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Urban and Regional Planning Capstone featured in Bridge Magazine

Urban and Regional Planning Capstone featured in Bridge Magazine

Bridge, an online pubication focused on delivering news and anaysis from The Center for Michigan, has published an article sharing research from one of this year’s Urban and Regional Planning capstone’s focused on the Morningside neighborhood of Detroit.

The article titled, “In Detroit neighborhood showered with love, uncertainty remain”, discusses the current issues facing the neighboohood while the capstone research is featured in the section titled, “Foreclosures take their toll.”

About the photo: The remains of a home on Beaconsfield Street. Even in one of Detroit’s more closely tended neighborhoods, the challenges remain vast. (photo by Bill McGraw)

Margi Dewar, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, was quoted in the article saying, “I feel outraged at what hit MorningSide. It’s outrageous that all those mortgages went into foreclosure. I think our number is that something like 40 percent of structures went through mortgage foreclosures. That’s horrible.”

About the Morningside capstone: MorningSide, a neighborhood on the eastside of Detroit, has experienced major changes since 2007 with large numbers of mortgage foreclosures, decrease in owner occupancy, many demolitions, substantial loss of housing value, and rising numbers of tax foreclosures.  To advance the goal of stabilizing the housing market and preventing further decline of this attractive middle- and working-class neighborhood, students have worked with an advisory committee to develop recommendations for stopping tax foreclosures, turning vacant lots into assets, improving the condition of owner-occupied housing, and building neighborhood and organizational capacity to implement these efforts.  Many of the neighborhoods in Detroit that were intact in 2007 have suffered changes similar to those in MorningSide, so the plan will also be useful for neighborhood leaders elsewhere.  The students’ partners in this plan are the MorningSide neighborhood organization, U-SNAP-BAC, Habitat for Humanity, Detroit Future City, Michigan Community Resources, and the Mayor’s Office.

Faculty advisors: Margi Dewar and Libby Levy

Master of Urban Planning Students:  Josh Bails, Sarah Clark, Fan Fan, Nick Fazio, Seul Lee, Evan Markarian, Jamie Simchik, Jacob Yan.

To read the entire article, visit: http://bridgemi.com/2015/04/in-detroit-neighborhood-showered-with-love-uncertainty-remains/