Detroit is studying a solution that might curb the raging decline of the city: a split-rate tax.
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Stunning new data analysis on the homes lost to tax forfeiture in Detroit shows that, in just a three-year span, $300 million in real estate transferred from homeowners living in Detroit to outside owners.
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The process for appealing your property taxes can be obscure, even when the appeal is merited (and more often than not, it is). This simple guide will help prepare you for when your property is next assessed.
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In Detroit's 48205 zip code, from 2014 to 2020, the number of vacant homes hardly budged, despite $25M spent demolishing 1,628 vacant homes. When the pandemic hit, vacant homes plummeted. What happened?
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Woodward Avenue in Michigan is as good a spot as any to think of as the birthplace of the auto-oriented development pattern. But if we can see our past there, we can also glimpse our future.
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Detroit today, your town tomorrow. Here’s how we can help keep homes out of foreclosure and residents from being evicted.
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Downtown Detroit has more parking today than any time in the city’s history—despite the city’s population being less than half what it once was. Now, a group of Detroiters are pushing for commonsense parking reform that can help put the Motor City back on the road to recovery.
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How one Detroit resident is using Google Maps to chronicle the accelerating disappearance of some of that city’s neighborhoods.
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The story of a neighborhood-led effort to address blight on Detroit’s East Side.
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Here’s what happened when a passionate community advocate in Detroit listened to what residents actually wanted, rather than imposing his will from the outside.
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An urban photographer reflects on the reactions he got when he started capturing what the American urban landscape is really like—parking lots, declining neighborhoods, tract homes, and all.
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If you want to lay up treasures for yourself in Roseville, Michigan, you’ll soon have a new option. But it comes at a high cost to the wallet (and soul) of the community.
Read MoreWe want to dismiss Detroit as an anomaly. But in fact Detroit is a glimpse into the future for nearly every American city and town. Increasingly fragile from auto-centric development, for Detroit—and for the rest of us—it was only a matter of time.
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Across the Rust Belt and Midwest, immigrant entrepreneurs and residents are helping to mitigate the financial challenges faced by declining and shrinking cities.
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The city's loss decades ago was the suburb's gain. Today's city gain is coming at the expense of the suburbs.
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In a wide-ranging conversation, journalist and planner Pete Saunders discusses the fate of Detroit, how baseball stadiums connect with their surrounding neighborhoods, and what African American migration to the suburbs means for the future of America.
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While the landscape of Westland remains predominantly suburban, projects like this are steps toward upcycling and intensifying obsolete developments: an important shift from our historical habits of build-and-abandon.
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"We will not change the dominant form until we start working together."
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Strong Towns member and contributor, Johnny Sanphillippo and President, Chuck Marohn, discuss their recent dueling essays about what to do with Detroit.
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Do we want to make life easy on the experts, or make Detroit a better place that can also pay its bills?
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