Connected Neighborhoods: The Joe Louis Greenway Neighborhood Study

[00:05] - Roberta Rewers

The National Planning Awards have honored the work of planners for more than 60 years, celebrating the innovation and impact of the profession, creating stronger, safer, and more just communities. Join us as we take a closer look at the 2025 National Planning Award recipients. On today's episode of the APA Podcast, we're heading to the city of Detroit. The Joe Louis Greenway Neighborhood Planning Study. Set out to leverage the Joe Louis Greenway as a catalyst for equitable neighborhood redevelopment, economic opportunity, and to strengthen community ties. The study is the recipient of the 2025 National Planning Excellence Award. Joining us to discuss the Joe Louis Greenway Neighborhood Planning Study are Michelle Flournoy, Urban Designer at Detroit's Planning Development Department, and Ashley DiCaro, Senior Associate at Interface Studio. I'm Roberta Rewers, APA's Senior Communications Manager. Thanks for joining us.

Michelle, can you set the scene for us a little bit about the Joe Louis Greenway and how the neighborhood planning study built upon the foundation of the greenways planning efforts that have already taken place to connect these neighborhoods and municipalities?

[01:16] - Michele Flournoy

Sure. Yeah, I think that's a really important part of how the planning study came about to even be funded and underway and led by the city. The Joe Louis Greenway plan, the framework plan for the Joe Louis Greenway, was published in 2020, and that was really an effort to plan for the route of the greenway and set some design standards. And the other thing that it did was a huge amount of community engagement. And through that community engagement, what we heard over and over again was that the importance of this greenway to the residents of the city of Detroit was equally important that there be a greenway that improved quality of life and that connected this multimodal transportation network, but that also it would lead to inclusive economic opportunity. And so the point of the neighborhood planning study was to really look at those place-based opportunities for that. And more specific policy and action plans for how to get to achieve that vision. But I think in general, one of the key ways that we kind of set the foundation for the planning study based in that prior work was that we looked at those, the vision and the goals of that initial JLG framework, and that formed the basis for the kind of 5 goals of the planning study and the work that we did in terms of the analysis and planning.

[02:46] - Roberta Rewers

Perfect. And you touched on this a little bit, and I think one of the concerns anytime with planning and any sort of development or redevelopment is to make sure that underserved neighborhoods are receiving the benefit of it and there's no risk of gentrification and current residents not benefiting from anything. Ashley, maybe you can start. What were some steps taken to ensure, to ensure that existing residents would benefit from the greenway and that they get to be part of the process.

[03:17] - Ashley DiCaro

Yeah, I think that that is one of the most interesting things to me about this study. You know, the premise of it is how can really nearby residents really benefit from this community? How can we better connect them to the greenway? How can the connections from the greenway to the communities improve, all without displacement and really taking into that concern very seriously? So The displacement concern really shaped the work. We studied explicitly on equitable outcomes and on addressing historic inequities. That meant really pairing the greenway with housing stability tools, things like home rehab and landlord repair. And also really thinking about future development very strategically. So where are those opportunities? How can they be mixed income and affordable? So that the benefits really show up for current residents, not just future residents. Future newcomers. We also quickly really realized that the displacement risk in a lot of the neighborhoods that we were thinking about was, is actually quite low. Our housing consultant, Noel Consulting out of Atlanta, had done a lot of extensive work around the Atlanta BeltLine, which is a very different kind of market typology. You know, he found the total potential for new housing around the Greenway in our study area to be about 2,200 units.

And if you think about the landscape of some of the neighborhoods around the Greenway, you know, there's over 13,000 vacant parcels or vacant parcels zoned for residential developments. And that gap really kind of quickly refocused us a bit to really think about vacant land strategies, very strategic opportunities for where housing could occur and when, and really thinking about the long-term framework of this plan. So it really wasn't about, necessarily the focus on displacement, but really thinking strategically about helping current residents as they are today and really being forward-thinking about that.

[05:09] - Roberta Rewers

Michelle, can you talk a little bit from being with the city's planning department, kind of the outlook of the Greenway in the Neighborhood study, again, addressing concerns that I'm sure you've heard potentially from other efforts that have been undertaken by the city?

