The city of Detroit, as part of the $9 million Toyota Mobility Foundation’s Sustainable Cities Challenge, has launched a global call for innovators to transform freight in the city’s historic Eastern Market.
Detroit was selected — along with Varanasi, India, and Venice, Italy — to host innovation challenge initiatives to help cities accelerate toward sustainable mobility, fostering healthier and safer urban environments while enhancing people’s ability to commute, work, study, and access services.
Detroit’s initiative invites innovators to access a share of $3 million in funding per city to create solutions that will reduce emissions, noise and air pollution, and operational costs in bringing freight to the historic Detroit market.
“We’re excited and honored to be one of just three cities in the world selected for the Sustainable Cities Challenge,” says Tim Slusser, chief of Detroit’s Office of Mobility Innovation. “As the only city chosen in the western hemisphere, Detroit represents over 100 years of world-renowned innovations in transportation.
“The Eastern Market district is a critical part of our region’s food distribution network. This Challenge is a great opportunity for the city to work closely with Eastern Market Partnership and the state of Michigan’s Office of Future Mobility and Electrification to pioneer new sustainable solutions in clean freight.”
Eastern Market is the largest open-air market and amongst the oldest historic markets in the U.S. It is the city’s hub for food distribution, selling more than $360 million of wholesale food annually, and double that in exports.
The district is poised to expand and is considering strategies to address environmental concerns, carbon emissions, and pollution while adding residential units to this bustling community.
“This challenge is an opportunity for innovators to work together with the city of Detroit to transform a critical part of the city’s infrastructure,” says Ryan Klem, director of programs at the Toyota Mobility Foundation. “Eastern Market is part of Detroit’s history, but it also plays a crucial role today and will do so for many years to come. The solutions to this challenge will help businesses throughout Detroit, but the lessons learned could also be applied to cities across the world.”
City planning efforts have called for exploring alternatives to fossil fuels and optimizing routing software to alleviate traffic congestion. Innovators are tasked with crafting mobility solutions that seek not only to lower emissions and mitigate pollution but also to explore sustainable financial strategies that challenge the current economics of freight that make alternative fuel options too costly.
Detroit calls on innovators to propose solutions that remove barriers to adopting clean freight technologies, reduce fossil fuel use within the freight network, and improve market vendor operations, where even slight cost reductions can have a profound impact.
Participants will gain exclusive insights into the complex workings of a large regional freight network as part of the city’s mobility systems, working with the city of Detroit to engage with city and business leaders in the Eastern Market.
More than 150 cities from 46 countries entered the challenge after the call to cities was first launched last June.
The deadline for Sustainable Cities Challenge Detroit entries is Sept. 5. For more information, visit here.
