“I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.” When asked how long he has lived in Detroit, Mr. Jackson, a fixture in the neighborhood around the El Moore, responds, “I have been here since nineteen hundred and sixty nine.” Not quite elderly just yet, Mr. Jackson makes his way around his Midtown neighborhood somewhat …
As we move into colder weather, the need to complete any outside work becomes more and more evident. The little greenhouse on the west side of the property, a composite of repurposed materials, is attracting a lot of attention for its beautiful design. Fence posts are going in. Foundational work on the property is nearing …
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 …
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 …
John White: A Story of Revitalizing a Detroit Neighborhood Read More »
If you know anything about the happenings in Midtown Detroit, you know that Sue Mosey, President of Midtown Detroit Inc., has been leading the charge to see to it that Midtown thrives as both a neighborhood and business center – no wonder she has come to be affectionately known as the “mayor of Midtown”. Sue …
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of Belonging, Peter Block describes the plight of many of today’s communities: fragmented, trapped in dysfunctional and outdated …
The Process of Detroit Community Building, Part 2 Read More »
“This is the first image that I did, and it’s more illustrative. I wanted this to be a sketching project, which is why I went back to my sketchbook. With this one, it probably took me about an hour, and I just wanted to focus on that turret. And so there’s a little bit …
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 …
The Voices of Detroit: The People of the Council of the Three Fires Read More »
