Future Friday: Detroit

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:02:11]Hello everyone and welcome to Future Friday. I am your host James Das Ball, the director of future cities at the National Building Museum. Thank you all so much for joining us today. For those that have been tuning in throughout our series, you know that we've been taking a journey across the United States, telling stories of cities, both small, large, north, and south. And today, we are heading virtually to Detroit. We have some incredible speakers lined up for you. And of course, we want to hear your voice and all of your thoughts about this city. Now, Future Friday is a part of our future cities initiative, a multi-year exploration of cities, bringing exhibitions and programs and community activations to this critical subject. We cannot do that without the support of our sponsors. So, let me take a moment to thank AARP, Enterprise and Wells Fargo, Wayne and Ursula Quinn, Rooted Communities, National League of Cities, CBRE, and KPF Associates. Thank you all so much for making this possible and thank all of you for tuning in and being a part of this conversation.

[00:03:27]Now, without further ado, let me briefly introduce our experts that are going to be sharing their stories and bringing this city of Detroit to life for us.

[00:03:38]First, we have Sandre Little, who is a principal and director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Quinn Evans.

[00:03:46]She is a co-founder of Noir Design Parti, a project that documents the professional journeys and creative work of Detroit's black architects. She co-hosts the Hidden in Plain Sight podcast interviewing current practicing black architects in Michigan and is the 2025 2026 president-elect of the National Organization of Minority Architects.

[00:04:12]Following Sandre's story is going to be Anika Goss Foster who is the chief executive officer of Detroit Future City, a nonprofit think tank and urban innovation center focused on land use and sustainability, community and economic development and economic equity in Detroit. She also serves on the board of national and local associations including the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit branch, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis, and she served on Governor Whitmer's Growing Michigan Together Council.

[00:04:50]Finally, we have Alexa Bush, who is the former planning director for the city of Detroit, where she leads citywide planning efforts focused on equitable development, neighborhood revitalization, and long-term urban strategy. She brings more than a decade of experience across public sector and philanthropy, including six years with Detroit's planning and development department, where she helped rebuild the department following the city's bankruptcy and led neighborhood planning initiatives across multiple strategic neighborhood fund areas. So you can tell an incredible amount of experience and wealth of stories that we will be hearing from today, but we want to hear your stories as well. And so this is your chance to also bring your voice to the story of Detroit. On the screen now, you're seeing a slide out. If you take out your phone or if you're on your computer and you go to this link, you can start to type in and add the words that you associate with Detroit. What does this city make you think of? And as we are live here, you're going to see those responses pop up on the screen for us to tell a collective story of Detroit. Now, while you all are getting out your phones and participating with our slidoh, I'm going to tell a brief history of the city just to set some context, set the stage for our speakers that will follow.

[00:06:17]Detroit is the largest US city on the Canadian border. Its name comes from the French word for straight, reflecting its position on the Detroit River, a critical connector between Lake Hiron and Lake Erie.

[00:06:32]Founded in 1701 by French explorers as a fort and fur trading post, Detroit grew into the largest European settlement between Montreal and New Orleans. The city was officially incorporated in 1815 and its broad avenues and plazas influenced by the design of Washington DC earned it the nickname Paris of the West.

[00:06:57]Before the end of slavery, Detroit was an active hub of the Underground Railroad with thousands of enslaved people crossing through the city to freedom in Canada. Detroit surged into global prominence with the rise of the auto industry in the early 20th century and it remains headquarters of the big three, General Motors, Ford, and Stalantis.

[00:07:22]Auto plants became a critical front for the American labor movement as workers fought for the 40hour work week, pensions, and safe working conditions.

[00:07:33]During World War II, nearly a million people migrated to Detroit to fill defense jobs, many from the American South.

[00:07:42]By midentury, a combination of de-industrialization, corporate consolidation, and suburbanization sent the city into a prolonged period of decline. Systemic inequities, housing covenants, highway construction through black neighborhoods, and strained police community relations deepened the crisis.

[00:08:02]Detroit lost over 65% of its population and in 2013 became the largest US city to file for bankruptcy. Remarkably, it recovered in only a year from the bankruptcy. And its dynamism has never stopped. Detroit's music culture gave us the world gave the world Mottown, techno, jazz, hiphop, and punk. In recent years, the downtown has experienced a genuine renaissance.

[00:08:29]Historic renovations, new investment, growing population along the river, a beautiful riverwalk, and the only international urban wildlife refuge in North America speak to what's possible when a city reinvests in itself. So, I can see by all of your responses, many of the things I shared there also resonate and echo within what you think of Detroit. So, keep sending in those ideas. I love seeing Mottown right there front and central. Now, without further ado, let me now turn us over to our first speaker, Sandre, to bring her story and dive deeper into the history of Detroit.

[00:09:12]>> Thank you, James. I really appreciate it.

[00:09:18]>> All righty.

[00:09:20]Uh so yes, I am um I I am here to talk about uh my architectural practice and basically working with uh Quinn Evans and the work that we've done in the city of Detroit uh and just uh how the stories of architecture and history uh are just interwoven in uh this great uh city that we are all working in and a part of. Um this is Mskin Central Station uh a new catalyst to um to the city uh that we are uh we're a part of as far as uh the work that we done here at Quinn Evans. This is a heavy historical preservation project, but it is uh also a catalyst to mobility and uh with the Ford uh doing this uh renovation. This is heavy preservation uh but it still is an adaptable use making this a a hub of innovation and uh connection for the city and uh the first floor of this uh train station and its beauty is being used for so many live events. Uh so it's an activator and it's sitting right on the Detroit River looking south into Canada. This the only place is in Detroit where you could say you look south into Canada. uh and uh just a beautiful history history of migration uh as well as people coming in from uh the great migration from the south and then people coming in from like Staten Island and different uh uh venues into this train station and getting their start in our motor city. Uh you can go to the next slide.

