How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood

by P.E. Moskowitz

Detroit was made cheap and therefore attractive to gentrify because, beginning in the 1930s, its black residents were systematically denied jobs in the booming auto industry and, later, mortgages in the suburbs as the housing industry took off. Detroit’s black residents were hired last and fired first when the auto industry collapsed; they were foreclosed upon and denied basic city services. The racism of Detroit’s geography means that the city’s population decline has been incredibly uneven: between 2000 and 2010, the white population of the city decreased by 35 percent, while the black population decreased by 24 percent. Detroit’s rebirth has been built on the backs of people who were too poor to leave. And the 7.2 can exist only as a heavily subsidized state, perpetuating the historical constriction of subsidy and wealth to the rest of Detroit. Of course, private companies and foundations can do what they wish with their money. As Sue Mosey told me, they’re not required to do the public sector’s job of ensuring that the poorest of Detroit’s citizens have good parks, fair policing, transit, jobs, and housing. And activists here aren’t even suggesting that they do that job. The problem in Detroit isn’t necessarily the money being poured into Midtown and downtown but the fact that it’s happening in a vacuum. The private and nonprofit sectors have virtually replaced the public sector in the city’s most gentrified areas.