election precincts (cleaned up version) down from 502 precincts in the 2020 election and 450 in the 2022 election with 401 polling places, yet some people travel more than 3 miles past 6-7 polling places to reach their assigned polling place (DETROITography)
Welcome to our Data Forum where we will discuss City, County, and Hospital health assessments in Detroit. Join us online for lunch-and-learn filled with insightful discussions, tips, and tricks on all things related to the data.
We’ll be joined by the Tiffani Stewart and the Detroit Health Department team releasing their latest Community Health Assessment (CHA), Katerina Stylianou sharing the most recent Wayne County health assessment results, and Ally Rooker from Henry Ford Health to share how hospitals engage in Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNA).
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and expand your knowledge.
WHEN: Friday, June 13th, 12:30-1:30pm
WHERE: Virtual
WHAT: Join us for our Data Forum where we will discuss City, County, and Hospital health assessments in Detroit.
Voting in Detroit is not known to be easy and the numbers of voters reflect that difficulty. Election Day confusion is well-known and documented even amongst regular voters. Polling places have changed and in some cases changed again. In 2020, the City Clerk noted that some 40,000 Detroiters were subject to a polling place update two weeks prior to the election. A result of the 2024 statewide redistricting led to some 300,000 Detroiters facing new polling places along with their new represented districts in the State House and State Senate.
As the map shows, the geography of voting in Detroit is far from being cleared up. The lines represent how far flung some Detroiters are from their polling place, in some cases more than 3 miles away. Detroiters in many cases will be traveling past multiple other polling places before reaching their assigned polling place. Other polling places look like a star because Detroiters are being assigned in every direction to come vote there.
Among the oddest polling place assignments is that of Sampson Academy where Detroiters may pass three to seven different polling places before reaching their assigned polling place at Sampson Academy.
Bethany Lutheran is a great example of the star pattern of polling place assignments. Oddly, another polling place is right across the street at Ronald Brown Academy. Detroiters come from all cardinal directions to vote.
The last example is a little bit of both where Detroiters in the same precinct as Mason School get to vote there, but then a random set of other precincts must vote there as well. The presence of Farwell Rec Center right next to Mason School complicate clarity and this area really represents the crisscrossing polling place geographies.
Are you prepared to vote in the August 2025 primary and the November 2025 general election? Has your polling place changed regularly?
trees planted as part of the Tree Equity Partnership’s goal of 75,000 by 2027 (WDET)
56
mentions of “neighborhood” by Mayor Duggan in his State of the City speech in 2024 after a previous high of 43 in 2015 (DETROITography/Ted Tansley) Check out the data on DetroitData.org
28th
round of Motor City Match awards to 13 new brick-and-motor businesses (Detroit Chamber)
Welcome to our Data Forum where we will explore how race and ethnicity data are captured and tracked as well as improvements in the works. Join us online for lunch-and-learn filled with insightful discussions, tips, and tricks on all things related to the data.
We’ll be joined by the Kristine Ajrouch, professional professor at Eastern Michigan University working on Middle Eastern-North African data disaggregation locally, Ashley Williams Clark is the Vice President of Detroit Future City (DFC) and the Director of the Center for Equity, Engagement and Research (the Center), and Noah Urban from Data Driven Detroit.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and expand your knowledge.
WHEN: Friday, May 16th, 12:30-1:30pm
WHERE: Virtual
WHAT: Join us for our Data Forum where we will explore how race and ethnicity data are captured and tracked as well as improvements in the works.
Join the annual and unofficial Detroit Regional Transit Fantasy Support (DRTFS) Group. Come see the great transit fantasy maps of the Detroit region and make your own! Propose people mover expansions or subway tunnel routes. Rocket buses or rail lines. We’ll focus the evening with Transit Riders United (TRU) sharing steps we can all take to improve mass public transit in the Detroit region.
WHEN: Wednesday, May 14th, 6:30-9pm
WHERE: North End Taproom, 111 S. Main, Royal Oak, MI
WHAT: Meet others who fantasize about regional transit, look at cool maps, make your own map of the people mover expansion!
This new arts focused effort claims to be attempting to bring the redevelopment of Detroit beyond Downtown. The effort is spearheaded by the Library Street Collective owners Anthony and JJ Curis. The LLCs associated with Little Village share an address with Curis Enterprises, owned by Michael Curis, Anthony’s father. Michael Curis has been engaged in real estate and community development since 1986 and developed Mack Alter Square, Shops at Woodward Place in Highland Park, and Riverbend Plaza near the Detroit/Grosse Pointe border. The separate LLCs associated with the Little Village development control almost 100 properties on the Eastside including a historic church and a marina with riverfront access.