[00:10:49]Uh we also do we do heavy preservation here but every story at of our architecture at Quinn Evans is about uh inclusivity. So inclusive design uh and practice. Uh we do not only large projects but uh projects along along our major corridors in the city that uh have been re renovi revitalized and uh brought back to their their key uh point. So this project uh is we we look at um you know what the the use of different design tactics to make sure a place is totally inclusive just from a building standpoint. She goes to the next slide.

[00:11:31]Uh the Alli media project is along Grand River coming out of downtown Detroit. We also looked at the history of this site.

[00:11:39]uh basically uh it was uh a former flower mill that was on this site and then it was a furniture warehouse and then we converted this building into a hub and a community center for the Alli media team. Uh and this nonprofit being as small as it is uh also did a community benefits agreement for the with the community to provide free Wi-Fi and access to the building and they didn't have to. So, a lot of the large scale developments like you saw at Michigan Central Station are required to have community benefits agreement, but we have nonprofits here that are doing the work and reaching out and being inclusive to our city owner. Uh, so John uh Clark was the former owner in the history of this site. Uh, the the city, like I said, has great history that's layered into every project. So, we try to under understand every site uh that we touch within the city and the history and the layers that are there. You can go to the next slide.

[00:12:31]Uh this project brings uh like history and architecture together for me. Uh this was a 20th century civil rights sites project that we looked at. This photo is of the Burwood Wall uh which is in Wells Park and uh uh right by 8 Mile at the border of the city of Detroit. Uh this this history here is about uh uh it is a physical version of Red Line. The wall that you see in the background is painted with murals. the community has taken that park and that wall back and celebrated uh what they've come from. Uh so they have not demoed this. Uh but one side of the wall was a a white was a black community. It was already there.

[00:13:10]Uh the wall is erected as a red line so that the white community that was proposed on the opposite side of the wall was able to build uh with the uh funds from the government at that time that wanted homogeneous uh neighborhoods. Uh so this story uh is being told through parks through healing. Um we were just uh we just had the American planning conference in our city and uh this was one of the mobile workshops that people were go out to see these parks for healing that the city of Parkers and Rex is working on at the city of Detroit. Uh you can go to the next slide. So with this project we looked at over a hundred sites related to civil rights history in the city of Detroit. uh ci civil rights was different in the north than it was in the south. In the north, we were uh raising money for the south through the NAACP uh to help fight against uh segregation. Uh we also had a lot of great stories like uh the Rosa Parks house that you see in the photo here at the top uh left corner. Uh Rosa Parks lived in Detroit longer than she lived uh in in the south. Uh so and continued her civil rights history while she was here. We did a bike route uh that was around the all of these uh well a percentage of these sites. Uh we were had five uh sites that went to the National Historic Register Historic Places. Uh and then we have um uh just so much risk history in this project.

[00:14:34]You can actually flip through the next uh slide. Uh we looked at these sites across the city of Detroit. Uh there, you know, like I said, the reconnaissance levels. We looked at the migration studies of neighborhoods which you see in the green blocks here. Uh the green block that is at the top towards 8 mile that is that neighborhood I just talked to you about with the uh Burwood wall site. Uh though that migration had taken place because of uh what happened with the displaced of families from Blackbottom as they move north into the city. So all of this rich history and layers of histories and stories uh that are part of our city is starting to percolate up. Uh, and this is just like beginning of my step into the planning world. Uh, within our great cities, there's layers of history. We work with the city of Detroit uh, HDAB uh, staff and have done a layers of history staff for women's history context as well as um, uh, Arab and Calaldian uh, history within the city of Detroit. uh you know Dearbornne is right outside uh the border that you see to the left of the slide and it has a larger concentration of ArabAmericans uh that are outside the uh um the continent, you know, their uh country of uh in the Middle East. So it's just such a rich history here in Detroit. So many stories to be told. Uh and there's great stories that uh lift up just the people of our community. You can go to the next slide.

[00:15:58]Uh this project uh is a tie together to me to to everything that I've been doing. My work with the um studying African-American architects, the work uh with the 20th century civil rights sites. This is the Dr. Awin educational plaza that is on the east side of Detroit. This story comes directly from that civil rights uh site project I just uh showed to you. Uh Dr. was a professional uh educated uh doctor who had a practice in Black Bottom uh which is the neighborhood that was displaced during um uh the uh re uh the highway acts that came through all across the United States. Uh but he bought a house for him and his wife in the east east side neighborhood that was part of a restricted covenant neighborhood and he was faced with a mob of over uh a thousand people in front of this intersection at Garland uh that basically threatened him and he had basically a stand your ground situation and it ended up uh with uh two people being shot outside the home because rocks and different things were being thrown at the house and he was uh not aware of everything that was happening outside. out of fear uh his family they protected themselves. Uh so this ended up in 10 trials uh that law schools across the country have been studying but now this story is on a being told on a broader lens with this project. So now you can actually go visit the home that has been restored through a public private partnership with the city of Detroit and the owner of this house uh the Baxter family uh that they created a park that tells that complete story that's on the side of the house that you could you can find out about the trials you can find out about the history of his family uh what happened uh after uh this historical 13 trials were done and he still was uh declared innocent. uh his family was declared innocent but he had to go through a lot. Uh so the story of the civil rights fights that were here this became a story that resonated across the country. Uh and it also helped set the grounds for a lot of the uh breaking of the uh restricted covenants that were throughout the city.

