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作者

Emma Jean Slager

来源

URBAN GEOGRAPHY,Vol.41,Issue1,P.124-142

语言

英文

关键字

Detroit,post-industrial city,place politics,tourism,urban redevelopment

作者单位

Urban Studies Program, University of Washington Tacoma, Tacoma, WA, USA

摘要

In the face of economic, demographic, and infrastructural decline, Detroit, Michigan, has become a destination for those interested in viewing the city’s iconic ruins. Paradoxically, such tours represent a form of economic development that takes urban decay as its object. Using data collected through participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, this study examines how such tours operate in relation to broader practices of urban redevelopment. It argues that tours are not only a way of turning the city into a site of consumption, but also a more complicated response to failures of industrial capitalism in which tour operators suggest different political modes of responding to the city’s decline. This is demonstrated by tracing the development of ruin tour programs and examining three representative cases of ruin tours. Examining how local actors respond to urban decline in this way strengthens urban geographic understandings of the post-industrial city and its recapitalization..KEYWORDS: Detroitpost-industrial cityplace politicstourismurban redevelopmentAcknowledgmentsThank you to Sarah Elwood, whose comments on various versions of this work strengthened it immensely. I am also grateful to Kevin Ward for his direction as editor and to three anonymous reviewers. Further thanks to Victoria Lawson, Will McKeithen, and Jennifer Porter for helpful comments on a previous version of this piece.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.