Since 2017 there have been 5,539 sinkholes reported for investigation on the Improve Detroit app. That’s a big number, but overall make up just 1.15% of all issues reported on the app.
Most of Detroit’s sewer and water pipes are more than 90 years old
Outlier Media recently reported that there are 300 active sinkholes and that number seemed too high on my initial reading. What I actually found was 1,299 sinkhole reports that haven’t been closed yet through the open data portal. As of August 10, there have already been 41 new sinkhole reports this month.
Detroit’s water mains burst 80% more often than the North American average, according to a 2017 report.
The 5,539 number is easily an over-count based on likely inaccurate reports on the Improve Detroit app. However, if there are 300 active as reported out of the 1,299 open sinkhole investigations that is still about 23% accuracy rate. The infrastructure woes of Detroit are not unknown, but this one is quite massive.
Data show reports citywide, every corner, every neighborhood experiences sinkholes. Hot spots appear in the Greater Downtown area as well as New Center/North End, Near Eastside, Southwest, and Grandmont-Rosedale area.
Detroit’s City Council pushback on marijuana (marihuana) dispensaries has taken years to resolve. Council first approved recreational marijuana licenses in 2020 with a “likely unconstitutional” preference for Detroit-based businesses. A revised ordinance was passed in 2022 and took effect in April 20th. Based on WeedMaps.com it would appear that not many businesses still have engaged in the licensing process with just a few locations on Gratiot Ave., Lyndon (Westside), and a few in Corktown/Southwest while nearly every border of the city is clustered with recreational marijuana dispensaries.
The actual number the Mayor used was 452, but still that number just didn’t sit right. I began searching high and low for where the Mayor possibly sourced the data. The open data portal came up empty, the new business data explorer was no help, even point of interest (POI) data providers didn’t show much. Meanwhile colleagues on the open data, GIS, and data strategy teams all said they had no involvement in the MPC data efforts on auto/scrap yards.
Finding Data
I first checked the BSEED blight violations of bulk solid waste on the open data portal, assuming these sites might show up. There were a few varied definitions, but I stuck to the below categories to begin exploring what became a new set of sites well above the 452 auto/scrap yards.
BSEED Environmental Affairs
Totals since 2006
Dumping, storing or depositing medial or hazardous waste on any publicly-owned property, or private property or water, without a permit
0
Dumping, storing or depositing solid waste on any publicly-owned property, or private property or water, without a permit
279
Dumping, storing or depositing solid waste 5 or more cubic yards on any publicly-owned property, or private property or water, without a permit
475
One of the first sites I checked on Google Streetview actually did appear to be an auto/scrap yard operation in a residential alleyway. There were too many sites to individually verify each, so I shifted my focus as to how these locations might be regulated.
Comparing Data
The State of Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) ended up having a more helpful and knowledgeable social media team than their legal team handling FOIA requests. I was able to search the public “Waste Data System” to find 110 used auto parts and metal recycling sites. Still a very low number compared to the 452. A quick search of Google Places also got me to the number of “junkyards” in the city (n=37).
I decided to start engaging the Mayor’s office for some clarity on data sources. That yielded insight into where some of the numbers came from, but only more confusion related to auto/scrap yards. I finally realized that this was part of the Mayor’s January 2019 moratorium on new auto or scrap yard businesses as part of the “blight to beauty” campaign and tracked down a June 2022 presentation made by BSEED to the City Planning Commission (CPC). The end goal of the effort being updates to zoning, code, and enforcement for auto related businesses and land uses. In a 2022 DONCast video presentation Dilip Patel of BSEED noted he used Secretary of State data sources to compile a list of sites. The Secretary of State maintains searchable databases for both auto repair and auto dealers as part of their online services.
