Urban Book Talk: Driving Detroit, The Quest for Respect in the Motor City

George C. Galster, Clarence Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs at Wayne State University, spoke about his latest book which uncovers why metropolitan Detroit’s cultural, commercial, and built landscape has been so radically transformed. He shows how geography, local government structure, and social forces created a housing development system that produced sprawl at the fringe and abandonment at the core. Partly a self-portrait, in which Detroiters paint their own stories through songs, poems, and oral histories, Driving Detroit offers an intimate, insightful, and perhaps controversial explanation for the stunning contrasts—poverty and plenty, decay and splendor, despair and resilience—that characterize the once mighty city. To learn more about this book, please visit http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15027.html. Co-sponsored by the Department of City and Regional Planning, Penn Design. This event was free and open to the public.