Alesia Montgomery provides an insightful account of life in Detroit, Michigan, from 2010 to 2013 to describe the public perception of the citywide planning process for the greater downtown area. Greening the Black Urban Regime can be seen as the story of how the very wealthy in Detroit dictated their eco-friendly vision for the city to the urban regime.In addition to her perceptive exploration of life in Detroit, Montgomery applies the lessons of what she found there to the experiences of other Historically Black Urban Regimes (HBURs), which are defined as cities with populations over 100,000, an African American population of over 40 percent, and the election of its first Black mayor before the 1990s. The author continued to visit and track developments in Detroit after completing her ethnographic study, with the aim to compare Detroit’s plans with thirty-two US cities, including fourteen other HBURs, in terms of justice and equality for all citizens.Throughout the book, Montgomery discusses how different groups within HBURs use the concept of “justice speak” to jockey for political gain by uniquely framing the term “justice” to please their own constituencies. She suggests that the powerful elite within cities influence technical experts and cultural workers to make new green planning and zoning strategies palatable to the general public by using key phrases that inspire specific groups to embrace new plans. More specifically, Montgomery states that African Americans and political liberals are more likely to show concern about “social equity, local hazards, and global climate change” than whites, non-Hispanics, and political conservatives.Montgomery noted that HBURs with a population loss greater than 35 percent were more likely to use justice language in their city planning documents, while growing cities were more likely to associate greening with commerce, leisure, and charity. Montgomery theorized that the HBURs growing in population use language to appease commercial and financial interests to the point of mirroring socially conservative majority white cities. She asserts that choosing commerce over justice has been as unwise as choosing commerce over racial justice, which has resulted in continued racism.Montgomery states that a century and a half after slavery and five decades after the first Black mayors took office, many African Americans remain in crisis. The author asserts that greater free market capitalism demonized and hurt the Black urban poor as it promoted out-migration from cities. She notes that as HBURs replaced white-supremacist urban regimes, racial hostilities sped up the out-migration of employers who had already begun to leave central cities. Although Montgomery’s account of “white flight” is merited, it does not adequately explain her assertions of how capitalism was the ruination of the inner city, nor does it effectively explain how the urban poor would be better off with an economic system that is less capitalistic in nature.Montgomery provides an entire chapter on sustainability and spends much of the book weaving discussions about green spaces, urban ecology, food deserts, and food oases into the narrative. She explores themes of equality, justice, and freedom and ties these to negative outcomes for African Americans from environmental hazards. Montgomery weaves in stories of freedom as they relate to Detroit and its role in the Underground Railroad and the road to freedom. The discussion of the Underground Railroad provides a useful metaphor in the discussion of how Detroit could be a beacon of liberation and provide inspiration as a city committed to both ecocentric initiatives and social justice.Montgomery effectively uses narratives, conversations, and interviews throughout the book and brings the Detroit of the past and present to life. She weaves together discussions with individuals on the streets, directors of nonprofits, social activists, and others as supportive illustrations. Montgomery offers insights into the meaning of these discussions from her own thoughts and cultural experiences by referencing African American history and literature.Montgomery thoughtfully describes the decline and de-industrialization of Detroit due to the downturn in the American automobile industry and the move to the suburbs that took place in the latter part of the twentieth century. Her viewpoint is that of an ecocentric ethnographer with extensive knowledge of ecology and planning efforts to make cities greener. Montgomery’s exceptional account of how African Americans have been excluded from architectural and city planning in the past, how this has played a significantly negative role on the plans made by cities in the past, and how these plans negatively affected Black families, provides the reader with a brief but essential understanding of how and why city planning programs often missed the mark in the last half of the twentieth century.Montgomery introduces the reader to her book in section I, “Empire and the Garden,” where she asks four questions:In section II, “Paradise Lost,” the author addresses her first and second research questions by interviewing people who fled to the suburbs. She refers to this as the “narrative of the fall,” wherein one mourns for the past and “affirms the image of the communal past” (55). She states this “moral we” helps to win over the neoliberal (capitalist) agenda. Montgomery describes the former grandeur of downtown Detroit before the automobile plants closed and how the remnants of the previous grandeur are still present and influence both the urban poor and cultural elites.In section III, “Redemption,” Montgomery continues answering the first two research questions and begins answering the third. The author emphasizes how longings for how things were in the past are used as a method by the growth elite to win over gentrifiers and long-term residents. She provides examples of how developers use nostalgia to draw outside interests into the city, such as how a Christmas festival that takes place at the vacant lot which once housed the grand Hudson’s Department Store is used to promote the redevelopment of downtown Detroit.In section IV, “The Forum,” the author discusses the public outreach for the Detroit Works Project, the name of the new city plan meant to help downsize or “right size” downtown Detroit and make it more green or eco-friendly. Montgomery analyzes how the facilitators made a good show of involving the general public, but then generally failed to do so in reality by not allowing for the general public to deliberate on the top-down redevelopment plans. A serious discussion on why and how public discourse is sometimes curtailed would have provided greater insight to the reader.In section V, “Consilium Principis” (in Roman times, literally “advisors to the Emperor”), the author examines the Detroit City Plan with other city plans in the United States. For instance, she states that the Birmingham, Alabama, city plan mentions historical and/or race-class injustices to explain their challenges. It discusses Jim Crow, industrial pollution, and substandard housing as well as zoning practices that placed African American homes in a flood plain. This history, as well as predatory lending, led to “an inequitable distribution of hazards” (233). However, at this point, Montgomery is trapped in her ecocentric point of view because she does not fully recognize that capitalism could have had some positive effects on the cities involved in the study, and she rejects any positive role that it may have played in cities like Atlanta.Finally, in section VI, “Naming the Baby,” Montgomery reflects on the changes in Detroit that have occurred since she completed her embedded research six years earlier. She presents an engaging narrative and relates it to events that had been transpiring. She tells of the mayor’s cooperation with developers so that he could get the help that he needed. However, the author notes that the mayor allowed developers to get their way too often. Her conclusions are, as she states, “bleak,” but she does note that there are possibilities for community organizers to “subvert power constellations.”Overall, Greening the Black Urban Regime is well written and contains stories that captivate the reader. The methodologies used for both the ethnography and case study were properly carried out. However, this study is not exhaustive. The author could have provided groundbreaking analyses for how and why comprehensive plans often fail large segments of the public, and particularly fail to serve the most-needy communities by focusing more on social stratification and on decisions made within local power structures and in the free market.Montgomery goes into considerable detail about how and why people left Detroit and moved to the suburbs. The book contains narratives of people who had fond memories of living in Detroit but then moved out to the suburbs. While she details the disconnect between cultural elites and the urban poor, she does not discuss the loss of bridging social capital that occurs when the middle class moves out. Pamela Paxton’s Social Capital and Democracy (2002) and Menno Hurenkamp’s Organize Liberal, Think Conservative: Citizenship in Light Communities (2009) offer important insights in this regard. This scholarship would also provide additional insight into why growing HBURs choose not to include justice speak in their planning documents.Montgomery’s disdain for capitalism is apparent throughout the book. As such, she does not explore the need for capital and its importance in the redevelopment of Detroit. She frames her arguments in terms of class, and how elites use power for their own greed. Authors often overcome this imbalance by providing evidence of the decline and struggles of the city in economic terms.Overall, Greening the Black Urban Regime provides useful information for anyone wanting to learn more about the views and opinions of a variety of people living in Detroit during the 2010–13 planning process. It is also very informative for anyone who wants to understand the ways in which a city excludes the public from a planning process. The study of HBURs provides an interesting and viable research for anyone desiring to learn more about economic development in large urban environments.