June 2022 Presentation to CPC
BSEED/Mayor’s Office Memo
SOS Data check
Enforcement Effect??? since 2019
2023 Totals
Source
Auto/scrap yards
1548/1405
1414
1248
—
925
Towyards
11
—
—
—
14
Google Places
Junkyards
95
122
110
—
110
EGLE Waste Data System
Auto repair
925
920
725
221
504
SOS online services
Auto dealer
374
372
413
116
297
SOS online services
Now, not much of this made sense. The Mayor’s office shared a memo written by BSEED that attempted to lay out some methodology, but that included an assumption that 50% of auto repair shops were or were not active at a given time. BSEED notes they have a master list of 1,414 sites which is slightly higher than what they mapped out in June 2022.
They also shared a spreadsheet of 121 business shutdowns related to auto uses enforcement. I was interested to see what kind of impact there was from the legal effort. I assumed there would be overlap between BSEED’s list and the Secretary of State’s, but there wasn’t much. Since 2019, 116 auto dealers and 221 auto repair facilities had closed, had their license revoked, expired, or suspended.
Among the locations that closed since 2019, just 7 overlapped with BSEED business closures. A few seemed to just be name changes such as Saad Motors to Platinum Auto Parts. The license expired, but the new entity was still shutdown by BSEED. Interestingly, none of the actual scrapyards were part of the BSEED closure dataset. Now I’m not sure what 114 additional sites BSEED closed are as part of the crackdown on auto/scrap yards.
Conclusion
Maybe this numbers story isn’t done, but the conclusion is that what many observers assumed was widespread scrapping in the city. In reality there is a small subset of scrapping happening (likely larger than in other cities), but the majority of the concern is around piles of old cars and their parts that have been left to decay and create eyesores. I think those are two separate stories. Unfortunately, because of the way the data was presented, one mostly negative narrative has emerged about scrapyards in Detroit that includes small businesses operating as car mechanics or used car sales.
Data is a hot commodity and its tough when used in unverifiable or confusing ways. When the city references data in public it should be readily available on the city’s open data portal in the same way that meeting minutes could be checked for accountability and transparency. The numbers help us track progress and identify what assets we have available. Data and numbers matter, maybe not as much to every person, but they seed the narratives of our city and drive perceptions of the people who live in Detroit.
This map was shared by the Detroit Historical Society and is an interesting look into the past. Some project names are even in the works today, like Lee Plaza. Big projects of this time period included: West Side Industrial, Medical Center, Elmwood, and University City (Wayne State).
The Detroit Housing Commission prepared this map in 1969 to highlight areas of low income housing, redevelopment, and code enforcement.
In the latest report from Transit Riders United (TRU), Save Our Service, they dig into the failure of DDOT and SMART to return to pre-pandemic levels of service compared to other cities.
The map below shows the current extent of semi-frequent DDOT service, running every 20 minutes during the day on weekdays. As seen, in four of the seven Detroit City Council districts, a majority of residents live more than one-half mile from these semi-frequent routes.
Understanding occupancy and vacancy in Detroit is a constant data battle. The known crises of low home mortgage origination, large-scale evictions, and property speculation make Detroiters unduly mobile having to secure housing by various means and face multiple barriers along the way.
The last subjective assessment of occupancy in Detroit came with the 2014 Motor City Mapping project, but relied on responses of surveyors. The City’s current in-house streetview imagery could be used to do the same, but might not capture indicators like utility turn-ons. The DLBA used to run a quarterly “occupancy index” model that included DTE account information to better assess occupancy, but as far as I have heard the data sharing agreement fell apart years ago.
The next best option is Census data on occupied housing units or USPS data on vacancy. I try to opt for the more positive data indicator with where people are in housing. We see a familiar pattern that maps onto the population dense clusters across the city.
Apple Music and Apple Maps made an effort to create a city guide with Detroit’s Most Essential Music Venues. While they captured many great spots with St. Andrew’s Hall, Marble Bar, Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, and many in Detroit’s entertainment district – there are many missing notable spots. I would suggest they need to add the Garden Theater, Chene Park/Aretha Franklin Amphitheater, Old Miami, and PJ’s Lager House. Apple has another guide to local Detroit spots that includes many of those missing from the “essential” list, so maybe I’m thinking too local?
