Historically the Arena District includes many historically relevant places, including for example the Brush Park Historic District. Detroit's initial expansion led to the creation of aesthetically beautiful neighborhoods on the periphery of the Downtown with access to social services and transportation benefiting the neighborhood and its residents. Plans proposed by the 2009 Detroit City Master Plan propose rehabilitating and preserving the historic neighborhoods and improving the areas surrounding Detroit's Cultural District.
Across the board, we can see that the whole Greater Downtown region of Detroit has been and currently is experiencing strong socioeconomic changes. While money seems to be flooding into the city center by the bucketful, its distribution appears neither uniform nor impartial. The Arena District is frequently distinct from the richer, waterfront areas of Downtown in its demographics and its take of the new money entering Detroit. Of particular note is Cass Park, whose data seem to indicate a stubborn, entrenched poverty. More worryingly, it's worsening or unmoved statistics are combined with it being one of the few parts of Greater Downtown to not have a noticeably-shrinking black population. Such trends seem to indicate that the area is experiencing all the symptoms of gentrification, down to the decreasing minority populations. That the Ilitch family has been able to purchase nearly the entirety of Cass Park in the observed timeframe could markedly effect it, even relative to the rest of the Arena District. Thus, Cass Park probably would be a good research topic in and of itself, especially since the completion of Little Caesar's Arena, not reflected in the map data.
Our suggested solutions focus on the incorporation of diverse socioeconomic populations into proposed neighborhood developments. Efforts to create greater density in the Arena District should not act to exclude Detroit's long term citizens or people with less fortunate economic situations. Access to the greater downtown area and its amenities should be offered to the widest range of users as possible. Suburban zoning regulations should be forgone to lessen design constraints and to allow for greater diversity in living options. The immediate downtown vicinity in Detroit should not use gentrification to allow wealthier people returning to the city to restrict current residents from reaping the benefits of Detroit's improvements.