Abstract
This chapter sets out to explore how Detroit has been framed-legally, fiscally, politically, and discursively-as the architect of its own misfortune. Dominant narrations of the Detroit bankruptcy displace both the blame and the burden of economic adjustment, dumping the costs and risks onto the city itself, and onto the most socioeconomically marginalized. Under the hegemony of the model ofneolibcral devolution known as fiscal federalism, the underlying causes of municipal financial crisis have been localized, cndogcnizcd, and pathologized. And the remedies must also be found locally, as under no circumstances must cities be "bailed out." This framing speaks to the way in which the banking crisis of 2008 has been translated into a state crisis, an urban crisis, and a social crisis, an improbable feat that Mark Blyth has characterized as "the greatest bait and switch in human history" (2013: 13, Peck 20 I 3). This ideological offensive has been pursued in the context of the ongoing financialization of the American urban system, exacerbating its still-unfolding contradictions. The effect has been to lock in a regime of "austerity urbanism" in which an adverse bundle of financial and political pressures work in a downward direction-in both social and scalar terms.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Reinventing Detroit: the Politics of Possibility |
Editors | Michael Peter Smith, L. Owen Kirkpatrick |
Place of Publication | U.S. |
Publisher | Transaction Publishers |
Pages | 145-165 |
Number of pages | 21 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781412856607 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781412856935 |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- financialization
- municipal government
- governance
- neoliberalism
- Detroit (Mich.)