Detroit: “A City Hollowed Out”

On July 18th, 2013, the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy; as the largest municipal default in U.S. history, it was the latest in a horrific series of economic, political, social, urban planning, and public policy bankruptcies to drain Detroiters of the ability to inhabit their city.  In effect, this long decline has been marked by the flow of factors of inhabitation from an increasingly disadvantaged city-centre towards an endowed (and sometimes predatory) periphery.  Thus the city has become the site for existing citizens to contest their rights of inhabitation and new citizens to experiment with new forms and functions in a city hollowed out.