07/06/2026

Outstanding Graduate Student Planning Project

East Village Catalyst Plan: Building Community-Engaged Resilience in Detroit

University of Michigan
Master of Urban and Regional Planning

The East Village is a historically underserved neighborhood in eastern Detroit that has experienced severe disinvestment and vacancies in recent decades. The East Village Catalyst Plan is a collaboration between students from the University of Michigan and the non-profit organization AboutFaceDetroit, which focuses on revitalization efforts in the East Village. This project was initiated to develop a framework for landscape improvements that enhance the neighborhood’s social character and ecological resilience and included site-level designs, a landscape design toolkit, and the catalyst plan itself. Jurors said, "We liked that the toolkit breaks down park strip widths and appropriate plant materials - something we see missing from a lot of landscape guides."

Congratulations to students Geoffrey Batterbee, Devin Derr, Anna Peppet, Mujie Sui, Minxuan Zhang and faculty advisors Lisa DuRussel and Isabella Shehab!