[00:18:06]So, it's just a great place for people now to come hear the complete story of of, you know, Detroit's uh civil rights.

[00:18:13]And actually, you could see the complete story of this house and his family and the trials right on site. Uh, and this is just like I said, a tie together moment for me. I was able to work with a collaborative and my business partner Karen Burton, which which we do the work on um studying the work of black architects. So, we work together in other fashions as well. and continuing that story. It all ties it all together for me and just makes me feel like I'm doing the right thing within the city and the projects that I'm working on uh in our great city.

[00:18:42]>> Sandra, thank you so much. I mean, first of all, what what powerful work, what an important story to be told. And what resonates for me is that this idea of how do you preserve that and using art and memorials and landscaping and architecture to tell these stories that might be about legal history or African-American history and yet this idea of place and including that map you showed which is not just one place right multiple places throughout the city and yet the story connects those places into into a singular kind of uh history that is being really brought through your work. So, thank you for sharing it, starting us off with this really important personal work that you're doing. We also want to hear from again the audience here. We always want to give the audience a chance to reflect on this story as well. So again, we have our QR code here where you can share what resonates with you from that story.

[00:19:35]Um, but while you all are reflecting and sharing what resonates with you, I'm going to turn it over to Ana now, who can also position her work within this story of Detroit. Let me turn it over to Ana.

[00:19:50]>> Thank you for having me, James. And, uh, I was riveted by, uh, Sandre's perspective of, um, uh, Detroit and preservation. Um, you know, it's funny.

[00:20:05]I at one point I had the opportunity to speak to the uh National Historic Preservation Trust and I I shared with them that all of Detroit, if you were a Detroititer and you live in a house in Detroit, you are a preservationist because 95% of the housing stock in Detroit is uh was built before 1950.

[00:20:30]So you have to learn how to do that quickly. So, um I for my presentation I'm going to talk more about uh really picking up where James left off about what happened between 2000 and 200 uh really 2020 uh with during COVID to really talk about how Detroit declined um so quickly uh when it was already on a decline. line. It was it it in 2006, if you look at the data and here, this is really where you can see the jobs, Detroit was beginning to stabilize in 2006 before the housing crisis. And I think um there was a lot of hope that we were going to actually increase the population. We were a city of over a million at that time. there was very little space in middle class households between um black workers and white workers. And so that is a lot of positive momentum.

[00:21:39]But as you can see here, you can begin to see the beginning of a decline in jobs. And there are a lot of reasons for that. Um, but we are heavily heavily reliant on the big three both in Detroit and across the region outside of Detroit. And that began to contribute to our ability um to become stable during the national housing crisis. So, if you can go to the next slide, please. So you can see, you know, there was a um mortgage delinquencies were very very low as they were in a lot of cities and there was sort of a a normalizing in Detroit uh prior to the housing crisis. But then there was this giant spike and um I think what's important to know the giant spike during the mortgage crisis for us there were two waves and before we go to the next slide where you could see the second wave it's really important to understand that when the housing crisis hit in Detroit mortgages basically stopped. So in the in the mortgage crisis where you see the spike here and then you see the decline and the flattening which seems like it's good but actually what that reflects is the fact that there were almost no mortgages in Detroit from 2012 until two almost 2018 is when it really picked up. So there were in 2012 there were only 200 recorded mortgages in Detroit.

[00:23:28]And so that is I I feel like that's important. That's an important note because when you go to the next slide here is the foreclosure um the tax foreclosure crisis. And we probably have had more tax foreclosures in Detroit than almost any other city in the United States. I don't have that slide that compares tax foreclosure for us, but our state law for a period of time was very aggressive for for tax foreclosure. And that had a detrimental effect on neighborhoods because it ended up becoming a second wave of foreclosures and vacancies in Detroit at the neighborhood level. and it created this almost emptying out that was unprecedented.

[00:24:19]Um, so you can see just from 2000 to 2010, Detroit lost 25% of the population. So if prior to that, you know, it was a much longer run where the story about Detroit losing half of its from being a city of 2 million to a city of 1 million took 50 years. To lose 25% of the population took 10 years and that is very very hard to recover from.

[00:24:52]And so some of this data we've we've actually seen an increase in the population. So, we're really excited about that because we're moving in the right direction. But, in terms of the timeline, a lot of you probably remember all of these news stories because this is probably some of the darkest moments in Detroit that would have been right around between 2010 and 2012. Uh, and this Time article I I always point to because it's um it was an an infiltration article. There was someone from Time magazine that moved into a neighborhood that befriended the people in this very stable neighborhood and then wrote this terrible article uh using what he learned from the people in the neighborhood. And so there was just a period of time where people thought Detroit was a dead city. Um where people thought that people didn't actually live in Detroit any longer. And I think the final nail, Can you go to the next slide, please?

[00:26:00]Was when the Lions lost and had a 016 season. That was the pinnacle moment.

