Plan Detroit Policy Workshop — Open Space and Environment, 4.12.2025

1:49PM Apr 14, 2025

Speakers:

Keywords:

Detroit master plan

open space

environment

data analysis

community engagement

policy workshops

vision statement

guiding principles

green infrastructure

climate challenges

vacant land

public health

land use strategy

community involvement

economic opportunities.

And Detroit plan. Detroit is the city's master plan of policies, which is a 20 year roadmap for the for future development and change in Detroit. So this is really our opportunity to look at kind of where we've been and where we are now and then where we hope to be in the future, and then making sure that we have policies in place to make sure that we can get there. So the last master plan of policies within the city of Detroit, because we do have a master plan of policies right now, was adopted in 2009 but a lot of the data and engagement from that plan was really from like around 2002 so just front of the table, if you think back to where we were in 2002 who thinks the city has changed since 2002 Raise your hands. Show a hands. I think we can all kind of agree that the city has experienced a lot of change since then. So that is why this work is so important, and we're so grateful that you're here today, because we need to acknowledge the changes from that's happened since 2002 and even before 2002 to make sure that we recognize, you know how things are on the ground today and where we want to go. So we are kind of thinking about this in multiple ways. The first is really focusing on data and analysis to understand what are the conditions of the city, particularly how it's changed, but also just what it is today, you know. And we're here to talk about open space and environment, you know, how much vacant land do we have today versus how much we have when the plan was written or adopted in 2009 but a whole bunch of other analysis around, you know, economics and, you know, just the population in general. But on top of that, there's kind of the data analysis that we'll talk a little bit about. We really want to make sure we combine that with all of your lived experience and what you experience in your neighborhoods, in your community and your jobs, so that it's a combination of data analysis and kind of the lived experience within the city of Detroit to help us really shape where we're going into the future. And now I'm going to pass it off to Julie to talk about kind of where we've been and where we're going.

All right, thank you. Dara, good afternoon, everyone. I am Julie Carnegie. I am the project manager for plan Detroit from the city of Detroit planning and development department. So hopefully you are familiar with the Master Plan process, but if you're not three phases to this planning process, kicking off early last year with our analysis and visioning phase, and that was really about doing that research and looking at the data, but then also doing community engagement about your current attitudes and the issues that you're facing in your neighborhoods, as well as future aspirations for the city of Detroit, which we'll kind of talk about how we synthesize so far that lays The foundation for our next phase, which we have just transitioned into now, draft policies. This is where we take what we learned in phase one, and we build on it, and we start to talk about solutions. We know what challenges and opportunities are out there in the city. Now, what are we going to do about it? And so these public policy workshops are the first opportunity for us to have conversation with residents and other stakeholders about those policy solutions. And you'll notice we're doing it really early on in this phase. We just kicked off this phase because we want to make sure that you're involved right at the start as we're starting to think about options, versus once we've drafted some policy solutions, and then later this year, we'll start to pull it all together and move into that last phase of the final plan, drafting. Every thing that we're doing is a piece of a puzzle, and it's all going to fit together and build this master plan. So we're here today to talk about this next puzzle piece, goals and potential solutions. This is to get started thinking about the real need plan, and that is why your input is so important here today, today's discussion is one of five workshops. We had our first workshop housing neighborhoods this morning. We'll have three more next week on Arts and Culture, mobility, jobs and economy, still spacing all three. So hopefully you enjoy yourself, and you're interested enough to sign up and come back and see it on one of those days, and you can go to plan detroit.com to register for any of those upcoming sessions. So I'm going to go over a little bit of what we've learned from you so far as kind of a level setting of where we've been so far in. Pop Ups. So we started by asking you your vision for the future of Detroit. We asked this very open ended question, in 20 years, Detroit would be what someone looked like for us. So we started with the visioning survey, and then we took our show on the road out to the neighborhoods with our city voices tour, and we did about 60 pop ups everywhere from rec centers to big events and even grocery stores to talk with folks about your vision for the future. So hopefully you've seen our Jenga, but we did it in kind of a fun Jenga format last summer for city of North East tour. All right, here are some of the things that we heard. We heard that we want Detroit to be vibrant, prosperous, community driven, kind of a sense of collective action or community innovative, equitable. But we also heard that Detroit is a lot of these things today, and we didn't want the vision statement to ignore all the great things that were going on currently. So when I share the vision statement that you might have a chance to review along the wall, that's kind of the thought that we have is we want to build on our strengths to become even better in the future. We also asked about your priorities, the issues that matter most to you, and the planning topics you wanted to dive into more in this process, every single one of these card exercises drove the thinking behind having a policy workshop around it. So open space and environment cards were selected 908 times with some of those cards about access to parks and recreation and having natural landscapes at the top. So you'll see those kinds of things represented in the exercise that you're about to do at your table, to continue the conversation from kind of a general idea to a more specific conversation about policy solutions. So our vision statements, our draft vision statement, I should say, built on all of that communication framework can be summarized this way, Detroit will be a city of choice and opportunity. And we do, we say this completely, recognizing that this might not be the case today for all people, but that's the aspiration in the future. So the vision statement says, what do we want Detroit to become? So every single policy that we're going to discuss should be working towards this overall vision for where we want the city to be in 20 years. We also want our policies to be rooted in our values. These are what we stand for. These are the guiding principles that should be informing everything we do in the plan. And these guiding principles, the values are on those green boards over there. So please take a chance to review them in more detail. There are definitions for each one, but they are resilience, or if you want, you would call it grit, equity, innovation, solidarity and legacy. So we put some drafts language for all of these out for you. That's our first take at vision and value statements to guide the plan, but we absolutely want to hear your feedback and continue to refine them as we move through the process. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bethany from our consultant team to give you a little more technical background and get you into the activity.

