Ground Forces: Dirt, Demolition, and the Geography of Decline in Detroit, Michigan by Michael Roman-John Koscielniak A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Urban and Regional Planning) in the University of Michigan 2020 Doctoral Committee: Assistant Professor Joshua M. Akers, Co-Chair Associate Professor Scott Campbell, Co-Chair Professor Margaret Dewar Professor Robert Fishman Professor Martin Murray "There's not another city in the country, and perhaps civilization, doing what we're doing ... blight removal at scale. Where is a better place to do this than Detroit, where scale is in our DNA? We put the world on wheels, we were the Arsenal of Democracy. Where else to teach the world how to do this and make a great city blight-free?" - Brian Farkas, Special Projects Director, Detroit Building Authority, 2018 “I am obsessed with a goal: To eliminate blight from the city of Detroit entirely by 2025.” - Michael Edward Duggan, Mayor of Detroit, 2019 M. Roman-John Koscielniak
[email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3338-8537 © M. Roman-John Koscielniak 2020 DEDICATION I dedicate this to the work and life of Ernest Calloway (1908-1989), a dishwasher, coal miner, highway drifter, cannabis activist, labor organizer, journalist, full-time civil rights activist, one-time Fulbright Scholar, President of the St. Louis Chapter of the NAACP, frequent local campaign director, newspaper publisher, candidate for US Congress, political kingmaker, part- time university lecturer, Assistant Professor, research director for the Teamsters, Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies at St. Louis University, and an “architect of the unfinished dream.” ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A dissertation is not an independent endeavor.