Author Archives: Alex B. Hill

Map: Midtown Boundary is Expanding

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The LiveMidtown housing incentive program was launched in 2011 after University Cultural Center Association (UCCA) merged with the New Center Council to form Midtown Detroit, Inc. The most recent announcement is that the program area has been expanded to include the historic Boston-Edison neighborhood north of New Center.

Midtown is considered Detroit’s premier neighborhood where young people flock and new business compete for space. Midtown is home to what could be considered Detroit’s core industry of health care with DMC campus, WSU Main and Medical Campus, and Henry Ford Health System.

Prior to 2001, Midtown did not even exist and now under Midtown Detroit, Inc. it has become a driving force behind the place-making, investment, and future development of one of Detroit’s core areas. Where will the Midtown boundaries expand to next?

Map: 2013 Gardens with Detroit City Council Districts

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This map comes from Keep Growing Detroit, part of the Greening of Detroit. We have been asking for data on gardens for a number of years and it is nice to finally see some data shared even if it is just in map image form.

It looks like there is a high concentration of family gardens in Northwest Detroit, which makes sense and matches with population density. Missing is the similar concentration in the population dense Northeast. I wonder if there is correlation with income level and gardening? The Westside has a higher median income than the Eastside.

Hopefully this data will be opened up at least for market, community, and school gardens?

Map: Percent Integration in Detroit Elementary Schools 1965-66

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Published in Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution, this map compliments the work of the Detroit Geographic and Expedition Institute (DGEI) in looking at equality, race, and integration within Detroit’s school system. The map key shows that 20% integration is the highest among any of the schools.

Detroit Street Map 1898

Detroit street map 1898It is so easy to forget that Detroit used to be so much smaller in land area and more dense in population. I always have to remind myself when I drive across Greenfield Rd. that the area used to be considered a suburb of Detroit, included with Springwells Township, Highland Park, and Hamtramck. This street map from 1898 is a good example of the road density that allowed street railways (carriages pulled by horse) to proliferate.

Cases of Lead Posioning in Detroit 2011

mostdangeroushouses11Annalie Campos at the WSU Center for Urban Studies created this map based on 2011 lead poisoning incidence.

The above map shows the number of lead poisoning incidences per address/home in the City of Detroit. The yellow dots show that there are 4,610 homes in the city with two occurrences per home; these are the most frequent. However, the blue dots, which show  three to five or six to nine occurrences per home, cover more of the map because of the higher number of people affected. There was one home in the southwest portion of the city that had 17 lead poisoning cases, according to the map.

Issues with this map:

  1. Poor design choice to use all point level data making it impossible to account for all colors and shapes of incidents. Some get covered up or overlap resulting in lost data.
  2. Colors don’t offer any real distinction due to the overwhelming amount of data/ number of incidents.
  3. Lack of analysis – beyond the poor choice of displaying point level data, there is no clear understanding to a reader as to what to take away from the map.
  4. Lack of citation for source of data.
  5. Another potential dataset where a map may not be the best option.

Map: Inferior Education in Detroit 1960

inferior-edThe Detroit Geographic and Expedition Institute (DGEI) spent much of their Field Notes II publication looking at the state of education in Detroit. This map, based on test scores, demonstrates the racial divide that matched the resources and education divide in the city.

Map of Inner-City Detroit 1999

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This map comes by way of Suzanne Smith’s book, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit and was created by the University of Wisconsin Cartographic Laboratory. There are a few problems here namely the use of “inner-city” in its true urban planning context is good, but leaves out the reality of Detroit’s inner-city in the 90s. It could be argue that in the 90s there was a broader understanding of “inner-city” and this map does little to give anyone a geographic understanding of Detroit’s “cultural politics” past or present [the 90s].

Smith, Suzanne E. Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Map: Detroit’s Sympathetic and Unsympathetic Ethnic Groups 1960

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The city was fairly diverse in the 1960s, yet there were underlying tensions between different ethnic groups and their particular sympathies towards Detroit’s black population. In this map the Detroit Geographic and Expedition Institute (DGEI) mapped out those various relationships based on Census data.

Proposed Detroit City Council Districts and Neighborhoods Map

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NOTE: These proposed districts were never adopted. They were one of many proposed district boundaries.

Data Driven Detroit created a map of their proposed plans for the new City Council Districts in 2011 along with the “neighborhoods” cataloged by Arthur Mullen of Cityscape in 2003. These are not the city council districts that were officially chosen, nor are the neighborhoods set in stone or widely agreed upon. This map is an important representation of how organizations and institutions with power and influence change and shape discussions about the city.

Does every area of Detroit need a name? Does it make more sense to talk about the city by District, neighborhood, school catchment area, or another distinction? Who decides these distinctions?