Thanks, Julie. How's everybody doing? We're still okay. We're still awake. Everybody having a little bit of that, like post lunch. Sleepy at the moment. If you didn't get a snack at some point, please feel free. As Julie said, my name is Stephanie. I work for Smith group on the consulting team, both as an urban designer and also as a community engagement specialist. So I've had the honor of collaborating with summer to try and make these sessions possible. Today I'm going to go through a little bit of the data that supports all of the things that you all have communicated as a part of the engagement. So we're using both of these as kind of a measure of the things that the city should begin to tackle. So when we specifically look at parks and open space, it is improving. Our access across the city is getting better to parks and open space, but there's still an opportunity specifically for transit access to improve. So about 80% of residents live within a 10 minute walk of a park in their neighborhood. However, nearly 60% of residents are within a 20 minute bus ride to a recreation center. So there's still a bit of a gap in how we're accessing the amenities and resources across the city. Health impacts and environmental risks are specifically hitting people differently across neighborhoods in the city. When we talk about those environmental issues, we're thinking of things like air quality, urban heat islands and flooding. So obviously, with some of the recent flooding in southwest, is an extremely pertinent issue that's hitting our neighborhoods in various capacities. And so trying to figure out what what are those environmental stressors that people are experiencing? What is the prevalence of those on a neighborhood to neighborhood? Basis and really trying to understand what the interventions can be. As one example, we have some neighborhoods that have 37% degree coverage, so lots of space for shade. Other neighborhoods only have like 15% so it's inequitable across the city. There we go. The city has a wealth of natural resources. Not only do we have access to the Detroit River, but there's also 12,800 acres of wetlands, streams and other waterways that are both great amenities to the city, but also deserve our protection and care moving forward as we consider what development and growth looks like, and then our climate challenges require innovative approaches. So again, because we've got unequal distribution of some of these environmental risks happening across the city, there's a need to kind of understand what does it mean to take advantage of the opportunities in our neighborhoods, like vacant land to better improve our climate challenges. We don't have to use all of our vacant land just to build new housing or new businesses, which there's opportunity for new open spaces, land to be preserved, and other things in order to make sure that we're getting some climate benefit out of those things as well. And that leads me to vacant spaces can be an asset and not just a community burden. We kind of understand that across the entire city, there's an unequal distribution of that vacant land. So some neighborhoods feel really dense. Other neighborhoods have a lot of open space in them, and we need to be creative about what the solutions are in each of those places, so that ultimately, that land doesn't just continue to sit vacant, but it's being used for community good. And so what does all of this mean as part of the context for today, if you have questions, first and foremost about any of the data, any of the points that we're using to back up the conversations, we've got a couple of boards in the corner of the room over here that go into a little bit more detail on those and also begin to highlight what the overlaps are. So Julie and Dora mentioned, this is one of five conversations we're having as a part of our public policy workshops, we recognize that open space and environment does have unique challenges specifically to this as a topic, but we talk about things like vacant land that hits jobs and economy that hits housing and neighborhoods, and so we've got some illustration of how those things begin to overlap, so that we recognize that you all in the room are having conversations that are going to intersect with the folks who are participating in those other workshops. So we've listed