greeningofdetroit.com
Replanting Detroit.
Thousands of trees seemed primed to topple. The city needed helped.
It found that help from its citizens. And got the trees down.
That’s the ongoing story in Detroit, Michigan, where over the past year citizens have reported some 4,500 old trees needing to be taken down from publicly owned berms.
They made those reports via Detroit’s SeeClickFix community problem-solving web platform. As a result, the city has taken care of 4,100 of those trees so far, according to Amy Sovereign, the program management officer for Detroit’s Department of Innovation and Technology.
Sovereign spoke about Detroit’s latest problem-solving moves during a Motor City edition of WNHH’s “SeeClickFix Radio” program.
Linked In
Amy Sovereign.
She said the city needed some help to get to all those trees. So it enlisted private tree removal companies from throughout the region in a “day of service,” in which they’d donate their services to remove dead trees. The companies responded in force, making the day “a huge success” that Detroit hopes to replicate annually.
The city has also relied on citizens to point it to the dead trees through SeeClickFix. In some cases, those tips have come from “block clubs” that have been sprouting up across town, Sovereign said. The city has encouraged the development of these civic gropus, she said. “Your neighbors are going to be better neighbors if they knkow your name,” she said.
The city has been relying in part on a private not-for-profit group to plant new trees and “green Detroit,” the way Urban Resources Initiative has been greening New Haven.
mowergang.com
Detroit volunteers mowing a lot.
Detroit, which is plagued by vacant abandoned properties, has also seen the emergence of “mower gangs,” aka “renegade landscapers.” “Everybody brings their lawn mower” to the vacant properties to cut the grass, Sovereign said. They hit overgrown parkland and playgrounds.
Another problem with which Detroit’s government is wrestling: water running in abandoned buildings, either because of pipe bursts or squatters turning on the taps. SeeClickFixers have reported 327 such cases just since January, Sovereign said.
Click on the above sound file to hear the full episode with Sovereign, which covered grassroots concerns in both Detroit and New Haven.
This episode of “Dateline New Haven” was made possible in part through support from Yale-New Haven Hospital.
SeeClickFix Radio co-hosts Ben Berkowitz and Caroline Smith.
