Detroit & Metro Detroit
Michigan, USA
Detroit stakeholders are working with the Urban Collaboratory to understand and improve their water resources.
About Detroit
The city of Detroit is located in Southwest Michigan. It lies directly across the Detroit River from Windsor, Canada.
Detroit is the largest city in Michigan, known for being home to many of the major automakers in the United States, as well as for the distinctive “Motown” music that came out of the city in the 1960s.
The Urban Collaboratory is working alongside organizations such as the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and the Great Lakes Water Authority to investigate ways to improve Detroit’s Water Resource Recovery Facility and to collect data on how Detroiters use their riverfront.
- Population: 672,795
- Area: 138.75 square miles
- Median Household Income: $26,249
- Poverty Rate: 39.4%
“We have worked with the University of Michigan Urban Collaboratory to monitor foot and bicycle traffic at several locations along the RiverWalk and the Dequindre Cut. The information gathered allows us to better understand which areas are the most traveled and during which parts of the day. We found the team at Urban Collaboratory to be very responsive, while the data they gathered was organized and thorough.”
Mark Wallace
President & CEO, Detroit Riverfront Conservancy
"The team at the Urban Collaboratory has been an amazing resource and partner for the City of Detroit. Their experience and expertise has helped us move forward at a pace we could not have achieved alone."
Marc de la Vergne
Chief of Mobility Innovation at the City of Detroit
GLWA’s projects to date have enabled us to leverage the extensive experience and research areas of UM to provide results that are scientifically rigorous and investigate areas of our operation to solve problems and optimize processes with an eye to improving our efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Wendy Barrott
Manager, Research & Innovation at Great Lakes Water Authority
Related Projects
in Detroit & Metro Detroit
Principal Investigators in Ann Arbor
María Arquero de Alarcón DEA, MLA
Principal Investigator
Director of the Master of Urban Design
Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning
María Arquero de Alarcón is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning and Director of the Master of Urban Design at the University of Michigan Taubman College. Operating at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism, her work interrogates the agency of design promoting cultural and environmental values in the agenda of urban sustainability. Her work is published in the edited volumes The Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan of the Great Lakes Region and Mapping Detroit: Land, Community, and Shaping a City, the Michigan Journal of Sustainability, Architect Magazine’s “Next Progressives,” PLOT, Green and Building Design, International Journal of Transportation, Journal of Transportation Planning and Technology, UHF and New Mobility. She holds a professional degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Madrid Polytechnic University, a master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture from the E.T.H. Zurich, and a master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design from the G.S.D., Harvard University. She is a Spanish registered architect, an A.S.L.A. and an A.P.A. member.
María is founding partner of MAde Studio, a research-based, collaborative design practice with projects that articulate a range of design strategies operating across geographies, scales and disciplinary sensibilities. Through the combination of grant-funded research initiatives, urban design experimentation, and small, site-specific built interventions, MAde Studio’s work focuses in the advancement of design values integrating the knowledge co-generated with local partners, collaborators and residents. MAde Studio has garnered recognition with four AIA Michigan Design Awards for Playful Horizons, A Dozen Playgrounds, Eastside Recreation Center and Liquid Planning Detroit, an ACSA Faculty Design Award for Liquid Planning Detroit, and two Boston Society of Architects Citations. The work has been exhibited in the 2017-2018 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, and academic institutions like the University of Tennessee, the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan.
Recent Projects
Glen Daigger PhD, MSCE, PE
Principal Investigator
Co-Founder
Professor, Environmental and Water Resources
Dr. Daigger is currently Professor of Engineering Practice at the University of Michigan and President and Founder of One Water Solutions, LLC, a water engineering and innovation firm. He previously served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for CH2M HILL where he was employed for 35 years, as well as Professor and Chair of Environmental Systems Engineering at Clemson University. Actively engaged in the water profession through major projects, and as author or co-author of more than 100 technical papers, four books, and several technical manuals, he contributes to significantly advance practice within the water profession. He has advised many of the major cites of the world, including New York, Los Angles, San Francisco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Istanbul, and Beijing, and is currently a member of the Asian Development Bank Water Advisory Group. Deeply involved in professional activities, he is currently co-Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Water Environment and Reuse Foundation (WE&RF), and a Past President of the International Water Association (IWA). The recipient of numerous awards, including the Kappe, Freese, and Feng lectures and the Harrison Prescott Eddy, Morgan, and the Gascoigne Awards, he is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a Distinguished Fellow of IWA, and a Fellow of the Water Environment Federation (WEF). A member of a number of professional societies, Dr. Daigger is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineers.
