Do-It-Yourself Practices and Politics of Urban Climate Adaptation and Mitigation on the Margins: Detroit in Comparative Perspective
During the sabbatical period (August 2022 – June 2023), I seek to complete a series of articles on everyday practices and politics of climate change adaptation and mitigation in Detroit. The writings coalesce empirical findings and theoretical innovations developed through a FORMAS funded research project, The Practice and Politics of Urban Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Efforts at the Margins (2018-2020). The proposed project explores how vulnerable urban dwellers in Detroit manage the effects of climate change amidst extreme levels of inequality and in the context of uneven state presence. The proposed articles follow two tracks. The first two articles draw on interviews, ethnographic observation, and document analysis to examine DIY infrastructure-making in Detroit in both historical and contemporary perspective. Second, two articles emplace Detroit in comparative conversation with Lagos and Lusaka, respectively, to explore shared challenges related to sustainable urbanism and socio-economic and racial (in)justice. Collectively, the articles advocate for the need to foreground class, race, and inequality in conversations around climate change and sustainability, while highlighting the importance of including the knowledge(s) and perspectives of vulnerable citizens at all stages of the planning processes from conceptualization to implementation. The sabbatical application provides for an extended stay at Wayne State University in Detroit during the autumn of 2022.
Final report
I would like to acknowledge at the onset my deep gratitude to the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for funding the project. Completing the research and writing up much of the results would have been made exponentially more difficult in the absence of support. The Sabbatical Grant funded a full year of research leave (August 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023). I spent a few months during the Autumn of 2022 as an affiliate researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit. Apart from being immersed in the academic community at Wayne State, which provided an enriching setting in which to write, the extended stay also afforded me the opportunity to spend an extended amount of time working in the Walter P. Reuther Library’s archives. The archives offer a unique opportunity to explore in-depth Detroit’s labor, environmental, and planning histories. I used the time to investigate earlier instances of grassroots mobilization around environmental planning decisions, as well as histories of civic organizing around struggles for racial and economic justice. This research helped me to better historicize my understanding and analysis of more contemporary practices of do-it-yourself urbanism and the politics and inequities of climate and sustainability adaptions from the urban margins across the city. Once back in Sweden, the spring of 2023 was dedicated to continuing analysis and writing.
The remainder of the Final Report further highlights what the project was about, while also flagging some of the publications, presentations, and new collaborations that emerged as a result.
Project Description and Contribution
The project engaged ongoing debates in the field of comparative urban studies by expanding the scope and scale of cross-regional comparisons. My approach drew from a comparative global perspective calling for the need to understand in relation to one another rather than in isolation. The project’s comparative approach demonstrates the relevance of, and the need to learn from, the Global South or other places that have experienced economic disruption or decline.
Why might this be the case? Community-led regeneration efforts in marginal cities or by vulnerable populations has necessarily required the re-imagination of belonging, space, and notions of inclusion where infrastructure is deficient, the state absent, or socio-economic precarity high. “Do-it-yourself” urbanism suggests a process of “enskillment”, as city residents learn how to grow their own food, repair failing infrastructure, and innovate social organizations to substitute for the lack of state or civil society supported associations. The project thus contributes to the literature on civic and urban associations by offering insight into the creation of planning and institutional frameworks that can work with and through “do-it-yourself” practices. (As an aside, these findings hint at provocative implications for thinking through how these efforts might inform or contribute to the ongoing work in Sweden today around crisis management and preparedness. This is an area of research interest that the project’s findings have allowed me to begin to pursue.)
Prominent conceptualizations of African urbanism(s) invite an alternate approach to the aforementioned challenges. They demonstrate how unpredictable, predatory, and/or unequal distribution of infrastructure(s) often found in African cities prompts residents to experiment or improvise their daily encounters with both urban environments and each other. Similarly, in ‘Northern’ cities, such as in Detroit and New Orleans, municipal bankruptcy and austerity policies have prompted the emergence of do-it-yourself (DIY) initiatives to provide services and infrastructure. These forms of infrastructure-making foreground the everyday tactics, strategies, and politics necessary for vulnerable urban residents to respond to climate-challenges in particular, and pervasive precarity, more generally.
The project thus attempted to address the following questions across a series of scientific articles and essays: a) how do Detroit residents, living with, and in, persistent and pervasive socio-economic, political, and spatial precarity conceive and implement sustainable climate solutions; b) what kind of politics do these efforts generate; c) what role does the state play; d) how to emplace these practices in Detroit within cross-regional conversation with African cities; e) what is the utility of African-centric urban theory in contemporary sustainability policy and practice?
Research Results: Completed and Ongoing
In pursuit of these questions, the following work has been completed:
1) Final work on an edited volume, DIY Urbanism in African Cities: Politics and Practice, was completed. The book was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023.