“A Map of Detroit, Michigan, USA.” Originally created in 2020 for Jeanette Pierce and Detroit Experience Factory, and updated for her organization, The City Institute, in 2022.
How did you come to make this map? What’s the story?
I have been working with Jeanette for years, first as a tour guide at DXF and then as a designer for all sorts of projects related to that organization and its successor, The City Institute. In addition to providing tours, DXF operated The Welcome Center downtown and handed out a number of helpful free print resources to the folks who would stop in. The map was created as both a promotional tool for their tours and to give a quick overview of notable points of interest to someone looking to explore the city. It also aimed to provide some brief history and information about each of those places.
What are you most proud of in the map? What stood out to you? What details do you enjoy about the map?
I’m most proud of how playful it is, visually speaking. We tried very hard to walk that line of functionality and aesthetics. We accepted the reality that paper maps are a novelty for most people and that the majority of them would end up navigating to their final destination on their phone, so we chose to keep it very simple in terms of details like street names. The result is a handy list you can glance at and get a quick sense of the general area, the proximity between places, and the broad route that you would need to travel to get there.
One of the details that I enjoy is the inclusion of so many of the neighborhood names and locations. To me, the act of naming a place gives the reader more of a feel of the area, even if they are a total stranger who doesn’t know anything else about it. A named place feels more real to people. And those individual neighborhoods are the lifeblood of any city because that’s where the majority of the residents actually live, so directly calling them out was a big priority for us.
What in your background has drawn you to maps?
I’m a big history buff and I love knowing how things work. I feel like you can really understand how a place has grown and see its inner workings on display on a map. You can look at the street patterns and directly relate them to waves of immigration into an area or to the migration out of them, to the openings and closings of entire industries, and so much more. You can see what the people living there prioritized, make inferences about what their local leaders envisioned for the next generation, and how those visions succeeded or failed. With the right context you can look into a place’s past, present, and future on a good map.
The news media have covered all the “grants” to Detroit and metro Detroit pet projects or pork barrel projects in the 2024 Michigan State Budget. If you know the monied interests and political relationships between Detroit and Lansing there isn’t much that comes as a surprise. The media often highlight 15 clearly Detroit projects, but overall there were 36 Detroit grants or notable line items totaling over $213 million. Almost half of that amount is from the literacy lawsuit settlement with students from Detroit Public Schools for $94.4 million (Gary B. vs, Whitmer).
Most of the grants (n=20) are $1.5 million or less. A handful are between $3 million, like those supporting the Detroit GOAL Line, Detroit Parent Network, and Global Detroit to $5 million for projects like the Fisher Building redevelopment as well as the same amount for the Fisher Body Plant No. 21. The Greektown streetscape and an unclear “Henry Ford Health Center” take the top dollar amount at $20 million. Other projects that were missed by the media include 3 grants to Motor City Blight Busters, Grandmont Rosedale Mixed Use Development, and the North Rosedale Community House.
This map is wild because the City of Detroit accepted more vacant land and structures from the old school district in exchange for unpaid electrical debt.
Since 2014, many of those properties remained vacant and unused as documented in the After School Detroit assessment conducted by Interboro Partners, WJE, and BJH in 2020. Maybe many of these sites will become solar farms as the Mayor has recently presented?
If you’ve been following on Twitter, I’ve been attempting to interrogate the Mayor’s recent data points that he listed in his Mackinac Policy Conference (MPC) 2023 speech. Specifically, he noted 452 auto/scrap yards (original tweet used incorrect 454 number) with very limited information on what that category meant. The number seemed absurdly high to me as well as other city staff that regularly work with data.
