HTLAN: Driving Detroit — West Grand Blvd. to Corktown to Detroit Riverwalk Park

HTLAN: Driving Detroit — West Grand Blvd. to Corktown to Detroit Riverwalk Park This drive takes you from West Grand Boulevard through Corktown to the Detroit Riverfront. As you travel, watch what changes: housing, commercial corridors, vacant and redeveloped properties, businesses, infrastructure, public spaces and the amount of investment from one area to another. The Detroit Riverfront is an important part of this story. For generations, much of Detroit's riverfront was a working commercial and industrial waterfront filled with factories, warehouses, shipping operations and railroad infrastructure. By the early 2000s, portions of the downtown riverfront included empty warehouses, parking lots and areas with limited public access to the river. The RiverWalk was not conceived simply as a park. Detroit's riverfront strategy called for transforming approximately 5½ miles for public use while improving Detroit's image, encouraging economic development downtown, and creating opportunities for residential and commercial activity. In 2003, The Kresge Foundation, General Motors and the City of Detroit came together to establish the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. Kresge provided a $50 million challenge grant. General Motors donated the first half-mile of RiverWalk and invested an additional $25 million in Renaissance Center waterfront improvements. The City contributed land and infrastructure improvements. Former industrial and transportation properties were transformed along the way. Cullen Plaza had been an aggregate-storage site. The Dequindre Cut was a former railroad line. Robert C. Valade Park occupies former industrial property. And part of the East RiverWalk crosses the former Uniroyal Tire factory property. Today, the RiverWalk is one of Detroit's most recognizable public spaces and was deliberately developed to also serve as an anchor for economic development. That history raises an important question: If sustained, coordinated investment can help transform a formerly industrial and largely inaccessible riverfront, what could that same level of commitment accomplish in Detroit's neighborhoods and commercial corridors? That is part of the story behind How to Lose a Neighborhood. The condition of a neighborhood is not simply about where people choose to live or where businesses choose to locate. Neighborhoods are also shaped over generations by public policy, lending practices, infrastructure decisions, population and job loss, and patterns of public and private investment. Neighborhoods aren't lost overnight. They are shaped by the decisions we make—and rebuilt the same way. • Purchase How to Lose a Neighborhood: A Developer's Perspective — By Design www.howtoloseaneighborhood.com Copyright Notice © 2026 Brinda Devine, P8 Real Estate Solutions, Evangeline Publishing. All Rights Reserved. This video and its contents, including narration, text, concepts, images, and excerpts related to How to Lose a Neighborhood, are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, distributed, or used without written permission from Brinda Devine. #Detroit #DetroitHistory #HowToLoseANeighborhood #DetroitRiverwalk #DetroitRiverfront #Corktown #UrbanPlanning #EconomicDevelopment #NeighborhoodDevelopment #TwoDetroits #bydesign #detroittrainstation