2) I co-organized and co-edited (with Jennifer Hart) an Intervention series published in Antipode on the theme, “Urban Theory in the Global South.” The symposium brought together emerging scholars from the Global South, along with one of the most prominent urbanists of the last few decades, AbdouMaliq Simone, to address these issues. Jennifer Hart and I wrote the introductory piece, “Urban Theory Futures are Turbulent, Vernacular, and Incomplete (and that’s okay).” The series is available online and can be accessed here: https://antipodeonline.org/2023/03/13/urban-theory-from-the-global-south/.
3) I wrote an essay comparing the experiences of deindustrialization and divestment in Detroit and the Central African Copperbelt to explore how the consequences of broader politico-economic forces play out in similar ways across widely divergent urban geographies. This essay is currently under review and should be published later in 2025.
4) I co-organized and co-edited a symposium (with Hoai Anh Tran) on the theme, “Planning from Precarity.” The series draws on cases from southern Africa, Brazil, Vietnam, and Detroit to make the broad argument that urban planners look beyond formalized, technocratic planning procedures to consider the ways in which grounded, everyday planning practices undertaken by local communities might serve as an alternative form of planning practice to meet environmental and infrastructural challenges in times of prolonged resource scarcity. This series is currently undergoing a second round of revisions and we aim for publication during late 2025 or 2026.
Future articles will focus more exclusively on the case of Detroit to leverage the archival materials collected during the project period. For instance, one article to be drafted will explore how Black Liberation and radical labor movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the ideologies of empowerment and autonomy they espoused, inform contemporary efforts to obtain climate and infrastructural justice.
Public Presentations of the Project’s Research
1) I presented “Comparative Perspectives on DIY Urbanism in Detroit: What Might be Learned from Africa and Why Does it Matter?”, to the Department of Geography at Sacramento City College. (November 2022)
2) I participated in a workshop organized by the State of California’s Department of Water Resource’s FLOOD-MAR Network. The workshop brought together working professionals and community organizations in California’s Central Valley for a conversation on community generated efforts at flood mitigation. My contribution was entitled, “DIY Approaches to Climate Adaptation and Mitigation in Comparative Perspective: Problems and Prospects.” (November 2022)
3) I presented at paper (with Patience Mususa) at an Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Philadelphia. Our contribution was entitled, “Is State “Weakness” the Same in Lusaka and Detroit?: Developing a Grounded Language of Cross-Regional Urban Comparison.” (November 2022)
4) I presented a paper at the European Conference on African Studies in Köln. The presentation was entitled, “Sustainable (Afro-) Futurisms Past and Present: Urban Imaginaries in Detroit, Lagos, and Kinshasa.” I also co-organized a panel for emerging Africanist scholars on the topic, “Climate Change and Changing Urban Dynamics in Africa’s Cities: Current Trends and Future Prospects.” (June 2023)
5) I presented a paper to the Institute for Housing Studies at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands, entitled, “A Politics of Interruption?: Challenges and Opportunities of DIY Urbanism in Africa.” (November 2024)
6) I participated in a panel discussion organized by the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. The panel’s theme was, “Urbanization beyond Dichotomies? Making Sense of Complexity in Contemporary Urban Practices.” (November 2024)
Collaborations and Future Research Trajectories
The time spent in Detroit offered an opportunity to network with a different constellation of researchers and civil society organizations that I would have otherwise not had the opportunity to meet. One collaborative network set in motion during this project period has resulted in a project funded for three years (2024 - 2026) by Formas on the topic of community-initiated transport solutions in Detroit’s North End neighborhood. The project brings together community partners in the city, along with US-based researchers at Universities in Detroit and Virginia to explore how community members in the North End attempt to mitigate significant transportation infrastructure deficits. It further seeks to explore how these innovations can be more comprehensively incorporated into more formal, state-led urban planning efforts to be more responsive and accountable to the needs of local residents.
The remainder of the Final Report further highlights what the project was about, while also flagging some of the publications, presentations, and new collaborations that emerged as a result.
Project Description and Contribution
The project engaged ongoing debates in the field of comparative urban studies by expanding the scope and scale of cross-regional comparisons. My approach drew from a comparative global perspective calling for the need to understand in relation to one another rather than in isolation. The project’s comparative approach demonstrates the relevance of, and the need to learn from, the Global South or other places that have experienced economic disruption or decline.
Why might this be the case? Community-led regeneration efforts in marginal cities or by vulnerable populations has necessarily required the re-imagination of belonging, space, and notions of inclusion where infrastructure is deficient, the state absent, or socio-economic precarity high. “Do-it-yourself” urbanism suggests a process of “enskillment”, as city residents learn how to grow their own food, repair failing infrastructure, and innovate social organizations to substitute for the lack of state or civil society supported associations. The project thus contributes to the literature on civic and urban associations by offering insight into the creation of planning and institutional frameworks that can work with and through “do-it-yourself” practices. (As an aside, these findings hint at provocative implications for thinking through how these efforts might inform or contribute to the ongoing work in Sweden today around crisis management and preparedness. This is an area of research interest that the project’s findings have allowed me to begin to pursue.)