[05:23] - Michele Flournoy

Yeah, I mean, I would echo what Ashley said, that part of it was really bringing some of that information to the conversation from the very beginning. So being able to start conversations with residents that might have fears about displacement or fears about what this level of investment might do in terms of changing their neighborhood and, and grounding everybody's conversations in that data. But from a city side, I think what's really important too is that we were working with our Housing and Revitalization Department from the very beginning. There's a ton of resources and programs that exist already within the city of Detroit. And one of the big challenges is the outreach to make sure that residents who are in need of those services or programs are aware of them and also have access to them. So for example, you know, the, the cap on property taxes increasing year over year that's tied to an inflation rate, that's really critical to making sure that people can, can stay in place. But if you have issues with your deed, or you have different history on that property, and you don't discover that until well into values rising, that's going to be a problem.

So getting kind of ahead of those things, and then also making sure that just like programs like our HOPE program for property taxes and all of those are, we're kind of present at every engagement opportunity that we had. But I guess like in general too, I would say Residents are often experiencing a lot more pressures for displacement based on disinvestment in the city of Detroit. And so some of these like historical disinvestments are actually the things that came to the forefront with resident concerns about blight or overgrowth, or, you know, what's happening with vacant properties, what's happening with enforcement. And so those are some of the ways that the city can kind of bring in our existing processes and resources.

[07:23] - Roberta Rewers

And we started talking a little bit about the scope and the sheer size of the project and the number of people and making sure there was a good flow of information. One of the major outcomes from the neighborhood study was individualized neighborhood playbooks, and there are 5 of them, right?

[07:40] - Ashley DiCaro

Right.

[07:40] - Roberta Rewers

How did you sort of identify the areas deal with, you know, you often hear times of why them, not us, how are we grouped in with these individuals? How did you kind of map out how you determined what the playbooks would cover and what areas?

[07:58] - Michele Flournoy

Yeah, I mean, I think thinking about kind of geographically where the playbooks would cover, that goes back to the overall planning study. And so we leveraged, I think, some best practices about, you know, walking distances and really looked at a half-mile buffer in general on either side of of the Greenway when we're thinking about like what the geographic boundary was going to be, but then taking into account sort of like natural boundaries or, you know, like freeways or census tracts to be able to like better make sure that the data was available and consistent. So the playbooks, they do cover the entire planning study area. We have a few coordination areas that had already gone through extensive neighborhood planning efforts, and so we decided to focus our playbooks and most of the planning engagement on the 5 neighborhood areas that were outside of those. So the playbooks cover kind of the whole planning study boundary, but when we start to think about, like, how do you start focusing on smaller geographies or target geographies, I think that's where our, our Greenway Opportunity Areas that were identified through the engagement and planning, those, those might be more in line with that question of, like, why here and not there?

[09:14] - Roberta Rewers

Can you talk a little bit what the Greenway Opportunity Areas are?

[09:18] - Michele Flournoy

Yeah, I would also defer to Ashley too, 'cause I think they've, you know, Interface Studio came up with this idea of a Greenway Opportunity Area, which also really nicely is abbreviated to a GO Area. And I think that's in line with this idea that like these are identified as ways to orient us towards action. But the Greenway Opportunity Areas, from the city's perspective, are kind of in line with some of our prior planning that we had done where you're doing a larger neighborhood plan, but you're finding that area on the corridor where there's a lot of alignment between different things that are happening as well as ownership or, you know, willing partners. And so you can try to focus kind of a layered approach there.

[10:04] - Roberta Rewers

I love the name GO Area. Ashley, can you talk a little bit more about those? That, that sounds ripe for action.

[10:12] - Ashley DiCaro

Yeah, I think it was maybe one of the main themes of this work that I find most interesting is that this — the scale of the greenway is incredible. It's going to be this — I mean, it's a beautiful infrastructure, um, and it goes through all these different neighborhoods, but we kept having to really try to understand the scale and make folks understand the scale, um, consistently, um, and that we couldn't improve every intersection that heats that hits the greenway or every single connection or really improve every single vacant parcel that aligns with the greenway, right? It's just the scale is so big. And that was one of the biggest challenges of really trying to frame the work and say, we need to focus in some really key areas. And hopefully you can leverage that progress and use it as a catalyst to then improve other areas as time goes on. So it really was about how do we establish and prioritize a couple of key areas to one, you know, illustrate what the planning study can accomplish and really think about strategic use of land, potentially piloting different housing programs or transportation programs or all kinds of different things in these certain areas that are really important, as Michelle said, overlapping opportunities and priorities, both from the city side and also, you know, the neighborhood resident side.

