The Basics

Today I drove up to U of M Flint for a summit on regional trails and greenways. It was something I more or less decided to do for fun... I don't usually work on Tuesdays. A lot of the conference focused on public parks and trails to be used for recreation, and current developments in the Flint area. I heard seminars on accessibility and ADA guidelines for trail development, the economic impact of trails and greenways, and building truly safe, walkable communities.

So one of the major projects I am working on at NCI is developing a greenway between two of the parks we built. A greenway is basically a trail built through developed urban areas and neighborhoods. So point A on the map is the All Saints Neighborhood Center Park and point B is the new Lafayette Park that was just finished in November, I believe. There are very few cross streets in the neighborhood, so if people want to get to the parks, they either have to take the long way around the streets, or cut through all these overgrown alleys filled with trash.
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So basically, we have been looking at Google Maps to determine which lots are vacant between those two parks. Then we dig around and try to find out who owns the lots, which more likely than not is the city of Detroit or the Michigan Land Bank Authority. Then we pretty much just fill out a form and show a development plan, and we can buy up the lots for about $500 (from the city) or even cheaper from the land bank.

This sounds incredibly boring. But its actually pretty exciting. There is certainly no shortage of vacant land in southwest Detroit... and really, anyone with a plan and a check can buy it. And they do. But here, we've established ourselves as an organization that the city is used to dealing with, and we've more than made the case to have social workers on board.

So there's the basics... bringing us all up to speed. I promise I will write about more exciting things soon.

Leah