Book description
For most of the twentieth century, Detroit was a symbol of American
industrial might, a place of entrepreneurial and technical ingenuity
where the latest consumer inventions were made available to everyone
through the genius of mass production. Today, Detroit is better known
for its dwindling population, moribund automobile industry, and
alarmingly high murder rate. In Driving Detroit, author George
Galster, a fifth-generation Detroiter and internationally known
urbanist, sets out to understand how the city has come to represent
both the best and worst of what cities can be, all within the span of
a half century. Galster invites the reader to travel with him along
the streets and into the soul of this place to grasp fully what drives
the Motor City.
With a scholar's rigor and a local's perspective, Galster
uncovers why metropolitan Detroit's cultural, commercial, and built
landscape has been so radically transformed. He shows how geography,
local government structure, and social forces created a housing
development system that produced sprawl at the fringe and abandonment
at the core. Galster argues that this system, in tandem with the
region's automotive economic base, has chronically frustrated the
population's quest for basic physical, social, and psychological
resources. These frustrations, in turn, generated numerous
adaptations-distrust, scapegoating, identity politics, segregation,
unionization, and jurisdictional fragmentation-that collectively leave
Detroit in an uncompetitive and unsustainable position.
Partly a self-portrait, in which Detroiters paint their own
stories through songs, poems, and oral histories, Driving
Detroit offers an intimate, insightful, and perhaps controversial
explanation for the stunning contrasts-poverty and plenty, decay and
splendor, despair and resilience-that characterize the once mighty city.
"George Galster cares deeply about Detroit-as should we all.
In this clever and highly readable book, he draws upon history, social
science, music, poetry and art to build a compelling case that bitter,
unresolved conflicts have trapped the region in a zero-sum game,
undermining the well-being of its people and communities-past,
present, and future. Although Detroit is unique in many respects, the
conflicts that bedevil it are not. There's a lot to learn here for
anyone who cares about 21st-century urban America."-Margery
Austin Turner, The Urban Institute
George Galster is Clarence Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs in the
Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University in
Detroit.
