Detroit + Delray, Michigan

University of Michigan
Fall 2011 Graduate Network Studio
James Macgillivray

Delray, as it exists today, is a broken fabric of uses. It draws no visitors and no incentives for prospective buyers. The only traffic passing through consists of the bleak and porous population that remain in the area and the inbound and outbound Canadian traffic passing through the existing Ambassador Bridge.

Through a series of cartographic studies, our team filtered through various layers of the city.  Derived from existing layers of the area, the masterplan extracts the patterns of infrastructure, layers of disintegration, industrial regions, existing structures and topography in order to reconfigure and reorganize the area into a more cohesive fabric of working systems. The extracted layers are then used as a method of carving visual and open corridors throughout the newly created grid. The resultant reveals the potential for additional organizational restructuring that generates a new zoning envelope to serve as a parameter for potential growth. By restructuring the broken fabric and condensing uses, the hope is that the prospect of growth is more evident and eventually, the envelopes of growth will transition from a boundary into density of structure and population.