Taubman College Kinder Book Launch: DIY Detroit
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Kimberley Kinder launched her latest book, DIY Detroit: Making Do in a City Without Services, in March 2016. DIY Detroit is published by the University of Minnesota Press.
DIY Detroit describes a phenomenon that has become woefully routine as inhabitants of deteriorating cities “domesticate” public services in order to get by. Stuck in a blighted city without basic services such as a bus line, what Detroit’s residents are left with after decades of disinvestment and decline is DIY urbanism – sweeping their own streets, maintaining public parks, and boarding up empty buildings. Kinder explores how these types of self-provisioned, spatial interventions are crucial in resident efforts to stabilize blocks and exert social control over their neighborhoods.
“Kimberley Kinder’s DIY Detroit is a clever, beautifully written account of everyday life in the wake of conventional market collapse and decades of austerity. It describes the ways that Detroiters have adapted, often defensively, always informally, sometimes illegally, to life without conventional markets and routine municipal services,” said Jason Hackworth, author of Neoliberal City.
Kinder is the author of The Politics of Urban Water: Changing Waterscapes in Amsterdam, released in the fall of 2015. Her research focuses on the social, cultural, and political aspects of urban landscapes.
For more information, including the table of contents, visit the book’s webpage: www.upress.umn.edu/diy-detroit
