Mapping Detroit: The last houses on the block

This is part of a series from the unofficial cartographer of Detroit, Alex B. Hill, a self-described “data nerd and anthropologist” who combines mapping, data, and analytics with storytelling and human experience. He is the founder of DETROITography and author of “Detroit in 50 Maps." 

One Detroit myth that followed the 2009 “Assignment Detroit” efforts by national media entities was the concept of the “urban prairie.” In 2010, mapper Rob Linn found the metaphor didn’t hold up well and there were just 134 “last houses on the block” (LHBs). One of the LHBs that Rob noted in 2010 has now been demolished. Near St. Aubin and Palmer, there are now no houses on the block (NHBs).

I’ve noticed a few LHBs on my drives around the city. The home across from Stanley Hong’s Mannia Cafe on East Baltimore always stood out. The other was a home on French Road just north of I-94. There is another house on Longwood, a dead end street that opens into a forest. Another home sits alone on Beniteau among the Hantz Woodlands. The east side has seen many streets clear out, and the LHBs occur on multiple blocks of Lakeview and Eastlawn streets.

I decided to test the LHB concept in 2024 after the city has seen mass demolition of over 29,000 homes since January 1, 2014 through the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) and an influx of targeted investment in the last decade. Utilizing the City of Detroit’s parcel file from the open data portal, I selected all properties coded for residential, single family, apartment, multi-family, and their related codes. I used Rob’s same radius of 300 feet and identified 155 LHBs in Detroit. In 13 instances it appears that the demolition program eliminated LHBs that had come up in my previous data analysis.

Rob’s analysis in 2010 found a very dispersed 134 LHBs, with some clusters on the near east side and far east side. In 2024, there are more significant clusters in greater downtown and the lower east side. It is likely that most LHBs from 2010 were eliminated through demolition and many of these 155 were also created as a result of the demolition program.

It's hardly an argument for a more rural city, yet vacancy remains high and much of the east side has seen a decades-long clearing out.