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The recent declaration of the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history has propelled Detroit’s plight into the international spotlight. Though a victim of the general decline of US manufacturing, drawing on Thomas Sugrue’s pioneering work I argue that Detroit’s crisis is better understood as a specifically urban crisis. The city’s concentrated poverty and desolation and its fiscal straits are not reducible to broader economic trends, nor are they exclusively the product of political mismanagement. Rather, they are the outcome of a long history of economic decentralization and racial segregation, made worse by a politico-administrative arrangement that distributes wealth and services unequally across the metropolitan area. By imposing municipal austerity, Detroit’s bankruptcy is unlikely to do much to address these fundamental inequalities. Any plan to revitalize the city must move beyond boosterism and tackle head on the problems of racial and economic segregation that continue to affect Detroit’s 700,000 residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The narrative of the 'fall'-an account by urban residents about a decline in the morality and aesthetics of their surroundings-is common in US urban studies. Researchers typically explain the 'fall' as an outcome of post-Fordist changes in urban resources, neglecting to explore the social construction of this sense of things. Analyzing the oral histories of people who were born in Detroit from the 1920s to the 1970s, the author considers three explanations for the persistence of this narrative: constant urban decline, a moralizing hegemony or doxa, and a clash between objective structures and embodied histories over the life course. This line of inquiry is relevant to concerns about the impact of structural crises on social consciousness, and it is of particular significance to the theorization of the politics of place in post-Fordist cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines discourses surrounding the concepts of craft and handmaking in early 21st-century Detroit, Michigan. Particular focus is given to gendered domestic arts such as knitting and craft fairs, and the organization Handmade Detroit. According to the author, the city's crafters often unintentionally reproduce neoliberalist values of individual responsibility and limit their own potential for political and community activism. It is suggested that crafters' discourse ignores racial politics and reproduces post-Fordist labor subjectivities by blending the distinctions between labor and leisure activities, thus allowing structural inequalities in the city to continue. Topics discussed include racial diversity, postfeminism capitalism, and labor exploitation.