The Great Black Migration to Detroit occurred at the height of the city’s industrial dominance, and yet the result was a deeply divided metropolis where almost all the benefits of subsequent industrial restructuring flowed to white suburbanites and almost all the costs were borne by Black city residents. Today’s Detroit might be more challenged economically, yet paradoxically the chances for an inclusive recovery and a more egalitarian metropolis might be greater. Detroit and Detroit-like cities have the possibility of restructuring to deliver greater equity for their residents than other metros hampered by high housing costs and issues associated with infrastructure, transportation, and education, among other pressing concerns. But can Detroit overcome its racial and economic divisions to become a more egalitarian metropolis?

The culmination of the Michigan-Mellon Project on the Egalitarian Metropolis, this symposium brings together University of Michigan researchers and Detroit community leaders who are working daily to make the city’s recovery equitable and inclusive. By highlighting voices that engage Detroit’s past, present, and future, each session presents vital work carried out by Detroit leaders alongside new urban humanities research funded by the Michigan-Mellon Project in order to advance critical conversations about Detroit’s future as an egalitarian metropolis. 

About the Michigan-Mellon Project on the Egalitarian Metropolis 

The Michigan-Mellon Project on the Egalitarian Metropolis is an Urban Humanities Initiative organized around a partnership of humanists, architects/urban designers/planners, and community leaders. A collaboration between the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning and College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the Project’s commitment to research and teaching aims to not only model a future for these disciplines, but to also demonstrate how the urban humanities can be effective partners and collaborators in the movement for more inclusive cities.