From left: Heaster Wheeler, Steering Committee Member; Toni Griffin, Director of Technical Planning Team and Rip Rapson, President and CEO of The Kresge Foundation listen in following their presentations at the unveiling of Detroit Future City report. (Photo by Thomas Richardson/Tell Us Detroit)

“Detroit City Future” Plans for the Next 50 Years

By Karen Hudson Samuels/Tell Us Detroit

DETROIT (Tell Us Det) - Detroit’s future may never have looked brighter, thanks to a two year collaborative effort that produced the Detroit Future City report and the $150 million dollars in support announced by the Kresge Foundation to finance its execution.

“Every dollar Kresge spends in Detroit over the next five years will be dedicated to this plan” said Kresge Foundation President & CEO Rip Rapson.

The Detroit Future City strategic framework was unveiled Wednesday by Mayor Dave Bing and a broad coalition of partners from government, civic, educational and community groups. “This is the most comprehensive framework every established for an American city,” said Toni Griffin, Director of the Technical Planning Team and a New York based expert on urban planning.

Over a two year period, some 30,000 interviews, numerous focus groups and input from urban planners, locally and nationally, all provided data for planning the city’s future.

Launched as the Detroit Works Project by the Bing administration, the 347 page Detroit Future City report addresses Detroit’s assets, challenges and opportunities and is intended to guide future decision-making over next half century.

The long term plans for the city are divided into six elements: Economic Growth, Land Use, Neighborhoods, Land and Building Assets, City Systems and Civic Engagement, each with its own set of recommendations.

On the Economic Growth front, the report says the challenge is to grow a diversified economy, but must also address “The need to enhance equity by creating job opportunities for Detroiters of all backgrounds and skill levels.” Equitable job growth means “the explicit recognition and dismantling of current barriers facing Detroit residents in terms of access to skills development and employment and entrepreneurship opportunities”.

Today four “pillars” of employment account for over fifty percent of Detroit’s employment base: education and medical employment (“Eds and Meds”), digital and creative jobs, industrial employment (both traditional and new technologies, large-scale and artisanal, manufacture and processes), and local entrepreneurship.

The hurdles facing the pillars of economic growth include this fact. “The city has only 27 jobs per 100 residents”. By comparison Denver has 80 jobs per 100 residents. “Of the top 100 Cities only 5 have fewer jobs per resident” according to the Detroit Future City report.
Establishing employment districts in already viable sectors of the city is a recommendation the report has to begin addressing this challenge.

Recommendations that address land use are visionary but possible. The report sees improving the quality of life by transforming vacant land into carbon forests and water retention ponds to achieve better health and beautify the city.

Mayor Bing and all partnering groups in the Detroit Future City project stressed community engagement as essential in moving city’s future forward. A copy of the report is available online at www.http://detroitworksproject.com/