Detroit natives can recall the neighborhood of Fitzgerald and its transition from a lively community to a vacant and foreclosed part of town. Today, the neighborhood is poised for change again, as landscape architects Spackman Mossop Michaels (SSM) work to help revitalize the community alongside the Fitzgerald Neighborhood Revitalization Plan with a series of design strategies that populate the neighborhood's vacant lots. In a recent Metropolis article, writes, "it’s a unique model for Detroit—or anywhere else—because it rebuilds equity not only by restoring what was taken but also by deepening residents’ relationships through the new landscapes." 

With the aim of piecing together 26 lots connecting to and surrounding the Ella Fitzgerald Park, the plan is to create a linear greenway filled with native meadows and larger orchards within the neighborhood. Mortice writes, "the Fitzgerald Neighborhood Revitalization Plan weaves together refurbished single-family homes within a network of productive and amenity landscapes centered on an axial greenway. The hopscotch of sagging husks surrounded by overgrown weeds is being replaced by orchards, native meadows, and rows of cash crops."

Collaborating with nonprofit organizations like The Greening of Detroit and community members, the SMM plan focuses on understanding how residents use this vacant land to help develop ways of enhancing the overall wellbeing of the neighborhood. 

Mortice continues, "The new landscapes will radically alter the spatial patterns of the neighborhood, he says, but won’t disrupt its intimate and steadfastly residential character. As the greenway winds through a formerly vacant lot between two houses now filled cheek by jowl with flowers, there’s a sense of discovery and whimsy, the feeling that the next lot could host an apiary or berry bushes."

SMM founding principal Wes Michaels shares with Mortice, “We’re looking at strategies that maybe have a little bit more up-front cost, but long-term, are lower-maintenance,”