The journey took me from the Mayor’s speech to “point of interest” datasets with NAICS codes to a FOIA sent to EGLE only to have the EGLE social media team actually be most helpful. In the end the source and dataset are still mysteries, however I was able to track down the presentation given to the City Planning Commission based on BSEED data in June 2022.
The map categories list 1,406 sites, which are majority “auto repair” sites not scrap or junkyards. However, the city’s Law Department and the resolution to change the zoning notes 1,548 sites in question. I’m still waiting for access to the dataset used and learning about its sourcing. I have yet to learn if this is the same dataset used to identify hardware and grocery stores.
The map is not the best, but the data is beyond significant. The Fair Housing Center worked with UM researchers to analyze housing discrimination in the Detroit metropolitan region. The article Residential Racial and Socioeconomic Segregation as Predictors of Housing Discrimination in Detroit Metropolitan Area, found fewer complaints from Metropolitan Detroit areas with larger numbers of whites, homeowners, or higher median income levels as compared to neighborhoods with fewer of those characteristics. The article proves the fact that low-income renters of color experience the vast majority of housing discrimination in the Detroit region.
I shared this map on social media because of the odd tobogganing ramp placed somewhere between Henry Ford Hospital and Herman Kiefer.
The map comes from the 1955 Fifth Edition of the “Michigan Road Atlas Fishing and Hunting Guide” that includes boat launching sites and winter sports facilities.
I went back and checked the 1950 First Edition too and the tobogganing facility is there. The mystery is that in the 1950s I can only find mentions of tobogganing at Rouge Park, Balduck Park, Dorais Playground (Derby Hill), and a park in Redford. Anyone recall tobogganing in New Center during the 1950s?
In the latest ParkServe scoring from the Trust for Public Land (TPL), Detroit dropped three places to 60th among the 100 largest cities.
Detroit scored (higher is better) 21 for acreage, 26 for investment, 49 for amenities and 72 for equity. So doing well in access and equity, which make the other low scoring categories more concerning.
A map of Detroit’s Cass Corridor neighborhood. Created in Spring of 2023 as a collaboration with City Bird and Midtown, Inc.
How did you come to make this map? What’s the story?
Andy Linn, from City Bird, approached me about creating a map with the help of Midtown, Inc. that would highlight just how walkable Detroit’s Cass Corridor is. We all wanted this map to highlight all the great small businesses that make this neighborhood so special and accessible.
What are you most proud of in the map? What stood out to you? What details do you enjoy about the map?
I’m most proud of how much we worked into the map! Creating maps is a very difficult task so I was glad we were able to include all the locations we wanted while still having there be some design flair. My favorite part was creating the little people. I thought of all the interesting and inspiring people I know and see daily around here and used them as inspiration on the map. I love the little local easter eggs hidden throughout the map as well, if you know you know.
What in your background has drawn you to maps?
I’m an illustrator and have been creating maps for a long time. I love the storytelling aspect of them. These maps aren’t meant to be 100% functional. They are meant to tell a story and give you a sense of an area. You can learn so much about a neighborhood by just taking a quick glance at an illustrated map. Everyone has access to a smartphone nowadays so no one “needs” this map but it’s the storytelling component that makes it an important piece.
The G-word always invites controversy and confusion, but from the authors own work:
To assess gentrification, longitudinal analyses were performed to examine median household income, percentage with a college education, median housing value, median gross rent and employment level.
There are issues with assessing geospatial phenomena using ZIP code level data, but these findings give pause and hopefully encourage a greater deep dive.
Sometimes I make a map because I’m unhappy with what exists out in the data-sphere already. This is an instance of that exact scenario. A local organization put out a map of population change between the decennial censuses (censi? censai?) using a poorly chosen color scheme and a misleading legend and data categories. What really stood out most was that there was 5,400% (WTF) increase in population somewhere in the city. I assumed it had to be an error or a mistake, but I also could not tell from the map where such a massive population increase occurred.
