Highland Park, Michigan, was once a beautiful place full of promise. 

But as businesses shuttered and schools closed, drugs and crime proliferated. The community was littered with dilapidated houses and empty blocks — beaten down, blighted, and forgotten.

Then, one woman got inspired. She got creative. And she began to rebuild. 

Today, Highland Park has once again become a place where people are proud to live — a community thriving with opportunity, support, and a collective spirit. 

It started with a vision and one $3,000 house.

Meet Mama Shu — an ‘unlikely urban planner’

Mama Shu lost two sons on the streets of Highland Park — one was hit by a car at age 2, while the other was murdered at 23. The grief was intense, but instead of being consumed by it, she fueled it into something powerful — Avalon Village, an eco-village in Highland Park. 

There, as founder and CEO, she’s built systems and structures for education, economics, health, and wellness.

“I’m the unlikely urban planner,” Shu said. “I never went to college for it, but I’m creative. And I saw something beautiful in the making. I thought about what it would look like if we had beautiful, functional things that the city used to have. And so, I just started doing something about that just a little bit at a time.”

She started by buying the first house. Then, she started cleaning up the area around it, one lot at a time — even though it wasn’t her property. She raised funds any way she could. 

Soon, others joined her. 

“Once people see you start doing the work, not only do they start wanting to volunteer and be involved, but they also get inspired to start doing things on their own and building it up themselves,” said Derrienne Reese, community leader. 

After the first house, Mama Shu began purchasing more. Currently, Avalon Village owns about 45 properties — 98% of the block — and serves as a beacon for its more than 10,000 surrounding neighbors in Highland Park.

A self-sustaining village, built where there once was nothing

Designed with a green infrastructure and solar power, it took about eight years to build Avalon Village. Today, it’s a thriving, self-sustaining village — where there once was nothing. 

“We’re recycling things so that we can have a beautiful space, and we can have the things that other cities have,” Mama Shu said. “It’s basically like a village all compacted on one whole block.”

The educational piece came first. Given the diverse circumstances of the neighborhood’s children — some parents are incarcerated or struggling with substance use — she knew they needed a safe place that could support them. So, she built the Homework House — a big, old, two-family apartment converted into a space for after-school classes and workshops for the community. 

In addition to daily math and reading tutoring, Avalon Village offers programs in sewing and coding. There’s a music camp, a STEM lab, and a “hood camp” where kids learn outside skills. 

“What we wanted to do here is to make sure that this place supplied all of the things that just filled in the gaps that are needed to make scholars excel,” Mama Shu said.

Pockets of positivity

Beyond the educational aspect, Avalon Village has numerous volunteers who provide central community pillars. There are people who started book clubs and neighborhood watches. Some volunteer to make sure the kids get home safely from school, while others pass out dinners in the neighborhood. 

“It’s like little pockets of positivity that people kind of have,” Reese said. “And I think those things, you know, it starts off small, and it can snowball. Mama Shu is building a community up and holding space for people to bond and build more camaraderie between one another.”

Mama Shu calls Avalon Village infectious. 

“It’s like this village that everybody has helped to build,” she said.

A blueprint for other blighted communities

There are an estimated 16 million abandoned properties across the United States in communities like Highland Park — bogged down by blight, but with potential for a similar transformation. 

Avalon Village may be just the blueprint they need. 

“It started with what I felt that I deserved as a citizen — some of the things that I wanted to enjoy, you know, and I’m sure that other people wanted to enjoy them, too,” Mama Shu said. “So, I’m like, OK, let’s get to work with this.”

The result of that work empowers others to step up and take ownership.  

“It’s so important when you actually feel empowered in your neighborhood, you actually take better care of and you have pride in it,” Reese said. “And then those neighborhoods, you grow. You stay in them, you build them up, you make them better.”

Mama Shu is proof that anyone can become an agent of change — and that real transformation starts with each of us. 

“A lot of times, people just wait until people that have millions and millions of dollars come, and I don’t know if they’re going to think it’s going to be saved by them or not," Mama Shu said. “But the thing about it is that you can be the changemaker. You can start it.”

Learn more about Stand Together’s efforts to build strong and safe communities and explore ways you can partner with us.