Map: Fitzgerald in Past, Present, and Future Detroit

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William Bunge wrote about urban geographies being very similar. In his book Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution, he discussed the changing nature of the Fitzgerald neighborhood from its existence in the Michigan wilderness in 1830 to becoming an affluent suburb in the 1920s. His question is whether the slums will continue to expand and include Fitzgerald, which at the time was considered a middle class neighborhood situated in between the suburbs and the slums.

I think the unfortunate answer to Bunge’s question is that Detroit continued to decline and the residents of Detroit continued to lose jobs and city services.

Map of Detroit on a Real Good Chair

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Members of the AIGA Detroit Chapter created a design for the “Facing Forward: AIGA at 100” exhibition in New York. So awesome that they chose a map image design of the Detroit area for their Real Good Chair!

Design team: Rachael Beresh, Maria Bologna, Stephanie Luscombe, Chad Reichert, and Kelly Salchow-Macarthur.

 

Detroit Future City “Neighborhoods” Map

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The ongoing debate about neighborhoods in Detroit have been troubled by the lack of clear definition in the Detroit Future City report. However, the report did define “traditional residential” neighborhoods, which were described as areas that would be maintained. The report states that with these neighborhoods have been hit by population loss, foreclosures, and lack of investment. The Midtown/ Downtown areas are given new labels in the report, so they do not appear in the “traditional neighborhoods” category. However, the report states that traditional neighborhoods:

“need improvements to their city systems and infrastructure to make them competitive with peer neighborhoods in the region.”

The color scheme for this map was chosen through inspiration from an article in Cartographic Perspectives: Expressive Map Design Based on Pop Art: Revisit of Semiology of Graphics? The article looks at using pop art graphic choices applied to map elements. This map is based on a Warhol example.

Map: Cass Corridor Land Owners 1971

cass land ownersThis map was published in Field Notes III of the Detroit Geographic Expedition and Institute (DGEI), which had a large focus on the 18-block area defined as the Cass Corridor. The report looked at demographics, assets, owner’s of land, etc. This is a very telling map as to the distribution of power and land in 1970s Detroit when Cass Corridor was not the best neighborhood to visit. It appears that Palmer Park, a wealthy, gated neighborhood to the North off of Woodward held much of the Cass Corridor land. Even as Midtown and Downtown see extensive development the legacy of Cass Corridor is seen in the poverty, homelessness, and social services. Time will tell how the new Arena District will impact the Cass Corridor and its history.

Map: Detroit vs. Suburbia County 1980

Suburbia-County

The saga of “Detroit vs. Everyone” has a host of racial, social, and economic factors – but who knew it included legislative action? The Metro Times was sent this map from a reader and dug up some interesting history.

“[…] an idea spawned by, it appears, then State Rep. Thomas Brown, a Democrat from Westland. Based on the map above, the plan would slice off everything besides Detroit and the Grosse Pointes. […] Then-Gov. William Milliken’s proposed solution was to reorganize the county under a structure that had a single top executive, but the county’s “36 independently elected commissioners and department heads do not want their political bailiwicks tampered with,” the Times reported […]”

The proposed plan passed in the Michigan House, but was sent to Committee to die. Can you imagine living in Metro Detroit where there was Suburbia County and everything Detroit and East? If anything this is an important representation of the municipal and legislative mentalities that have continued to push for this invisible line drawing.

Map inside Herman Keifer complex

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Curbed Detroit took a look inside the Herman Keifer main building. The complex is up for sale and looking for a developer. Could this be housing to anchor neighborhoods north of the Medical/ Education zones of Detroit? The main building, designed by Albert Kahn, was used for vaccination campaigns up until 2012.

Matt Clayson of the Detroit Creative Corridor Center (DC3) said in 2012:

“Its location is prime and strategic – immediately behind Henry Ford Health systems and proximate to M-10 – and, as such, it could play a key role in connecting Boston Edison, Lasalle Gardens and Virginia Park to the greater downtown area.”

We aren’t sure what the map on the wall represents, maybe just a reference map for employees?

Map of Where to Recycle in Detroit

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About to head out to the Recycle Here! Main Location, which has been a great recycling resource as the city works to improve city services all around. In late 2013, it was announced that there would be citywide curbside recycling. This announcement makes the future of sites like Recycle Here! uncertain and new business models like Detroit Greencycle obsolete?

Map of Downtown Detroit in the Guardian Building

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Just a beautiful map of Detroit (Necklace District area) inside the Guardian Building. The bottom corner reads that this is a map of Wards 1,2, & 3. Detroit is no longer broken into wards, which were based on the original ribbon farm boundaries, but recently voted to move to new Districts.