Little Village is anchored by The Shepherd, a historic church ground that has been reimagined as an arts hub. The grounds includes a Tony Hawk skatepark, Charles McGee Legacy Park, and artist housing in the former rectory building, now called ALEO. Adjacent to The Shepherd is BridgeHouse, comprised of two former residential homes now connected by a decking system with plans for a Warda Patisserie location. Louis Buhl & Co. is a contemporary art gallery located in the former convent building. The LANTERN building hosts PASC disability arts organization, Signal Return print shop, Collect beer bar, and Cafe Franco. LSC—O is the “Library Street Collection – Outpost” for gallery operations. The biggest effort looks like it will be re-imagining a 13-acre marina site with multiple former warehouses into the Little Village Marina and Stanton Yards.
In the 2012 Hantz Woodlands land grab, the City of Detroit sold 140 acres at 8 cents per square foot to Southfield-based finance entrepreneur, John Hantz. In 2021, it was reported that Hantz sold off about 100 of his properties for $2.8 million. The majority of the Little Village properties were purchased from Hantz Woodlands LLC between 2021 and 2023. I’ve heard mixed discussions as to whether this is gentrification, a furthering of the land grab, or important redevelopment work. Since much of East Village is vacant lots owned by Hantz Woodlands there isn’t much to go on and there aren’t many neighbors to ask. Little Village has actively engaged the Villages CDC, East Village Association, and other neighborhood groups. A nearby effort by Greatwater Homes (Greatwater Opportunity Capital) is also the first residential home development project in Detroit in many years with a focus on Fischer Street near the Little Village development.
I am intrigued and will watch to see how this effort plays out. Based on past efforts by Anthony and JJ Curis, I have no doubt that Detroit’s Eastside will become a hub for artists visiting Detroit and hopefully a platform for Detroit artists to launch themselves into the national art scene.
Updated 04/05/2025:
Text edited to clarify that Curis Enterprises and LLCs associated with Little Village development are not connected, but do share a mailing address.
Welcome to our Data Forum where we will explore themes from the Mayor’s State of the City address and the data points within them. Join us online for lunch-and-learn filled with insightful discussions, tips, and tricks on all things related to the data.
We’ll be joined by the Detroit Next podcast team, Bryce Huffman and Malachi Barrett, both from Bridge Detroit and Data Analyst, Ted Tansley.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and expand your knowledge..
WHEN: Friday, April 11th, 12:30-1:30pm
WHERE: Virtual
WHAT: Join us for our Data Forum where we will explore themes from the Mayor’s State of the City address and the data points within them
This map shows where 8 Mile and I-94 meet towards the Eastside of Detroit and the Grosse Pointes. This might not be the best example of broken social connections based on the divided history of the area and the systematic barriers put in place to keep the Grosse Pointes insulated.
The authors do note Detroit as an example of highways acting as an interracial barriers during the urban renewal era. I’ve noted time and again how many of these projects erased ethnic and culturally significant enclaves in the city from Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, and Chinatown. I can’t help but think of the legacy of these broken social connects as much of the westside of Downtown remains as parking lots and vacant spaces.
WHAT: Come hang out with Detroit’s shadow geography department (that’s us) to talk Detroit, maps, and geography. Inside scoops, free snacks, and coffee!
WHAT: Mapping Your Local Environment (MYLE) is an introductory workshop that addresses inequitable data representation by training participants in GIS to map local environmental justice concerns. Local journalists, accompanied by environmental justice organizers and other interested community members, will learn to identify and challenge biases by developing critical skills to find, analyze and present relevant local data, combining qualitative and quantitative insights to build powerful narratives.
Join our Data Forum where we will explore tair quality data and community efforts to address the impacts. Join us online for lunch-and-learn filled with insightful discussions, tips, and tricks on all things related to foreclosure data.
We’ll be joined by owner of Darren Riley from JustAir Co, Nina Ignaczak working with Planet Detroit, and Jeff Gearhart from the Ecology Center.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and expand your knowledge in this critical area.
WHEN: Friday, March 14th, 12:30-1:30pm
WHERE: Virtual
WHAT: Join us for our Data Forum where we will dig into air quality data and community efforts to address impacts
Join our Data Forum where we will explore the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction and community efforts to address the impacts. Join us online for lunch-and-learn filled with insightful discussions, tips, and tricks on all things related to foreclosure data.
We’ll be joined by owner of Alex Alsup, who has mapped out the windfall profit potential, Shiva Shahmir working with Outlier Media to spread the word about tax windfalls, and Donovan McCarty from the Detroit Justice Center to share more on policy around tax foreclosure profits.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and expand your knowledge in this critical area.
WHEN: Friday, February 28th, 12:30-1:30pm
WHERE: Virtual
WHAT: Join us for our Data Forum where we will dig into the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction and community efforts to address impacts
This map by Matt Daniels shows approximately 500 properties that Outlier Media was able to link to RealT. The company says its real estate arm controls about 1,000 Detroit properties.
