Urban Blight Contested Heritage on the Postindustrial Frontier
Pyburn, Anne
Indiana University
2020
308
Ph.D.
Indiana University
2020
As of 2014, there were 78,506 blighted structures in the city of Detroit. Quantifying blight according to a set of subjective standards and mapping its presence on the landscape allowed city officials to frame the city's high levels of vacancy and structural abandonment as a crisis requiring immediate intervention in the form of mechanical demolition and, to a lesser extent, deconstruction. In addition to city-level blight removal efforts, Metro Detroit residents have undertaken a variety of property appropriation and salvage practices. This spectrum of activities-from landscape clearance via demolition to the small-scale removal of building materials and artifacts for safekeeping and reuse-has resulted in the fragmentation and redistribution of Detroit's built environment over the course of decades.