Flint is located approximately an hour’s drive from Detroit (the major city and metropolitan area), Lansing (the state capital and location of Michigan State University), and Ann Arbor (University of Michigan).
It has a small renovated downtown area with a traditional brick-paved main street, Saginaw Street, featuring a landmark theater, the Capitol, many new restaurants with sidewalk seating, cafes, bars, and offices. Buckham Alley features a gallery and classic bars, the Torch and the Loft. The campus of the University of Michigan-Flint is at the center of downtown Flint, near a riverfront park landscape-designed by renowned architect Lawrence Halprin.
Local institutions such as the Flint Youth Theatre, the Sloan Museum's Buick Gallery, the Flint Institute of Arts, and Local 432 are anchors of cultural life in the greater downtown area. The Farmers' Market is an essential gathering place three days a week on the edge of downtown.
The Edible Flint Coop and Flint River Farm are urban farming initiatives that coordinate gardening on abandoned lots and grow organic food in the city.
The Flint Public Art Project focuses on areas of the city from Carriage Town, Atwood Stadium, Flint Urban League, Boys and Girls Club of Greater Flint, Haskell Community Center, and the Flint Farmers' Market to the north, Kettering University and the site of the historic Chevrolet-Fisher Body sit-down strike to the East, the Durant-Dort Carriage Factory and Saginaw Street in downtown Flint, and the former Central High School and the Buick Gallery in the Cultural District as sites for research, installation, programming, and performance.
Map
This link references a map of the broader downtown area.
On the left side of the map, Saginaw Street is the main street through the downtown area, and the Cultural Center is to the right on the opposite side of the highway.
If you toggle the map to the left, the large gray empty lot is the site of the former Chevrolet factories, the site of the 1937 sit-down strike that resulted in the formation of the UAW and the national labor movement.
If you toggle to the north, you can see the site of the former Buick City manufacturing plant, the biggest brownfield site in the country.