[00:26:08]Like we have got to do something different. We people just don't care about us. and even an alliance uh aren't aren't working to help Detroit. So, something really interesting began to happen and this just sort of outlines what I talked about over a timeline um in 2010 and I actually worked for one of the administrations at that time. We had three mayors in a year and a half.

[00:26:35]That's really you can imagine the impact and instability that creates of having three mayors in a year and a half and one of them was sent to prison. So you can imagine how unstable and destabilizing that was for the city. And then in 2012 we start the between 2010 and 2012 we started the framework process and I'll get to that. And then in 2013 was the the official bankruptcy and receiverhip from the state uh for Detroit. And then uh in 2014, and I'm not going to get into it, maybe in the questions and discussion, I can talk a little bit more about the grand bargain.

[00:27:22]It was one of the only times in the country where this happened and mostly because Detroit was the largest city to experience a full bankruptcy in the United States. Um and then uh in 2015 as I talked about before was the tax foreclosure peak. Can you go to the next?

[00:27:43]And so one of the really important things that happened as a resident, as someone who worked in Detroit, the Detroit the Detroit strategic framework process began in 2010. And this was um if you were an architect, no matter where you were in the world, you were coming to Detroit to or an urban planner or a a an urbanist, you were coming to Detroit to work on this strategic framework process. This was the largest framework process, the largest community planning process in the United States.

[00:28:24]It still is. over 200,000 people participated in this process. So this there wait can you go back just for a second before I go into that? There were two major things that happened.

[00:28:38]The first major thing was that funders both uh private corporate as well as private philanthropy funded the city to begin to just to begin to govern uh because they were not able to do basic city functions at that time. And then the second thing they did was create this planning process that would really invest and this process was almost $16 million over a two-year period uh to make sure that people were able to participate. Okay, we can go to the next slide and then I'm going to I think my time is almost up. And this process was so important because this was going to be a 50-year economic and sustainable fu future for Detroit. And it focused on five core elements which I really I can't read up here, but it's it's jobs and neighborhoods.

[00:29:40]Economics were trying to connect people to those jobs based on where you lived.

[00:29:46]land use and the open space. At that time, there was 49 square miles of vacant land in Detroit, um, which surpassed even Philadelphia at that point. And then layering all of that to actually create this framework for Detroit's future. And so the next slide.

[00:30:09]So it we ended up creating this 50-year framework which became the Detroit Future City Framework which is a 450 page um workbook. There are only five left of them um in and they're in our office. The rest are scattered throughout uh the United States and the world. that really outlines what this vision could look like for Detroit.

[00:30:39]Detroit Future City, the organization that I have the privilege of leading, is now a research center, a think tank, and an urban innovation center. And we still drive the core principles of economic inclusion, of finding ways for Detroit residents to understand how Detroit is growing and changing and participating in that growth and change. We also spend still spend a lot of time on land use and prioritizing land use as a primary uh feature of redevelopment for Detroit.

[00:31:21]Uh and that's really and then the economic future for Detroit, how we can connect people to jobs to small business opportunities for the future as we uh see it through. I think I probably talked over the last slide, but um this is basically what we do. So, thank you.

[00:31:40]I'm really excited to join the conversation today.

[00:31:43]>> Ben, that was so great. I just felt like it it really built so well on Sandre's kind of like this longer history and then this more recent history and and something resonated with me is like you're looking at these macroeconomic conditions and trends and changes and yet the inspiring part was that this highly participatory human centric process is what is is really a success story of what came out of that. So, I mean that connects so directly to what we're looking to do at Future Cities at the National Building Museum. So, I'm just thrilled to to have you be able to share your work on this platform where we are really bringing the same ethos uh to to a national conversation. So, let's keep on moving.

[00:32:29]Our next speaker is going to take all of this and talk about what is currently happening in Detroit and perhaps where's the future going. So, I will turn it over now to Alexa. Take us away. Thanks so much, James. And I really appreciate being here with you, Sandra and Ana. We get to work together. I'm always amazed and excited to work with the brilliant things you do, and you've actually teed me up perfectly to step into the next piece of the story. Um because yes, I think as Ana laid out, you know, the national story of Detroit was just so negative for such a time and a lot of it were these really macroeconomic issues, right? Far bigger than what the city could manage on its own. Um, I'm going to step back just a tiny bit, too, because in spite of all of this, there was a lot of active work happening. If you go back just for a second, um, this is our downtown in 1999. Um, very autooriented, most of the space is for cars. Around Detroit's 300th anniversary in 2001, a group of business leaders began to get together to reimagine what this could look like. And if you go to the next slide, um, it's now become this amazing public park, Campus Marshius, that's really the heart of our downtown.

[00:33:36]Next slide. It's got an urban beach. Um, if you go to the next slide, in the winter we transform it into our ice rink, tree lighting, Quanza celebration, manura lighting. Like, it's really become not only for the city, but the region, this really amazing place of gathering in the heart of the city. Um, similarly, there's been a ton of advocacy and work done over the last 20 plus years to transform our riverfront.

