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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
Wayne County residents unnecessarily losing homes to foreclosure
Advocates say the county is overestimating property values and that many people are losing their homes because they don’t know they can challenge their assessment.
Award-winning Detroit Journalism Cooperative to extend focus on city’s bankruptcy and its impact with new $500,000 Knight Foundation investment
The Detroit Journalism Cooperative will extend its exploration of Detroit’s financial issues and engage citizens in finding solutions to challenges facing the city
In Detroit neighborhood showered with love, uncertainty remains
Despite government and philanthropic attention, the eastside community of MorningSide remains a neighborhood on the brink
Detroit’s next hot neighborhood is hiding in plain sight
Real-estate developers have discovered Milwaukee Junction, the semi-anonymous district northeast of Midtown. Will black Detroiters share in its revival?
12 signs of growing interest in Milwaukee Junction
Real estate developers have descended on this long-ignored district to plan lofts, art galleries and other amenities in what many are predicting is the city’s next hot neighborhood.
Mapping out how Detroit is tackling a mountain of blight
Faced with derelict properties across the city, leaders choose a strategy that produces measurable results in a few, targeted neighborhoods.
INTERACTIVE MAP: Where Detroit is focusing on blight
See which neighborhoods are getting the city's attention, and which are being ignored.
In a city filled with blight, one Detroit neighborhood gets help while another waits
Detroit officials must pick winners and losers in deciding which areas get homes demolished first. Those that must wait: neighborhoods already too far gone.
Landing a job isn’t the end of obstacles facing one Detroit mom
For ordinary Detroiters like Fatima Mixon, finding a job is just the first step. Securing transportation to get to work can feel like winning the lottery. In Mixon’s case, that’s exactly what happened.
For one Detroit mom, a complicated path to employment
Fatima Mixon is one of many jobless Detroiters struggling to learn new skills to support her family. Can she overcome the obstacles of daily life?
Detroit by the numbers – the truth about poverty
Separating fact from fiction, the Detroit Journalism Cooperative digs into the difference between what’s enough money to survive versus the amount needed to be stable.
A bump in deliberations over Detroit schools
Resignation offers piercing criticism, insider glimpse into high-powered coalition studying Detroit’s schools.
Big ambitions for Detroit’s M-1 Rail system
Boosters promise the streetcar system, now under construction along Woodward Avenue, will spur downtown revitalization, brushing aside critics who fear another People Mover.
In Detroit, city hall tries a new approach: helping
Detroit’s newly minted Department of Neighborhoods has unleashed a squadron of district managers, pledging to respond to residents’ calls that went unanswered for decades.
Detroit’s neighborhood fixers, by the numbers
Mayor Mike Duggan’s Department of Neighborhoods measures success in vacant-lot sales, cleanups and complaints answered.
Photo gallery: A day in the life of Detroit after bankruptcy
Michigan Radio asked photographer Ali Lapetina to traverse Detroit one day; she returned with this gallery of a city in motion
A forlorn park gets a fixup
When a fence went up around a cherished community park, residents thought gentrification might be the culprit. But it turns out a neighborhood development group is making the park better.
As good jobs finally arrive, few Detroiters have the skills to fill them
Thousands of positions in construction, healthcare, information technology and other high-growth fields are finally coming as Detroit emerges from bankruptcy. But a rollback in job programs and an educational system that leaves many young adults short on reading and math skills means many Detroiters can’t even quality for job training.
Detroit Public Schools taking a new approach with trade schools
Detroit Public Schools once served thousands of students daily at vocational -technical career centers. Declining enrollment and high school closures led to cuts. DPS is now re-inventing the trade schools.
A new Ford Field
A sparkling baseball diamond for kids is rounding into shape on Detroit’s west side, a $1.4 million neighborhood gift from UAW-Ford.