October 2014

Detroit, the El Moore, and Jane Jacobs

The El Moore is a project under construction that will be a model of urban residential sustainable living. Like most cities in the United States, Detroit went through a phase of “urban renewal” in the mid-20th century, with very mixed results. Jane Jacobs, author of the seminal 1961 book on urban planning, The Death and …

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John White: A Story of Revitalizing a Detroit Neighborhood

Recently, when many people talk about the “rebirth of Detroit”, they proudly point to the flurry of redevelopment and resurgence mainly in three areas of our city: Downtown, Midtown, and Corktown. But as we native and long-time Detroiters know, there is much, much more to Detroit than those areas. People look to rehabilitation projects such …

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The Process of Detroit Community Building, Part 2

Over at the El Moore, a sustainable urban living project now under construction in Detroit at the corner of 2nd Avenue and West Alexandrine, we are also re-building a community. In his 2009 book, Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block describes the plight of many of today’s communities: fragmented, trapped in dysfunctional and outdated …

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The Voices of Detroit: The People of the Council of the Three Fires

The El Moore, a sustainable urban living reconstruction project in Detroit at the corner of 2nd Avenue and West Alexandrine, is a beautiful example of late 19th and early 20th century history in Detroit. But Detroit’s history, of course, goes much, much further back—starting with the original people to inhabit this area: the First Nations …

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