transforming the region

Transforming the Region’s Economy: Road to Renaissance

Detroit Renaissance is leading a region-wide collaboration that is launching strategies and taking actions to transform our region’s economy. Called the Road to Renaissance, the initiative benchmarked 6 peer domestic and international regions, gathered input from over 650 local leaders from 500 different organizations, analyzed the region’s business and workforce strengths and is being led by a 30 member steering committee.

The Road to Renaissance plan has six priorities.

The work being done to implement these strategies is described below:

Becoming the Global Center for Mobility: Building on its’ position as the world center for automobile research, development & engineering, efforts to attract global investment, market automotive technologies to other sectors and anticipate future mobility sector growth are being supported.
Developing an Aerotropolis (Airport City): A master development plan for over 25,000 acres of underdeveloped land between Metro and Willow Run Airports has the potential for turning Detroit into a global logistics hub and create a new center for business development that benefits the entire region. For more information on Detroit's Aerotropolis click here.
Growing Greater Detroit’s Creative Economy: The development of a Creative Corridor connecting existing nodes of activity in downtown Detroit is aimed at attracting and growing new advertising, design, artistic and marketing firms that diversifies and re-brands the region. For more information on Detroit's Creative Economy, visit the Detroit - Make It Here website.
Expanding the Region’s Entrepreneurial Capacity: Attracting additional resources to expand the region’s business accelerators and raising capital to expand growth capital funds are aimed at accelerating the growth of new and expanding companies of all sectors.
Securing the Future Talent Base: Raising awareness for the importance of post-secondary education, increasing enrollments in STEM education programs and launching new ways of connecting students to jobs in the region through apprenticeships and internships will help secure the future talent base to grow Greater Detroit.
Promoting our Assets Globally and Locally: Opening an independent regional media relations bureau will provide the capability for communicating our assets and opportunities to local residents and share our accomplishments and initiatives with the nation and world.

Now entering the second year of a three to five year implementation period, the Road to Renaissance has garnered broad public support and nearly $70 million in private and foundation funding has been raised to date to support its implementation.

More information on the research findings and detailed implementation plans of the Road to Renaissance initiative can be found below:

PROGRESS REPORT: