Climate change hits Detroit harder than other cities. Here's how parks are working to change that.

This story is part of Equity in Our Parks, a series highlighting the people and organizations advancing equity through Southeast Michigan’s parks and related programming. It is supported by Oakland County Parks and Recreation, Wayne County Parks and Recreation, Huron-Clinton Metroparks, City of Detroit, and Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. 

When Huron-Clinton Metroparks staff were assembling the parks system's climate action plan, Metroparks Director Amy McMillan says they worked with the understanding that climate action is "inherently about equity.'

"It is clear to us that communities of color, communities with lower income, have consistently, over decades, borne the disproportionate, negative impact of climate change," she says.

The resulting plan, released last year, includes goals of offering education, doing engagement work, and providing better transit service among "equity populations" – areas of Southeast Michigan where there are high concentrations of vulnerable groups such as older adults, people of color, and people in poverty. And the Metroparks plan is just one example of how Southeast Michigan's parks are working to address climate equity by mitigating climate change's disproportionate effects on already underserved populations.

The need, particularly in the city of Detroit, is great. While climate change effects like higher temperatures and heavier storms affect everyone, the impact is particularly acute for communities that are already socioeconomically disadvantaged. In Detroit, this manifests in a variety of ways. The city has one of the most intense urban heat island effects in the nation, meaning that hot temperatures feel even hotter due to the prevalence of heat-absorbing surfaces and lack of vegetation. Heavy rainfall brought devastating flooding to the city in 2021, and the city's combined sewer overflow system – which carries stormwater and sewage in the same pipes – has caused contaminated water to flood some residents' homes, as well as rivers and other bodies of water. Air quality in Detroit, already ranked among the worst in the nation, also stands to worsen with climate change.

Ryan Myers-Johnson has seen these effects firsthand as a Detroit resident and an advocate for Detroit's Eliza Howell Park and the adjacent Brightmoor neighborhood. She is the director and founder of Sidewalk Detroit, a nonprofit that acts as a stewardship group for Eliza Howell Park.

"When you're in Black and brown communities that have really poor infrastructure, there's no protections for you because the cities are already strapped and it's easy for people to just kind of shrug their shoulders and say, 'That happens,'" she says. " ... There's no escape for you when you don't have a stronger economic base or stronger social capital protections."
Steve KossRyan Myers-Johnson.
In Eliza Howell Park, Myers-Johnson says addressing climate equity has included building bioswales to naturally collect and redirect stormwater, restoring naturally occurring ponds, and even engaging an Eco-Artist-in-Residency to draw attention to environmental issues through art. Myers-Johnson says there's much more work to do.

"This is something that really affects our whole future, our collective future as a species, and our children's children," she says.

Partnering to restore Detroit's natural areas

As in Eliza Howell Park, climate equity work in Southeast Michigan's parks manifests in myriad ways. At the Huron-Clinton Metroparks, recent activities under the new climate action plan have included educating staff on climate issues, working to host a climate action conference, and taking steps toward implementing stormwater management projects in parks. McMillan says that as she and her staff researched other climate plans, many of them were "incredibly impressive" but seemed "difficult to activate" because of the number of systemic changes they required.

"Our focus was on what we can put our hands around that will make a difference from the beginning," she says.
Steve KossMetroparks staff at a volunteer work day at Palmer Park in Detroit.
One of the Metroparks' most explicit commitments to climate equity is through a partnership supporting environmental restoration in several Detroit city parks. The Metroparks have never had a physical location in the city of Detroit, although that will change next year with the opening of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks Water Garden at Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park. But since 2019, the Metroparks have been collaborating with the Detroit Parks and Recreation Department and various park stewardship groups to support natural areas in Detroit parks.

That work has included controlled burns, which help promote healthy native plant growth, in prairies at Rouge and Riverside parks; invasive species management at Rouge, Palmer, and Chandler parks; and wildlife habitat restoration at Palmer Park. Metroparks staff have also hosted city staff and stewardship group members to explain how controlled burns are conducted.
Steve KossVolunteers remove invasive species at Palmer Park in Detroit.
"The Metroparks really have a lot of natural areas. It's not an urban park space like we have in Detroit, so they've been doing natural areas management for a long time," says Jeff Klein, Detroit's deputy chief of landscape architecture. 
Steve KossJeff Klein.
Klein adds that better managing Detroit's natural areas will have positive outcomes for "equity, quality of life, stormwater, resiliency, all of that." And while the city-Metroparks partnership precedes the Metroparks' climate action plan, it's still very much in keeping with the plan's goals of collaborating with other organizations to serve equity populations. 
Steve KossKatie Carlisle, the Huron-Clinton Metroparks' chief of natural resources and regulatory compliance.
"The thing about plants and animals is they don't understand political borders," says Katie Carlisle, the Metroparks' chief of natural resources and regulatory compliance. "... There's only so much that we can do within our Metroparks' borders, so being able to work outside of that on a regional scale is really important to trying to adapt with climate change."
Steve KossNewly planted trees at Palmer Park.
Supporting climate equity in Oakland County

