From Solar to Smart Cities: Sustainability and Broadband

CM credit hours for mobile workshops are awarded based on the planned dedicated instructional time. Adjustments to CM hours will not be made after the live event.

The cities of Detroit and Inkster face climate change, infrastructure disinvestment, and digital divides. Planning has often inequitably deployed sustainability and technology in communities of color. See how adaptive reuse, corridor-scale solar, and broadband hubs can reshape disinvested neighborhoods into opportunity engines.

The tour, led by Strategic Alliance Community Development, begins in Inkster, where a former city hall is transforming into a broadband hub that integrates fiber infrastructure, workforce training, and community governance. Explore strategies for bridging digital inequities while building local capacity. Travel along Livernois corridor, where a collective solar project powers multiple small businesses. Visit one solar-equipped business to hear about benefits and tour a retrofitted commercial building that integrates solar, electric vehicle charging, and adaptive reuse.

Learn to navigate financing barriers, policy misalignment, and trust challenges by examining projects that embed equity into infrastructure. Finally, be prepared to integrate climate resilience, digital access, and inclusive engagement into your practice, thereby helping to dismantle systemic inequities and implement long-lasting, community-driven change.

Learn new planning methods that generate tangible outcomes and approaches - centered on equity, workforce opportunity, and racial justice - to dismantle systemic inequalities and build inclusive, future-ready communities across diverse geographies.