Welcome everyone to the tenth week!

I will be posting more explanation here over the coming weeks but the reading for this week is as follows:

The reading packet this week has two parts, one by Brian Doucet, professor from the University of Waterloo in Canada about how we can think specifically about addressing the future of Detroit, and another by Kenya Covington, a professor from UCLA, that uses social science methodology to understand the problem of spatial mismatch of jobs (and some potential solutions)

Here is the annotated version: Hon1000-reading-Doucet+Covington-annotated.pdf
Here is the non-annotated version: Hon1000-reading-Doucet+Covington-not annotated.pdf

If you have time, you may want skim the following report about revitalizing cities. It's not mandatory but it will be useful and will help class make more sense:

https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/regenerating-legacy-cities-full_0.pdf

Finally, here are a few optional videos that you may find useful for understanding the topic:

Optional supplemental video: John Oliver on Sports Stadiums (It's John Oliver so it's filled with profanity, but because it's John Oliver it's also pretty funny.)
Optional supplemental video: Equality and Social Justice in City Building

As always, let me know at kdk@wayne.edu or 248-744-3535 or put it into the "Questions and Answer Board. If you have any questions or find any mistakes or broken links. I very much appreciate that help.

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iDetroit Masthead

Anthony Benavides
Nonprofit Leader

My family came up on my father’s side from Texas, San Antonio. They came up as migrant workers, him, his brothers and his sisters came up seasonally to pick fruit or vegetables. They would go back once the season was over... back to Texas... eventually they saw that Detroit was a good place to live and there were other opportunities... the dream was to get into Chrysler, Ford or General Motors and eventually he went to trade school and did that — he became a welding, molding tradesperson. They came up by train from Texas to Michigan Central train station, that’s being renovated over there in Corktown... that was his Ellis Island.

My parents’ values were always to help people out — my mother, she worked at the school — before she got hired she was a volunteer there for many years. They were always big promoters of the City of Detroit. She was big on winter sports. She loved tobogganing; so I always had this outdoor feel. We didn’t stay home in the winter. We always embraced the winter. So this is Clark Park ice rink... she would bring us here and we would skate for hours. It was free and it was something to do in the city that was positive.

Full image: https://www.marcuslyon.com/artworks/idetroit/anthony-benavides