Reinventing Detroit

This book addresses the questions of what went wrong with Detroit and what can be done to reinvent the Motor City. Various answers to the former-deindustrialization, white flight, and a disappearing tax base-are now well understood. Less discussed are potential paths forward, stemming from alternative explanations of Detroit's long-term decline and reconsideration of the challenges the city currently faces. Urban crisis-socioeconomic, fiscal, and political-has seemingly narrowed the range of possible interventions. Growth-oriented redevelopment strategies have not reversed Detroit's decline, but in the wake of crisis, officials have increasingly funnelled limited public resources into the city's commercial core via an implicit policy of "urban triage." The crisis has also led to the emergency management of the city by extra-democratic entities. As a disruptive historical event, Detroit's crisis is a moment teeming with political possibilities. The critical rethinking of Detroit's past, present, and future is essential reading for both urban studies scholars and the general public.

This book addresses the questions of what went wrong with Detroit and what can be done to reinvent the Motor City. Various answers to the former-deindustrialization, white flight, and a disappearing tax base-are now well understood. Less discussed are potential paths forward, stemming from alternative explanations of Detroit's long-term decline and reconsideration of the challenges the city currently faces. Urban crisis-socioeconomic, fiscal, and political-has seemingly narrowed the range of possible interventions. Growth-oriented redevelopment strategies have not reversed Detroit's decline, but in the wake of crisis, officials have increasingly funnelled limited public resources into the city's commercial core via an implicit policy of "urban triage." The crisis has also led to the emergency management of the city by extra-democratic entities. As a disruptive historical event, Detroit's crisis is a moment teeming with political possibilities. The critical rethinking of Detroit's past, present, and future is essential reading for both urban studies scholars and the general public.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction-Reinventing Detroit: Urban Decline and the Politics of Possibility -- Part I: Theoretical and Epistemological Frameworks -- 1 Rereading Detroit: Toward a Polanyian Methodology -- 2 The Spontaneous Sociology of Detroit's Hyper-Crisis -- 3 Learning from Detroit: How Research on a Declining City Enriches Urban Studies -- Part II: How We Got Here: Cities, the State, and Markets -- 4 National Urban Policy and the Fate of Detroit -- 5 The Normalization of Market Fundamentalism in Detroit: The Case of Land Abandonment -- Part III: Where We Are: Fiscal Crisis, Local Democracy, and Neoliberal Austerity -- 6 Detroit in Bankruptcy -- 7 Democracy vs. Efficiency in Detroit -- 8 Ritual and Redistribution in De-democratized Detroit -- 9 Framing Detroit -- Part IV: Where We Are Going: Pitfalls and Possibilities -- 10 Detroit Prospects: Why Recovery is Elusive -- 11 A Community Wealth-Building Vision for Detroit-and Beyond -- 12 The Cooperative City: New Visions for Urban Futures -- 13 Which Way, "Detroit"? -- About the Contributors -- Index

For over three decades, urban theorist Michael Peter Smith has engaged in constructing innovative theories on central research questions in urban studies. This book brings together his views on the state of urban theory, sorting out the changing strengths and weaknesses in the field. Smith refocuses attention on the cultural, social, and political practices of urban inhabitants, particularly the way in which their everyday activities have contributed to the social construction of new ethnic identities and new meanings of urban citizenship. Combining the methods of political economy and transnational ethnography, he encourages us to think about new political spaces for practicing "urban citizenship" by analyzing the connections linking cities to the web of relations to other localities in which they are embedded. Smith systematically analyzes the dynamics of "community power" and "urban change" under new globalizing trends and increased transnational mobility. Expanding on his original conceptualization of "transnational urbanism," he frames urban political life within a wider transnational context of political practice, in which an endless interplay of distinctly situated networks, social practices, and power relations are fought out at multiple scales, in an inexorable politics of inclusion and exclusion.

Recent bouts of gentrification and investment in Detroit have led some to call it the greatest turnaround story in American history. Meanwhile, activists point to the city's cuts to public services, water shutoffs, mass foreclosures, and violent police raids. In A People's History of Detroit, Mark Jay and Philip Conklin use a class framework to tell a sweeping story of Detroit from 1913 to the present, embedding Motown's history in a global economic context. Attending to the struggle between corporate elites and radical working-class organizations, Jay and Conklin outline the complex sociopolitical dynamics underlying major events in Detroit's past, from the rise of Fordism and the formation of labor unions, to deindustrialization and the city's recent bankruptcy. They demonstrate that Detroit's history is not a tale of two cities—one of wealth and development and another racked by poverty and racial violence; rather it is the story of a single Detroit that operates according to capitalism's mandates.

Recent US economic history is rife with examples of cities and regions that have experienced significant decline. Many of those localities began to slide after decades, even generations, of feeling immune to economic disaster. Boeing and Kodak, the steel industry in Pittsburg, and the automotive industry in Detroit all expected to make it golden in

Suggests ways for Detroit to become a smaller but better city in the twenty first century and proposes productive uses for the city's vacant spaces.

After decades of suburban sprawl, job loss, and lack of regional government, Detroit has become a symbol of post-industrial distress and also one of the most complex urban environments in the world. In Revolution Detroit: Strategies for Urban Reinvention, John Gallagher argues that Detroit's experience can offer valuable lessons to other cities that are, or will soon be, dealing with the same broken municipal model. A follow-up to his award-winning 2010 work, Reimagining Detroit, this volume looks at Detroit's successes and failures in confronting its considerable challenges. It also looks at other ideas for reinvention drawn from the recent history of other cities, including Cleveland, Flint, Richmond, Philadelphia, and Youngstown, as well as overseas cities, including Manchester and Leipzig. This book surveys four key areas: governance, education and crime, economic models, and the repurposing of vacant urban land. Among the topics Gallagher covers are effective new urban governance models developed in Cleveland and Detroit; new education models highlighting low-income-but-high-achievement schools and districts; creative new entrepreneurial business models emerging in Detroit and other post-industrial cities; and examples of successful repurposing of vacant urban land through urban agriculture, restoration of natural landscapes, and the use of art in public places. He concludes with a cautious yet hopeful message that Detroit may prove to be the world's most important venue for successful urban experimentation and that the reinvention portrayed in the book can be repeated in many cities. Gallagher's extensive traveling and research, along with his long career covering urban redevelopment for the Detroit Free Press, has given him an unmatched perspective on Detroit's story. Readers interested in urban studies and recent Detroit history will appreciate this thoughtful assessment of the best practices and obvious errors when it comes to reinventing our cities.