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Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City
"Driving Detroit is replete with interesting insights on the social history of one of America's most troubled cities. George Galster has done a remarkable job of revealing how powerful elements in the Detroit metropolitan area created over time intense race and class polarization and a pronounced city-suburban dichotomy. There are lessons to be learned from this compelling study of a dysfunctional metropolitan region. Indeed, Galster's illuminating analysis is a must-read."--William Julius Wilson, Harvard University
"George Galster cares deeply about Detroit--as should we all. In this clever and highly readable book, he draws upon history, social science, music, poetry and art to build a compelling case that bitter, unresolved conflicts have trapped the region in a zero-sum game, undermining the well-being of its people and communities--past, present, and future. Although Detroit is unique in many respects, the conflicts that bedevil it are not. There's a lot to learn here for anyone who cares about 21st-century urban America."--Margery Austin Turner, The Urban Institute "Like a good documentary, Driving Detroit expertly guides us through a fascinating yet grim and sad urban reality while exposing the deeper historical impact of economic restructuring, enduring racism, and selfish politics. And yet the insights connected to this extreme case are not confined only to Detroit. This book should be compulsory reading for urbanists in the U.S. and beyond who are searching for adequate responses to the challenges of their own cities."--Sako Musterd, University of Amsterdam For most of the twentieth century, Detroit was a symbol of American industrial might, a place of entrepreneurial and technical ingenuity where the latest consumer inventions were made available to everyone through the genius of mass production. Today, Detroit is better known for its dwindling population, moribund automobile industry, and alarmingly high murder rate. In Driving Detroit, author George Galster, a fifth-generation Detroiter and internationally known urbanist, sets out to understand how the city has come to represent both the best and worst of what cities can be, all within the span of a half century. Galster invites the reader to travel with him along the streets and into the soul of this place to grasp fully what drives the Motor City.
"George Galster cares deeply about Detroit--as should we all. In this clever and highly readable book, he draws upon history, social science, music, poetry and art to build a compelling case that bitter, unresolved conflicts have trapped the region in a zero-sum game, undermining the well-being of its people and communities--past, present, and future. Although Detroit is unique in many respects, the conflicts that bedevil it are not. There's a lot to learn here for anyone who cares about 21st-century urban America."--Margery Austin Turner, The Urban Institute "Like a good documentary, Driving Detroit expertly guides us through a fascinating yet grim and sad urban reality while exposing the deeper historical impact of economic restructuring, enduring racism, and selfish politics. And yet the insights connected to this extreme case are not confined only to Detroit. This book should be compulsory reading for urbanists in the U.S. and beyond who are searching for adequate responses to the challenges of their own cities."--Sako Musterd, University of Amsterdam For most of the twentieth century, Detroit was a symbol of American industrial might, a place of entrepreneurial and technical ingenuity where the latest consumer inventions were made available to everyone through the genius of mass production. Today, Detroit is better known for its dwindling population, moribund automobile industry, and alarmingly high murder rate. In Driving Detroit, author George Galster, a fifth-generation Detroiter and internationally known urbanist, sets out to understand how the city has come to represent both the best and worst of what cities can be, all within the span of a half century. Galster invites the reader to travel with him along the streets and into the soul of this place to grasp fully what drives the Motor City.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
305 pages, Hardcover
First published August 14, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 6, 2018
Galster's Driving Detroit is a look at Detroit history to explain its present symbol as the lost promise of the United States. He argues that a "dual-dialects" of conflict between white and black residents of the metropolitan area, and of between organized labor and the Big 3 auto capitalists. He frames the two as undermining each other, as both labor is weakened by race politics (Ford and GM happily flamed racial discord in order to divide workers and encouraged hate strikes that the UAW had to help suppress) and while labor achieved massive gains for its workforce, over the course of the late 20th century, Detroit became more and more sharply segregated. By 2010, Detroit was 83% black while only 10% of its suburbs were black, as not surprisingly, unions had also been weakened as companies moved more and more away from Detroit and happily fanned racial disharmony and "defended neighborhoods". White workers often took the head of racist actions, which are fueled by Detroit's flat geography and easy of building suburbs that had originated the auto industry in the first place. Detroit was especially vulnerable to fealty and hierarchy opposition because of the domination of the auto industry which dismantled public transit and designed the city around cars.
Galster's work is a good understanding of the larger landscape of the Detroit metro area and how it became a symbol of the rust belt, vulnerable to high segregation of class and race. He has an obvious love of the city and region even as he paints it as highly depressed and psychologically damaged by the conflicts of the 20th century as its residents served to fight for "respect", or access to shelter, food, love and status. It lost half its population to the suburbs (mainly white residents) as well as a fourth of its housing, half its jobs, and 63% of its tax base. The big 3 auto industry meanwhile arrogantly sought cheaper labor to defeat the UAW, which some residents blame for the gradual moving of the industry away from the metro area. Interestingly, he opens by saying much of Detroit musical culture is based on making driving music, particularly Mo-town, which sets up the book nicely as splicing poetry, narrative, literature, and images.
