Map Attacks, Parcel Wars, & The Detroit Singularity: The Lights Are Turning On, Now How To Proceed?
Now that we’ve got a parcel-based starter map of Detroit up at livinginthemap.us and are beginning to work on filling out the Corktown neighborhood at corkstarter.com we’ve got an awful lot of options for how to proceed in displaying city information visually, and making it useful to interact with.
Today my inbox blew up with people pointing me to a map the Detroit news put out showing the top 10 property owners in Detroit by sheer number of parcels. Check it out.
Paintball fight!!!
If you tally up the parcels owned by these top players (and they are players — a couple of them have great quotes about playing real life monopoly and doing this instead of hitting the casino) you get 5,901 combined parcels. Compare that to 42,300 parcels owned by the city of Detroit. (Note: LOVELAND micro real estate still has 20,000+ parcels of land on our hands, technically making us the largest land owner in Detroit behind the city itself, but they’re only a square inch big each and we invite you to take them off our hands for a dollar a piece at makeloveland.com. :-))
It’s interesting to zoom in from city-scale land barons to particular neighborhoods. According the data we have for Corktown (which is generally a couple years old, but I don’t think much has changed) the city overwhelmingly blows out the top private land owners. In fact the city blows out the top 50 private land owners *combined*, owning 562 parcels compared to their 514 (excuse me if my combined number is off by a few, I hacked it out on my phone’s calculator :-)):
562 CITY OF DETROIT-P&DD
47 KHALIL BROTHERS INC
34 GREATER CORKTOWN DEVELOPMENT CORP
34 DETROIT ENTERTAINMENT LLC
26 PHILLIPS, RAYMOND SR
20 MICHIGAN CONSOLIDATED GAS CO
20 GRINNELL PLACE DEV LLC
15 TRIDENT-CHECKER LLC
11 MUSCAT, FRANK
10 ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP
10 ANDAHAZY, JANICE P
10 M I I A INC
9 JZ PROPERTIES INC
9 BERESH, HARRY
9 CDS PROPERTIES
9 STONE, HOWARD L
9 CORKTOWN HOUSING LLC
8 BAGLEY PROPERTIES LLC
8 TROSPER, HAROLD
8 BOARD OF EDUCATION
8 ORCA PROPERTY MANAGEMENT LLC
8 MIFSUD, JOSEPH
8 CITY OF DETROIT-P&DD MRYTLE ST WDNG
8 D P W - WESTERN YARD
7 A G J ENTERPRISES LLC
7 TAXPAYER
7 YOUTH FOR CHRIST OF DETROIT
7 BENNETT PARK PEANUT AND NOVELTY CO
7 GREATER CORKTOWN DEV CORP
7 BROOKS LUMBER CO
7 FORMOSA, FELIX
7 BARMC LLC
6 MCRR RAILROAD COMPANY
6 RENAISSANCE PROPERTIES INC
6 F F & B MANAGMENT INC
6 M L KING JR BLVD LDHA
6 NIKOLICH, PAUL
6 SMITH, BARBARA L
6 COOK, KELLY R
6 CUTAJAR, CARMEL
5 LEWIS, KIMBERLY
5 ESTERS, JERRY L
5 RUSCOE, KERRY
5 CARUANA, JOHN
5 CIESZKOWSKI, THOMAS C
5 KHALIL, THOMAS M
5 CITY OF DETROIT-TAXABLE
5 FORMOSA, ANTHONY
5 TEAMSTERS TEMPLE ASSN
5 BRIDGESTONE/FIRESTONE INC
5 MCPHARLIN, WILLIAM & BARBARA
So, obviously this is all very interesting stuff to display. We’re working on showing ownership leaderboards for Detroit and for Corktown and for each neighborhood (starting with zip codes), and making it simple to get in touch with property owners who clearly have more on their hands than they know what to do with. But stuff like that is the tip of the iceberg.
The lights are clearly turning on in the room, and Detroit is getting very close to a “singularity” where abundant public information on city-wide and hyper-local levels will combine with maps, social networks, and the city’s own professed need to rewire and reshape itself through the Detroit Works Project. This will all shake up the game board in ways nobody can predict, and that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. Now, how to proceed in designing an interface for it to most effectively happen in?
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