand the reason behind inflating the numbers.
After years of a substandard webpage with download links to GIS files, the City of Detroit entered the modern open data era with a Socrata data platform supported (read: free) from their new Socrata Foundation. The city has been trumpeting that it has released over 90 datasets to the public. This would be an incredible feat in a formerly bankrupt government with multiple departments spread out and often at odds with one another. Yet, there are fewer datasets from the City today than when they were using the old webpage with download links to GIS files. Many of those now missing datasets were historical and have relevance to the current changes in the city.
The bigger story here is that the City has adopted a comprehensive, broad ranging, open data policy for all departments that places City data into the public domain. Regardless of how many datasets were released, this is the most important step towards progress in open data for Detroit.
“The cornerstone of this major shift in City policy will be that data and information, unless exempt from disclosure under State or federal law, will be available to the public, starting with an open data portal.”
Data in Detroit made leaps when a Chief Information Officer (CIO) was appointed, but appointee Beth Niblock faced the daunting task of getting the City Government off of a mainframe and upgrading its systems for the current century. She often spoke about the issues of not having up-to-date computers and getting push back from various departments. Then a Deputy Director of Civic Technology Outreach was hired with support from the Knight Foundation. Garlin Gilchrist, appointed August 2014, is focused on equitable access to information and yet again open data for Detroit was a goal within reach.
However, many people and organizations had already given up waiting for the city to launch an open data portal.
| Year | Portal | Organization |
| 2009 | Fileshare Site | Detroit Data Collaborative (via D3) |
| 2014 | Esri/ ArcGIS | Data Driven Detroit |
| 2014 | CKAN | Civic Tech Community |
| 2015 | Socrata | City of Detroit |
Data Driven Detroit (D3) was founded in 2008 with support from City Connect Detroit ($1.85 million from Kresge Foundation and Skillman Foundation) as the Detroit Area Community Indicators System (D-ACIS) with the idea of pushing for more open data. The organization became a Detroit data powerhouse, but the majority of their data remained behind closed doors. There was an unsupported initiative within the organization called the Detroit Data Collaborative (DDC) led by a few dedicated staff members that attempted to make their data more accessible, but that only lasted about a year. Finally in 2014, D3 launched their own open data platform through the Esri ArcGIS OpenData Beta initiative.
I also gave up waiting for a data portal solution and worked with a group of individuals to launch DetroitData.org which is built on the leading open source data sharing platform in the world, CKAN from the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), which is utilized by major international institutions and city governments alike. The great opportunity with CKAN is to make open data a community in Detroit where everyone with an internet connection can share and collaborate with data. Detroit has a thriving civic technology community already and too many institutional platforms are restricted and insular. Some great CKAN examples come from OpenDataPhilly.org and DATA.GOV.
Back to the issue of duplicate datasets, they are not a new occurrence. Many organizations take the time to simplify datasets to help make them less cumbersome and more usable, but that doesn’t increase the amount of data.
| Datasets | Duplicates | Total | |
| City of Detroit GIS | 75 | 31 | 106 |
| data.DetroitMI.gov | 46 | 47 | 93 |
| DDC | 19 | 0 | 19 |
| D3 | 72 | 5 | 77 |
| DetroitData.org | 31 | 0 | 31 |
There are a few city departments that are conspicuously missing from the new data portal, namely Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) and the Department of Neighborhoods (DON). In a recent interview on WDET, Gilchrist noted that finance data would be made available soon to improve the transparency efforts. It will be great to see how the community meetings go where Gilchrist will help residents navigate the open data portal site.
@DetroitData data from all departments is in the works and will come online on an ongoing basis.
— Garlin Gilchrist II (@DetroitCivTech) February 26, 2015
We can only hope that the City’s new open data policy actions will align with the Mayor’s (and staff) statements about becoming a more transparent city government. The City of Detroit is fighting many fires now and I hope that in the process they don’t forget about collaboration and the citizen driven efforts already under way. The open data portal has been a small step overall for data in Detroit, but the adoption of an open data policy holds huge potential for the future.
