Reinvention and Resoluteness: A Brief History of Detroit

Detroiters’ Spatial Imagination, Essay, Lisa Ubelaker Andrade, NESS. 1, No Density, Politics and economics, Urban Paradigms

City, Community, Community Facilities, Cultural diversity, Depopulation, Detroit, Detroiters’ Spatial Imagination, Essay, Gentrification, History, Housing market, Immigration, Inclusivity, Industrial context, Inequality, Landscape, Neighborhood, Political & Economic Approach, Politics, Population, Urban Legacy, Urban policies, USA, Vacant lot

For a casual observer, one who blithely follows the news, the mere mention of the city of Detroit evokes images of a post-industrial landscape. Detroit, the familiar story goes, was the backbone of the U.S. industrial age, the home to the nascent automobile industry, and the celebrated ‘arsenal of democracy’ during World War II. Fifty years later, the city was the graveyard of a declining industrial era, a symbol of urban crisis.