Detroit, Michigan, and Hartford, Connecticut, are two cities facing profound and longstanding urban challenges. This talk compares recent approaches to community revitalization through visionary actions that reconnect isolated neighborhoods to each other and their downtowns. In Detroit, the city is sponsoring redevelopment plans for four distinct neighborhoods that bring consultants and community members to the table to achieve implementable results after years of informal planning by local organizations. In Hartford, the state’s plan to reconstruct an aging, two-mile-long highway viaduct is providing the opportunity to link neighborhoods and a city that was split apart 50 years ago by the interstate’s construction. Both efforts reveal the myriad ways that planners and urban designers are affecting tangible change in developing U.S. cities.
This lecture will be presented by visiting critic Mitch Glass.