Detroit’s Municipal Bankruptcy: Racialised Geographies of Austerity

Reimagining geographies of public finance

“…As highlighted in a letter from three US senators to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the discrepancy in the Fed's support for private and public financial markets meant that "giant corporations will reap all the benefits of this recovery while cities and states are left behind and suffer needless economic devastation" (Warren et al, 2020: 1)-likely in ways that will accelerate racial disparities. Here the critical urban geographic approach of linking the production of space, with its attendant racialized, classed, and gendered dynamics, to the underlying structures of capitalism is a powerful guide to what is at stake in understanding the public-private interface, reminding us who is most harmed by austerity, and how state and local governments have historically made up for reduced revenue shortfalls through pecuniary measures like traffic fines (US Department of Justice, 2015: 1) or more extreme measures such as switching the municipal water source to a contaminated river (Pulido, 2016) or shutting off the water supply to impoverished households altogether (Phinney, 2018).…”