Urban Affairs

A Michigan Radio reporter surveys the destruction of Grand Rapids during protests on Saturday. Despite what city leaders insist, he says outsiders didn’t cause all the damage. It came from within.

Police departments in several Michigan cities have a lower share of African-American officers than the communities they serve, leading to some scars that have yet to heal.

What happened in Detroit and the streets of at least 35 other cities reflects the raw state of urban America. Months of dealing with a killer virus. Surging economic despair. Then another viral video emerged of a Black man killed while being arrested by a white policeman in Minneapolis.

The upcoming count will offer a better understanding of Detroit’s demographic changes but the state's largest city is grappling with a low response rate for Census 2020.

At a time when credible news has never been more important, a new team of journalists aims to respond to Detroiters’ most crucial information needs.

Authentically Detroit celebrates a year of being on the airwaves by asking Kat Stafford and Candice Fortman what it means to be an authentic Detroiter.

The author's grandfather, Antonio Martinez, met the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Depression-era Detroit.

In this episode, hosts Orlando Bailey and Donna Givens explore the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic in Michigan prisons.

The pandemic hit Detroit harder than most cities, but coordinated efforts have made a difference, and begun to pay off.

Detroit had marshaled huge resources to boost census participation. Then came COVID-19. Now, as cases decline, the city is trying to play catchup because millions of dollars are at stake from an accurate count.

Authentically Detroit is a BridgeDetroit partner podcast that tells the stories of Detroiters’ lives through exposition and interview.

An open-casket funeral outside is a small step toward closure and rethinking funerals at a time traditional spaces are forbidden, says the pastor of Plymouth United Church of Christ in Detroit.

Despite adding capacity, food banks throughout Michigan are running out of food, crushed by the hunger created by the pandemic’s economic strain.

In a city devastated by the coronavirus, there will be no eucharist and no fellowship this Easter. But churches say they are persevering and adjusting how they tend to mourning congregations.

Racial disparities that struck southeast Michigan are repeating in Flint, Saginaw, Lansing and Ypsilanti, highlighting inequities in health care. And even as Detroit cases ebb, the mourning is just beginning: ‘I just feel numb,’ one says.

The same government orders that closed restaurants also forced soup kitchens to take their missions outside. In Detroit, volunteers pack paper bag lunches and feed the needy from parking lots.

In metro Detroit, the epicenter of Michigan’s outbreak, the pandemic is spreading rapidly as hospitals, government leaders and residents deal with medical shortages and some painful goodbyes.

Detroit and the rest of Wayne County comprise nearly half of Michigan’s coronavirus cases, forcing residents to summon resilience forged through decades of crisis.

O’Neil Swanson was the man to call for decades for stately funerals in Detroit. But his own death shows how grieving has changed in the age of the coronavirus.

Hoarding has made bottled water a scarce commodity in Michigan, complicating efforts to deliver the bare essentials to thousands of Detroit residents.