Mobility in Detroit - Living in the Shadows
Problem
Through an extensive study involving GIS mapping and research on local journalism, we found that Detroit is generally very under-served in regards to individual physical mobility, and more so in several neighborhoods directly adjacent to neighborhoods slated to receive millions of dollars of investment in the coming years. These communities score worse on almost every metric of well-being in health, food access, mobility, and economic prosperity. How can we think about manipulating the medium of the city to provide these neighborhoods with much needed resources?
Solution
We created a document to explain these problems through data and maps, and suggested a possible solution of mobile versions of the services that these neighborhoods require. We searched for examples of mobile libraries, kitchens, farmers markets, clinics, and schools from around the world and history, and postulated that they could be applied in the myriad vacant lots present in the neighborhoods. The coordination and reservation (if necessary) could be handled in a digital environment, with kiosks and an application for end user and business use.
Impact
The impact of our suggestions would be that of changing the way that Detroit, and cities that follow its example, think about solving urban problems. Our design would provide services and products to the people who need them most in the quickest way possible, without the need for millions in development funds and the years it takes to build up permanent infrastructure.
For a more detailed breakdown of the project, processes, and the full report, see below.
Project Brief
With a focus on the city of Detroit, the prompt for this project was to create an intervention of some sort based on theories learned in the class readings in one of five topics (Health, Education, Urban Metabolism, Mobility, and Energy). I worked in a group of three to study the city of Detroit using a variety of maps, graphics, data, and interventions from around the world to produce a comprehensive graphic document and proposal for a "medium" design. That is changing the "medium" of the city, as opposed to an additive intervention.
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We focused on a couple neighborhoods that were adjacent to the city's "strategic neighborhood investment targets".
Vintage map advertisement for Detroit Urban Railways showing its reaches out into the then rural areas of Metro Detroit which are now its sprawling suburbs
Overlapping Maps, Overlapping Problems
I brought a keen interest of both pioneering new mobility solutions and urban farming/agriculture to the team, as well as my diverse background in Mechanical Engineering and international studies to open the range of competencies in our team. I was interested in how food and mobility problems are connected in the Motor City. Detroit is a city with at least 1300 urban farms and gardens, an impressive grassroots food independence movement for any city. As we studied and played with the maps showing data ranging from bus routes, to poverty ridden households, to grocery stores with walking sheds, and others. We started to see that mobility is inextricably tied with more issues than just food security, it touches all of the topics in the class.
A map of the urban farms and gardens in Detroit, over 1,300 in total!
GIS map showing an overlay of bus lines with their frequencies of service (blue lines), grocery stores with 1 mile walking sheds (yellow dots with green blotches), and poverty stricken households (red dots)
Shadow Communities
When comparing particular data metrics measuring poverty and transportation and strategic neighborhood investment boundaries, my team and I noticed that there were several communities on the fringes of those neighborhoods receiving heavy investment which were doing markedly worse than their adjacent neighbors. As we dug deeper into this phenomenon, we realized that was our area of opportunity for an intervention. We inspected these communities further and found that they had a higher rate of vacant land tracts and a high transit dependency index among the residents.
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A manipulation of the urban medium was required. We decided to look around the world for examples of mobile solutions for healthcare, food, education, and other services, and postulate how they might be applied in the City of Detroit.
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Below there is a link to the PDF document we produced containing much more detail. My specific contributions to the document were the writings, the first iteration of the actor/agent map, the concept of the app/neighborhood kiosk allowing for the exploration of mobile services and reservation of spots, the research of several of the world wide examples of mobile solutions, and the writings after Chapter 1.
Scroll through the below slides for a preview of the final document
Click below to view the full document
