Detroit in 50 Maps

by Alex B. Hill

Detroit in 50 Maps shows you the Motor City from entirely new perspectives, from neighborhood coffee shops to the legacy of redlining.   There are thousands of ways to map a city. Roads, bridges, and railways help you navigate the twists and turns; topography gives you the lay of the land; population growth shows you its changing fortunes. But the best maps let you feel what that city's really like.  Detroit in 50 Maps  deconstructs the Motor City in surprising new ways. Track where new coffee shops and coworking spaces have opened and closed in the last five years. Find the areas with the highest concentrations of pizzerias, Coney Island hot dog shops, or ring-necked pheasants. In each colorful map, you'll find a new perspective on one of America’s most misunderstood cities and the people who live here. A conversation starter for Detroiters past, present, and future,  Detroit in 50 Maps  is for anyone keen to understand the city in new and surprising ways.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Geography

192 pages, Hardcover

Published November 2, 2021

About the author

Alex's work highlights the intersections of power, privilege, and race in regards to health equity, access to basic services, and the social and political determinants of health. He is Project Director of the Detroit Food Map Initiative, which has been mapping food access locations in Detroit since 2011. Alex started the website DETROITography (detroitography.com) in 2013 to bring together various Detroit cartographers and their work. He teaches in urban studies, public health, geography and data visualization. Alex is the author and cartographer of the books, Detroit in 50 Maps (2021) and Great Lakes in 50 Maps (forthcoming, 2023) from Belt Publishing.

Reviews

[Matt]

Very interesting. Definitely raised my interest in making some road trip expeditions into Detroit.

[Cory]

This is a fun read for those who know or love the city of Detroit. It's not a true cartographical reference, but a fun conversation-starter to sit on your coffee table. As other reviewers have noted, some of the maps are too small, lack legends, and in one case a sentence disappears halfway through. However, it prompts reflection on race, class, and historical structures of inequality in a different medium, even if those reflections are somewhat surface-level. For all those times you have friends over to dinner and someone asks where to look for pheasants (or at least where to look for the Detroiters who call in to WDET to report them), this is the perfect book for the job.

[Ophelia]

Love the map about Coney Dogs

[Jerry Nechal]

While the book has an occasional interesting map, I found it to be a disappointing purchase. First the small size makes the maps hard to read and difficult to easily pinpoint locations. Map books need to be in a larger format. Also some of the maps did not include a legend. Some of the information on maps is superfluous such as color coding streets, roads, avenues, etc. Finally the author states that there are no longer any auto plants in Detroit. What about Jefferson North Assembly or Factory Zero in Hamtramck?

[Adam Cohn]

I agree with Corey’s review. Great conversation starter. The surface level information is there, plenty more research to do.

[Ember McCoy]

Great coffee table book! Proved my complaint that there are not enough coffee shops in Detroit. (Now just need a map that shows by hours open — not enough!)

[selen]

The typos were funny (sentence cut-off midway on page 31, “green” dots that were teal) but also the lack of actual substance and refined cartography makes it a meh