Projects

Detroit is a city-region in renewal, after decades of socio-economic recession, urban decline, high land vacancy, and depopulation. The Detroit Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) consists of six counties (4000 sq. mi) and has abundant vacant and abandoned residential, commercial, and industrial property. There are ambitious plans to demolish properties and ‘shrink’ the city by concentrating stabilization efforts in target neighborhoods. In October 2018, recognizing the urgent and potentially irreversible threat of climate change, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report6 calling for ambitious adaptive mitigation efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre–industrial levels. These ambitious “pathways”, framed within the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, center on transformational strategies to reduce emissions, enhance the natural CO2 sinks and stimulate adaptation options that lead to more climate-resilient systems. 

One emerging strategy for urban regeneration and as a means to enhance resilience and adaptive capacity is to expand green infrastructure (GI) — the network of urban forests, greenways, parks and protected river basins that weave through a city’s environs. GI can be conceptualized as a network of hubs or nodes composed of larger green patches and links (such as tree-lined streets). Not necessarily a green matrix connected throughout an urban area; GI is often fragmented with isolated pockets of green space. The ecosystem benefits of healthy and extensive GI are many, especially with respect to trees(e.g. reduced stormwater flows, improved water quality, carbon sequestration) and studies indicate urban GI can improve property values and have multiple social, economic, health, and psychological benefits. 

The maintenance of existing urban forests and planting of new ones has emerged as a primary GI expansion strategy in city-regions worldwide. 14-16 In the Detroit MSA, this is taking place through projects and initiatives. Since the early 1990s, the city-region has expanded greenways to transform abandoned industrial infrastructure and with funds from the US Forest Service, the NGO Greening of Detroit is planting trees primarily to improve stormwater retention and to reduce water pollution in Detroit’s regional watersheds.

The purpose of this project is to take advantage of the momentum and support decisions toward social and environmental sustainability, equity, resilience and justice. Our effort will assist ongoing (and future) GI projects and initiatives17 by addressing three major shortcomings:
1. Lack of baseline knowledge of how Detroit’s GI has changed over the past decades.
2. Decisions about where to maintain and expand GI are being made without full consideration of all sustainability costs and benefits.
3. Decisions are being made without taking into account prospective climate-resilient pathways under different climate realities and futures.