SITETACTICS

• who we are: Sitetactics is a group of professional designers and researchers including architects
 
• landscape architects
 
• city planners and geographers dedicated to improving the quality
 
• value and purpose of public space through design. In particular
 
• attention is paid toward underutilized areas and under-served communities-- Sitetactics seeks to optimize strategic sites with regard to social
 
• environmental and cultural performance. our vision: for cities to be built around an integrated public landscape of constructed space
 
• cultivated landscapes and naturalized terrains.

this winter break I visited Detroit, and Flint Michigan and Youngstown Ohio to see other shrinking cities--how they were managing, what the issues were, how they were the same or different from Baltimore. The scene is an auto-archaeology of America. Extremely disturbing, yet people continue.

Shrinking cities--Detroit is a parking lot.

Downtown detroit, see location at Downtown Detroit, Grand River and Cass intersection

REVERSIBLE URBANISM--a concept I'm working on with Baltimore as the pilot, to see if through design, community and partnering of infrastructural needs and social challenges, we can develop projects for our public realm that reduce storm water, filter it, create gathering spaces for neighborhoods and allow us to shrink our urban areas with grace.

Above,  downtown Detroit, January 2011, painful reductions.

Below, Youngstown Ohio neighborhood, January 2011--occupied houses right next to boarded up, vacated, burned out or wide open houses, about 30-50% of original housing stock even standing. Similar neighborhoods all around town: Flint MI neighborhood