Spatial Analysis of Vacant Land in Detroit, Michigan:
Quantifying Potential Redevelopment for Green Infrastructure
Introduction:
Over the last few decades Detroit Michigan has experienced a 61% population
decline from a peak of 2 Million residents to just 700,000 today. Currently, 40
square miles of vacant land and 804 contaminated brownfield sites exist within
the city, these properties are remnants of the prosperous industrial
development of the 20th Century. Since then, many community based
organizations such as the Land Bank, Blight Authority, Greening of Detroit and
Grown in Detroit have attempted to redevelop these sites for a number of
purposes. But, few have taken a multidisciplinary approach to redeveloping
vacant land in Detroit by prioritizing environmental sustainability and green
infrasture. Therefore, herein follows a spatial analysis of vacant land in Detroit
with the following objectives:
1. BioRemediation of Contaminated Sites
2. Increasing Urban Agriculture
3. Water Retention Potential
Data:
1. Data Driven Detroit: Open Portal
- Zoning, public land, vacancy sites, suggested demolition sites, brownfield
data, grocery stores, non-motorized transportation hardest hit fund areas.
2. Food desert:USDA
3. SSURGO/STATSGO Soil data: USGSDataGateway
4. 4 DEM’s of southeast MI from USGS earth explorer portal
- from October 2011
- 30 m spatial resolution
Methods:
Software: ArcMap 10.1 and Erdas Imagine
1. ID and quantify brownfield areas of concern (AOC)
- Assess the distribution of brownfields: point density map
- Test for spatial autocorrelation: Moran’s I.
- Study Area consisted of 3 AOCs which contained high concentrations
of both brownfields and publicly owned vacancy.
- Suggested Management for BioRemediation comes from Baarl et. al.
- Estimate total potential greenspace (bioremediation zones and
adjacent vacancies): attribute queries, field calculator, & calculate
geometry tools.
1. Id and quantify areas available for urban agriculture
- Added in census tracts & non-motorized transit - clip from the entire
State of Michigan
- Join the tables from the USDA to census tracts (keep only matching,
symbolized values greater than 0)
- Clipped SSURGO soil data, used the Field Calculator to name soil
series
- Assess the potential for urban agriculture within the city: Series of
Location Queries to identify publicly owned unoccupied units and
suggested demolition sites,
- Additional location queries to identify the unoccupied units and
suggested demolition within food deserts, as well as within the Tedrow
soil series most favorable to sunflower cultivation
- The remainder of potential urban cropland are poorly-drained soil
types, so winter cereal rye will be planted for soil improvement and
food yield
1. Id water accumulation and quantify distance accumulated
- Hydrology tools to create flow accumulation raster (Fill-> Flow
direction-> Flow accumulation->). Reclassify pixels accumulating less
than 1 sq mile as NoData->stream to feature class.
- Buffer accumulation feature and select vacant/suggested demolition
lots intersecting.
- Values to table, summarize, and join tools used to add accumulation
raster values to parcels.
- Queries based on location (hardest hit funds) and attribute (larger than
an acre).
By: Chris Vandenberg, Becky
Laughon, Sean Wylie, Ben DuBois
2. a) Urban Agriculture
Results:
1. BioRemediation =
● 330 Total Acres of Blight converted to Urban Green Space
● 183 Acres of Urban Green Space from Demolished Blight
● 147 Acres of Urban Green Space from 41 Brownfield Sites
● 10.4% of Total publicly owned vacant property converted to ecologically
functional Urban Green Space Table 1: Sum of potential BioRemediation Zones
and potential Green Space from adjacent publicly
owned, vacant land within 3 Areas of Concern
shown in Figure 1
Table 2. Unoccupied Units and Suggested Demolition Table 2a. Potential Yield Estimates for Publicly-owned Unoccupied Units and Suggested Demolition Sites
3.) Water Retention =
Figure 1: A point density map of brownfield sites with 3 Areas of Concern which
contain 41 Contaminated Sites and high densities of publicly owned vacant land.
Suggested redevelopment would remediate contaminated sites and maximize
continuous greenspace by removing blight and planting near existing parks
infrastructure.
Prospective Hardest Hit Fund Areas were
named in 2014. They are part of the second
phase of neighborhoods to receive funding
for structure demolition. Only parcels in
these areas were selected because we
know they are going to be receiving funds
this following year to clear houses.
Figure 4. Map of accumulation of parcels. Shows unoccupied and suggested demolition parcels. Parcels greater than acre
are highlighted with a star.
2.) Food Deserts= Table 3. Areas in Acres of Criteria Throughout the Analysis
● Urbanized areas that are over one mile from health foods
● Total area of 88,800 Acres
● Food Deserts = 23.9% of total area
○ 21,182.7 Acres
Literature Cited:
- Data Driven Detroit, 2014
- Bieby Voijant Tangahu, Siti Rozaimah Sheikh Abdullah, Hassan Basri, Mushrifah Idris, Nurina
Anuar, and Muhammad Mukhlisin, “A Review on Heavy Metals (As, Pb, and Hg) Uptake by
Plants through Phytoremediation,” International Journal of Chemical Engineering, vol. 2011,
Article ID 939161, 31 pages, 2011. doi:10.1155/2011/939161
- Clark, A. (Ed.). (2007). Managing Cover Crops Profitably (3rd ed.). College Park, MD:
Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education.
- Eggen, T. (1999). Application of fungal substrate from commercial mushroom production -
Pleurotus ostreatus - for bioremediation of creosote contaminated soil. International
Biodeterioration & Biodegradation, 44, 117-126.
- Oh, K., Li, T., Cheng, H., Hu, X., He, C., Yan, L., Shinichi, Y. (2013). Development of profitable
phytoremediation of contaminated soils with biofuel crops. Journal of Environmental
Protection, 4, 58-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jep.2013.44A008
- Sales, A. (2011). Production of biodiesel from sunflower oil and ethanol by base catalyzed
transesterification. Unpublished master’s thesis, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH),
Stockholm, Sweden.
Figure 2: Shows the area that are deemed food deserts by the United States Department of
- Sunflower Production (D. R. Berglund, Comp.). (2007). Fargo, ND: North Dakota State
Agriculture. A food desert is determined when residents in urbanized areas are more than one
mile from a store to purchase health foods. Some food deserts maybe a results of parks and Univerrsity
industrial zones (low population levels).