2001: University of Detroit Mercy architectural students and professors work with local activists, including the Boggs Center to craft a vision for sustainable development of the near East Side of Detroit, which they called Adamah. A Metro Times article spurred public interest in the vision.
2002 – 2003: The Boggs Center began hosting monthly meetings to explore how to promote more sustainable development in the city under the name of the Adamah movement.The Adamah.org website is launched to provide an information gateway on these and related efforts. The meetings served to connect individual activists with local organizations already working on efforts to green the city. Eventually the meetings were deemed to have served their function and other strategies were explored.
2004: A group of core volunteers determined that the movement needed a specific effort to focus on providing information and inspiration to help network sustainbility efforts in Detroit. They launched the Sustainable Detroit website and listservs as a centralized gateway for information about sustainability efforts in Detroit.
2005-2008: Sustainable Detroit hosts the web presence for the Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit conference, and pages and listserves for several local efforts including Detroit CoHousing, the Catherine Ferguson Farm, and the Garden Resource Program. The site continues to run completely on volunteer efforts and from generous support of a few key donors.
2009: Sustainable Detroit launches a new site format. This includes the introduction of the new open Detroit Greenmap and the anchor organization structure. Stay tuned for future evolution.