Urban blight becomes tangible heritage in Detroit

What is it about?

As Detroit experiences an influx of capital and new middle-class residents, a variety of small businesses aim to transform salvaged materials from the city's vacant structures into an array of consumer goods. The items made with materials from blighted properties incorporate and draw on Detroit heritage and history and are marketed to the city's new middle-class (generally white) residents, tourists, and residents in the Metro Detroit region. Though this process is meant to serve the dual purpose of removing blight from the city's landscape (creating space for new development) and restoring its value and purpose, it ultimately reflects and reinforces harmful, widespread misperceptions about Detroit's "blighted" neighborhoods and the residents who live there.

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