Oakland County Parks has been undertaking similar climate change mitigation projects across the entire county, and the department is also beginning a process of identifying additional projects to support climate equity in the county's most underserved areas. Sarah Cook-Maylen, natural resources coordinator for Oakland County Parks, says the department recently received funding from the Michigan Invasive Species Grant Program (MISGP) to focus on equity priority communities within the county's Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area. Cook-Maylen says the funding will result in a new strategic plan identifying projects that will help address climate equity issues in underserved areas. 

Prior to receiving the grant, stormwater management has been a key focus area for climate change mitigation work across the Oakland County Parks system. Those efforts have included installing bioswales and rain gardens at county parks. Cook-Maylen says her department has also prioritized prairie restoration, transforming old fields that "might not have been super functional, ecologically, into something that helps with climate change and ... biodiversity."

"Prairies are actually really great at carbon sequestration, so they capture a bunch of existing carbon in the air and then keep it in their root system," she says. "And prairie plants also are really good at capturing water ... and preventing erosion."

Cook-Maylen says Addison Oaks, Independence Oaks, Rose Oaks, and Highland Oaks parks are all good examples of the work the county has done so far. But she looks forward to using MISGP funds to put added focus on the communities that need climate change mitigation most.

"There's definitely a long pattern of climate inequality, I think, in our low-income communities," she says. "So we're trying to readjust, making sure that we're focusing resources on those communities, and giving them the same access to nature and also the benefits of nature for climate adaptation."

From a pollution "armpit" to an Arboretum

In addition to the actions being undertaken by Metro Detroit parks systems and institutions, one Detroiter has spent 20 years taking climate equity into his own hands by building a series of parks sprawling across Detroit's Poletown East neighborhood. Andrew "Birch" Kemp has been slowly buying up plots of mostly vacant land, filling them with trees, and managing them since he moved to the area 20 years ago. In 2019 he formed the nonprofit Arboretum Detroit to manage his nine parks, interconnected by paths winding across eight blocks. Kemp describes the inspiration behind his project with three simple words: "More trees faster."

"I've been planting trees almost my whole life, but I kind of decided, with climate anxiety and stuff, that there's no reason to not just go really hard," he says.
Steve KossBirch Kemp at Arboretum Detroit's Treetroit One park.
Kemp was motivated by his neighborhood's rather bleak environmental history. He describes the area as having been "super abused and neglected" for decades, particularly since the Poletown neighborhood was razed in 1981 to build GM's Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant. The plant, now called Factory Zero, is still in operation just blocks from Arboretum Detroit's parks, as is the US Ecology Detroit South hazardous waste storage and treatment site. The Detroit waste incinerator operated in the area until 2019. And the community sits just southeast of the I-75/I-94 interchange.

"We're kind of in this armpit of pollution," Kemp says.
Steve KossArboretum Detroit's Treetroit One park.
However, Kemp also sees opportunity in the expansive vacant land available in many areas of Detroit. He notes that it would be hard to plant a forest in a densely developed city like Hamtramck, but it's been comparatively easy to find land for one in his neighborhood. He's aimed to design his parks with trees closely spaced together so they completely shade the ground, reducing urban heat island effect and cooling the air.
Steve KossA mural of Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai at Arboretum Detroit's tree nursery. Maathai founded the Greenbelt Movement, which advocates for conservation and women's rights.
"We tend to put a lot of effort into suppressing nature, and if we don't intentionally create space for the trees, they're not going to be here," he says. "And with the effects of climate change ... we've just got to have more protection."
Steve KossArboretum Detroit's Treetroit One park.
Kemp says he aims to eventually turn Arboretum Detroit into a conservancy, as he wants his parks to be permanently "safe, not sellable, [and] not developable." He hopes his work serves as a model for other Detroiters in similarly disinvested neighborhoods who are seeking to mitigate climate change effects. 

"I feel like everybody should be able to live under trees," he says.

Patrick Dunn is the lead writer for the Equity in Our Parks series. He's also the managing editor of Concentrate and an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and editor.

Photos by Steve Koss.