Greening the Black Urban Regime: The Culture and Commerce of Sustainability in Detroit by Alesia Montgomery

Abstract

Reviewed by: Greening the Black Urban Regime: The Culture and Commerce of Sustainability in Detroit by Alesia Montgomery Allison Puglisi Alesia Montgomery, Greening the Black Urban Regime: The Culture and Commerce of Sustainability in Detroit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. Pp. 332. Illustrations. Paperback: $34.99. As governments and developers reshape American cities, many of them have made "green" design and planning a priority. But there is more to this story than a sudden concern for the environment. In Greening the Black Urban Regime, Alesia Montgomery shows how White elites have used notions of sustainability to propel and legitimate uneven development in Detroit. To make their plans a reality, Montgomery suggests elites need the help of two groups: "technical experts (planners, engineers, architects)" and "cultural workers (artists, clergy, street scholars)." (13) Cultural workers are in an especially strange position: elites sometimes co-opt their art and rhetoric, but they are usually the fiercest critics of inequity. Montgomery's new book is part of a larger body of literature on political, economic, and cultural shifts in US cities. Much of this literature, for good reason, is concerned with gentrification. But Montgomery, crucially, broadens the scope of this conversation to include minoritization: the subordination of Black political interests to White power in a given space. An urban ethnographer, Montgomery draws most of her evidence from "naturally occurring speech (chats, tweets, blogs, ephemera, public meetings, street performances)." (258) These sources enable her to capture both the force of minoritization and how Detroiters have resisted it. Montgomery begins the book with an introduction to urban "greening." For many gentrifiers, the "greening" of Detroit is enticing: it consists of bikeshares, farm-to-table cafés, and other "amenities." (29) These serve to obscure the ecological violence Detroit's Black and low-income residents face: water shutoffs and toxicity, food insecurity, and (for houseless people) exposure to Michigan's extreme temperatures. Emblematic of this tension is the Detroit Works Project (DWP), unveiled in 2010. The project entailed "rightsizing": phasing out key city services and displacing residents to cut utility costs, then building parks and other amenities where their homes were. (175, 198) Planners and experts couched the DWP in "justice-speak" and created the appearance of community input without meaningfully soliciting or incorporating it. (13) For example, at one town hall, attendees were handed clickers, ostensibly to express their opinions in a group survey. But they were asked "leading" questions that silenced dissenting opinions. (188) Alongside examples like these, Montgomery also shows how Detroit's cultural workers offer their own terms for an equitable and sustainable Detroit. [End Page 157] Greening the Black Urban Regime paints the often-complex relationships between "green" developers, technical experts, and cultural workers. Historians may wish for more details on how that tenuous triad came to be, but this is not what Montgomery set out to do. Instead, she situates a changing Detroit in the broader landscape of Black urban politics and contemporary environmental justice concerns—both of which are crucial considerations across disciplines. As she does this, she moves effortlessly between scales, from the boardroom to the corner grocery. This level of intimacy is rare in academic writing. It is possible in large part because she moved to Detroit out of a commitment to engaged and accountable scholarship. For three years she walked its streets, attended its events, and chatted with its residents. She captures these in such detail that by the book's end, we feel we have too. Allison Puglisi Harvard University Copyright © 2021 Historical Society of Michigan