[00:33:58]Um, so taking it from a very industrial place into now an amazing premier public space that draws people not only from the city but across the region. Um, to really be able to be, to celebrate, to be in community with each other. Um, there's some amazing features that deal with storm water. There's a new state park. But all of this work and all this effort was happening in parallel with a lot of what Anika was laying out in terms of what was happening with the auto bankruptcy, what was happening with the city's bankruptcy. Um, the amazing engagement work that was starting to happen with Detroit Future City over that time horizon. Um, you know, we've been investing in a number of rails to trails project. This is one called the Dwinder cut that really started near the bottom. Um, and around 2009, there was a lot of work coming out of the Obama administration to leverage federal dollars into transforming um, some of these abandoned rail corridors into really premier public spaces. Um, this is a walking and biking path that also connects up to Detroit's eastern market and down to the riverfront. But a lot of people really working hard and also allowing the space for this amazing bike culture that we have in Detroit that isn't always so well known, but just to flourish. um opportunities for entrepreneurship, activation and arts really began to find these kind of amazing public spaces that could host a lot of this programming.

[00:35:22]Um so I joined the city around 2015. So at that moment where in Ana's graphic, right, we're at the height of the tax forclosure crisis, we were continuing to think about, you know, what does public space mean? How can we really activate it? And how does it become a driver of where people want to be in place? Um this is right in front of our city hall.

[00:35:40]the spirit of Detroit as this iconic statue that's on the city logo. Um there was a big push to think about this as a civic space. Um really took from the Janet Satic playbook of temporary activation. Um if you move to the next slide, it's since become this kind of phenomenal gathering space. It got a lot of push back in the beginning, but yoga, food trucks, it's an incredibly activated zone of our downtown um that has really begun to knit together, if you go to the next slide, this network of public spaces from the river through the downtown that I think has really supported um a number of the businesses that have come back downtown. It supports a lot of the events we're seeing downtown. Um and it supported us actually doing a lot of office conversion over time. We were lucky to have a lot of pre-war office buildings, but to really think of downtown as actually a neighborhood with residents um has been a big part of the transformation that I think you've seen over the last decade and a half um of what's happened to what's happened to downtown.

[00:36:37]Um Sandre mentioned this project because I think it's important to us. It was kind of our iconic poster child building of, you know, Detroit's failed. that I think uh the the renovation that Sandra's done through Quinn Evans with Ford Motor Company to bring this building back has been phenomenal. But further than that, it's really starting to become if you go to the next slide, a catalyst for a whole ecosystem of the future. Right? So again, the auto industry is a critical piece of our economy. Um but there's a lot of opportunity in thinking about hard tech.

[00:37:07]There's an amazing group um that's put together Black Tech Saturdays that operates out of this Ford Motor Company campus. Um, and I'm really excited about the ways that our economy is building off that base and beginning to diversify in a lot of these really amazing places and sites that have begun to be reinvested in. Um, but around this time 2015 16 when there's a lot of momentum picking up downtown. Um, and also is laid out in a lot of the Detroit future city process was there was a huge huge political demand for like okay downtown's coming back. What about our neighborhoods? We are truly a city of neighborhoods. um we're 139 square miles. Our downtown core is like 7.2 of those. And the big question became, you know, what about the rest of the city?

[00:37:51]And so at uh in the planning department at that time, we were really trying to think about, you know, what does it mean to translate that urban vitality into neighborhoods, it means jobs, it means restaurants, it means those third places you want to be, but it has a really different scale and has a really different set of needs than in a downtown core. Um, and I think we also saw an opportunity, you know, to to grow the pipeline of who builds, who develops, who are these small business owners that could really start to anchor a lot of our our core neighborhoods across across the city. Um, so we began to think across a couple of different assets. How do we think about the space we own as the city, our parks, our greenways, really our streets, how do we think of them as a as a place and a place we have jurisdiction? How do we align that also with bringing new types of development? Um, we are a very single family city. That came out in the slido.

[00:38:41]You know, how do we diversify the typologies of housing? How do we create more options for people of all stages of life to be in our neighborhoods? And then fundamentally, how did we begin to stabilize this single family housing stock that was just so battered by um the foreclosure crisis out of the great recession, great depression recession.

[00:38:59]Um, next slide, please.

[00:39:01]uh we really did this and really built on I think a lot of the engagement framework that was mentioned to try and again invest in these places but to do so in a way with residents if you go to the next slide um that are animated by people right because we can we can build nice stuff but if if it's not lived in we're sort of not meeting the mark um and so if you kind of go through some of the next slides you know we were doing a lot of popups with people and testing out ideas um streetcapes have become somewhat popular in the city it wasn't a thing we had in Detroit. We were very auto oriented. Our streets had a lot of excess capacity. Um, and if you click through the next slides, we really had to imagine with people like what if this really was a neighborhood street. Um, this is Liveroy, which has become a major commercial anchor. You know, we started to put down literally tempera paint gaff tape and kind of mock up these bike lanes and people just started coming out to use them. Um, this led to some pretty major capital investments.

[00:39:57]This is Liveroy before we started. We really gave about 25 extra feet of space back to people to an elevated bike lane um to making space for businesses and really thinking about how the street could actually be a driver for economic development. How could this be a place where we could encourage people to shop um unplanned by us, these became incredibly resilient during the pandemic when then we had places for people to be. Um businesses could have takeout windows, outdoor seating, and the public space for us has proven truly resilient.

[00:40:28]Um aligned with this again we were working to reinvest in the building stock of our corridors. Um this is a commercial building. It had been a BC Seagull's department store. Uh if you go to the next slide, it's now been renovated immediately adjacent to this bike lane. The the department store has um 10 apartment units. So we're really trying to integrate more housing typologies, more density to really support the corridors and create these more walkable nodes throughout our city.