out what some of those challenges are. We're starting today to talk about what the opportunities are to co create a land use strategy with a mission focused on getting people more access to walkable parks, making sure that people are in closer proximity to or have better access to our recreation centers across the city, continuing to preserve those vast natural resources and also making sure that we're integrating those public health concerns into our land use strategies, so that we're taking into consideration those climate risks as we make decisions towards development. But with all of that in mind, you all are the experts. You're experts on your neighborhood, you're experts on your daily experiences and things that you live in and work in on a daily basis. And so really, the point of today's conversation is take all of that information and begin to understand what the possibilities are for plan Detroit to tackle those things. So we want to understand all the possibilities. What are the tools that we can use as a master planning team and as the city to identify the solutions for the challenges that you're facing? We want to understand how those things might work in some neighborhoods and not others. So again, we're not looking at blanket solutions that just cover the city as a whole. But how does that begin to change as you go from neighborhood to neighborhood, prioritizing which of those possibilities should be included in the plan, or where we should start. So we might not be able to start with everything, but what's the most important thing for us to start with? And what can we kind of line up after that to keep going over the next 20 years and then identifying what needs to happen in order to make these things work? Well, we've got some ideas. We know that you all have some ideas of how this would work. Well, in your neighborhoods, we'd love to hear what that feedback is. So this is where we're going to begin the discussion piece of today's conversation. So we're going to do a little bit less talking at you and a little bit more talking with you. We've got about an hour and 10 minutes for this piece of the conversation, so lots of time to dig in to the topic at hand. We're going to divide this into two sections. First, you're going to start with a series of possibility cards that should be sitting on your table. They're probably hiding under your game board at the moment. So your facilitator at the table will be able to start pulling those things out for you. We've got six pre identified ideas, everything from expanded green infrastructure to climate ready neighborhood strategies. But we do want to emphasize that these are just conversational starters. Let me be very clear. We have not written planned Detroit. We we have not written any of it. We are here to begin. The conversation of what should be included in the writing of planned Detroit. And so the possibility cards that are sitting in front of you are really just conversation starters for you all to think through of possible ideas and solutions that could begin to address the challenges that you've already talked about through the city voices tour and other engagement. But if you don't think that those things will work in the city, or you've got other ideas. There's also blank cards on the table for you to provide all of that feedback as well. And we're going to do two things with it. So first you're going to have those possibility cards. We want to know what would make these things work. What are your concerns that you have with the ideas or approaches that are in front of you, and what are any new ideas that you want to share with the team that's going to be that 50 minute discussion. Once we get wrapped up with that piece of the conversation, we're going to spend about 20 minutes doing a prioritization exercise. So that's the large sheet of white paper that's got four buckets on it. On your table. We'd like you to take the possibility cards and begin to support them. What ideas do you like? What ideas do you think would work in some neighborhoods but not all of them? What ideas do you not like at all and don't think would work in the city of Detroit? And what are your new ideas that you're proposing today for us to consider. So with that, I'm going to pass it off to summer to get a pulse check and get us started. Okay,

