Alex B. Hill
Founder and Principal
DETROITography
Alex B. Hill highlights the intersections of power, privilege, and race in regards to health equity, access to basic services, and the social and political determinants of health. He is Project Director for the Detroit Food Map Initiative, Property Praxis, Detroit Atlas Collaboration, and DetroitData. Alex started DETROITography (detroitography.com) in 2013 to bring together various Detroit mapmakers and cartographers to showcase their work and encourage community members to start mapping their own city. He teaches in urban studies, public health, and geography at Wayne State University and Michigan State University. Alex is the author and cartographer of the books, Detroit in 50 Maps (2021) and Great Lakes in 50 Maps (2025) from Belt Publishing. He is a regular contributor to Model D Media, Flintside, Detroit PBS and the Detroit Free Press.
DETROITography, is a project conceived and curated by Alex B. Hill, and places emphasis on the unique way that people within the city think about space and place, their own idiosyncratic demographics and pathways and memories, all offering an array of insights as to the exact location of Detroit embedded within history but at the same time, transformative in relation to dominant narratives of the city. DETROITography has run community data and mapping workshops since 2014 and regularly hosts community events. Multiple projects have crowdsourced knowledge and harnessed data volunteers to impact city policies and processes, from neighborhood boundaries and property issues to voting access and data sharing. This session will share examples and opportunities to make data work for social good.