Project news

Joseph Coates and Emiliano Aguilar discuss the work done to preserve the memory of ACME workers in the Calumet region after the company’s coking plant closure.

Noah Schwartz discusses the whitewashing that occurs in many cases of historical preservation of gentrifying deindustrialized neighbourhoods, using the example of Marysville, New Brunswick

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. 

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.”