So like, let's just focus on these key areas first and try to see what policies need to be enacted, how to, how to really implement, you know, very strategically on these certain nodes around the greenway. And that can then apply to different other parts of the greenway as things get built out and as the greenway itself opens up and people start using it.

[11:49] - Roberta Rewers

Engagement, big topic, especially given the sheer size and scope and scale of working across 23 neighborhoods, you created community leadership teams. Can you talk a little bit about what are the leadership teams and the role they played and how did they work with Interface and the city to help kind of keep things moving forward for the study?

[12:16] - Ashley DiCaro

Yeah, we had 40+ public meetings, over 200 stakeholder sessions. We had local partners on the ground to help us shape this process. I can't speak highly of them enough. They're Sidewalk Detroit. They're incredible partners on the ground and they do engagement very well. So, you know, we, we formed this idea to have community ambassadors given the scale of the project and that we can't be everywhere at once. But there's also this issue, as all planners face, of planning fatigue. You know, we mentioned the neighborhood framework plan already that was talking about the alignment of the greenway. There's been a lot of engagement. To date about the Greenway itself, and it's very confusing to normal residents of like what the difference of our planning study is versus, you know, what's happening with the construction of the Greenway and the alignment of the Greenway conversations. And so we really wanted to have stipend positions for ambassadors who are dedicating their time and could help us spread the word and really understand the planning process and bring out their cohorts. So we structured it in a way where they had We had like geographic representation of community leaders all along the greenway in all of these different neighborhoods.

They had varying levels of expertise. And so there was a lot of gearing up to really understand, you know, what this plan was, how it was different from other efforts, what are the goals, how can they contribute to really build this network and leverage them to bring other folks out when needed. And then also use them as a, as a real sounding board and pressure test ideas. So making sure we are understanding who benefits from the greenway, who's missing from being at the table, what does success really look like for your organization or in your neighborhood? I think oftentimes we really, you know, we're building all of these plans using community voices, and sometimes those voices are really undervalued. And we really thought it was important in this process to make sure, you know, not only were they valued, but they were getting paid for their time. They were really able to understand them on the ground and have a connection to the plan and the work.

[14:20] - Michele Flournoy

Yeah, I think I would add to just how valuable that basis was, like the process of setting up the community leadership team, having those individuals that had representation in all of the different geographies, but those individuals then are more engaged in the project. They're, you know, having the time to really dive deep with other city staff and agencies and get into mobility issues or get into, housing development issues. And then as we're moving forward, you know, as the plan is completed and moves into implementation, they remain on the ground. Like, these are people who are doing the work and they're in the community. And so they're, they're carrying with that, you know, the experience they've had with the planning effort, but also brainstorming and thinking about and making connections. And so it kind of has a dual purpose of both, like, giving us that added outreach and engagement during the plan, but also like starting to set up that kind of capacity building and networking that we've, we've been lifting up through the plan is like being really necessary in some of, some of these neighborhoods specifically where there's not that more formal organizational capacity always.

[15:30] - Roberta Rewers

How did you find the individuals?

[15:33] - Michele Flournoy

That is where I would say Ashley already gave them a shout out, but Sidewalk Detroit, Ryan, Josie, Tommy, they went through a really robust effort to comb through contacts and community stakeholders from their list, from our list, from prior planning, and, and then actually invite people to interview and have a conversation about what this would mean for them, what their perspective is, what they think is important, and, and really try to, I think, objectively create a cross-section of priorities and representation of different, not just geographies, but different kind of stakeholder groups and bring, I guess, perspectives that were diverse to the table. So I can't, we obviously, you know, Interface Studio and the planning department participated in that process, but I think it was led by Sidewalk Detroit and kind of a brainchild of them.

[16:35] - Ashley DiCaro

You know, to be honest, it wasn't always easy. I think when folks are thinking about carrying that process to other communities or, you know, the community ambassador programs in general, and why we love Sidewalk Detroit so much is that keeping people engaged over that long a period of time, it takes constant care. So they would often talk about, you know, phone calls late at night and like some folks were starting from zero in terms of planning. Planning experience. So it was really onboarding them. A lot of process and time went into really making sure they understand what planning can do, what it can't do, how decisions get made, where the study can actually influence outcomes in their community. Really building champions is a lot of work, and I think it's a takeaway that everyone really needs to understand, that it's not just like, you know, getting these groups together and and making the list and getting the payment secured. It's really handholding and building champions and it eats up a lot of fee and time and budget. So it's something to really think about.

