If you care about Michigan, please support our work.
Donate TodayUrban Affairs
In-depth reporting on Michigan's largest city and surrounding communities, including deep dives into the big changes afoot in Detroit, its schools, neighborhoods, institutions and city hall.
Articles
Detroit Police killed their sons at the Algiers Motel. No one ever said sorry.
Three black teens died at the Algiers 50 years ago today. So did faith in justice for their families.
He started the Detroit riot. His son wrestles with the carnage.
Bill Scott threw the first bottle at police, an act that encouraged violent uprisings by black Detroiters in 1967. His son grew up thinking his race didn’t matter. Until one night, suddenly, it did.
He became famous defending ‘Algiers Motel’ cops. Deal with it.
With the release of “Detroit,” director Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the killings of three black teens during the 1967 unrest, the lawyer who successfully defended several infamous white Detroit officers looks back with indifference toward his critics.
Share your 1967 recollections and attend showing of documentary on Detroit uprisings
Additional showings of “12th and Clairmount,” a documentary produced by the Detroit Free Press in collaboration with Bridge and WXYZ-TV, have been scheduled as the 50th anniversary of the unrest of 1967 approaches.
Can Detroit find salvation through demolition?
Mike Duggan is the latest Detroit mayor to measure success by tearing down homes. Two scholars debate whether the strategy works.
Detroit is razing thousands of homes. It won’t fix much.
An urban planning professor argues that Detroit has knocked down more homes than any other city in past 50 years – and has little to show for it.
Bulldoze away: Some Detroit neighborhoods need thinning out
An urban policy expert says the city needs to ask difficult questions about which areas can be saved in era of diminishing revenues.
A day in the life of one Detroit high-crime neighborhood
Michigan Radio’s Lester Graham tags along as a neighborhood police officer completes his rounds in the city’s MorningSide community.
Just another Tuesday for 37 first-graders with no music or art or gym
This is what it’s like to teach in a classroom with too many children, books that don’t arrive until March, and no help because there not enough teachers.
Detroit court gets tough on traffic tickets. County taxpayers get stuck with tab
A get-tough approach is sending scofflaws to jail for unpaid misdemeanor tickets. But it costs the county more to jail them than it generates for the city in ticket revenue and, now, even the sheriff is complaining.
Sorry we foreclosed your home. But thanks for fixing our budget.
Counties across Michigan profit from selling foreclosed homes and charging fees on back taxes to down-and-out residents. No place does it more than Wayne County.
One envelope holds her fate. Is she getting deported today?
A Michigan woman brings hope and a duffel bag to the airport on what could be her last day in only country she’s known since she was a baby.
The future of small business outside Detroit’s bustling downtown is uncertain
It’s not only the residents who continue to struggle in the city’s vast, impoverished neighborhoods. Small stores are barely hanging on.
The Detroit uprising: 50 years later
July 22, 1967 - It's been 50 years since the uprising
The backdoor voucher: How a Detroit school created to lift up a 'Christ-centered culture' found a way to get public dollars
Cornerstone Schools recently announced that its flagship K-8 school would become a charter this fall. It would keep the same staff and curriculum, but would now be able to collect taxpayer money.
How to cash in on a crappy home. Step one: Find a sucker to sign a land contract.
Left for dead in the 1970s, lending through (often predatory) land contracts is back with a vengeance in Michigan and Rust Belt cities after the mortgage meltdown.
More showings added for documentary on ‘67 Detroit uprisings
The documentary, produced by the Detroit Free Press in partnership with Bridge Magazine is selling out fast. A Bridge/DJC book examining the violence that shook Detroit 50 years ago is available now.
On the Detroit River, a faded dream at a city-owned marina
An African-American businessman dreamed of a place where people of color could live and boat on the river, in the shadow of high-rise luxury. It never happened.
Mom has sick husband, baby – and looming deportation to ‘home’ she’s never known
The past and new immigration policies catch up to a woman who must soon leave United States – and her family.
There’s a lot riding on Detroit’s new QLINE streetcar
To break even, streetcar must be more than a millennial mover or party tram for sports fans, experts say.