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. With a
scholar's rigor and a local's perspective, Galster uncovers why
metropolitan Detroit's cultural, commercial, and built landscape
has been so radically transformed. He shows how geography, local
government structure, and social forces created a housing
development system that produced sprawl at the fringe and
abandonment at the core. Galster argues that this system, in tandem
with the region's automotive economic base, has chronically
frustrated the population's quest for basic physical, social, and
psychological resources. These frustrations, in turn, generated
numerous adaptations-distrust, scapegoating, identity politics,
segregation, unionization, and jurisdictional fragmentation-that
collectively leave Detroit in an uncompetitive and unsustainable
position. Partly a self-portrait, in which Detroiters paint their
own stories through songs, poems, and oral histories, Driving
Detroit offers an intimate, insightful, and perhaps controversial
explanation for the stunning contrasts-poverty and plenty, decay
and splendor, despair and resilience-that characterize the once
mighty city.
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