Urban Affairs

Ferndale, an inner-ring suburb popular with Detroit students, is taking bold steps to desegregate its schools.

The $50,000 Hatch Detroit competition has helped startups launch creative businesses in the thriving central city. But winning entries for entrepreneurs of color in Detroit’s neighborhoods have proven more elusive.

The museum is collecting oral histories from Detroit and suburban residents who lived through the chaos and pain of the disturbances that took place in Detroit that summer as its 50th anniversary nears.

Detroit’s school board will have power limits unlike other districts across Michigan. Some fear that those restrictions will scare off strong candidate

Early payments to city retirement funds from the state and the Detroit Institute of Arts were heavily discounted, which means the troubled pensions must produce even bigger returns over two decades.

Yet the Detroit Journalism Cooperative survey on racial attitudes also shows that bias infiltrates the daily lives of blacks in the region a way that many whites can’t imagine.

The Detroit Journalism Cooperative survey found significant optimism over racial attitudes in general. But blacks and whites have vastly different experiences -- and opinions -- concerning law enforcement.

We asked leaders around metro Detroit to talk frankly about racial attitudes in their lives and communities. These five answered the bell.

Unemployment and poverty drove much of the violence that swept across Detroit in the summer of 1967. Today, those numbers are even worse.

Detroit’s boom and bust auto industry explains a lot about the poverty and jobs challenges the city faces today.

Politicians and media reports indicate Detroit is in the middle of an economic resurgence. That’s true for the central business districts. That’s not the case for many residents in the poorest neighborhoods

Tired of waiting for the garbage trucks and housing inspectors who never seemed to come, here’s how one ordinary, extraordinary Detroiter restored beauty and a sense of safety to the street she calls home

The city’s feared, nearly-all-white police force eventually integrated after the 1967 riot. But crime and mistrust within the city’s African-American community did not fade so easily. Residents say a new chief is helping to ease old animosities

In Baltimore Freddie Gray died after being arrested and thrown in the back of a police van. In Cleveland, video captured images of 12-year-old Tamir Rice as he was shot by a Cleveland officer. And in Ferguson, Missouri, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead in the street. These events and others have increased racial tensions in cities across the nation in a way not seen since the 1960

In the aftermath of Bridge’s story on the Detroit Community Schools, the Michigan Department of Education is checking for certification violations

A low-achieving Detroit charter, now run by former city councilwoman Sharon McPhail and administrators with checkered pasts, is the only high school in Brightmoor. Other city neighborhoods face a glut of schools. Can a new commission bring order to Detroit’s chaotic school landscape?