There was a single census tract in the Hubbard-Richard/Corktown/West Side Industrial area that gained significant population since 2010. I racked my brain for a long time trying to figure out why or what developments contributed to the area going from 4 people in 2010 to 220 in 2020. I had to reach back in time and recall that many of the empty warehouses were converted into lofts. The Hudson (2011) was one of the first with about 80 units, then The Coat Factory Lofts (2014) with 62 units, and most recently The Assembly (2019) with 32 units. Most of the units are one bedroom with a handful of two and three bedroom units. In all the 174 units house an estimated 240 people.
What had been a relatively empty industrial and warehouse square of the city now houses quite a few more people. New amenities like the West Riverfront park and even more housing are coming soon as Ford Motor Company redevelops the train station.
Ever since I saw the similarly named map of Manhattan, NYC in an Atlas of Radical Cartography I have wanted to recreate the concept for Detroit. The hardest part as usual was data collection or data access. Collecting data on surveillance and CCTV cameras would have taken forever, but was possible. One of the Data, Mapping, and Research Justice workshops that I ran tested data collection in the Cass Corridor, which had surprisingly few cameras. I randomly stumbled upon the CCTV data variable on Mapillary, which is an open source streetview platform. Submitted streetview images are scanned to extract multiple data points and cameras happen to be one. The data is not perfect, but is fairly reliable since the City of Detroit itself is capturing and submitting streetview imagery to Mapillary.
Now, Detroit is a city full of security and surveillance: Project Greenlight, Shotspotter, expansion of Automated License Plate Readers, etc. Wayne State University Police Chief Holt is quoted as saying, “Anywhere on campus, if you look up, I can see you.” The WSUPD managed the camera apparatus that was installed prior to the 2006 Super Bowl XL until the Detroit Police were able to take on the resource via their $20 million Real Time Crime Center. WSUPD has at least 380 external cameras across campus properties.
The Gilbert/Bedrock/Quicken group has installed at least 850 cameras on the properties that they own, manage, or ones just wish to own like American Coney Island and 1515 Broadway. The offending entity turned out to be Compuware security, but many if not all major Downtown companies have been sharing and collaborating on surveillance for many years.
In all I found 2,943 surveillance cameras in the Greater Downtown 7.2 sq mi area. The best I could do was find a route that encounters at least 41 cameras within 25 feet of the route. The route starts in New Center Commons on Third Street and ends up at Hart Plaza, which is full of cameras. Once you reach the Central Business District it is impossible not to be captured on camera or possibly surveilled.
In the last few years, Detroit lost some staples of the city’s coffee and gathering spaces, including:
Avalon Bakery (original location)
Astro Coffee
Bikes and Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee
Starbucks (Midtown)
3 Tim Hortons locations
Despite all the closings (n=21), the city is only down by one coffee shop overall from 84 to 83 coffee shops. Since 2021 there have been 20 new coffee shops or pop-ups launched. The focus for coffee remains Downtown and Midtown, but the neighborhoods remain under-served by third places (not home, not work).
Other staples got new life as renewed coffee shops:
Detroit Rosa (former A Public Square, former Towne Hall Caffe)
SPKRBOX (former Urban Bean Co.)
Red Hook – Midtown (former Great Lakes Coffee)
Still more moved to grow in new locations:
Anthology relocated to Eastern Market
Cairo Coffee moved into Spotlite Detroit space
Avalon moved in to share space with Jolly Pumpkin
Gathering spaces in Detroit are a hot commodity and not easy to come by, so the loss of just one is usually a substantial hit to the community. A handful of new baristas are trying their hand at pop-up coffee and we can’t wait until they have some physical space:
Last week I shared that DDOT was creating a new map and entirely new bus routes for the city. DDOT Reimagined now has an excellent StoryMap that includes a map slider to compare existing and reimagined routes.
The site contains feedback, draft proposals, bus route specific changes, and a place to provide your own feedback. Help DDOT Reimagine transportation in the city and submit your comments!
DETROITography 