Struggling for the Commons: An Ethnography of Ruins, Gentrification, and Social Justice in Detroit, Michigan
Social Sciences
Community Studies 195A
This thesis explores the process of gentrification in the context of neoliberal urban governance in Detroit, Michigan. Emblematic of the creative destruction of industrial capitalism, Detroit now symbolizes the possibilities for both the expansion of extreme neoliberal “shock doctrine” policies as well as radical forms of resistance to such homogenizing prescriptions. Through analyzing the material manifestations of the excesses of industrial capitalism—the ruins of Detroit—I attempt to highlight the contradictions of gentrification’s development and growth narrative. Steeped in a history of entrenched structural racism and dispossession, city planners and private investors have adopted a vision of the city that re-appropriates its historical antecedent. This “future-nostalgia” evokes the same rhetoric of the middle-class fantasy—the “good life”—that led to Detroit’s urban crisis to begin with. In highlighting ruptures within this progress narrative, I push for an alternate imagining of the city’s future, one outside the scope of the growth politics of progressive modernity.
The ruins of Detroit stand as physical reminders of the end of an epoch. Gentrification on one level works to erase such symbols: the refurbishing or demolition of buildings and displacement of the city’s mostly black residents. Yet, gentrification is neither a totalizing nor complete process. In a space of a depressive modernity, ruins—understood dialectically—allow for an alternate futurity to emerge. Ruins, then, offer the possibility for a radical rethinking of urban space. In Detroit, a method of the “commons” adopted by grassroots community activists has challenged the hegemonic forces of neoliberal urban governance. Through my field study working in a place called the Cass Corridor Commons, I show how Detroit activists enacted a philosophy of the commons in their everyday lives. These competing future narratives, though, ultimately came up against the realities of Detroit’s uncertain future.
