Maximizing Community Impact (MCI) Tool

With the Motor City Mapping project providing the best available information about vacancy and blight in Detroit, the city of Detroit now needs to look beyond sheer numbers. Blight removal in Detroit must occur in geographic areas of concentration, rather than the scattered, habitually random, approaches of the past. Addressing blight holistically within specific geographies stops the blight from spreading, treats it, and then creates a strong base for current residents to realize the future.

The Maximizing Community Impact (MCI) software tool was designed, in consultation with Detroit Future City, Center for Community Progress, and Wayne State University’s Center for Urban Studies, to take the big picture of Detroit’s needs to the neighborhood level. Like the Motor City Mapping database, the MCI is intended to start a conversation about where to begin the blight removal process. The MCI uses the Motor City Mapping datasets and additional indices about property ownership and condition, neighborhood occupancy (focused specifically on the number of children under 18), housing market activity, and foreclosures. That information is used to identify Detroit geographies that are at a “tipping point”: areas of the city where immediate intervention has the best odds of preserving neighborhood stability and attracting new investment.

Chapter 4 of the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force report explains the MCI’s methodology and motivation and can be found at http://report.timetoendblight.org/guide/.