Detroit Urbanism

Hamtramck's border with Detroit on Oliver Street.

When Royal Oak Township was established in 1833, it was a rural community spanning 36 square miles.

On the outskirts of Detroit and in the suburbs, the land is covered by a gridiron network of concrete roads conveniently spaced one mile apart, sometimes referred to as the "mile road system".

Blue = Farmington Hills; lavender = Farmington.

Facing west on Highland Park's south border with Detroit at Woodward Avenue.

(Virtual Motor City) The City of Highland Park once operated its own independent municipal water supply, from June 1915 through December 2012.

(Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library) This is the fourth installment in an ongoing series covering the development history of Highland Park: Part I: Before Ford explores the early origins of the Village of Highland Park as an upper-class…

(The Henry Ford) This is Part Three in a series covering the historical development of the City of Highland Park.

Facing east down Manchester Avenue in 1911, as a Ford factory addition rises in the foreground.

This blog post started off as another entry in the "Detroit Borders" series, with this installment examining the city's border with the City of Highland Park.

One of the first things you probably notice about the map of Detroit is that there are two large holes in the middle of it created by the cities of Highland Park and Hamtramck: These two communities were encapsulated within Detroit's borders when the city…

Seven Mile Road in northwest Detroit in 1930.

The border between Detroit & Harper Woods on Kelly Rd. south of Washtenaw St., May 23, 1958.

(Archive.org) Much of Detroit's easternmost neighborhood, Cornerstone Village, came into the city when a half square mile of territory was annexed from Grosse Pointe Township in 1926.

In this series on the City of Detroit border, we are breaking the city limits down into segments and uncovering the history behind them individually.

Detroit's current borders superimposed over an 1876 map of Wayne County.

I began working at the Detroit Institute of Arts as a bookkeeper in April 2007.

(This is not the post where I explain why I quit my job, or make any radical political statements.

The signs are everywhere--the caution tape, the marking of underground utilities, the removal of trees--that a demolition is near.

(This is the second and final installment of an article on the survey of Michigan and Detroit.

We are living in a 200-year-old matrix marked by brass and iron.

One noticeable feature on some old Detroit maps is the slightly tilted, fourteen-square-mile rectangle that lies three miles northwest of the original city core.

A strangely common frustration for drivers in Detroit, especially those who are not yet familiar with the city, is that crossing Woodward Avenue is not always a straightforward task.

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library The last of Detroit's radial avenues to be established was Fort Street.

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library Grand River Avenue, the fifth radial avenue to be extended from Detroit, was built to connect the city to the point where the Grand River flows into Lake Michigan.