[00:40:55]Um we've continued to do this thinking about parks and greenways again a lot of activation a lot of testing um that then we always tried to convert into true physical capital improvement. So if you go to the next slide you know testing out bike lanes starting to build them into our parks and greenways. Um if you move through some of these you know we really invested into residents to become activators of those space. Um, we worked with our small businesses to host workshops to help us build things and really connect again people place and using this investment as an economic driver. Um, we took vacant lots that had formerly been single family homes and instead of just thinking about infill, we thought about how might we convert some of these into public parks and other spaces that really become something for neighborhoods and um residents to rally around when we think about economic development. But these have since become really core places in terms of where um people recreate, where they go, and where they find really important. We think about winter. You know, how do we how do we use the barbecue pits and really host a samore party in the winter? Um you know, what does it mean and look like to give kids more positive places to be in their neighborhoods. Um so again, we've taken this approach across corridors in the city. If you go to the next slide, we think a lot about the population of entrepreneurs who are populating these spaces. Um, oftentimes these are people living in the proximate neighborhoods.

[00:42:19]We have a number of programs, one of which is Motor City Match where we try to match um, entrepreneurs and brickandmortar developers and bring them together.

[00:42:28]And then if you move ahead, um, what I found really amazing is we've had a few places to capture some data and see what the impacts been. Um, in the neighborhood I was just showing you, you know, 2017, 2023, we pulled people huge increases in the perception of safety also at night, right? This is not the trend line I think that we're nationally hearing all the time. Uh if you go to the next one, we were also asking about trust, right? Another national challenge, right? Interpersonal trust, isolation. We were seeing this kind of engagement and active investment actually increasing people who believe not only in kind of general trust with each other, but if you go to the next slide, um also trust in municipal government. Right? I think Ana you laid out perfectly our challenge, right? We'd gone through this secession of mayors.

[00:43:12]we'd gone through bankruptcy. Um, if you go move to the next slide as well, we were really seeing these investments both help bring people together in their neighborhoods. Um, so huge amounts of, you know, on the left is people who never spent time with their neighbors.

[00:43:26]On the right are people who are now, you know, once a week, twice a week really starting to mix in these places, um, that are public places in their neighborhood. And then to me, the most impact is, you know, the trajectory we think we're on and people's belief in the future of the city and the future of their neighborhoods has been a a huge swing in perception in the last last 5 years. Um, I'll kind of forecast some of where we're going. I know we're we're coming to a great time to grab questions. Um, but we're continuing to take this work forward. One of our major initiatives is something called the Joe Lewis Greenway, which will be a 27mi loop rails to trail some on street um pathways that are coming. If you go to the next slide, um you can kind of see this huge on the left a lot of this in formerly industrial land that we're now transforming into this connected greenway. Um it's punctuated on the next slide by some amazing public parks that are now starting to reach out into neighborhoods across the city. Um and I think we're just really excited to continue the momentum that we've begun to build on in spite of the challenges we've faced over the last several decades. And so with that, I'll wrap up and bring it back to the group.

[00:44:32]>> Wow. Um I am blown away. I I I truly uh am learning alongside our audience here around this work and and truly just part of what strikes me is that the amount of work the the success of the work of course, but there's a there's a productivity here in terms of that the work you're doing that is is truly um stunning. It's it's incredible. Um, we're going to get into a conversation here and I want to really invite the audience to send in their questions. Um, I'll tee us off, but I'd like to be getting to the questions that the audience wants to hear. Um, so please use the slido to use that Q&A function and get your questions for our incredible panelists today. So, let's pull everybody up on screen. And I kind of want to start with that that I what really struck me which is like there's this story of the problem, the decline, the challenge and yet what you all have really painted the the this other story is how you all responded to that and rooted in history, brought people together and have transformed the city in in small painting ways to big project ways to urban ways.

[00:45:47]um maybe for the audience to just share some of like the keys to success, but not so much from the specific of it as more from for me at least this the productivity of it. I heard you mentioning like pilots and things like what are some of the ways that you feel like you were just able to get all this done cuz I think some cities want to do all this and perhaps just feel like they can't or it's too slow or what. Alexa, maybe I can start with you. Like what are some of these kind of takeaways and like how you did this?

[00:46:19]>> Yeah. No, it's a great question. I think it's a little bit of our like Detroit secret sauce at the moment. Um, you know, I think there was a real galvanizing effect of everything that Sandra and Anika laid out. Um, that, you know, we were facing these huge structural challenges. We had to do things differently. And I do think we've built in our ecosystem um, an ability to work across sectors. You know, it's messy. It's bumpy. We don't always agree with each other. We butt heads. You got to figure out ego. But there really is an effort to work whether you're in, you know, public sector, private sector, nonprofits, philanthropy, touching grassroots to really build a coalition.

[00:46:59]And I think everyone is extremely invested in the city's success in a different way. Um that we do try even despite disagreements to be pulling in the same direction. And I think you're seeing some of the the impact of what that can do. So, so I'm hearing there's this kind of like I've heard this equation of like the the thing you need to overcome has to be enough of a pressure to get you to do that. Um, but Ana, maybe I can pass it over to you and and you can share your story in that.

[00:47:26]And there's a question that's already come in about specifically the financing piece to that as one of those major obstacles and challenges. Maybe you can speak more to that.

