Four Days in Detroit: a Dutch urban geography fieldtrip to the Motor City

Abstract

This article describes a four day field trip to Detroit, Michigan with twenty-eight Urban Geography Master’s students from Utrecht University. Detroit is known for its population decline, industrial collapse and racial strife. However, the city is far more complex than that and understanding what happened to Detroit can teach us a lot about contemporary cities more generally. Each day of our visit built up a different narrative of Detroit and challenged what we thought we knew about the city and its people. This process evolved from the shocking scale of the ruins and destruction, to seeing this same landscape turned into art and hope, placing the city in a wider regional context and finally providing a reality check as to the city’s problems and potential solutions. Through our interactions and discussions with Detroiters, the students have come away with a great respect for the city and an understanding of why Detroit matters.