Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures

Innovative field work reveals how infrastructural systems—buildings, laws, algorithms, excavators, regulations, toxins—maintain white supremacy within the urban landscape

For decades, Detroit residents, politicians, planners, and advocacy organizations have campaigned for the elimination of empty buildings from city neighborhoods. Leveling these structures, many argue, is essential to making space for Detroit's majority-Black populace to flourish in the wake of white flight and deindustrial...