[00:47:35]um the finance which part of the well let me let me say this because I think this might answer the question regardless >> that um it helps to have billionaires and billionaire companies care about a city because when the media was when the narrative was that Detroit was a dead city nobody wanted to live there was still this significant investment that was still happening in Detroit even downtown. So that at the same time Rocket Dan Gilbert and Rocket Mortgage was making major investments downtown that had an enormous impact on the stability and continued growth of downtown during our darkest moments. As um Alexa mentioned, the riverfront consery that was enormous.

[00:48:34]When people when the lights weren't on in the city, there was a concerted effort to make an investment on the riverfront because the people with those major resources saw a future for Detroit. They knew that Detroit wasn't dead. And at the same time, I think what was really critical is that you began to also see um the grassroots efforts on the ground for things like home repair and housing and cooperative uh cooperative housing lending and cooperative housing repair.

[00:49:13]>> Yeah.

[00:49:13]>> In neighbor at the neighborhood level, that was a thing that was happening. you continued to see urban gardens, urban farms, the control of land uh was had a significant impact. There's over 2500 urban farms in Detroit of of varying size and scale and most of them began during this period of time. So there there was this resiliency whether you were a very at the very top of the income strata and were able to make this investment or at the lower end of the income strata and could only invest in your own block.

[00:49:56]>> All of that had a a significant impact uh for for Detroit. And to me, the the culmination of that was really the Ford purchase of Michigan Central. It really at that time when that happened, it felt because, you know, I think we might forget that Michigan Central was owned by a Canadian um company and individual that held that building hostage and vacant for 35 years intentionally.

[00:50:35]Um, and it wasn't until Ford purchased that property and put in I will never forget when they put in the new windows, >> every that was all everybody talked about because there hadn't been new windows in that building for over 35 years.

[00:50:52]>> Yeah. Yeah. I love this this view of like the the the critical part is not one piece to the equation, right? This is this is multiple facets to it at different scales, different income levels. Sandre, how do you see this kind of these keys to unlocking the success of this story?

[00:51:08]>> Yeah. Um, I guess I'll finish the Michigan Central story that uh to kind of resonate with that. I mean, as an architectural firm, Quinn Evans was actually on that building owner uh to to do certain things like put an elevator in the building so we can actually work and get construction crews in the building. So it's like it's advocating happening at all levels to save key that that key structure that was right on our our riverfront. And when Ford purchased the building that first set of drawings that rolled out on the table to talk about how to reuse it and how to repurpose it uh were Quinn Evans drawings. So the activating you know the act being an activist happens in the professional side as well. Uh the other thing to that is that um all the planning studies and the strategic neighborhood uh studies that came out of both uh the city of Detroit and future uh Detroit future uh cities was just uh a catalyst to uh help architecture follow those plans, right? So, we were able to have a lot of uh the projects like uh Michigan Central Station happen out of the Corktown neighborhood strategic plan work plan and you can look that up online and see all of the the information that went into these different strategic neighbor neighborhood framework plans across the city. Uh we were fortunate enough to work on three of those. Uh the Warrenale Cody Rouge neighborhood framework plan which literally was focused on kids. uh and having the youth lead a planning effort. Uh that won the national planning award with the um American planning uh association. Uh it was so it was a great to be a part of that. Uh like I said the planning studies like what I showed with the 20th century civil rights sites the the work that Detroit future cities did uh from taking vacant land to parks and same thing with the planning department that happened with Dr. Suites uh project that was with two vacant uh sites that former homes that that what was part of the concept of that that project that I shown. So it's like all of us uh seemed like we were working in unison to uh to get get Detroit back to where it was and and you can come to the city and get a t-shirt about it. Uh Detroit versus everybody and Detroit hustles harder. That is just the way the people in Detroit feel.

[00:53:22]That's just the way of the city and it happens all the way from our city government all the way down to our our neighborhood. So that is just the way we are and you come here you will get that in full effect.

[00:53:33]>> Wow. Yeah. I got goosebumps with you talking about that. I mean there's something so powerful about the what I hear is partially this identity that you know you you hold so clearly and it shows up in the work and therefore the results of what you're able to accomplish. I I just want to always I love to go into the the challenging piece of this and the nuance of this because that sounds incredible and yet if we're trying to replicate that in other cities, I wonder if each of you can kind of take me into some of these moments where it wasn't going well and you had to work over a a challenge. And another kind of lens to that for me is knowing that you put in plans and then there's just this always reality of, you know, the bestlaid plans can really, you know, meet the ground and have to change. And so I'm also interested in kind of, you know, we're hearing about all this incredible planning work and yet I'm also hearing the amount of productivity that's happening. So yeah, maybe Alexa, I'll come back to you in terms of like, you know, those moments where you were you were mentioning the kind of working through the conflict or what were some of the things you learned of how to do that? What what are the replicable examples of that?

[00:54:40]>> Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think another part of our Detroit DNA is like we we can handle conflict. Like we don't totally shove conflict down. Like there's there's a fair amount of it and we we tend to face it. Um so, you know, it was mentioned about the funding, right? We've got huge private investors.

[00:54:57]We had a limited amount of city dollars.

[00:54:59]The philanthropic sector is a big piece of our ecosystem. Um, and each of those folks, you know, have different boards, have a city council, have, you know, corporate directors and you're you're being driven by different imperatives.