thank you. Alright. So I see people looking at it. Don't look at the sheets. Hold on, that's okay. I was like, Don't tell them it's under the sheet method, because they don't look the facilitators will facilitate that. So let's just slow down. Let's pump our brakes. And I see everybody slow down. Alright? So this is what I have. I just want to make sure that in every table, because if we're at this point, we want to make sure that we have everybody consolidated to as many tables as possible, or, you know, kind of spread out as not too spread out, but everybody so one all facilitators. If you could please raise your hand if you are a facilitator at the table. Okay, so we have Okay, so we don't have,

okay, your

facility. Can you come over here for me, please? Do you don't have a facilitator? Yeah, raise your hand. You're a facilitator. I need you to raise your hands. I can see a visual. So we don't have a facilitator here. Victoria, can you come to this table right here for me, please? Okay. Facilitator, facilitator, facilitator, facilitator, empty. So we need somebody here. Okay, they are good. So I just wanna make sure I guys, I need three tables. Okay, so I need three facilitators. So Kim, I'm gonna have you. Oh, Kim, I'll have you go to this table, right here.

You're a

facilitator. Okay, you're good, okay, yeah, I was trying to figure out it's only this three, but it's not enough here. Oh, yeah, um, okay, so yeah, so we can, so there's only yeah, there's nobody there. Okay, so I think we can Victoria. Okay, yeah, we consolidated that one. Do you want three of you money coming up here? That'll be awesome sauce. I know it's a little bit of a journey. We got water on the way. Alright?

It's a funny. What so this,

we need a facilitator at this table here, yes, so you're right there, you're good, and then they're going to come this way. So we roll. Okay, this is perfect. Alright, I think we have everybody. So thank you for your patience. We know that sometimes, so let's go through a little bit. So these are the facilitators. Just so you all know what we're doing is we're using these cards as a prompt of a conversation. As Bethany stated earlier, there may be something on there that doesn't make sense to you, and that's completely fine. There's some things. If you say, Hey, we got some different ideas, then that's completely cool. And that's the concept of what we're looking to do. So on each one of your tables, there's also a long sheet that is a notepad for the participants. It's like a long sheet with some I want to make sure I get a sample of here. So there's long there's each one of you on that should have a so you can take notes while you're talking, you can take notes after the fact. We want to make sure that bringing you know, write these notes, we're going to collect those notes and be able to add to the conversation based off of these notes. So please use this as a baseline for you as well. There are the card props for each one of the cards that we're going to go through. But there's also blank additional cards, idea cards that should be in your table as well. This is a baseline for facilitators of hope as well. And then there is a failed document that has a couple of different suggestions that you might be talking to for the for the community members or. Part of this. For those our guests, there are part of us that you all use as well. Alright, so with that, we're going to go ahead and get started. We have about seven minutes or so for each one of the cards, and I hope to be able to prompt as we go along. And so the first card we have is talking about expanded green infrastructure network. Okay, this is the first card. And so what we want you want to do is take seven minutes or so to talk about the one here again. If there are things on here that you want to go outside of that place, please use it as do this as well. Alright, so we'll go seven minutes for this first card, and I will give you all a heads up on the next one.

What is, what was your most creative, innovative idea within the open space conversation today? So when you heard somebody go back, yeah, that was very innovative. But what is something that absolutely need to make sure that's a part of it. So I'm going to just kind of randomly go, is there anyone over here that like to share from

the table? We got

to out. Oh, okay, anybody else want to? No, you don't want you sure you want to do okay? I'm

going to give it to you anyway. Just give us your family and tell us what's the most innovative idea that came from this group? If we could just have everybody's attention. Oh, right, okay, nobody, okay, what do we got? We have somebody over here, alright, come over here.