Galster's work is a good understanding of the larger landscape of the Detroit metro area and how it became a symbol of the rust belt, vulnerable to high segregation of class and race. He has an obvious love of the city and region even as he paints it as highly depressed and psychologically damaged by the conflicts of the 20th century as its residents served to fight for "respect", or access to shelter, food, love and status. It lost half its population to the suburbs (mainly white residents) as well as a fourth of its housing, half its jobs, and 63% of its tax base. The big 3 auto industry meanwhile arrogantly sought cheaper labor to defeat the UAW, which some residents blame for the gradual moving of the industry away from the metro area. Interestingly, he opens by saying much of Detroit musical culture is based on making driving music, particularly Mo-town, which sets up the book nicely as splicing poetry, narrative, literature, and images.
April 25, 2018
An in-depth analysis of the many chapters of Detroit's history from the early explorers to the automakers bankruptcy. This book explores the many facets that have shaped Detroit into one of the mst economically and racially segregated communities in the world. George is a fascinating writer, bordering on the line of too much sarcasm at times. He is a Detroit boy born and raised and recently retired from Wayne States urban planning department.
A+ book for anyone looking to understand Detroit a little more
A+ book for anyone looking to understand Detroit a little more
November 21, 2013
I grew up in the suburbs of Southeast Michigan, so Detroit was always a hazy presence looming on the horizon: Here there be dragons, and they'll take your damn wallet. I didn't often visit, but every trip was a mix of fascination and terror. I could see that the city had fallen on hard times, and the continuous jokes at Detroit's expense cemented that as a place to be feared or dismissed. The annual pilgrimage to the opulent Detroit Institute of Art was nice (until my feets got sore), but every destination felt like a bubble encased within a landscape of decay. Ghostly columns of steam poured from street grates, trash blew across open fields, homeless (we don't have those in Plymouth!) hobbled about, their sunken faces and cracked skin revealing their need of shelter they would not find.
My friend's parents spoke as if they were guiding a wary safari group into the brush. Don't make eye contact. Jeff, Don't stare. They were firm in their fear that from the urban Serengeti could emerge a beast bursting with drugs and bad intentions, and it was our job to not look like prey. Any provocation would crumple our 5 lane-wide envelope of safety, the beast taking our automobile and money, leaving only a lead souvenir. On those safaris, they were Marlow, and their only connection to this city was the nightly news: The horror, the horror.
I absorbed a lot of Detroit from living in Michigan for 28 years, even if only subconsciously. I couldn't map them, but Livernois, Gratiot, the Lodge, Big Beaver all evoke memories of watching Local News at 6 on Channel 4. Coleman Young exists as a noxious fog, his memory ready to agitate anyone old enough to remember his mayorship. The UAW is another firecracker that either leveled the metro area or is the only weapon possessed by the people of Wayne County, depending on the narrator. Henry Ford built a nice museum and made some cars, Thomas Edison was his buddy, Jimmy Hoffa was last seen in Detroit, Lee Iacocca is controversial, Joe Louis has his name on stuff, "Toyota is Jap crap", Kwame Kilpatrick (Kwame Fucking Kilpatrick!); none of this made sense growing up, but it's there.
A few summers spent working at Mr. Ford's aforementioned museum piqued my interest in the history of Detroit. Ford built the car, but he also molded the landscape and through luck of location, Detroit became an industrial capital of the Midwest. Reading those histories revived those street names; Livernois isn't a dead line on a map, it contains a portion of the cycle of Detroit as it transformed from boomtown to vital war muscle to suburban nucleus to half-empty balloon.
This book explains that sine wave of progress through a story of exploitation. First, Europeans had to swindle the Indians out of land. Then tycoons swindled workers out of their time, health, and rights. Next, real estate speculators swindled homeowners out of a sense of security, shoving them toward the bucolic suburbs. Finally, the suburbs swindled the urban core out of funding and control. And all along, white people have tried to stay as far as possible from black people.
It's a sordid story, and a pessimistic one, not unlike A People's History of the United States. It's a detailed account of how the city robbed its way to the top and careened to the bottom through short-sighted, racist planning. I'd like to read a more balanced account, because I doubt that it was a city devoid of joy and culture through its best years. However, the specter of race riots and union wars lead me to believe the city was always tense, and its resolution occurred through extreme segregation. Detroit's flat, featureless geography allowed everyone who wanted space to get it, and those who did (and were allowed) left the city once they could. So while I'd like a less pessimistic narrative, I probably got the opposite from Greenfield Village, set in Dearborn (whose mayor openly excluded minorities), which tells the whitewashed story of infinite industrial progress and the potential for each man to metamorphose into a Great Man.
That said, I'm glad I read this. The tour of Detroit in the first chapter is excellent, and the author, who's lived in Detroit for (presumably) his whole life explains the oddities and ironies only learned from living in the city. What pushed this to five stars are the interludes of poetry, song, and memoir. Galster sets the historical setting, but those snippets of despair, cruelty, and ironic hope round this into a three-dimensional story.
Detroit's story is sad, and there might not be much hope it will ever approach the wealth of its best days. But it's a story that should be read as a cautionary tale to prevent the backbiting, race baiting, and violent battles that doomed the Motor City.
My friend's parents spoke as if they were guiding a wary safari group into the brush. Don't make eye contact. Jeff, Don't stare. They were firm in their fear that from the urban Serengeti could emerge a beast bursting with drugs and bad intentions, and it was our job to not look like prey. Any provocation would crumple our 5 lane-wide envelope of safety, the beast taking our automobile and money, leaving only a lead souvenir. On those safaris, they were Marlow, and their only connection to this city was the nightly news: The horror, the horror.
I absorbed a lot of Detroit from living in Michigan for 28 years, even if only subconsciously. I couldn't map them, but Livernois, Gratiot, the Lodge, Big Beaver all evoke memories of watching Local News at 6 on Channel 4. Coleman Young exists as a noxious fog, his memory ready to agitate anyone old enough to remember his mayorship. The UAW is another firecracker that either leveled the metro area or is the only weapon possessed by the people of Wayne County, depending on the narrator. Henry Ford built a nice museum and made some cars, Thomas Edison was his buddy, Jimmy Hoffa was last seen in Detroit, Lee Iacocca is controversial, Joe Louis has his name on stuff, "Toyota is Jap crap", Kwame Kilpatrick (Kwame Fucking Kilpatrick!); none of this made sense growing up, but it's there.
A few summers spent working at Mr. Ford's aforementioned museum piqued my interest in the history of Detroit. Ford built the car, but he also molded the landscape and through luck of location, Detroit became an industrial capital of the Midwest. Reading those histories revived those street names; Livernois isn't a dead line on a map, it contains a portion of the cycle of Detroit as it transformed from boomtown to vital war muscle to suburban nucleus to half-empty balloon.
This book explains that sine wave of progress through a story of exploitation. First, Europeans had to swindle the Indians out of land. Then tycoons swindled workers out of their time, health, and rights. Next, real estate speculators swindled homeowners out of a sense of security, shoving them toward the bucolic suburbs. Finally, the suburbs swindled the urban core out of funding and control. And all along, white people have tried to stay as far as possible from black people.
It's a sordid story, and a pessimistic one, not unlike A People's History of the United States. It's a detailed account of how the city robbed its way to the top and careened to the bottom through short-sighted, racist planning. I'd like to read a more balanced account, because I doubt that it was a city devoid of joy and culture through its best years. However, the specter of race riots and union wars lead me to believe the city was always tense, and its resolution occurred through extreme segregation. Detroit's flat, featureless geography allowed everyone who wanted space to get it, and those who did (and were allowed) left the city once they could. So while I'd like a less pessimistic narrative, I probably got the opposite from Greenfield Village, set in Dearborn (whose mayor openly excluded minorities), which tells the whitewashed story of infinite industrial progress and the potential for each man to metamorphose into a Great Man.
That said, I'm glad I read this. The tour of Detroit in the first chapter is excellent, and the author, who's lived in Detroit for (presumably) his whole life explains the oddities and ironies only learned from living in the city. What pushed this to five stars are the interludes of poetry, song, and memoir. Galster sets the historical setting, but those snippets of despair, cruelty, and ironic hope round this into a three-dimensional story.
Detroit's story is sad, and there might not be much hope it will ever approach the wealth of its best days. But it's a story that should be read as a cautionary tale to prevent the backbiting, race baiting, and violent battles that doomed the Motor City.
May 7, 2016
Having read many books on Detroit, this is one of the best. The author is an urban planning professor at Wayne State University and talks about the many factors which led to Detroit's decline, including the devastating segregation and housing discrimination for African Americans. The availability of cheap land also made sprawl desirable, leaving a city largely abandoned by the auto industry and middle class.
August 30, 2013
Best of the Detroit books that have been published recently. Fact-based and academic as opposed to anecdotal. Very good read if you'd like more in-depth analysis of the unique geographic, social and political history of the Greater Detroit area.
July 14, 2014
Provides an interesting historical perspective.
August 22, 2014
I will NEVER understand man's inhumanity!
June 1, 2015
If you have a shelf devoted to Detroit, as I do, make room for this.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews