Many years ago (2009) a viral infographic was created that showed Boston, Manhattan, and San Francisco could physically fit inside the map of Detroit...and people were shocked! I heard comments like, “Wow! That’s why Detroit looks so empty!” and “There’s too much land to possibly be able to make any progress!” and “Detroit must be one of the largest cities in the country in terms of square miles.” Spoiler alert: None of those statements are true.
I was also shocked by the graphic , but as a data nerd, I needed more information to fully understand just how huge we were. Were we the #1 largest city in the U.S.? 4th? 8th? Well, it turns out we’re...64th. Yes, Detroit is the 64th largest city in terms of square miles of land in the United States at 138.7 square miles. This was confusing since the whole point of the infographic was to show that we were such a big land mass, but it turns out we really aren’t! So I kept digging into the data and here’s what I found out:
Infographic from original article.
First, Boston and San Francisco are outliers as they are actually some of the smallest major cities in the U.S. Second, Manhattan is only one borough of New York City, which is more than double the size of Detroit at 300 square miles of land! (Small aside: I use the square miles of land and not the entire city since many cities have bodies of water, which shouldn’t count if we are talking population density. While in Detroit, that’s only about 2 miles of water, New York has 168 square miles of water for a total area of 468 square miles!)
After exploring the data, here are some more facts that may be surprising:
Detroit is approximately ¼ of Nashville, ⅓ of Los Angeles, ½ the size of New York City, and ⅔ of Chicago.
640,000 people is not a small number of people: Detroit is almost exactly the same size as Atlanta but has 140,000 MORE people.
Even after losing more than half of its population, Detroit is ranked 9th in the United States in terms of density (people per square mile).
As I research and find out information that surprises me, I feel the need to share it with others. So for years I have been sharing this information with tour attendees, in speeches, on social media and sometimes even with strangers at the bar. Now more than a decade later, and with the help of the awesome Ton Yes! Design, I have my own infographic to share.
Here you can see some other cities and how Detroit compares both in square mileage but also in density (people per square mile).
While this data doesn’t change the fact that Detroit still has challenges related to vacant land (estimates are between 24 and 40 sq. mi.), what it does do is provide some context so people can better understand and be better equipped to work together towards the solutions. A more holistic and deeper understanding of the situation is so important because if we think the problem is too big to solve, as was alluded to by the original infographic, then some might ask why even bother trying?
Others keep working to move Detroit forward no matter what. Detroit it is fortunate to have organizations and individuals working on innovative and equitable solutions everyday and each one of them knows the truth: that Detroit is more than data and it’s a city worth fighting for.
