Deconstructing Citizenship and the Growth of Detroit’s Green Renaissance

Abstract

Detroit is in the midst of a contemporary urban renewal project that is being carried out through speculative investment and green gentrification.  Unlike the active infrastructural violence of the past that was implemented by building freeways through neighborhoods, the displacement of residents is happening through discursive and political means that leave residents with few options for remaining in the city.  In this paper, I explore how resource management, particularly water and wastewater infrastructure, has been used to degrade the political efficacy of Detroit residents.   Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and discourse analysis of news articles and government reports, I argue that in recent years the city of Detroit has developed a wasting economy.  This political-economic-environmental structure relies on the coupling of deconstructive and constructive processes that promote the withering of citizenship in order to make way for radical transformation in the use of the cityscape.