Prominent conceptualizations of African urbanism(s) invite an alternate approach to the aforementioned challenges. They demonstrate how unpredictable, predatory, and/or unequal distribution of infrastructure(s) often found in African cities prompts residents to experiment or improvise their daily encounters with both urban environments and each other. Similarly, in ‘Northern’ cities, such as in Detroit and New Orleans, municipal bankruptcy and austerity policies have prompted the emergence of do-it-yourself (DIY) initiatives to provide services and infrastructure. These forms of infrastructure-making foreground the everyday tactics, strategies, and politics necessary for vulnerable urban residents to respond to climate-challenges in particular, and pervasive precarity, more generally.
The project thus attempted to address the following questions across a series of scientific articles and essays: a) how do Detroit residents, living with, and in, persistent and pervasive socio-economic, political, and spatial precarity conceive and implement sustainable climate solutions; b) what kind of politics do these efforts generate; c) what role does the state play; d) how to emplace these practices in Detroit within cross-regional conversation with African cities; e) what is the utility of African-centric urban theory in contemporary sustainability policy and practice?
Research Results: Completed and Ongoing
In pursuit of these questions, the following work has been completed:
1) Final work on an edited volume, DIY Urbanism in African Cities: Politics and Practice, was completed. The book was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023.
2) I co-organized and co-edited (with Jennifer Hart) an Intervention series published in Antipode on the theme, “Urban Theory in the Global South.” The symposium brought together emerging scholars from the Global South, along with one of the most prominent urbanists of the last few decades, AbdouMaliq Simone, to address these issues. Jennifer Hart and I wrote the introductory piece, “Urban Theory Futures are Turbulent, Vernacular, and Incomplete (and that’s okay).” The series is available online and can be accessed here: https://antipodeonline.org/2023/03/13/urban-theory-from-the-global-south/.
3) I wrote an essay comparing the experiences of deindustrialization and divestment in Detroit and the Central African Copperbelt to explore how the consequences of broader politico-economic forces play out in similar ways across widely divergent urban geographies. This essay is currently under review and should be published later in 2025.
4) I co-organized and co-edited a symposium (with Hoai Anh Tran) on the theme, “Planning from Precarity.” The series draws on cases from southern Africa, Brazil, Vietnam, and Detroit to make the broad argument that urban planners look beyond formalized, technocratic planning procedures to consider the ways in which grounded, everyday planning practices undertaken by local communities might serve as an alternative form of planning practice to meet environmental and infrastructural challenges in times of prolonged resource scarcity. This series is currently undergoing a second round of revisions and we aim for publication during late 2025 or 2026.
Future articles will focus more exclusively on the case of Detroit to leverage the archival materials collected during the project period. For instance, one article to be drafted will explore how Black Liberation and radical labor movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the ideologies of empowerment and autonomy they espoused, inform contemporary efforts to obtain climate and infrastructural justice.
Public Presentations of the Project’s Research
1) I presented “Comparative Perspectives on DIY Urbanism in Detroit: What Might be Learned from Africa and Why Does it Matter?”, to the Department of Geography at Sacramento City College. (November 2022)
2) I participated in a workshop organized by the State of California’s Department of Water Resource’s FLOOD-MAR Network. The workshop brought together working professionals and community organizations in California’s Central Valley for a conversation on community generated efforts at flood mitigation. My contribution was entitled, “DIY Approaches to Climate Adaptation and Mitigation in Comparative Perspective: Problems and Prospects.” (November 2022)
3) I presented at paper (with Patience Mususa) at an Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Philadelphia. Our contribution was entitled, “Is State “Weakness” the Same in Lusaka and Detroit?: Developing a Grounded Language of Cross-Regional Urban Comparison.” (November 2022)
4) I presented a paper at the European Conference on African Studies in Köln. The presentation was entitled, “Sustainable (Afro-) Futurisms Past and Present: Urban Imaginaries in Detroit, Lagos, and Kinshasa.” I also co-organized a panel for emerging Africanist scholars on the topic, “Climate Change and Changing Urban Dynamics in Africa’s Cities: Current Trends and Future Prospects.” (June 2023)
5) I presented a paper to the Institute for Housing Studies at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands, entitled, “A Politics of Interruption?: Challenges and Opportunities of DIY Urbanism in Africa.” (November 2024)
6) I participated in a panel discussion organized by the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. The panel’s theme was, “Urbanization beyond Dichotomies? Making Sense of Complexity in Contemporary Urban Practices.” (November 2024)
Collaborations and Future Research Trajectories
The time spent in Detroit offered an opportunity to network with a different constellation of researchers and civil society organizations that I would have otherwise not had the opportunity to meet. One collaborative network set in motion during this project period has resulted in a project funded for three years (2024 - 2026) by Formas on the topic of community-initiated transport solutions in Detroit’s North End neighborhood. The project brings together community partners in the city, along with US-based researchers at Universities in Detroit and Virginia to explore how community members in the North End attempt to mitigate significant transportation infrastructure deficits. It further seeks to explore how these innovations can be more comprehensively incorporated into more formal, state-led urban planning efforts to be more responsive and accountable to the needs of local residents.