The city of Detroit was the epicenter of the fur trade era, an unparalleled leader of shipbuilding for one hundred years, the Silicon Valley of the industrial age, and an unquestioned leader in the march of democracy. John Hartig’s book Waterfront Porch: Reclaiming Detroit’s Industrial Waterfront as a Gathering Place for All offers a unique history of Detroit as a city of innovation, resilience, and leadership in times to change. Waterfront Porch examines how the city has begun responding to the challenges of climate change, again redefining itself as a national and world leader on the path, this time, toward a more sustainable future. This book details the building of a new waterfront porch alongside the Detroit River called the Detroit RiverWalk, which is meant to help revitalize the city and region and promote sustainability practices. It tells the story of one of the largest, by scale, urban waterfront redevelopment projects in the United States, and gives us hope while it proves that Detroit and its metropolitan region have a bright future. 

John Hartig is an award-wining Great Lakes scientist, a former Fulbright Scholar, and the current Great Lakes Science-Policy Advisor for the International Association for Great Lakes Research. His book Bringing Conservation to Cities: Lessons from Building the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge won a gold medal from the Nonfiction Authors Association in the “Sustainable Living” category and a bronze medal from the Living Now Book Awards in the “Green Living” category.

Waterfront Porch: Reclaiming Detroit’s Industrial Waterfront as a Gathering Place for All is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on Twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to the team at MSU Press for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi people. The University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.

Thank you all so much for listening, and never give up books.