What does/can/should an egalitarian metropolis look like? And how does a focus on Detroit allow us to ask and answer these conceptual—and practical—questions in ways that draw on a variety of disciplines including architecture, history, urban planning, and the urban humanities?

This course offers an interdisciplinary perspective on urban studies, urban design, and the ways that concerns around social justice and equity can influence how we think about cities in the past, present, and future. Drawing on a range of faculty expertise in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, this team-taught course also incorporates the voices of practitioners and community members involved in current attempts to revitalize Detroit and “Detroit-like” cities in the United States and elsewhere. By “Detroit-like cities” we mean urban areas that have experienced negative population growth, deindustrialization, economic disinvestment, racial stratification, environmental injustices, and concomitant crises in housing, health care, policing, criminalization, and education. At the same time, Detroit and Detroit-like cities offer opportunities to conjoin critical humanistic inquiry, urban design, and policy solutions for building more equitable and sustainable cities.