Recent Projects
+ Optimizing Phosphorus Removal at Detroit’s Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF)
+ Protecting Public Health with Improved Water Service
+ Use of Artificial Intelligence in Water Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRF)
Cyrus Peñarroyo
Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor of Architecture
Cyrus Peñarroyo is a Filipino-American designer and educator whose work explores the complex interrelations between architecture, contemporary media, and digital culture. He is an Assistant Professor at University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, where he was the 2015‑16 William Muschenheim Fellow. Previously, he taught at Princeton University, Columbia University GSAPP, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Peñarroyo was awarded the 2019 Architectural League Prize and an ACSA Faculty Design Award Honorable Mention. His work has been exhibited at Materials & Applications in Los Angeles, Pinkcomma Gallery in Boston, The New School in New York, Princeton University School of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the 2014 Venice Biennale.
Peñarroyo received a B.S. in Architecture Summa Cum Laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an M.Arch from Princeton University. He worked for LTL Architects and Office for Metropolitan Architecture in New York, and Bureau Spectacular in Chicago. He was Project Lead on Manual of Section, published by Princeton Architectural Press and Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook, published by ORO. He is a partner of the design practice EXTENTS.
Recent Projects
Jen Maigret MS, MArch
Co-Principal Investigator
Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning
Jen Maigret is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she teaches design studios and courses in sustainability and representation. She was a 2006-2008 Cynthia Weese Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in Saint Louis, where she also held an assistant professor position. Maigret is a licensed architect in the State of Michigan and a principal at PLY+ architecture, urbanism and design.
Maigret holds degrees in Biology (B.A. Biology, Hartwick College and M.S. Evolutionary Biology and Ecology, University of Michigan) and Architecture (M.Arch, University of Michigan). Her educational and professional experience within the fields of biology and architecture inform her design expertise and approach to architecture as a component of broader environmental systems. Maigret was previously a partner in the trans-disciplinary, collaborative practice, MAde Studio where she contributed to projects ranging from regional green infrastructure analyses and oversaw the design and fabrication of architectural elements within public spaces.
Recent Projects
Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos PhD, MSc
Co-Principal Investigator
Associate Professor
Dr. Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos holds a joint BS/MSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece (2003), and received her MSc (2004) and PhD (2008) Degrees in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2004 she received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her PhD research. She joined the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2008 as an Assistant Professor, and is now an Associate Professor since 2015.
She has received the NSF CAREER award (2013), the 2014 Faculty Excellence Award by the CEE Dept at the Univ. of Michigan, the 2015 ASCE Arthur Casagrande Award and the 2015 ASCE Thomas Middlebrooks Award, and more recently the 2016 Chi Epsilon (XE) Outstanding Teaching Award.
Her research focuses on soil liquefaction, seismic slope stability, and flood protection systems and soil structures under extreme loading like hurricanes and earthquakes and new technologies and methodologies to design, monitor and reinforce them. Her work recently has focused on investigating the dynamic response of gravelly soils by integrating unique laboratory testing and advanced field testing, as well as Discrete Element Method numerical modeling.
Recent Projects
Dimitrios Zekkos PhD, MS
Co-Principal Investigator
Dimitrios Zekkos, PhD, PE, is an Associate Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the University of Michigan. His research interests are in the nexus of geotechnical engineering, natural hazards, and informatics. Dr. Zekkos received his undergraduate degree from the University of Patras in Greece, and a MSCE and PhD Degree in Geoengineering from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to joining the University of Michigan in 2008, he worked for Geosyntec Consultants in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has published more than 100 publications in refereed journals and conferences, and has been recognized with several awards including the Middlebrooks Award, Casagrande Award and Collingwood Prize by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the Outstanding Innovator Award by the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. He is the CEO of ARGO-E LLC, a startup based in Ann Arbor with a focus on informatics in civil engineering.