Okay, yeah. So my name is Nadia. Oh, yeah, hi, hi. My name is Nadia, and I came up with the idea of turning vacant spots and vacant lots into neighborhoods into parking lots, so that way that we can protect assets like cars and stuff from flooding on the streets, while also freeing up spaces on the streets so that people can like, ride their bikes and walk to where they need to be, that we could also the parking lot could double as a green space. So maybe we have solar panels on the top, and we use it to catch like runoff from the rain and really just kind of help the community overall, and they have a safe place to like Park and that their kids can like play without, you know, being impeded by, oh, there's no space to walk because everybody is parking on the street. There's people parking on my grass, you know. So that was the idea.

Thank you. Anybody else want to walk down this way? Anybody else have a innovative idea that came back as a, okay, all right.

We talked at our table about my name is Hank. This is my lovely table. We had a few ideas that we wanted to share with you all. One is that residents should have the ability to make money off of park investments as vendors or otherwise as seasonal employees with the Parks and Rec to let them know how they can get connected to some of the economy around parks. So instead of running people out like, No, you're not allowed to sell here, let's find a pathway program for them to become a permitted legal vendor and help people grow entrepreneurship opportunities. We want safety in parks, but not we're not asking for creepy surveillance and cops. We're asking for other types of safety, and to think creatively about that. So we didn't see that as much in the strategies, but would like a little more thought about that. Generally support of the climate ready neighborhood strategies. However, it seems that we're working at cross purposes, because we're requiring a lot of parking, which is not a permeable service, general surface, generally, and we're turning around and trying to mitigate against parking lots. So we're doing something for that. And it seems like we need to reconcile that, figure that out no highway removal mentions, just buffering highway from that out there for natural areas and biodiversity. Day lighting creeks and natural waterways wasn't included, but that would still be a wonderful thing to explore, partnership with Native Americans, for example, this sugar bush activity that happens up in Rouge Park, great example of stewardship and more off street pathways. Instead of just prioritizing planned greenways, how do we add more greenways to be planned? Thank you

so much. Here I see your hands.

Which guy, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Yelena, and with a lot of our conference, a lot of our conversation, and I'm listening to everyone, one thing that we are missing is policy. We do not have anything standardized across any of the districts. And so as I was thinking about all of the suggestions, we kind of pick and choose where we go, and we assume that one neighborhood is going to benefit, and not all of the neighborhoods. And so can we talk about something standardized across all seven council districts, regardless of income?

All right, thank you. Anybody else one more table. Any other tables? Oh, alright, sweet. Alright. Who's going to speak? Just give us your name and give us your name.

My name is Eric, so there's this thing Barcelona super blocks. I don't know if anybody's familiar with y'all just read little somebody, but it says Barcelona, super blocks are a new and exciting way of organizing city streets. They're designed to make urban areas better for people to live in, rather than just drive through. They reorganize city blocks into groups of three by three. I guess you can have it whatever size you want it to be, but it prioritizes pedestrian cycling and parks in these areas banned automobiles, so you can't drive through these areas. So thought maybe something like that might be, you know, in the vacant here.

Alright, thank you. One

more. Oh, we got all right. I'm getting my workout. Thank you. My name is

Tracy theory. I over a period of time I've worked with Charles cross. He works with the collaborative design center, and I was trying not to be too loud, okay? And so over a great period of time, probably like eight to 10 years, he helped me to understand how to redevelop areas, and we began to find a square mile like around where I live, right where I live. And I started doing some designs based on his structure. He called it layering, right? So I learned how to layer. That means to that layering means to understand how development works. So you make different drawings. I took architecture, so it helped me to do that, and I made a design for like, a square mile, right? And he helped me with it. So once it got established, we reached out to Skillman Foundation, and basically they actually funded us to start a project. And so what I learned is that

if we got the right education, it took me a long time, then we'll get the right back, and we'll understand what the doctor founders The foundations are looking for, right? And then we'll be more, I believe, able to implement. But what I'm finding is that getting that knowledge and that education is not like right in your face, okay? I was to go down to the Detroit future city framework when they were developing that book. It's very thick, right? I still didn't get it from the book. I got it from the people who wrote the book, and I know those people, da Futura, people that are in the Detroit collaborative design center. I work with them, and so they helped me understand what I needed to understand so that I could actually work with open space with the right ideas according to the framework. And we were able to get funding from the president foundation, so now we got an ongoing project, square mile right? And green, blue, green infrastructure is a big part of it, and it's a real learning process. Process, and so it just takes a lot to it. I would say that these outreaches or workshops, I recall, are good, but I don't think, I think that there needs to be some type of more education systems to help people get beyond the problems or ideas, you kind of really come up with something that's really exclusive of a lot of different things. Excuse,

