Staff and faculty of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning and the Urban and Regional Planning Program in the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning received The Clark Street Award for Public Investment from the Southwest Detroit Business Association (SDBA) at its annual Community Investment Breakfast in Detroit.
The SDBA presented the award last month to U-M for outstanding service and partnership provided by the Ginsberg Center’s Michigan AmeriCorps Partnership program and Taubman College’s Urban and Regional Planning Program.
The relationship between SDBA and the Urban and Regional Planning Program was initiated in 1989 and further solidified as U-M placed AmeriCorps members with their organization in Detroit starting in 1995. In the past 15 years, 23 U-M AmeriCorps volunteers and scores of students with other sources of internship funding have served Detroit through working with the SDBA. The AmeriCorps relationship has been managed since 2003 under the leadership of Addell Austin Anderson, formerly the director of the Michigan AmeriCorps Partnership at the Ginsberg Center, recently named U-M’s Detroit Center director.
Aiding in the placement of students with the SDBA is Taubman College community partnerships manager, Eric Dueweke. Dueweke works on behalf of Taubman College to create partnerships with Detroit not-for-profit organizations and faculty and students for the purpose of collaborative projects that will benefit their organizations and educate students. This year, two of the 11 Taubman College urban planning master students serving as Detroit AmeriCorps volunteers were placed with the SDBA.
Taubman College urban planning faculty members, including Margi Dewar, Larissa Larsen and Dueweke, managed urban planning students’ final planning projects on behalf of the SDBA that have helped Southwest Detroit businesses, not-for-profits and residents create better communities. Most recently, nine urban planning students developed a plan for ways that SDBA and others can assure that residents of Southwest Detroit benefit from the jobs that a new bridge to Canada and the Detroit Intermodal Freight Terminal will produce.
“The research by U-M’s AmeriCorps volunteers and the urban planning students have helped us realize what is possible in our community,” says SDBA President Kathy Wendler.
Research on ways to reduce vehicle pollution through the use of increased vegetation, perspectives on ways to increase benefits from new international crossings over the Detroit River to Canada and ways to design neighborhoods to increase residents’ satisfaction have been conducted by U-M faculty and students on behalf of the SDBA.
“The possibilities to affect change in Detroit are endless,” says Dewar, an urban planning professor and former Ginsberg Center faculty director, who helped maintain the relationship with the SDBA. “There is need and with research, hard work and partnership, change to reinforce better communities is possible.”
