Detroit’s Riverwalk, and Waterfront Revivals
Visitors check out the latest addition to the Detroit Riverwalk, the Uniroyal Promenade, at its grand opening on October 21, 2023. Source: detroit.urbanize.city
One of the positive things that many cities worldwide have done over the last half century is to transition the relics of their industrial era – the port facilities, the warehouses, railyards and more that defined manufacturing – to uses that would appeal to a new creative class demographic. These spaces have become new entertainment sites, offices, retail, residential and recreational uses, depending on the site. The new uses have brought an added element to the quality of life cities can offer.
However, not all cities have been able to make the transition. American Rust Belt cities, for example, have lagged behind other cities in making the switch. For far too long, these cities have been defined by the decaying factories and vacant land. The Rust Belt failure to transition continues to tarnish their image, and constrains their ability to be competitive with other cities nationwide.
But a new addition to Detroit’s landscape can help change its image. In October, the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy celebrated the opening of a new stretch of the Detroit Riverwalk, the Uniroyal Promenade. It’s the newest segment of the unbroken 4-mile-long riverfront path and trail along the Detroit River.
The Conservancy is a non-profit organization founded in 2003 that took on the task of bringing a new public and recreational vision for a 5 ½ mile stretch of the city’s riverfront – from the Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit to Canada on the west, and to Gabriel Richard Park and Detroit’s jewel park, Belle Isle in the Detroit River, to the east. Ever since, the Conservancy has been the leader in transforming the Motor City’s waterfront.
I’ve often referred to a quote from a 1961 Time Magazine article entitled Decline in Detroit:
"If ever a city stood as a symbol of the dynamic U.S. economy, it was Detroit. It was not pretty. It was, in fact, a combination of the grey and the garish: its downtown area was a warren of dingy, twisting streets; the used-car lots along Livernois Avenue raised an aurora of neon. But Detroit cared less about how it looked than about what it did—and it did plenty.”
It must be noted that Detroit wasn’t always that careless about its appearance. Prior to the city’s establishment as the world’s automobile capital, Detroit had often been referred to as the "Paris of the Midwest" – a reference to its French heritage, and the broad diagonal avenues and boulevards that were imagined in the well-before-its-time Woodward Plan. Prior to 1910 or so, before automobile manufacturing shifted into high gear, Detroit cared quite a bit about its appearance. However, Detroit left its beautiful side behind as it became an industrial power.
Of course, Detroit was not alone in this. Lakes and rivers were the first interstate highways, and they were used for commerce. The waterfronts of Great Lakes cities like Buffalo, Cleveland and Gary were dotted with smokestacks and silos. River cities like Minneapolis, St. Louis and Cincinnati also contained factories that assembled goods and docks to distribute them. Like many cities built on industry, Detroit had a long history of manufacturing uses on its primary waterway. As manufacturing receded as a key part of the American economy, they fell into disrepair and became a blighting influence on the city.
One of the things coastal cities were able to do was to transition their former port and warehouse districts into new uses much earlier than Rust Belt cities. Class, I believe, plays a big role in this. Cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco were able to remake such districts into spaces that would appeal to a growing upper-middle class demographic in their cities, at a much earlier time. In the ‘80s, warehouses became residential lofts, port facilities became water-based mixed use developments or entertainment complexes. Washington, DC, with the federal government being its most prominent economic generator, never really had much warehouse and port district development. In addition, as the nation’s capital it was ready-made for the kind of monumental and institutional developments that drive tourism and also improve resident quality of life.
Cities in the South and West had another distinct advantage. Being generally younger and newer cities, and they were able to bring in more contemporary development that would also appeal to upper-middle class creative types. Atlanta and Charlotte, or Phoenix and Las Vegas, for example, were never really burdened with extensive pre-World War II development of any kind, giving them a relatively clean slate.
Rust Belt cities had neither the upper-middle class surge that coastal cities experienced, nor the advantage of newness that Sun Belt cities had. In coastal and Sun Belt cities, developers saw opportunities that simply didn’t exist in late 20th/early 21st century Rust Belt cities.
Which leads to another point. Without developers transitioning warehouses into lofts, ports into mixed use developments, and greenfield sites into residential and commercial developments that employ the latest examples of contemporary development, in terms of space and construction, exactly who would lead the way? It would not be local governments, facing declining revenues and difficulty in maintaining basic public services like delivering water to residents, trash collection or street repair. In the case of cities like Detroit, the non-profit sector had to intervene.
In 2003 the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy saw a riverfront landscape with dozens, if not hundreds, of individual property owners. Many properties had already been abandoned, other is deep states of disrepair. There was no coherency to the riverfront. Consider these before and after pictures from the Conservancy’s website:
This happened because the Conservancy was able to create a vision for Detroit’s riverfront when no one else was able to do so. Over the years the Conservancy built momentum, found partners, purchased land, and initiated environmental cleanups, created riverfront designs and implementing construction that led to the beautiful public riverfront today. In addition to the riverfront path, the Conservancy was behind efforts to bring other uses to make the riverfront a true destination – like the outdoor Aretha Franklin Amphitheater, the recreationally-focused Cullen Plaza, the Stroh River Place and Talon Center mixed-use development and the Harbortown residential development – all linked to each other by the Riverwalk.
This is a profound change for Detroit. Rust Belt cities have had perhaps a 30-year lag in addressing things like improved amenities that appeal to a rising creative economy upper-middle class, compared to coastal and Sun Belt cities. Steps like this must be taken for Rust Belt cities to be competitive. Groups like the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy should be applauded for recognizing the importance of this.