Historically, downtown Cleveland and Detroit played a role in the industrialization of America throughout the 20th century. Industrial restructuring and changes to the auto industry led to stagnation in the cities’ growth, which has been largely compounded by racial and social tensions. Bedrock Detroit has set a goal to revamp both riverfront districts through redevelopment plans that focus on reinvigorating the economy through mixed-use communities of the future that offer residents a sustainable, transit-oriented place to live.

In both cities, our data-driven plans are playing a key role in transforming waterfront districts that have been underutilized for decades. We consulted with local planning firms and quantitative data to produce parametric models that allowed us to test future social, economic, and climate-driven scenarios such as population growth. 

With the assistance of computational modeling, we managed to determine the precise combination of residential areas, commercial amenities, services, and infrastructure needed by any mixed-use community. Specifically, we assessed many variables, such as the availability and necessity of schools, hospitals, grocery stores, cafes, and urban traffic and transit flows, to maintain the 15-minute optimization of each neighborhood. 

By layering this information with client and stakeholder engagement, along with community feedback, we created urban models that consider social and equity-based services that would be required in the new resilient neighborhoods. This step was particularly important given the class and racial inequities that have long existed in both Detroit and Cleveland. 

In the 1960s, the city authority of Detroit demolished predominantly Black neighborhoods or left them neglected and disconnected from the rest of the city through discriminatory planning policies. A key goal of the Detroit redevelopment plan is stitching several downtown neighborhoods back together and demolishing the I-375 Freeway, which bored its way through the Black Bottom neighborhood in the 1960s. After all these efforts, local streets, bike paths, and sidewalk connections will appear, bringing people and communities together.