Detroit’s narrative over the past few decades has been grim and oft-told: auto industry abandonment, depopulation and blighted neighborhoods. But these changes have also made space for new opportunities.

One of those opportunities is around how the city develops going forward. As with many cities around the world, as it grew Detroit followed an urban sprawl model of development, paving over grasslands and wetlands, making it so water is unable to soak into the ground. Today, that impervious development, coupled with the more intense storms brought by climate change, is making flooding a major issue for many cities. Detroit is joining a growing movement worldwide to reclaim space for water in cities and implement what is known as green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) to either absorb water where it falls or to direct it in a more controlled way to treatment plants, which today can get overwhelmed by more rushing water than they are capable of handling.