Nick Tobier, Roland Graf, and Michael Flynn: Brightmoor Runway Project Funded
Brightmoor Runway, a project created by Stamps Professor Nick Tobier, Stamps Assistant Professor Roland Graf, and Michael Flynn has been funded by the 2016 KaBOOM! Play Everywhere Challenge. The project, which was selected as a finalist from over 1000 submissions by a panel of industry leaders, will transform Brightmoor sidewalks into an illuminated running, play, and exercise track.
KaBOOM! is a national non-profit dedicated to bringing balanced and active play into the daily lives of all kids, particularly those growing up in poverty in America.
Brightmoor Runway seeks to transform a section of a broken sidewalk in Detroit’s Brightmoor community into an illuminated running, play, and exercise track. The track will have a custom-designed rubber surface with motion activated solar lights and a speed display to stimulate kids and adults to test their personal speed limits and run this section of the sidewalk as fast as they want. We will work with local contractors to create and install the track based on plans developed in a series of open workshops and meetings with our community partners, ranging from k‑12 students and their teachers, to local block clubs, community centers and churches. Brightmoor Runway will embrace the connection of physical activity and physical computing by designing and building the solar activated light speed display in an adjacent community local maker space and holding a regular series of opportunities to engage the project at all levels and all abilities.
Brightmoor Runway re-purposes a portion of sidewalk where scores of schoolchildren board their school buses each day. Providing a permeable surface for good fitness and good drainage, the track brings a joyous, buoyant, well lit and well traveled surface to a residential street on which there are more vacancies than occupants.