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Neighborhood City Halls, Community News, "What Makes a City Great?", by Corinne L. Gilb, 1984.
Detroit Free Press, "Master plan foresees high-tech Detroit", June 22, 1985.
Detroit Free Press, "Downtown of the future: Fiber optics, new housing", "Build on auto industry, plan says", June 22, 1985.
Detroit Free Press, "Without wide support, plan only blueprint of a dream", June 22, 1985.
The Detroit News editorial cartoon, "Corinne Gilb's Guide to La Gloire de Détroit", July 16, 1985.
The Detroit News editorial, "The Downtown Plan".
Letter from Charles (Chuck) A. Forbes, Detroit developer and preservationist, commending master plan.
Crain's Detroit Business, "Ex-planner Gilb recalls job with regret, frustration", September 29, 1986.
Handwritten page from Corinne L. Gilb's "Diary of a Planning Director" (1979-1982). The original diaries are now at the Hoover Institution Archives.
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 Washington Blvd. groundbreaking with Downtown
Development Authority partners; Planning Director
Gilb, left, Detroit Mayor Young, center, April 15, 1980
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April 1980
“My first activity in April was attendance at the first national seminar of the Foreign Trade Zone Association. A fascinating torrent of lectures on how to create and operate a foreign trade zone. It was in Philadelphia and I had a brief time to walk around the much-vaunted city center. So many hotels, banks, and airlines offices made the area seem rather forbidding—despite all its new plazas. The underground corridors to the subway, lined with shops, were livelier.
When C&ED sent us a UDAG for luxury condominiums as phase III of Rencen, I refused to sign until the language provided for “adequately sized public access.” After some meetings back and forth we got a concession that 2 feet of planter would be removed at one corner to allow 12 feet instead of 10 feet of passage way along the river. The UDAG called for $60,000 federal subsidy per condominium, and a separate $8 million for the bulkhead. So much for free enterprise!
April was the cruellest month for the city. Ford and GM announced layoffs. Chrysler was barely surviving. American Motors lost money. But VW closed the deal to move into a former missile plant at Sterling Heights, a Detroit suburb.
In Lansing, debate was bitter over approval of the subway engineering study. The Mayor lost ground.
The Mayor’s budget message announced layoffs of around 2500 city workers...”
Excerpt, “Diary of a Planning Director, Book I”,
by Corinne Lathrop Gilb
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