PizzaPlex Triple Bottom Line Sustainability

PizzaPlex is where people, planet, and pizza napoletana meet to foster an equitable and sustainable city by distributing wealth fairly through worker ownership, providing accessible prices and programs for the local community, and practicing responsible environmental stewardship. This presentation will delve into the approach we have taken to become a social enterprise, discuss the challenges of balancing community and business and showcase PizzaPlex' future plans to raise restaurant industry standards.

Solar in the Jefferson Chalmers Community

The Presentation will be on the solar projects in the Jefferson Chalmers Community. Projects Solar Powered Treehouse of Relaxation, Programming and Mental Health using a Holistic Therapeutic Approach. Outdoor Solar Greenhouse ,Emergency power station, Structure of imagination. 25 Homes Rooftop Solar Panels. Talking about how the community has embraced the idea of Solar in the community to help to save our environment and our wallets. This is a conversation that we plan to education the community in through workshops, learning to install, and inviting experts into talk about the benefits.

Power Reduction Agreements

When meeting green energy goals, there is a new tool in town! Power Reduction Agreements operate like a virtual power purchase agreements, but instead of buying renewable energy, you are buying offsite energy waste reduction. PRAs can be faster and cheaper than a virtual PPA, and offer new opportunities to target the location or type of project to further enhance the entity’s core mission and local presence. This session will explain how PRAs work and how it can bring new investment to Detroit.

Sustainability and Human Capital: Applying Sustainability Models to Workplace Culture

Organizations that want to save the world should start from the inside out. From four day workweeks to proactive approaches to burnout, practices with a smaller environmental footprint create more engaged workplaces - and a bigger positive impact. In this presentation, Belle Detroit will make a case for considering workplace engagement efforts alongside environmental efforts; introduce sustainability efforts to integrate into the workplace and apply to employee engagement; and discuss the intention behind its own conscious workplace to encourage more Detroit businesses to follow suit.

Restoring Detroit Land with Cover Crops

Cover crops are plants that protect the soil from degradation and also improve soil health. This presentation will highlight the Urban Soil Management Research Project being conducted by Michigan State University Extension at the Detroit Partnership for Food, Learning, and Innovation site. After highlighting the findings of year one, I will propose how the City could incorporate cover crops into land management, not only for urban farms, but also into vacant parcels to reduce stormwater runoff, boost pollinators, sequester carbon dioxide, and manage weeds.

Detroit's New Skate Park - A Brownfield Transformed

Situated under the Ambassador Bridge to Canada, this brownfield site was previously characterized by more than a century of heavy industry and stagnant blight, but is now home to vibrant new community-driven facilities including a Tony Hawk skate park, expansive dog park, basketball, soccer, baseball, and playground. Celebrating its recent summer 2019 ribbon cutting, this presentation explores the design process, environmental challenges, and public / private partnerships that helped sculpt Detroit’s newest riverfront attraction.

Smart Design: The Benefits of Integrating Green Infrastructure into Commercial Development

Green infrastructure offers triple bottom line benefits to all types of development. Inhabitect's founder has played an active role in the design, development, sale and installation of over 1,000+ green roofs in his career and will walk attendees through his experiences with this form of green infrastructure, how it ties into other infrastructure options and how each of these can benefit a project. Attendees will learn how they can reduce their Detroit Water and Sewage Department stormwater fees as well as various financing options for these technologies.

Navigating through Storm(y)waters

In an effort to help Detroit property owners navigate the drainage charge and understand the process for successfully retrofitting properties with green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) practices for drainage credit, Detroit Future City brought together cross-sector partners to discuss challenges and best practices for implementing bioretention projects. This informed the development of the Detroit Property Owner’s Guide to Bioretention. Learn about the guide and other resources to support small businesses, nonprofits and faith-based institutions with planning and implementing GSI projects.

