From Disinvestment to Renewal: Lessons from Detroit's Joe Louis Greenway

The Joe Louis Greenway is a 29-mile trail network connecting 23 neighborhoods and four cities across metropolitan Detroit, and it runs on land with a complex legacy of disinvestment, industrial use, and community displacement. Building the Greenway requires more than funding and construction. It requires trust. Recorded at the 2026 National Planning Conference in Detroit, this episode of Critical Conversations in Transportation Planning features Idrees Mutahr and Reuben Riggs-Bookman, PhD, the planning and implementation team behind the Greenway. They walk co-hosts Divya Gandhi and Em Hall through how their team built an engagement framework that goes far beyond typical public involvement, with more than 200 community meetings, a presence at a diverse array of events, and a deliberate effort to inherit and honor years of relational groundwork laid before either of them arrived. They also get honest about where that model has been tested. Greenway planning and transportation planning are related, but not the same. This conversation explores where they diverge, and what transportation planners can learn from a project that must be, all at once, a piece of infrastructure, a community commitment, and a down payment on a city's future. Episode URL: https://planning.org/podcast/from-disinvestment-to-renewal-lessons-from-detroits-joe-louis-greenway/