[17:41] - Roberta Rewers

Very much so.

More than just identifying the individuals, right? Kind of establishing those long-term relationships. We, we touched a little bit on partners and partnerships with Sidewalk Detroit, and I know there were many other partners part of this study, including Joe Louis Greenway Partnership, Invest Detroit. How do you manage partners and more people coming to the table? Everybody obviously has a common goal and interest and investment in wanting to see this succeed. And then you add in partners, but then also you have 3 other municipalities that you're working with beyond the neighborhoods. How do you work together? How do you coordinate all that? How do you kind of keep moving everyone moving? Towards that goal you've identified?

[18:28] - Michele Flournoy

I think, you know, this project is really interesting because the, the city is building the greenway during the same period of time that we're doing the planning study. And so there is already relationships being built between — I'm thinking of the different municipalities. There's already kind of joint grant applications with other municipalities. There's in one case, the city of Detroit owns the property for the greenway within a different municipality. So they're working with them for the permits. And so a lot of a lot of these relationships are, were being formed already through the construction, and we were able to leverage that on top of working with the county and their kind of invested interest in, in all of the municipalities and the success of the project. And so I would say it kind of starts with the project itself and that it by definition was starting to create that collaboration. But I do see that being kind of a critical role that setting up the Jolus Greenway Partnership, and I think this was part of the thinking for that organization being a separate nonprofit from the City of Detroit, that it would have this more kind of, you know, project-wide view.

And our planning study was kicked off and, you know, happening right in the first couple of years of new leadership being established, actually, you know, a new organization, the Jolus Greenway Partnership, and their first executive director. And so I think Part of what we were doing during the planning study was understanding kind of what role they would play and how we could leverage that organization and what it was doing in terms of the, the programming of the greenway and activation of spaces to support some of our planning goals. And I would say like, that's kind of similar to our work with Invest Detroit. The city of Detroit had this history of the Strategic Neighborhood Fund and partnering with Invest Detroit to implement some of our planning recommendations through the Strategic Neighborhood Fund. And so what we gathered from having these partnerships kind of closely involved during the planning study was that I think we were able to be doing the planning work with a mind for implementation and how those partnerships would be like so critical to achieving the kind of recommendations of the planning study beyond the city policy and actions in terms of additional infrastructure or whatnot.

[21:00] - Ashley DiCaro

I would also add that Michelle is another incredible partner, and the City of Detroit, one, needed a dedicated position that was really the point person for all of these — there's all of these moving parts and again, the scale and all the partners you mentioned. So really establishing that position was really important to implementation in the planning moving forward. Also that you, she, is really the front face of this work. You know, city planning from the city of Detroit's perspective is different than a lot of different cities we work in, in that their planners really are the face of their planning projects. Some cities really like to lean on us as consultants. You know, to do the presentations and handle and build the relationships. But we, you know, we come in and then we leave after the plan is done, and it's really important to build those relationships, as Michelle said, from the beginning. And so having her be the face of the project, um, and really like lifting up, you know, her too with the materials and all of the supports that she needed, but really making that the relationship that was really more important than the consultant and the different partners.

[22:08] - Roberta Rewers

Let's dig into a little bit the, um, the playbooks. How did you put them together? What kind of information were you debating to include? The data? What are you hoping those playbooks can be or will be used for now or in the future?

[22:25] - Ashley DiCaro

I would say number one, we, we were trying to be as intentional as possible of them being a usable product. Really establishing who our audience was and making sure that they weren't, you know, a 200-page plan that, that no one would ever read. So, you know, goal one was to whittle down the information as much as possible, to have a short, concise document that really summarized the key recommendations and strategies for each plan area. And honestly, I think it's harder to edit down all of that information into a short document than it is to write a much larger plan. So it was really strategic in thinking about how we would put those together. So each playbook has kind of an interesting design. It's a gatefold design with some, you know, a map of the study area on the front and information about what happens next and implementation on the back. And then key information about each neighborhood as the inserts. And then there's all these one-pagers, we called them, relating to each of the planned topic areas. So, you know, what are the key recommendations around housing in this particular planning area? Where do those exist in the map?

What are the key strategies or policies that are recommended as that? And those were designed as single sheets so that the city, you know, later on when they're having community meetings or sitting in on a different actual greenway construction meeting, they could be on hand. You could lay them out as, you know, just like mini boards, we'll call them. To as quickly as possible summarize the work and the ideas and the neighborhood voices that come through it in as easy and brief as possible. It's quite a challenge, honestly. The editing process was pretty intensive of what should be included there.

