Best known for Motown and motorcars, 

Detroit, Michigan is rich in American history 

and culture, diverse in its residents, and is 

consistently on the frontier of innovation. 

Historical and cultural resources are 

abundant in the city, and vary from the 

interpretation of complex issues like race 

and industrialization, to the more famous 

stories of Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye. 

For instance, the city served as one of the 

last stops on the Underground Railroad for 

a quarter of all Freedom Seekers, 

maintains the oldest car factory in the 

world, and oddly enough, is home to 

the world’s first floating post office. 

With the diverse tapestry of peoples 

and stories to tell it would seem 

natural that the National Park Service 

is a community player and 

stakeholder in the cultural and 

natural resources in Detroit. This is 

true, but not in the way one would 

expect. Detroit was selected as a 

model city because it has no

traditional park unit in the city; the 

closest of these is the River Raisin 

National Battlefield Park in Monroe, 

approximately a 45-minute drive from 

downtown. That does not, however, 

imply that the Park Service is absent 

from the preservation and 

conservation efforts in Detroit.

David Goldstein, Detroit’s Urban Fellow, 

asserted that the Park Service has had a 

presence in the city for at least 40 years 

through programs like the Federal Historic 

Preservation Tax Incentives and National 

Heritage Areas. The city is the largest user 

in the U.S. of Historic Preservation Tax 

Incentives—nearly every building 

downtown is using federal money or 

subsidies for renovations, upkeep, signage 

and interpretation that maintain the cultural 

and historical value of these properties. 

Motor Cities National Heritage Area 

focuses on interpreting and preserving 

Southeastern Michigan’s auto heritage and 

is based in Detroit. The Heritage Area is 

managed by with assistance from the 

Park Service. Other community 

assistance programs like the Land 

and Water Conservation Fund and 

the Network to Freedom program 

have provided funding and technical 

assistance for the preservation and 

interpretation of Detroit resources for 

decades.

The established presence of NPS 

community assistance programs, coupled 

with the lack of a traditional park unit 

presented interesting challenges for 

Goldstein, but also made Detroit a useful 

model for other urban areas with similar 

conditions. Despite the challenges, 

successful deployment of the Urban 

Agenda proved that you don’t need a 

national park to effectively implement 

National Park Service programs and 

initiatives. 

With a substantial majority 

demographic of Black or 

African American (89.4% 

of 700,000) Detroiters, 

Goldstein and NPS 

focused much of the 

pilot’s work on increasing 

visibility of NPS with and 

better connecting 

recreation and preservation 

work to the needs of Black or 

African American communities. 

Detroit was particularly ripe for this 

kind of work particularly through the 

Every Kid in a Park (EKIP) program, 

which with support from the National 

Park Foundation, NPS was able to 

successfully deploy EKIP in Detroit 

three years in a row for over 3,000 

fourth-graders each year.

“One of the benefits of the Urban 

Fellow position was the freedom and 

flexibility it provided to work beyond 

traditional organizational boundaries 

that normally have constrained interagency 

collaboration,” Goldstein noted. By using 

EKIP as a bridge, NPS helped link local 

recreation entities across Detroit. Prior to 

EKIP, the NPS, USFWS, US Army Corps 

of Engineers, and USFS were all acting 

independently in Detroit with very little 

interaction. All have volunteer and outdoor 

education programs. EKIP helped unite 

these agencies, which now meet 

collaboratively on a regular basis to work 
together to create a career development 

programs based on the needs they saw for 

local neighborhoods and for young diverse 

Detroiters to be hired into these agencies. 

In addition to enhancing recreational and 

professional opportunities for diverse youth 

in the area, NPS recognized 16 

Underground Railroad sites, with another 

10 eligible for consideration, which would 

benefit from linkages in interpretation 

and education, better reflecting 

their national affiliation 

with the NPS Network to 

Freedom Program. 

Taking cue from this 

NPS program, and 

programs of Detroit’s 

Canadian neighbors, 

NPS brought in an 

NGO with expertise in 

afterschool programming to 

help stakeholders identify 

and recognize the remaining 

sites not yet recognized and 

worked with the Detroit Public 

School system and other educators to 

develop a third- and eighth-grade 

curriculum tied to the Underground 

Railroad. Multiple Park Service programs, 

as well as the Midwest Regional Office, 

came together to advance this work. There 

is a hope that the group will develop an 

African American Heritage Trail for Detroit. 

LESSONS LEARNED

Partner with the City Government

Goldstein set his office up in City Hall, 

giving him the opportunity to build rapport 

with local officials, and promote the work of 

the Park Service through the City 

Government Planning Commission. “As 

useful as it was to work with the city, I had 

to learn to respect organizational capacity 

of the government. As efforts to rehabilitate 

the city continue, officials’ capacity grows, 

but flexibility is key in maintaining a good 

working relationship with the city,” 

Goldstein remarked. While the relationship 

between NPS and the City of Detroit 

continued to grow, NPS was able to offer 

additional federal assistance to help offset 

capacity barriers at the city and state 

levels.

Share Asset Maps with Partners and 

Stakeholders 

Asset mapping was a key step in 

identifying and inventorying NPS programs 

and partners in Detroit. By connecting this 

data to a digital platform and offering 

access to local partners and stakeholders, 

Goldstein and NPS staff was able to take 

an internal tool and use it to showcase One 

NPS while increasing visibility of and 

knowledge about active NPS efforts in 

Detroit. Asset mapping also led Goldstein 

to realize the gaps associated with 

preservation of sites along the 

Underground Railroad.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NPS

Goldstein had one major recommendation 

to continue implementing the Urban 

Agenda principles. “We should talk about 

NPS community assistance programs! We 

should present two modes of work: 

resource protection and facilitation of 

public assistance as equal and use one to 

inform the other.” While successful 

campaigns like Find Your Park have 

increased visitation to national parks, they 

understate the presence and visibility of 

the community assistance programs, which 

for cities like Detroit are the main avenues 

in which NPS connects to the urban 

population. Presenting both modes of work 

also showcases a single network of 

resources, rather than a series of parks 

and programs that could end up competing 

for resources. Additionally, it puts the 

priority on maintaining strong and resilient 

partnerships which are a critical resource 

that NPS manages nationwide. Goldstein 

saw this concept reflected in one symbol of 

the National Park Service - the bison. 

“Think of our work paralleling the nomadic 

lifestyle of a bison herd. NPS is one large 

resource that moves around from park to 

park and it moves more fluidly when 

everyone is in sync.”

“Think of our work paralleling the nomadic lifestyle of a bison herd. NPS is one large resource 

that moves around from park to park and it moves more fluidly when everyone is in sync.”