A People’s Atlas of Detroit ed. by Linda Campbell, et al

Abstract

188 The Michigan Historical Review breaking into the women’s homes, holding them hostage with a pair of long-bladed scissors. In at least one instance, he raped a young mother along with her underage daughter.” (24) He is serving his sentence and will not be eligible for parole until 2058 when he turns 100. The abandoned suburban amusement park was Pirates Park, which was located in Flint Township behind a strip center. It closed when a coowner died. Redevelopment attempts on the site have so far been unsuccessful. Most impressive in the book is the bibliography in smaller print than the regular text and spread over three and a half pages, with many of the citations providing URLs of web sites where the citations can be found. As this review was written in April 2020, the libraries were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing researchers from looking up material from hard copies. Since the libraries may remain closed for some time, including internet links in the citations is much appreciated. Gary Flinn Author of Remembering Flint, Michigan: Stores from the Vehicle City and Hidden History of Flint Linda Campbell, Andrew Newman, Sara Safransky, and Tim Stallmann, eds. A People’s Atlas of Detroit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. Pp. 352. 52 photographs. 52 maps. 6 charts. Paper: $34.99 Detroit is often written about, but rarely engaged with. Many people come to the city to tell stories about it, without listening to the voices, perspectives, and ideas of the almost 700,000 people that call the city home. This is even more problematic because many people who treat the city as a “blank slate” or “urban frontier” are white, while Detroit’s population is approximately 85% African American. Much of this recent writing on Detroit positions the city as a unique outlier to contemporary American, or global urbanism. The economic, social, cultural, political, or racial insights gained from studying Detroit stem from its difference and framing as an outlier city. A People’s Atlas of Detroit takes a decidedly different view on the city and its contribution to urban knowledge. It asks what if “Detroit—and the stories of Detroiters—are captivating not because they are so different but rather because they have so much in common with such a wide variety of people and places?” (301) The recent murder of George Floyd by members of the Minneapolis Police Department, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the anti-black racism protests around the world (as well Book Reviews 189 as the ways in which the pandemic has augmented pre-existing inequities) have all illustrated that the racism and injustices that are so evident in Detroit are also common elements of capitalism and contemporary cities far beyond Detroit’s borders. The editors of this impressive volume argue that Detroit’s outlier status actively works to deprive its residents of their rights to the city. They seek to dispel the myth that Detroiters are “absent, silent or disengaged from efforts to improve their city (p.1).” By highlighting the experiences of Detroiters and amplifying the voices of grassroots community organisations, the Atlas beautifully illustrates many of these efforts, visions, initiatives, and practices that have been working to fight racism, economic decline, and injustice for decades. The Atlas emerged from a participatory research project called Uniting Detroiters, which was founded in 2012 and had three main goals: challenge the dominant narratives about development, use collective research to strengthen grassroots organisations, and reassert residents’ positions as active participants in the city’s development. Uniting Detroiters consists of activists, community leaders, scholars, students, and other residents and employs participatory research and critical cartography. The book is therefore not an atlas in the traditional sense, but rather one that seeks to reimagine Detroit’s place “on a map” through lived experiences, rather than scientific precision. Heavily influenced by William Bunge’s and Gwendolyn Warren’s work in the 1960s, the Atlas works to challenge racial capitalism and urban revanchism, while stressing possibilities and limitations of the right to the city and the urban commons. The editors are at the frontier of contemporary urban thinking that centers race and racism, not as by...