[24:10] - Michele Flournoy

Yeah, I love the design of the playbooks. And as the person who's been distributing them and handing them out, I think the ability to take like 10 or 15 of them or take a set of 5 or the flexibility to hand them out easily, to use them, to be able to reference. Like Ashley said, it's really challenging to kind of have that amount of data, but when you don't know where the opportunities are going to come up in a conversation or you don't know what questions are going to arise, it's helpful to have the whole map there. And so the fact that the playbooks, you know, for each of those subject areas, they have the data there, you can point to, you know, if somebody is like, well, what about this other intersection? Like, it's like, oh, well, you could see the data there and you could see why we're focused here. Or like those, that kind of usability, I guess, in being able to point to data but not have to read, you know, 300 pages is, is really helpful. I think it's also like The executive summary, I think, gives this like overall, okay, I understand how all these strategies fit together and, and, you know, how policy might impact all of these areas.

But when it comes to talking to people about specific place, it's helpful to have it much more concise and just have the takeaway that they're looking for. So you don't have to read the whole housing chapter, but you can say, oh, in this area, this is like key takeaway. These are the number of units that were forecasted. In the next, you know, 5 years. And so that's why there's these sites identified, you know, and that, that context I think is really helpful for the, the future conversation. I mean, I guess the whole point of the playbooks in my view was that we felt that achieving the goals that were set by the Greenway and achieving the, the opportunity that was identified within the, the planning study would not be a singular effort of the city or a singular effort of a community organization or the Joe Louis Greenway Partnership. It, it was kind of like, here's everybody working together, so it needs to be usable by all those different audiences.

[26:25] - Roberta Rewers

What would you say was an unexpected, unforeseen challenge that you had to work through or think about as you were in the thick of things with the neighborhood studies?

[26:36] - Ashley DiCaro

I think a couple of things I already talked about illustrating the scale for folks, you know, just like how broad, how many neighborhoods this touches, you know, how many different bike lane intersections, like all of the things. So that's really number one, like 23 neighborhoods, really big numbers talking about, you know, recommendations. So how do we, how do we focus? And then leading into that is also really thinking about resident expectations and not overpromising. The Greenway itself, again, is beautiful, incredible infrastructure, and we were really cautious to do, you know, beautiful renderings of things that might not ever get built. Like, we really wanted to make sure we're being very realistic and practical about what could happen in a short and in a long term. And so you'll notice in the plan, it's very diagrammatic. You know, we're talking about potential redevelopment or development opportunities. Those are very diagrammatic. We really didn't want to set higher expectations than what we thought was achievable. So that was a really difficult way to really figure out what those should look like. How could they be digestible? How do we still make it exciting for folks and really illustrate that long-term potential, but also again, to level set appropriately.

I would say another one that's really interesting to talk about is that most of the trail is on a former rail line, and so not surprisingly, it's mostly industrial land on either side, right? And those are, you know, you think about the barriers that some former industrial land can create in accessing the greenway. It's not just physical barriers, it's the way that some of the properties look and feel. At Interface Studio, we do a lot of industrial planning work, and so we're pretty sensitive to thinking about business needs. And, and, you know, that some properties do actually need space to lay down their materials, for instance, or, you know, to have all of these different uses. And now we're putting this really important open space resource next to their, their property. And so how do you be sensitive to existing businesses that are there, that have been there for decades, that aren't really used to having to care about what their property like necessarily looks like, you know, all of those different things. So I would say the industrial side of, side of the equation and really thinking through how you can support existing businesses and also try to improve or make recommendations for improvements that would benefit everybody in the surrounding communities.

[29:12] - Michele Flournoy

Maybe a little bit to piggyback on, on Ashley and thinking about the sort of like challenges of the industrial properties, but also just, you know, the adjacency to the former rail, and that this is really like transforming property that's been kind of tucked away. The, the kind of shift between the environmental impacts of that industrial rail corridor and those uses there that have — and then the abandonment of that corridor meant that there weren't there weren't a lot of eyes. And then it's, you know, it's opened up. All of these tires and debris and all this are removed, and now people are walking there. And there's, to me, what I guess the challenge that was also maybe unexpected was that there's kind of a clash between serving the businesses and residents that have been there, but also not like serving them too much or like making them change too fast. So there is this like desire for change, but it also So, you know, can, can be challenging. So I guess just to like be more specific, I think we had the opportunity early in the planning study with a partner that wanted to fund a housing pilot.

And so we were beginning to do this outreach to specifically to residents in that area and also partnering with a housing services organization that was doing that outreach. And then at the same time, the city had funds for corridor improvement that was really kind of based on outreach and then enforcement of blight tickets. And so we had this convergence of, you know, a desire for bad actors to be, you know, for there to be more enforcement and the city having the capacity to actually do that with some funds to remediate. And then this like outreach happening at the same time. And all of a sudden there was this like spin of the message and a real confusion about like, what does this mean? And why is somebody offering to buy my house? And why, you know, like, and that, you know, it took even from the internal partners, a lot of kind of parsing out like, wait, what was, what is this person talking about? And what notice did they, or what did they read? What did they see? But I think that that also helped us build in those networks of communication and understand that.

And in that specific case, we also leaned really heavily on our community contacts and we were able to really quickly kind of get out there and host an in-person gathering where we could, somebody could bring the piece of paper they received and we could say, okay, this is this thing and this is that thing. But that was really unexpected. And I think kind of rooted in those challenges of like, wanting change, but change being a little bit of growing pains, even for really well-intentioned and good neighbors, right? Like when we think about the industrial businesses that have been there for 40 years, but it takes money to start investing in your rear facade that you've never needed to. So yeah, it's definitely a challenge. I think the other challenge I think maybe we alluded to earlier with this level of deep engagement and the fact that we had partners both on the team and kind of in the community that have really high standards was that we had these great goals of how to set up a community leadership team and how to do each step of the process really kind of deep. And we burned through scope really quickly.

And so thinking about like, how do you scale that up in a way that doesn't take, you know, take everybody's hours so much. But that was also kind of a success and a challenge in the early part of the engagement was that we had some really great events and kind of systems put in place to support the process. And then we had to evaluate whether we could sustain that for 2 years. So.

[33:24] - Ashley DiCaro

And maybe one more interesting challenge to talk about is also the timing of the greenway. In some neighborhoods, it was like finished and beautiful, and in others, it was under construction and folks were wanting to know what was going on with that. And then in other places, the alignment was still being, you know, adjusted in certain places. And so we were trying to to really think through different scenarios for that. You know, what would it mean in terms of if the alignment went here? You know, what does the frontage look like and how would that be different? And one of the biggest things around that for us was that the project was so big, the scale was so big, it's so many neighborhoods, it was really hard to know every single detail about everything. So the city did a really incredible job of having lots of resource tables available at our different community events. So if you had a question about the Greenway construction, which I could not speak to, you know, there was someone on staff there who would be able to ask or answer those questions. Same thing, like representatives from the land bank or from the housing agency, like, like they did a really great job of covering all those bases so that we didn't have to have every answer or say like, we'll get back to you with that.

So really just showing up, being able to answer questions, I think went a long way. In terms of building trust with communities and having them understand what our particular, you know, focus was versus all of these different things that are, that are coming to the table at them at different times surrounding the Greenway. So I'd say timing, you know, it's like timing the planning study and like different parts of the Greenway were in different phases. It was, it was kind of really tough to align those, those different interests and parties and all of the things.

[35:10] - Michele Flournoy

Yeah, I'm really appreciative and thankful that we have staff at all of the other departments that are involved. So the General Services Department, who's building the greenway, we have, you know, all of those partners we talked about, kind of internal and external, that were willing to be at our planning study meetings so that they could kind of provide to residents and stakeholders a broader opportunity to engage. I would also say to Ashley's point about the Greenway being so different in each neighborhood and there being some uncertainties and some changes, I, I think that the interface team did an incredible job of not trying to just like duplicate 5 plans for 5 different geographies. They really were mindful of like really taking the feedback and setting up the engagement and setting up the analysis and the all of the work to speak to each of those kind of nuanced areas and being really flexible. Probably an unexpected challenge was how flexible they had to be to move in our shifting world, but I think we came to a good place.

