El Moore: Midtown Eco-Village

The El Moore and surrounding vacant land will be the site of a living demonstration center for 21st century urban sustainability. The level of sustainability would attract people from around the world to see how Detroit is helping to create a new globally relevant model for sustainable urban living.

The Eco-village Design Elements

It will include:

• El Moore - a sixteen unit historic apartment building
  • Community collaborative where members share common values about caring for the planet and each other.
    • Healthy living environment...natural lighting, ventilation and materials.
    • Include community gathering and recreation space
    • Mixed income and multi-generational
    • Include "in residence" space for people to come and learn and participate in the teaching and learning.
  • Deep green historic renovation
    • Net-zero energy using solar hot water panels, super insulated envelop and natural lighting
    • Rain harvesting and irrigation
    • Native plants
    • No waste...recycling and compost center
    • Encourage walking, bicycling and use of public transit
• Urban sustainable food demonstration and learning center
  • Focused on how residence can grow food for themselves (food security) using natural methods (permaculture)
  • Edible forests showing how trees can be a vital part of our food system
  • A learning center where sustainable urban food techniques can be taught to the community
  • Bee keeping and microbe demonstration space
  • Connected to North Cass Community Garden
  • The learning center would be a open air building made from using natural building techniques
  • Create and sustain local "green" jobs
• Sustainable Eco-Art space
  • Teaming with MOCAD to display and teach art that connects people to the earth and sustainable ways of living
• Community Park
  • community playing and building of neighborhood relationships
  • Include an outdoor skating rink and outdoor movie venue\
• Work - Live
  • This would a sister project to The Green Garage where sustainable work approaches are lived out everyday.
  • Expect a commercial aspect to the project that creates "green" jobs. Likely this would come from start-ups resident in the Green Garage.

The Design Process

We would use a community-based collaborative design process to develop the final design. This would be very similar to that used at The Green Garage for it's development. We expect to develop this project in partnership with the neighbors, UCCA, MOCAD, and local food establishments.