The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
By Peter Blackmer Editor’s note: This is the third post in our annual Digital Summer School for 2025, where we highlight projects in the digital humanities. You can read other posts in the series here. In early 2013, Michigan governor Rick Snyder declared a financial emergency in Detroit, which gave him the power under a […]
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Editor’s note: This is the sixth post in our theme for January 2022, Urban Environmentalism. Additional entries can be seen at the end of this article. By Brandon Ward Mildred Smith was fed up with bulldozers in 1966. She had twice been forced out of homes to accommodate urban renewal developments in Detroit, and officials […]
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By Daniel Clark For most of the twentieth century, autoworkers and their families were a large share of metro-Detroit’s population, and the decade and a half after World War II has been widely considered to be their heyday. Those familiar with the literature on Detroit history will immediately, and correctly, point out that Tom Sugrue’s […]
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By Richard Harris, McMaster University I enjoyed Victoria Wolcott’s recent item in The Metropole. Engaging, and deeply-felt, it effectively made the point that the lives and struggles of black women are among the most neglected aspects of the American urban experience. But one phrase gave me pause. She suggested that lately we have been “neglecting […]
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By Pete Saunders Detroit has had an outsized impact on American history. People around the world are familiar with its contributions to the auto industry in particular and manufacturing in general. And Detroit has had an impact on music—from Motown rhythm and blues to rock, jazz, gospel, and electronic dance music—that is unparalleled. Detroit has […]
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By James McQuaid On May 10, 1973, Gary Kapanowski walked into work and was greeted by orange and black fliers papered throughout the plant denouncing him as “a faggot,” asking workers at the plant, “Do you want a faggot to be your chairman of the shop committee?”[i] Kapanowski had worked at the Briggs Beautyware stamping […]
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[Editor’s note: In anticipation of UHA 2020 to be held in Detroit, October 8-11, 2020, The Metropole is featuring Detroit as our Metro of the Month for January. See here for the CFP and here for info about and link to the UHA spreadsheet. The latter is meant to help urbanists find prospective panels and […]
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[Editor’s note: In anticipation of UHA 2020 to be held in Detroit, October 8-11, 2020, The Metropole is featuring Detroit as our Metro of the Month for January. See here for the CFP and here for info about and link to the UHA spreadsheet. The latter is meant to help urbanists find prospective panels and […]
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Editor’s note: Michael Brickey’s post below is, of course, a reminder to check out the CFP for #UHA2020 in Detroit. If you’re reading this, consider submitting! You can check out the CFP here. By Michael Brickey Last week, Kate Carpenter posted this to Twitter: Still feeling inspired by #WHA2019 and seeing chatter about #WHA2020 panels, […]
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Editor’s Note: Socialists in cities have imagined, formulated, and attempted to create a conception of urban space that revolved around their ideological principals and ideas. Urban socialist experiments took on many forms and have had a varying rate of success and failure. Each case demonstrates how crucial alternative conceptions to the political economy of capitalist […]
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