Interactive map shows all properties that have been demolished or are scheduled to be razed.
The city of Detroit – the motto of which is “it shall rise from the ashes – has launched an interactive map that allows residents to track the progress of blight removal.
The Detroit Demolition Tracker shows the locations of all properties that either have already been demolished or are scheduled to be razed. The website also discloses cost, date of demolition and what contractor did the work. This is part of an effort by the mayor’s office to emphasise operational transparency in city government.
“We want it to be consumable for the community residents, which is why we got the mapping software on there, but also for the people who want to take this data and mesh it with their data, so higher-end data users have an easier format,” said Brian Farkas, director of special projects for the Detroit Building Authority. “The mayor’s charge is that he wants to be aggressively transparent with all of our data, so I think you’re seeing more and more of that.”
The new system was developed in-house by the city’s Information Technology Department using Socrata, Salesforce and Esri ArcGIS software. The system automatically updates every day at 5 a.m.
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