In the winter of 2013, the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force commissioned Data Driven Detroit (D3) to serve as the data management partner on Motor City Mapping, a comprehensive, city-wide data collection effort. As a part of this project, D3 was tasked with compiling existing information on historic districts in the City of Detroit, so that the city would be able to identify all areas and structures of historic significance. 

D3 compiled this dataset from a number of different sources, which ranged from existing shapefiles on the City of Detroit's website to drawing polygons manually based on descriptions from the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). D3 analysts then subjected the data to an extensive manual cleaning process, removing duplicates and reconciling conflicting boundaries. The resulting dataset contains boundaries for 656 features, including national, state, and locally-listed historic districts, as well as proposed/potential and eligible historic districts. 

This file is projected in NAD_1983_HARN_StatePlane_Michigan_South_FIPS_2113_Feet_Intl. Metadata associated with this file includes field description metadata and a narrative description of the process involved in creating this dataset. 

We look forward to seeing how this data can be used to inform decisions and conversations around historic preservation and historic buildings! If you would like to receive a more detailed process document that contains the step-by-step process of how this dataset was generated, please use the contact information contained in the above-listed files.  For more information on the Motor City Mapping project, please visit www.motorcitymapping.org.