The DePOT blog shares emerging research from within the project and outside of it. We aim to publish a range of perspectives.
Do you want to submit to the DePOT blog?
DePOT Blog Submissions Guideline
We are looking for 750-1,000-word blog post with a clear message or argument, and a suggested title.
Tips:
- Write for a general and specialized audience, as this is our public-facing website. No jargon!
- Use Chicago-style citations
- If possible, send a photo to accompany your post with citation (photos must be under 2500 pixels)
- If you are not a DePOT affiliate, please send a writer biography (200 words max)
Email submissions or questions to deindustrialization@concordia.ca, and the DePOT blog is edited by Dr Steven High.
Topic ideas:
- Responses to current events
- Discussions on upcoming publications
- Reflections on recent research trips
- Notes on recent conferences in related fields, protests and solidarity events, marches, workshops, roundtables…
- Posts commemorating important anniversaries or key historical events
- Blog posts written as coursework in a class related to deindustrialization
- Discussions on representations of deindustrialization in pop culture
- Personal essays about how your work in deindustrialization studies intersects with lived experience
Comparing Deindustrialization in Detroit and Windsor
Nearly 150 researchers and students are currently affiliated with the DePOT project. Historians and sociologists abound. Yet there are only a few scholars trained in planning or geography.
As urban planning scholars based in Detroit—specializing in community development and economic development respectively—we have affiliated with the DePOT project because studying deindustrialization challenges us to reconsider one of the foundational relationships structuring the built environment: the linkage between jobs and communities. Specifically, deindustrialization draws our attention to the decisive role that industry has long played in creating—and subsequently remaking—neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas.
The Deindustrialization of DC
Between January and May this year, more than 260,000 U.S. federal government workers have either been laid off, taken early retirement, or accepted buyouts. Thousands more are losing jobs as the Trump administration slashes research grants and funding for social services and non-profits. While the cuts affect people across the country and the world, they hit especially hard in Washington, D.C., where the federal government has always been the largest employer. As the Axios news service put it, the Trump administration is “downsiz[ing] the capital city’s big factory.”
Recording Deindustrialization in the New Populist Era