Alesia Montgomery provides an insightful account of life in Detroit, Michigan, from 2010 to 2013 to describe the public perception of the citywide planning process for the greater downtown area. Greening the Black Urban Regime can be seen as the story of how the very wealthy in Detroit dictated their eco-friendly vision for the city to the urban regime.
In addition to her perceptive exploration of life in Detroit, Montgomery applies the lessons of what she found there to the experiences of other Historically Black Urban Regimes (HBURs), which are defined as cities with populations over 100,000, an African American population of over 40 percent, and the election of its first Black mayor before the 1990s. The author continued to visit and track developments in Detroit after completing her ethnographic study, with the aim to compare Detroit’s plans with thirty-two US cities, including fourteen other HBURs, in terms of justice...
University of California Press