The Detroit Strategic Framework Plan is a comprehensive, action-oriented roadmap for decision-making to improve the quality of life and business in Detroit. Stoss collaborated with a team of planners, designers, and community leaders on the Detroit Works Project, a city-wide planning framework for Detroit. The project identifies productive efficiencies by establishing links between social, economic, and ecological systems. These integrated solutions suggest new forms of urban living, new modes of production in the city, and newly productive green infrastructures for the city at large.

Stoss's work seeks to redefine and diversify the traditional notion of landscapes as only recreation by showing the multiple ways landscapes can improve the overall health of the city and its residents. Single-use, passive landscapes are resource-consumptive; but contemporary productive landscapes can generate resources. Through natural processes, they can reduce environmental health problems faced by city residents. Making landscapes productive is a guiding principle of Stoss's work. Landscapes and green infrastructures can clean air, water, and soil and improve the health of urban ecosystems. Innovative landscapes focus on multiple types of blue / green infrastructure, cleaning water and air and combine with productive types, including food and energy production, community engagement, and research. In this way, the plan encourages landscape infrastructure as a civic instigator for new city structures.

client

Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (Hamilton Anderson prime)

location

Detroit, Michigan

TEAM

Stoss