Corktown Urban Performance

MIT City Science collaborated with Ford to model the transformation of Corktown, Detroit, into a high-performance, entrepreneurial mobility innovation district anchored by Michigan Central Station. The team created an interactive planning model that allowed stakeholders to test potential designs and understand how land-use and mobility decisions could affect the surrounding community.

Built on the CityScope platform, the project combined a land-use and mobility simulation, urban performance indicators, and a web-based interactive tool. Users could explore changes in development density and program alongside interventions such as greenways, shuttle systems, fleet electrification, and shared micromobility, then compare their effects across economic performance, innovation potential, sustainable mobility, sustainable buildings, and community benefits.

The work showed the importance of evaluating interventions as a connected system: individual changes often introduced tradeoffs, while a compact, mixed-use strategy combining multiple interventions improved performance across the dimensions studied.