Thanks to an old discussion, a question about all the Downtown/Midtown steam may be answered or maybe there are just more questions. It seems that Detroit Thermal LLC is no longer operating. The steam plant on Willis St. (behind McDonalds/LTU/Hopcat) also appears to be dormant. Is all the steam now supplied by the human hazard that is the trash incinerator?
This is a preliminary analysis to better understand the pattern of homicides in Detroit as part of a decade long view (2003 – 2013). Critical research and innovative programs have called for utilizing public health and epidemiological approaches to homicide and violence prevention (Cure Violence). The Detroit Youth Violence Prevention (DYVP) initiative reports that 87 percent of the 1,200 Detroit high school students surveyed said a family member or friend had been shot, murdered or disabled as a result of violence in the previous 12 months. The Detroit News has a long 2010 article on the effects of gun violence on children that is definitely worth a read.
It appears that homicides in 2003 follow a disease diffusion model where there are a few focal points that spread out into the rest of the city while continuing to be hot spots throughout the year. In 2003, 366 people were murdered with July being the worst month followed by August and September.
Detroit has reported early success with the ShotSpotter technology that helps triangulate gunshots and sends officers into communities to talk with neighbors.
The decade long analysis is in the works. Read more: Homicide, Gun Violence, and Epidemiology in Detroit
We’ve covered maps of thrift gardens from 1934 as well as the data on 6,600 thrift gardens in 1932 covering 400 acres. The majority of these 6,600 gardens were contained in 20 field farms. The above map shared by the Detroit Historical Society shows there were 23 field farms with thrift gardens.
Detroit used to have major traffic congestion Downtown:
The arterial vehicular traffic jams in Detroit can be cleared only by breaking the bottlenecks in the heart of the city where the greatest volume occurs. Traffic studies clearly show that a large percentage of traffic proceeds between its origin and destination on illogical routes. The crow-foot avenues, the confused tangle of the old city, the rectangular pattern of the newer developments, the network of railroads, the absence of breaks in topography through which arteries might have been built behind the growth of the city, the monotonous flatness downtown which prompted the solid building with no open spaces between developments, the relation of business and industry to the waterfront; all these contribute to the circuitous travel necessary to reach most points by automobile. The streets of Detroit are wider than those in most cities hut they arc not wide enough in the right places and cannot he stretched enough at most throats of congestion to meet the increasing traffic loads. The greatest barriers to convenient and safe automobile travel are the automobiles themselves which were built faster than the streets were modernized to accommodate them.
These maps and the traffic analyses led to the emphasis on expressway development as opposed to regional and rapid transit. The unfortunate conclusion from these analyses were:
With no natural open spaces to follow, the new expressways must be located largely through solid development. It is fortunate that the general pattern of traffic flow coincides with belts of depressed property cheap enough to acquire for wide traffic arteries.
The areas of “depressed property” being referenced were the majority Black areas of Detroit, most notably Hastings Street, Paradise Valley.
This map comes from Solstice: An Electronic Journal of Geography and Mathematics (Volume VII, Number 1, 1996) at the University of Michigan. Authors John Nystuen, Rhonda Ryznar, and Thomas Wagner.
Figure 6. In Figure 6, census tracts with the largest increase in greenness are shown with the darkest green and brown tones. Superimposed on this colored pattern are census tracts of high social stress (cross-hatched). High social stress census tracts are defined as those tracts with decrease in population greater than 25% between 1980 and 1990 and with more than 50% of children below the poverty level. There is substantial correspondence between the two patterns.
What: #Maptime
A monthly event that will share mapping skills at a different community group each meeting. Read more about #maptime DETROIT
Why: Goal
To democratize map making: to help everyone learn how to make maps and become literate map readers.
Where: SEMCOG, 1001 Woodward Ave., Suite 1400
Hosted by SEMCOG (Southeast Michigan Council of Governments) and LOVELAND Technologies – this February #maptime will focus on the basics of web maps and help you dig into OpenStreetMap, the open, editable map of the world.