SHINE A LIGHT / OFF GRID PEOPLE + PLANT CONSERVATORY

Shine A Light / Off Grid People and Plant Conservatory is an architectural prototype built in the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood of Detroit, MI which integrates various solar technologies such as photovoltaic panels and specialty projection coatings into the architecture in order to produce a greenhouse by day and a movie theater by night, completely off grid and self sufficient. The project was commissioned by the Charles Wright Museum and opened with a short documentary film by acclaimed artist Jullie Dash.

Belly Flops and GSI

Is sustainable change possible without pleasure? I propose to explore the role of swimming in Detroit as a form of pleasure and an act of warm weather resilience. Although Detroit is nestled in the heart of the Great Lakes, we only have two public places to swim outdoors. The majority of Detroit children do not know how to swim. Black and brown children are three times more likely to die from drowning than their white counterparts. What does stormwater management mean in this cultural context? How can strategies connect the pleasure of water to the longer term sustainability of Detroit and the region?

Scaling Green Stormwater Infrastructure in Detroit Neighborhoods

How can CDO's in Detroit neighborhoods create sustainable green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) projects to help mitigate flooding issues and reduce property owner's liability to drainage fees on their water bills? GSI projects are expensive to build and have a terrible return on investment, but what if there was a funding mechanism to help offset and subsidize the cost of these projects? SDBA is looking at a creating a Targeted Redevelopment Area (TRA), similar to a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to help finance GSI projects on a larger scale in Southwest Detroit.

Creating Collaborative Solutions for Detroit's Sustainable Fashion Industry

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Groundwater in SE Michigan: Understanding groundwater processes for sustainable urban development.

Groundwater (GW) plays a critical role in the vitality of the Great Lakes Basin and is largely overlooked in urban coastal cities in the Great Lakes. This presentation summarizes a project addressing urban GW from a multidisciplinary perspective that combines engineering, pharmacology, and anthropology to holistically discuss GW issues in relation to urban sustainability.

Celebrating the Past for a Sustainable Future – 20th Century African American Civil Rights Sites in Detroit

Detroit has a rich and significant history of 20th Century African American civil rights activism and achievement that influenced the struggle for black equality in Michigan and the US. Creating a sustainable Detroit includes preserving these stories and places and finding visible ways to share this history. Quinn Evans worked with State Historic Preservation Office and National Parks Service to conduct research and engage the community and historians to identify 30 critical sites. A bike tour is being developed to highlight places around the theme of “resilience” and will include the important site of the 1963 Malcolm X speech.

Sustainability Action Agenda Community Engagement

Community input was central to the creation of the Detroit's Sustainability Action Agenda. Throughout the development of the Agenda, we focused on engaging a diverse array of Detroiters in every neighborhood across the city. In a year, we heard from thousands of Detroiters and their feedback on the challenges faced by residents and businesses, and suggestions on how to build a more sustainable city. In our session we will go highlight our community engagement strategies, lessons learned, and how this model can be applied to future City of Detroit planning processes.

Detroit Roots and Fruits: Complex Systems Strategy in Community-Led Sustainability

In this session, you’ll learn principles of transdisciplinary and complex systems strategy while engaging leaders from front-line communities with cases at the cusp of economic development pressures, heavy industry, intergenerational leadership and storytelling as applied and navigated across Southwest Detroit, Cody-Rouge, the East Side, and when working with municipal and state-level advocacy through Alkemystery 313, LLC; AGI Construction, LLC; USGBC Detroit’s Advocacy.

GSI in McDougall-Hunt’s Bailey Park

The Bailey Park Project (BPP) is working to develop 'Bailey Park' on 22 contiguous vacant lots in the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood. Through a process that will incorporate resident’s aspirations, professional planning concepts, and universal accessibility features, the final plan for Bailey Park will transform these vacant lots into an environmentally sustainable, multigenerational, green space. Exploring practical strategies for vacant land reuse, creative alleyway improvements, walking/biking trails, opportunities for recreation, and stormwater features.