[36:22] - Ashley DiCaro

One lesson learned that I took away from this project, it seems like a lot of RFPs that are coming out now from cities, I'm calling them umbrella plans, where they'll have a couple of different study areas under one planning contract. And I get the idea behind it. It's really about efficiencies of scale and we could pull all the data at the same time. But in this case, you know, we were focused on 5 different areas and we were trying to bring them through the same sequence along the way. So, you know, this round of existing conditions analysis, this round of, you know, draft ideas, and then the final round. And, you know, it was a lot to manage, and I think some details were slipping through the cracks a little bit because, you know, parcels change and community contacts change, like all of those things. So in recent work where we've had multiple study areas, I've actually rewritten some scopes to say, like, we actually want to focus on this area first, and then we're going to, we're going to go to the next and then the next, and then we can really dig in really deep, really understand that particular place and what the opportunities are, and then move on to the next so that we're not trying to host 5 different meetings, you know, in this phase at the same time.

And so that was a really good takeaway for us of like how to maybe, as Michelle said, like do a little bit better in terms of sequencing, deeper listening in that so things aren't getting watered down across all these different communities. You're really present in one and then you can move on to the next. I think that was a really important takeaway for me.

[37:57] - Roberta Rewers

So what's next for the City of Detroit's planning department, the Joe Louis Greenway? What if we encourage listeners to head to Detroit? What's, what's up?

[38:10] - Michele Flournoy

I think one of the exciting things is that the Greenway is still under construction and it's like, it feels like every month there's a new little section open or connected and a new, a new piece to celebrate. And I think it feels that way because it's, it's true. So I, um, one thing to take away is that the, the speed at which the Greenway is actually, like, the infrastructure itself is actually being put down on that, that former rail corridor is really an incredible thing to watch. And in terms of our next steps as a, as a planning department, we've started to pilot some of those recommendations from the planning study. So We're working on our first rezoning with the City Planning Commission, and all of that's happening at the same time that the city of Detroit overall is going through a master plan effort. And so some of that will kind of like feed into a larger opportunity. And then at the same time, we have this kind of like policy discussion and thinking about our real estate process, and we have a lot of coordination to do just around public property and making sure that that's being stewarded in the way that the plan recommends.

And then we have the more kind of tactical, like, can we raise funds to start to pilot some activations? We've, we've gotten a couple grants in the door and we're going to be hopefully opening our first kind of commercial pop-up site along the Greenway this summer, working with the Joe Louis Greenway Partnership on that and the Project for Public Spaces. And so those are some things that hopefully, you know, when the weather comes out of these freezing temperatures, well, you know, on the greenway, you'll kind of see these opportunities physically there alongside the more hidden kind of policy changes that are happening.

[39:56] - Ashley DiCaro

I would also say, as a non-Detroiter, and I think a lot of planners may be in town for the APA conference this spring, don't just go to the DeKinder Cut or the Riverfront Greenway, like, go to the West Side and see, you know, the full scope of the greenway. I think it's really important. To get out and see it. It's really a beautiful piece of infrastructure, and I wish that more cities would invest in these kinds of projects.

[40:22] - Roberta Rewers

I think that's a great end to our conversation. Is there anything else for the listeners to take away?

[40:28] - Ashley DiCaro

I think that this, you know, if other city policymakers are listening, this was a really novel idea and plan, you know, to really think about displacement risk alongside the infrastructure that you're planning for. We're seeing some, you know, planning opportunities come out in this space, but, you know, with the current administration and environment, thinking about equity and displacement and those kinds of keywords are falling a little bit behind. So I think it's important as planners to keep raising these topics, to keep being forward-thinking about potential impacts of open space infrastructure. And to put dollars behind actually the data. You know, what are the impacts that you're going to see? How can these infrastructure investments really benefit communities and neighbors? Kudos to Detroit for, for putting this work forward because I think more of it needs to happen across the country.

[41:25] - Michele Flournoy

For me, I think one of the biggest takeaways is the, the scale of the project and the opportunity to use it, you know, this concurrent planning, the, some of the events that we had like the Vacant Land Summit where we brought folks together from all different parts of the city is the, really the opportunity to network and to start to embed in the planning process like a beginning of that, that sort of agency that folks can have not only over the plan but also how it's going to be implemented. And so the more conversations that involve multiple stakeholders alongside residents, alongside community leaders, And really having everybody at the table, it means that going forward, those, those conversations and those relationships can kind of have a life of their own.

[42:16] - Roberta Rewers

Wonderful. Well, Michelle and Ashley, thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to kind of really dig into the Joe Louis Greenway neighborhood study. And thank you so much for your time today.

[42:26] - Ashley DiCaro

Thank you.

[42:28] - Michele Flournoy

Thank you.

[42:29] - Roberta Rewers

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