Schools use them as outdoor environmental classrooms. Commuters use them as an alternative to car or bus. The riverfront walkway and bikeway should extend from the Belle Isle Bridge to Historic Fort Wayne. Historic structures along old train lines find adaptive reuses as restaurants, ice cream parlors or bike shops when a greenway is created. Housing values next to the trails go up once people learn to use them.
Businesses choose to locate nearby, so employees can walk there and eat their lunches.
Construction, landscaping and management jobs are created for local residents. Planning for a Southwest Detroit Greenway Project is complete. The greenway will link parks, schools, neighborhoods, churches and businesses to the river. Historic Fort Wayne is the sprocket for greenway spokes radiating along the Detroit and Rouge Rivers, the abandoned railroad tracks and wide boulevards in this part of Detroit. The fort lies at a strategic spot on the Detroit River, where the river bends and is at its narrowest from one shore to another.