General Plan
From the riverfront, some 11 miles (18 km) long, Detroit spreads northward and westward over relatively flat terrain. Maximum distances are 19 miles (31 km) east-west and 12 miles (19 km) north-south. The city was originally laid out on a plan similar to that of Washington, D.C., with streets radiating from central parks and squares. With rapid expansion after 1900 a rectangular grid system was adopted, largely negating the early plan.
Downtown Detroit adjoins the riverfront and is encircled by a loop of freeways. Major office buildings, financial institutions, hotels, retail stores, and entertainment facilities cluster around semicircular Grand Circus Park. The Civic Center, including government buildings, an exhibition center, an auditorium, a sports arena, and a central plaza, is on the riverfront. Nearby is the Renaissance Center, a multi-towered office and hotel complex.
Outside the downtown area Detroit is primarily a city of sprawling industrial districts and residential neighborhoods. In contrast to other large cities, it has relatively few apartment buildings. A secondary business and commercial area on west Grand Boulevard, dominated by the Fisher building and Cadillac Place (formerly the General Motors building), is known as New Center. Since the 1950's the inner city adjoining the business district has been the site of extensive slum clearance and urban renewal.
Detroit's suburbs generally are of two types—old, relatively stable communities established before 1930 and rapidly growing cities that have developed since World War II. Dearborn, Royal Oak, Lincoln Park, and Oak Park are examples of the first type; Warren, Livonia, St. Clair Shores, West-land, and Dearborn Heights represent the second. Two old, independent cities— Hamtramck and Highland Park—are completely surrounded by Detroit. Grosse Pointe and other fashionable residential communities—all with Grosse Pointe as part of their names—line the shore of Lake St. Clair northeast of the city.
Freeways, including Fisher, Jeffries, Lodge, Chrysler, and Edsel Ford, provide high-speed routes through the city. Most of them converge on the downtown area, providing easy access from suburbs and outlying areas. Southfield Freeway, which cuts through western Detroit, links northern and southern suburbs.
Detroit's principal thoroughfares—Fort Street and Michigan, Grand River, Woodward, and Gratiot avenues—radiate from the downtown area like spokes of a wheel, extending to the city limits and the suburbs beyond. Woodward Avenue, which runs northwestward from the riverfront bisecting Grand Circus Park, is the dividing line for the city's east-west street numbering system. Grand Boulevard forms three sides of a rectangle completed by the river and encloses the oldest part of the city.