so general consensus around that is education baseline in terms of the work and execution from that. So that's helpful. Thank you. So we are truly, truly appreciative of everyone being engaged. And again, we want to definitely make sure that we're mindful of your or your time, and we'll get you all out of here. So there's a couple things that are going to be taking place. We have upcoming sessions that this week. So this week, this Saturday, was the first day. We have two sessions. We also have three sessions. Wanted to be able to convey all of them are going to be at this location. So we have a conversation around our arts and culture on Monday, mobility on Tuesday, jobs and economy on Wednesday. 530 to 730 are those times and you can go to plan detroit.com in order to register if you have not registered for that to be a part of it. So with that, something that's interest, please, you know, please make sure you sign up so that we can have all of your information. And we also will have members from planning and development that will be here, Julie and dar will be here in the purple shirt, so people have questions to be able to feed it. We appreciate you all sitting down with this. So if you do have some questions, feel free to tap in with the team here in the purple shirt there again. Don't want to forget these boards that's along the windows. If you have it stuck over there, make sure you do as well as the mapping board outside, just to make sure you know all the different communities you're represented. A couple people asked a question about district meetings, and how does that work? These are city wide conversations around certain focuses and workshops, but there will be district meetings that will be taking place as well. So you know all of you all have come. You will obviously receive that information on the future. So we do appreciate you all being here with us today.

I'm just

question. Alright, so we got one last thing before we leave, for those that we're going to just one question from a couple people that came twice. So no planner can answer this question. But what is a master plan? What is it? What is your definition? What is the master plan? How's

everybody doing? My name is Damon cannon. I'm the founder of tired muscle Detroit, logistic labor and moving so my definition of a Madison plan, I think it's a plan that is meticulously developed, sourced and procured within the community, because for these things to be sustainable, They have to be organized and rooted within the community. When you give them equity and ownership, these things will sustain the reason we've been in business for 10 years without any funding or any assistance from the city, and have been prosperous aside from a wonderful, small loan from black leaders Detroit. I You, I've been able to hire 24 people that live directly in our zip code, and we created many we've had a huge part in creating and providing labor for multiple sustained green spaces, because we were able to hire people directly in the community and develop those greens, green spaces. So aside from the planners, aside from the artifacts, when you source within the community and give them equity, right, hire a guy like myself or some others, and they can. In full talent directly from the community. It affects their bottom line, their pocketbooks. And when you give somebody a part time job over the summer, you talk about raising the median household income somewhere from, you know, $40,000 a year on average, up to 60 $65,000 a year. That means everything in the community, and it will really engage in that green space.

Alright, thank you, brother, David. Listen. His commercial is the guns. He knew y'all a gun show. Y'all didn't see it. I seen you, David, with the gun show. Okay, I saw you over there. I just label, okay, I see you. David, alright, alright. Then we appreciate you. We have a gift card for you that is very true. So we think about this process, I think one of the things that's important that you talk about, you know, rooting in community, being able to understand what that is from a long term perspective, that does play a role, right? But also being here a part of these conversations, the city is curating this, that it is important that all voices are included in it. So we do appreciate you all being here. I remind people all the time that all of us are sitting in somebody's future, like somebody planned 3040, 50 years ago they had so we're sitting in somebody's future, and so we need to take this serious as we're thinking about the work that we're doing. Stay engaged, because we are literally the babies that's in the bag. This is their future, right? So we appreciate you all being here and being a part of it, and please stay tapped in with this as we go through this journey. Thank you and be safe. Enjoy the sunshine. Hello.