For a city that is often talked about instead of listened to, Lauren Hood has turned the script upside down.

She doesn’t bulldoze, she doesn’t boast.

She asks us to listen, reflect, and reimagine.

Hood is more than a planner or facilitator.

She is Detroit’s civic conscience – a determined woman who asks tougher questions than most are willing to answer – one whose work is not in development, but alignment: in space, memory, justice, and soul.

Detroit-born Lauren Hood was raised in its brilliance, its erasure, its renaissance stories, and its raw, unresolved pain.

Yet where others sought solutions, Lauren looked inward.

Hood is educated in public policy and sacred practice – a rare figure who can exist both in academia and on the front porches of ordinary people. 

A highly educated technocrat with a Master’s in Community Development from the University of Detroit Mercy, she has never pursued the title of “urban planner.” 

Instead, she’s redefined it, taking on the role of a quiet witness.

Hood founded the Live6 Alliance, staking claim to the once-thriving, now disinvested corridor near Livernois and McNichols.

However, instead of revitalizing it from the top down, she held a mirror up and asked, “What do you see here? Revitalize for whom? The people, or major corporations?”

Under her leadership, Live6 became a national model for place-making and truth-telling, one with deep roots planted firmly in black self-determination.

She’s not here to paint over poverty…her aim is to dismantle the conditions that produce it in the first place.

Lauren Hood’s superpower isn’t policy – it’s presence.

She is a radical listener – a believer that transformation does not begin with zoning code, but in trust.

Over the course of her career, she has created rituals for community engagement, urged institutions to stop extracting and start participating in relationships, and participated in town halls and national panels.

Hood does not minimize the Black experience, nor does she allow Detroit to be discussed without Detroiters present.

She sits at one of Detroit’s most powerful intersections – one where politics, land, memory, and money meet – and from there, she brings a unique fire to her chairman endeavors:

• Asking questions no one wants to answer.
• Refusing to rubber-stamp displacement.
• Naming the systems behind disenfranchisement.
• Advocating liberation-based planning in a city still scarred by “urban renewal.”

Lauren Hood doesn’t just build skyscrapers.

She builds trust.

She constructs liberation frameworks – inclusive spaces where Black Detroiters are invited and centered.

She doesn’t speak to appease.

She speaks to awaken.

She is one of the few true voices in a city that has seen its fair share of bulldozers and blueprints:

A woman who knows you can’t bury grief. 

You listen, and then ask, “How can we fix this – together?”

She isn’t just a developer – she’s a seer.

And Detroit is better off thanks to her magic touch.

Victoria Jackson (Editor In Chief)

Victoria Jackson is a lifelong student and sharp-eyed documentarian of all things Detroit, from its rich musical roots and cultural icons to its shifting neighborhoods, storied architecture, and underground legends. With her finger firmly on the pulse of both the city’s vibrant past and its rapidly unfolding future, she brings a deeply personal, historically grounded lens to every piece she writes.

Published on: June 26, 2025