White flight, redlining, and factory relocation created Detroit’s brownfield-laden food desert

Evidence

As white families and the manufacturing sector left, property values in Detroit fell as did the tax-base supporting city services such as public education, garbage and trash pickup, street maintenance, sewer and water utilities. As the quality of education, housing, and public health services fell for remaining residents, segregation continued, and racial tensions became high. In the late 1960s a riot erupted resulting in fires, violence, and other destruction that sent even more white families fleeing the city. Detroit had become a veritable war zone in just two decades as the people who had built it and the auto industry with their labor were pitted against each other for what little the city had left to offer. Today the results of these historic events can be seen in the abandoned and burned out buildings, abandoned lots, and general blight across this once beautiful flourishing city. Now considered one of the world’s “shrink - ing cities” as more and more people leave, Detroit has 40,000 aban doned lots, many of which are “brownfields” contaminated with lead, mercury, and other toxins, and the city is considered a “food desert”: the last major grocery store left in 2007 because it could not make a profit. Liquor stores and fast food restaurants are found on every other corner. Obesity is a problem among teenagers, diabetes is on the rise, and the elderly are finding it more and more difficult to find sufficient food. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1477

Categorization

• XREF: Ties directly to the reader’s earlier notes on housing discrimination producing northern school segregation, Detroit’s incinerator concentrating toxic harm on poor communities of color, and childhood lead exposure harming cognition — this passage completes the causal chain to food insecurity. — connects to: Economic abandonment forced Detroit residents to revive commons practices of barter and mutual care — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1479; Economically marginalized people bear disproportionate air pollution and asthma burdens — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 213; Residential segregation is the primary driver of American food deserts — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 311 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Feeds the editor’s ‘Grafting & Growth’ piece as an urban-commons counterpoint to trees as livable infrastructure — the same structural abandonment behind vacant lots is what community gardens must remediate.

Broader Connections

• Interstate-funded suburbanization triggered mass white flight that undercut urban renewal #expands (0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1201
• Residential segregation is the primary driver of American food deserts #corroborates (0.75) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 311