[00:55:12]You're on different timelines and you're like, okay, how do we roll up our sleeves and get this done? um you know there's there were many times where those timelines did not line up at all and it was like okay how are we going to do this and I think a lot of the time um it had to do at least in planning we really were actionoriented in the plans um it was like okay we can come up with an amazing idea I'm a deeply pragmatic optimist but it was like the first bite had to be doable the first step had to be something at least from city government that we're like we will fund this we're not going to the next step isn't fundraising but it's a really actionoriented plan and I think that's what helped with the friction was okay we don't agree you know you've got this rub I've got that rub but if we can just get this one thing done together how do we take that first step >> wow I mean that that feels genuinely something we can all learn from is like take that bite-sized piece and also that culture of don't avoid the conflict right that that's inherent to the process we we have to work through that um Ana, what what what do you kind of uh see from that same perspective of leading now this this plan and and bringing it into reality?

[00:56:26]Yeah, I I I do think, you know, and I've been all over the country as you can imagine people are wanting to hear about the Detroit future city story and oftent times cities will say, "Well, we don't have a Kresky Foundation or we don't have a Dan Gilbert with a billion dollars to invest in our downtown."

[00:56:52]And I I I feel like I don't know that I agree with that because I feel like cities large and small have somebody there who can who's always been the driver of economic opportunity. I feel like it's less about the money. It's much more about believing in the future of that city and believing that that city, every citizen, every resident of that city has a future in that city. And that getting in line with that, no matter your race, ethnic, ethnicity, culture, getting in line with that was so critical for us because it would have been very easy. We would have had a win if we only fixed downtown and the 7.2 area. People would still say, "Oh, Detroit is great."

[00:57:54]>> But all of these people that have made these investments have also said Detroit is a city of 139 square miles. And so we are not going to build a city that you can only come downtown. We have to build a city that has a full breath of neighborhood that wants to attract and grow the population here. And you're beginning you're you're seeing that we're seeing a growth trajectory. Now the economy is not is not working in our favor right now. So we may not see that uh that growth continue in the next uh ACS. But certainly the investment and even in the investment of core neighborhood structures, neighborhood buildings as anchors for those neighborhoods since we're talking about the building museum. What a difference that makes at the neighborhood level, investing in that library as the anchor, investing in that core theater building as the anchor. Those are things that draw those neighborhoods together. And that that is as much of the story as Rocket Mortgage uh coming downtown.

[00:59:11]>> Um we promise we did not uh tell you to say that and I admit it has shown up in our other episodes as well. These cultural institutions that really root identity and belonging which drives investment which drives that commitment to the future of these cities. That's so well said. Um, Sandra, final words here as we wrap up our time again on some of these kind of lessons you'd want to share or those moments that got challenging you pushed through.

[00:59:36]>> I I definitely say from a a challenging standpoint as the economy goes that that does affect our citizens and individuals within our city. Um, but I I have been a benefit of a lot of the um resources that the city of Detroit has around entrepreneurship.

[00:59:53]uh literally when uh the 2008 recession hit Detroit and then they said in Detroit if if the rest of the uh country has a cold we have the flu. Uh so we were we were hit hard during that time but there were a lot of entrepreneurship resources through a lot of entities within the city. Techtown was the entity that I uh started my architectural firm through because I got laid off during the um the uh economic downturn and then my firm ended up getting uh acquired by Coin Evans. That's how I'm here today.

[01:00:25]But that resource is still here in the city like Alexa mentioned the Black Tech Saturdays. It's another cohort of entrepreneurship coming through that uh organization and uh really farreaching because they travel across the country.

[01:00:39]Um so like I said that grit is in is being built into the sense of industrial and place that Detroit has.

[01:00:46]Entrepreneurship has always been at the roots of our city. Uh and that has helped uh different individuals you know uh climb out of um through innovation and our in our thought process climb out of uh our our our down times as well. So the city continues to reinvent itself every time uh we go through something.

[01:01:07]that sense of resilience is just built in. Uh and then like I said like catalyst projects across the city. Uh it doesn't just happen downtown. Uh like Alexa mentioned the BC go building uh at Liver Noise the seven mile that's also another project and we believe like saving these existing places and these buildings. Uh we have a saying here at the firm the greenest building is a building that's already built. So, we're revitalizing and re uh instituting these these key neighborhood staples across the across the city. It it is just uh so much work to be done and everybody is so passionate here. Uh it it it Yeah, we're we're not giving up. Uh we'll just keep going to build our great city back to the Paris of the Midwest.

[01:01:49]>> Well, this this the passion comes through from all of you in this work and and this word grit you're using. I've been hearing all week, right? to showing up to these challenges and these tasks with this Detroit spirit that you all really brought to this program today.

[01:02:02]So, um, our time always goes too fast, but please, let's give a virtual round of applause for our speakers today.

[01:02:08]Absolutely phenomenal stories, inspiring, powerful, and thank you for your work. I mean, really, all of you are clearly so committed and doing so much uh to to bring this story to life in the city of Detroit. For those of you our last minute here, stay tuned. Our last episode, we are heading to Chattanooga. So, we are wrapping up our future Friday series. We have one more for you all. And this is going to be a really beautiful kind of final chapter in this ongoing story that we're telling about the future of cities. Thank you all for joining us today for Future Friday. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Happy Friday. Happy Future Friday. It's been my pleasure. Have a great Friday everyone. Bye-bye now.