Urban shrinkage as a performance of whiteness: neoliberal urban restructuring, education, and racial containment in the post-industrial, global niche city

Abstract

Although Detroit is not a centre of global finance, and plays a declining role in global production, it nevertheless participates in the present remediation of the relationship between cities and the globe. Manoeuvring to reposition the city as the global hub of mobility technology, metropolitan Detroit's neoliberal leadership advances particular development strategies in urban education, housing, infrastructure, and governance, all with implications for social exclusion. This paper analyzes Detroit's neoliberal policy complex, uncovering how rituals of place-making and suburbanite nostalgia for the city intersect with broader struggles over the region's resources and representation.There are areas in our city where we are going to have to make hard decisions to get people to move, and move into those communities that I think we can support. Relocation, absolutely. That's the reality that we are in. (Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, 24 February 2010) Many factors have been bringing Americans back downtown. The memory of the vibrant downtown as the central place for gathering and business, the irreplaceable historic buildings that are increasingly valued by communities and, most important, the pent-up consumer demand for walkable, vibrant places in which to live, work, and play have been the driving reasons for recent downtown revitalizations. (Downtown Detroit in Focus: A Profile of Market Opportunity, October 2006) *

Shrinking communities in Japan: Community ownership of assets as a development potential for rural Japan?

“…Moreover, it occurs particularly in affluent, developed countries in the Western world. It comes as no surprise, then, that the current literature on the causes and consequences of urban shrinkage as well as policy responses is mostly concentrated on cities in Europe and the United States (see, for example, Bucher and Mai, 2005;Ferry and Vironen, 2011;Pallagst et al, 2009;Pedroni, 2011;Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). Most recently, Pallagst et al (2012) addressed shrinking cities from a global perspective by presenting a number of case studies from around the world, considering specific economic, social, environmental, cultural and land-use issues.…”

“We felt they took the heart out of the community”: Examining a community-based response to urban school closure

“…Specifically, in 20001,193 to 1,992. Specifically, in -2001 high schools accounted for 25% of all school closings in the United States compared to 22% in 2010-2011(NCES, 2013. While the number of high school closings decreased on a percentage basis between 2001 and 2011, at the same time, high school closings increased on a per building basis from 302 to 436, respectively.…”

“…Similarly, the most populated city in Michigan, Detroit, has experienced massive school closures. Detroit Public Schools closed nearly 200 schools since 2004 (Pedroni, 2011).…”

“…The corrosive damage of structural racism, disinvestment in Black 2 communities, deindustrialization, and marketbased policies have left many urban communities-and the school districts located within themwith declining student enrollments, low test scores, and fiscal deficits (Buras, 2013;Good, 2016;Lipman, 2011a;Pedroni, 2011). As a response to these conditions, several large urban U.S. school districts, such as Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and St. Louis have closed schools (Finnigan & Lavner, 2012;Kirshner & Pozzoboni, 2011).…”

Review of A good investment? Philanthropy and the marketing of race in an urban public school

“…Complementing macro analyses of philanthropic networks and their influence on public education policy (Au & Ferrare, 2015;Pedroni & Pedroni, 2011;Reckhow, 2013;Scott, 2009;Scott, Jabbar, LaLonde, DeBray, & Lubienski, 2015), Brown's intimate political portrait of "College Prep" offers the insights that only a place-situated perspective can provide relative to the contested politics of racial, class, and gendered representations within a context of neoliberal austerity that forces schools (and students) to compete with one another for scarce funds. In one particularly striking anecdote, the director of the school's in-house nonprofit organization recalls recruiting students for an NBC segment with the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, in which Ferguson planned to bestow a scholarship on a student with a "big sob story" (Brown, 2015, p. 5).…”