Some of Detroit's most vibrant areas would get an infusion of cash and other new services, such as transit and work force training, and other districts now mostly vacant and abandoned would be turned into farms, forests and other landscape uses under the long-awaited Detroit Future City strategy document that is to be released today, John Gallagher writes in the Free Press.
Following two years of study and 30,000 conversations with the public, the Detroit Works Long-Term Planning team gave the news media a sneak peek Tuesday of its final report that is being billed as a "framework" for development of Detroit over the next 50 years.
Under the plan, specific employment and population centers of Detroit would be tagged as areas for future investment -- some obvious ones are Midtown and downtown, but another would be the West McNichols hospital corridor, among others.
Other sparsely populated areas would be gradually transformed to other purposes, such as farms, apple orchards, retention ponds for rainwater and other environmental uses. Some of these areas include the lower east side and the blocks west of the Coleman A. Young International Airport.