One of the most concerning discoveries that myself and the team of Property Praxis data volunteers uncovered while coding property speculator entities was that crypto and blockchain had entered the arena. The RealT company owns somewhere between 500 to 1,500 properties in Detroit. They are racking up blight tickets and have unpaid taxes all while the tokenized properties piecemeal change hands daily. Read Aaron Mondry’s full article on Outlier Media.
This is by far the most disturbing trend I have seen in Detroit to date and I expect it will only increase unless something is done about it.
WHAT: The second annual “Demystify Detroit” seminar series begins. This half-day event offers an opportunity to explore the complex overlapping layers of the city’s history, culture, society and economy, guided by local content experts.
Property Praxis 2.0 launched in November 2024 with 10 years of data on speculative owners of property in Detroit.
Land in Detroit has many different meanings whether you claim to be an “investor” looking to profit, a community leader working to preserve space for people, or local government hoping to generate more tax revenue.
This project is for community members and no one else. The tool allows community groups to dig into who owns bulk property that is contributing to negative impacts on a neighborhood.
At least 20% of land in Detroit is owned by property speculators, defined by the amount of property they own that is not registered to an owner that lives in the same neighborhood. Property speculators benefited from the new inventory of property created by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, but in turn fueled the decline of these properties into blight of once intact neighborhoods.
This collaborative mapping project is not the first to examine individuals and corporations that have held large swaths of land in Detroit, but it is the first to examine the true extent of property speculation by digging into the records of shell companies and LLCs that are often used to hide ownership or skirt tax payments. Not all property speculators are bad people, but the process of speculation has far reaching negative impacts on neighborhoods and the people who live in them from loss of homes, exposure to lead poisoning, to a deterioration of overall neighborhood connectivity.
The U.S. Census Bureau publishes updated boundary files every year. The most consequential years are those that fall on the decennial Census: 2000, 2010, 2020. For at least the last 70 years Census Tract boundaries have fallen within the city’s municipal boundary until Census 2020. Census tracts are typically drawn to include between 1,200 to 8,000 people with the optimal goal being around 4,000 people. Census tracts are often used as a default “neighborhood” level of analysis.
The new Census tract boundaries include a handful of oddities that for the most part contribute no change to the Census data reporting. Three boundary changes now extend beyond the city boundary, but add no people to be counted in those extension areas.
It is unclear why the Census decided to expand Census tract boundaries beyond the city boundary when it doesn’t change or improve data collection or reporting and instead opens the opportunity to make data reporting more confusing for Michigan’s largest city.
Rob Linn was a big inspiration for this site to become something real. His mapping topics and data deep dives have given me countless new questions and topics to pursue.
One such topic that Rob mapped in 2010 was the concept of the “last house on the prairie.” In the media hubbub of the late 2000s the concept of Detroit as a urban prairie was commonplace. Rob found the metaphor didn’t hold too well and there were just 134 “last houses on the block” (LHB). One of the LHBs that Rob noted had a recent interview in 2010 has now been demolished. Near St. Aubin and Palmer, there are now no houses on the block (NHB).
I’ve noticed a few LHBs on my drives around the city. The home across from Stanley Hong’s Mannia Cafe on East Baltimore always stood out. The other was a home on French Road just north of I-94. There is another house on Longwood, a dead end street that opens into a forest. Another home sits alone on Beniteau among the Hantz Woodlands. The Eastside has seen many streets clear out and the LHBs happen on multiple blocks of Lakeview and Eastlawn streets.
I decided to test the LHB concept in 2024 after the city has seen mass demolition of over 29,000 homes since January 1, 2014 through the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) and an influx of targeted investment in the last decade. Utilizing the City of Detroit’s parcel file from the open data portal, I selected all properties coded for residential, single family, apartment, multi-family, and their related codes. I used Rob’s same radius of 300ft and identified 155 LHBs in Detroit. In 13 instances it appears that the demolition program eliminated LHBs that had come up in my previous data analysis.
Rob’s analysis in 2010 found a very dispersed 134 LHBs with some clusters on the Near Eastside and Far Eastside. In 2024, there are more significant clusters in Greater Downtown and the Lower Eastside. It is likely that most LHBs from 2010 were eliminated through demolition and many of these 155 were also created as a result of the demolition program. Hardly an argument for a more rural city, yet vacancy remains high and much of the Eastside has seen a decades-long clearing out.
Join us for our Data Forum where we will dig into coffee shops and places to get coffee from new cafes to panaderias. Join us online for lunch-and-learn filled with insightful discussions, tips, and tricks on all things related to coffee data.
We’ll be joined by owner of Sepia Coffee Project, Martell Mason, coffee-beat reporter extraordinaire Jena Brooker at BridgeDetroit, and me, annual mapper of coffee shop changes!
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and expand your knowledge in this exciting field.
WHEN: Friday, January 17th, 12:30-1:30pm
WHERE: Virtual
WHAT: Join us at the Data Forum to dive into coffee shops and tracking places to get your caffeination – all from the comfort of your own home!
DETROITography 