Riley Rinnan

August 17, 2020

18,000 structures were demolished in the city of Detroit between 2014-2019 and an additional 18,000 structures are planned to be demolished by 2024 as a result of the Detroit Demolition Program 1. The Detroit Demolition Program’s public-facing marketed goal is to remove all residential blight while simultaneously increasing property values across the city with a hard push from the current mayor, Mike Duggan. The program was federally and state funded, with 2⁄3 of recorded demolitions being accounted for by the federal $9.6 billion Hardest Hit Fund (HFF) 2. The Hardest Hit Fund allocated $258.6 million to demolitions and “blight removal” in Detroit, with a single residential demolition estimated to cost $14,855 3. The HFF budget has now run out and the financial responsibility of the blight task force falls on the city and the state. It has been recorded that the removal of blighted structures across residential neighborhoods has increased property values from 2.1% to as much as 13.8% when paired with complimentary strategies such as selling side lots to neighboring residents and auctioning off existing vacant homes 4. However, sprawling acres of cleared parcels appear to sit vacant and inaccessible to residents, especially those in more “desirable” communities - i.e. those with access to something as simple as a grocery store, or proximity to dense and consistently maintained neighborhoods. This type of land is highly favorable to developers and investors, who in many cases reap the benefits of decades of maintenance and personal investment by the residents who may be priced out.

Individuals in positions of power in city governments make decisions that deeply impact current and future generations’ health and their sense of identity. These ghostly structures were once people’s homes, businesses, entertainment and cultural centers, schools, grocery stores - entire neighborhoods. Current residents and generations of communities passed, possess memories and emotional connections to these environments that are now in flux. Imagine an urban fabric with 36,000+ newly flattened lots.

When entire neighborhoods vanish from the physical space, and business corridors with their intertwined infrastructure disappear, there are questions we must ask ourselves: “How do we document these changes, and give back to the communities directly affected? How do we memorialize what a neighborhood once was? How can the function of open source data be expanded and utilized in the 21st century of “cloud computing”? What potential exists to archive our built environment and pay homage to structures that stand today and may not tomorrow?”

3D laser scanning is a technological tool used to capture an object’s exact size and shape using a line of laser light. A 3D scanner captures data from the laser being shone on an object and its surfaces in addition to data from another sensor, typically a camera, which is used to locate the recorded surfaces in space and relation to one another. The two data sets collected are then stitched together to create point clouds. These point clouds can be processed and brought into computer programs as a reality capture. The reality capture displays an accurate position of every pixel of what was scanned to be seen with the human eye on a computer monitor. The applications of 3D laser scanning are incredibly diverse. For example, it can be used in the medical field to create more ergonomic braces and prosthetics using scans of the human body; or in archeology, to make shareable reality captures of million-year old fossils, and it can even be used to create accurate 3D models of cities in the infrastructure of video games.