Please bring a laptop. Let us know if you can’t bring one and we’ll try and have spares. Also, if you’ve got it, bring your own data!
When: February 24th @ 6pm
We’ll get the evening started at 5:30pm with an overview of #Maptime and then others will give lightning talks on how they are currently doing community mapping in Detroit.
RSVP: HERE
I’ve gotten flak for posting many of the fantasy transit maps of Detroit, but I think the fact that there have been so many fantasy transit plans speaks to the enormity of the issue that our metro area hasn’t solved since the 1950s.
There is no date for this map, but I think it is one of the more beautiful representations of regional transit as proposed by the Michigan Elevated Railway Company. My guess is during the 1920s when the Michigan Elevated Railway Co. was in operation and the Ford Blast Furnaces were built.
This map from the 1941 Annual Report of the Detroit Housing Commission was an omen of things to come. Detroit’s black population was forced (racism, segregation, and redlining) to live in areas deemed “slums.” Properties were dilapidated due to negligent landlords and overcrowded as a result of racially restrictive housing.
This map is an important reference point to the “urban renewal” of the 1950s that displaced thousands of Detroit’s black residents. As the “slums” were removed, black residents’ only options were the new housing projects, which today you can watch being torn down.
Since 2000 the area known as Midtown has seen rapid expansion. It is important to note that even though Midtown is largely a conglomeration of various institutional partners and acts as an economic driver, there is no official geographic demarcation, which has seemingly allowed Midtown to continue reaching northward. In many instances the authority, Midtown Detroit Inc., offers incentives in an area before officially annexing it for inclusion in its official brochures. Below is a quick breakdown:
In early 2011, UCCA merged with New Center Council (NCC) and formally began doing work as Midtown Detroit, Inc. The organization has expanded its staff and geographic footprint, increased its real estate investment activities and is implementing additional programs. This new footprint incorporates TechTown and the New Center area which will allow the organization to work more closely with HFHS, University Preparatory Schools, the College for Creative Studies, TechTown and many other anchors.
The Public Lighting Authority (PLA) reported that it surpassed 20,000 newly installed streetlights in September. As of 01/17/15 the Detroit Dashboard reports 20,572 new streetlight installed for an average of 935 per week, which is nearly double what Duggan promised in his State of the City speech in February 2014.
It obviously isn’t as straight-forward as a steady number each week, but rather ups and downs of construction, problem solving, etc. – however it appears that from the chart below weather was not a major installation hindrance.
My request for point locations of old streetlights was denied by the Public Lighting Authority:
[…] Specifically, the PLA hereby denies your request as the information contained on the PLA’s GIS system is exempt under MCL 15.243(1)(y), on the basis that the information requested “is designed to protect the security and safety of persons or property, whether public or private, including but not limited to […]
Maybe the DTE’s new management of the streetlights grid will make data more accessible?
In Mayor Duggan’s first “State of the City” (SOTC) speech (02/26/14), he promised many things from a bureaucratic, planning heavy 10 point plan. One of those many numerical goals that he set was to install 500 new streetlights each week.
Based on the spotty and often missing data on the Detroit Dashboard, the average actually comes out to 953 new streetlights installed each week from 07/19/14 – 01/10/15 (some missing weeks). It appears that this was one metric out of many that the Mayor was able to make good on.
This map was published in the Detroit News April 17, 1951, shows the hypothetical effects of a nuclear attack on Detroit. It appears that Arden Park and Brush along with Livernois and Warren held important targets for a nuclear bomb drop.
“Major airlines, Detroit automakers, IBM, the phone company and Wall Street planned employee shelters. The Federal Reserve designated banks for postwar check cashing, and a farmer in Iowa built a fallout shelter for 200 cows.”
Mapbox has put together an excellent visualization from data collected through the Runkeeper phone app that helps you track your activity.
This was shared by the Detroit Greenways Coalition and later had some good coverage by Daily Detroit.
There is an obvious focus in Downtown and like many other major cities, people prefer to run along the river.
DETROITography 