detroitography

[detroitography]

Event: #Maptime Winter 2025 Series

WHEN: Mondays, starting January 27th, from 12-4PM WHERE: Prentis Building Fishbowl, Wayne State University, 5201 Cass Ave. WHAT: Come co-work on your mapping project, get support learning GIS, or just chat about maps!

[detroitography]

Map: Census 2020 Boundaries Muddle Detroit Data

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…

[detroitography]

Map: City of Detroit Street and Alley Vacations

by: Yanyun Li, Jered Dean, Houjon Ding, Raven Wright – City of Detroit This layer indicates all streets and alleys vacated ‘Outright’ and vacated with conversion to utility easement in the City of Detroit. This layer is updated regularly. View the interactive application

[detroitography]

Map: Detroit Last Houses on the Block

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…

[detroitography]

Map: City of Detroit Traffic Crashes

by: Steven Wiltse, Martin Denicolo, Zachary Manning, Kevin Zhang, Tess Parr – City of Detroit The City of Detroit has launched its Open Data Portal Analytics initiative in order to increase public access and understanding to valuable data and information that is posted on the Open Data Portal as raw datasets.To that end, the Traffic Crashes dashboard was built to visualize 267,078 traffic…

[detroitography]

Event: Detroit Data Forum: Coffee Shops and Places

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…

[detroitography]

Map: Detroit's Eight Mile-Wyoming Neighborhood: Stories Untold

by Kelsey Maas & Megha Bamola – City of Detroit, Historic Designation Advisory Board (HDAB) Detroit’s Eight Mile-Wyoming neighborhood is the oldest Black neighborhood in Northwest Detroit. The neighborhood signified a starting point for many working-class Black Detroiters; one of homeownership, hopeful revitalization, and a sense of community. Numerous resources remain in the community that…

[detroitography]

Detroit Road Jurisdiction Map

by: Yanyun Li – City of Detroit, Department of Public Works (DPW) The jurisdiction map of Detroit delineates city, county, and MDOT territories. City-owned roads include city minor and city major. MDOT’s highways serve as vital conduits linking Detroit to broader networks. This map will serve as a valuable tool for promoting efficient city right-of-way governance, fostering collaboration, and…

[detroitography]

Map: Detroit's Urban Environment in Color: Revitalizing Detroit's Development Ecosystem

by: Lisa Kyle, Garrett Gillis, Noah Frey (Wayne State University) We chose to focus on the present development of Detroit because, in our view, the city is at a crucial precipice. The latter half of the 20th century was not kind to our city — but recent blight removal projects give us a unique opportunity. That opportunity is, of course, to rebuild the city with modern values and sustainability…

[detroitography]

Map: Sustainable Urban Environments: Detroit Tree Canopy

by: Kerrel Spivey Detroit, once known as a tree-filled city before its urban decline starting in the 50s and the emerald ash borer invasion beginning in 2002, has experienced landscape change over the decades. Neighborhoods within a city can be defined by their people, setting, and character. Trees influence all three of these by improving the mood of residents, beautifying the landscape, and…

[detroitography]

Event: Detroit Data Forum: Property and Parcels

Welcome to our Data Forum where we will explore a new category of data each month. This month we will be focused on property data, the relaunch of Property Praxis, and the important details when trying to utilize parcel data. We’ll be joined by Chase Cantrell of Building Community Value, Joshua Akers, instigator of Property Praxis, and Aaron Mondry from Outlier Media writing on the “speculators…

[detroitography]

Map: Code Enforcement Zones 1957

I was pleasantly surprised by the maps in the report: “Detroit: A New City” from the Mayor’s Committee on Community Renewal and prepared by the City of Detroit, Department Report and Information Committee. The city’s Community Renewal Program (CRP) was the vehicle for studying and planning Detroit’s future amidst the federal urban renewal regime. For better or worse the CRP produced numerous…

[detroitography]

Map: Detroit HMDA Longitudinal Dataset 1981 - 2021

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) has put together an incredible interactive map and dataset of all Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data since 1981. HMDA was created as a stop gap to use data to identify if redlining was still occurring. In recent history, HMDA was a data source that demonstrated “reverse redlining.” More from the NCRC GIS team: “this interactive map…

[detroitography]

Event: Detroit Data Forum: Election Maps, Precincts, etc.

Welcome to our Data Forum where we will dive into the world of Election Maps, Precincts, etc. specific to Detroit data. Join us online for lunch-and-learn filled with insightful discussions, tips, and tricks on all things related to election data. Whether you’re a seasoned data analyst or just starting out, this event is perfect for anyone interested in learning more about how data shapes our…

[detroitography]

Speculation and the City “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

Property speculators own nearly 20 percent of all property in Detroit. The parcels caught up in this web of speculation are spread across the city and come in a variety of forms. At their worst these owners are buying and selling houses that rapidly decline into vacant and abandoned shells. Too often neighborhoods and the public are forced to bare the cost of these activities from the daily…

[detroitography]

Where is Dan Gilbert, Detroit’s parking garage and skyscraper king?

The line between speculation and investment can seem arbitrary. In fact, some of the largest speculators in the city of Detroit often characterize their activities as investment. In 2010, Manuel “Matty” Moroun told the Free-Press his holdings represented his commitment to the city. “Our fortunes are linked to the city. If the city doesn’t have any prosperity, we don’t have any value in the land,…

[detroitography]

Development Creep: 40-years devaluing Detroit’s lower Cass Corridor

For nearly four decades, speculation in the lower Cass Corridor wreaked havoc on residents and shredded the community fabric that held it together. By the early 2000s, the area was largely deserted except for low income apartment buildings. The primary speculator in this neighborhood was the Ilitch family, the owners of a national pizza chain and two major sports franchises. The Ilitch companies…