Land Justice as a Historical Diagnostic: Thinking with Detroit

• Published in: Annals of the American Association of Geographers Vol. 108; no. 2; pp. 499 - 512
• Main Author: Safransky, Sara
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Routledge 04.03.2018; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Auctions; bienes comunes urbanos; Cities; Colour; Debates; Decolonization; desposesión racializada; Diagnostic systems; economía moral de la tierra; Emergency management; Emergency preparedness; Gentrification; Justice; la cuestión de la tierra; Land; Low income groups; Moral economy; moral economy of land; National reconciliation; Property rights; Race; racialized dispossession; Rents; Segregation; Social justice; Taxation; the land question; Truth; truth and reconciliation; Truth and reconciliation commissions; urban commons; verdad y reconciliación; 土地的道德经济; 土地问题; 城市公有地; 真相与和解; 种族化迫迁; Detroit Michigan; United States > US
• ISSN: 2469-4452; 2469-4460
• DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1385380

Debates around urban land-who owns it, who can access it, who decides, and on what basis-are intensifying in the United States. Fifty years after the end of legally sanctioned segregation, rising rents in cities across the country are displacing poor people, particularly people of color. In this article, I consider debates around land in Detroit. Building on work in critical race studies, indigenous studies, and decolonial theory, as well insights from community activists, I introduce and develop what I call a "historical diagnostic." This justice-oriented analytical approach illuminates the racialized dispossession that haunts land struggles and foregrounds the historical antecedents to and aspirations of contemporary land justice movements. Drawing on research conducted in Detroit between 2010 and 2012, I analyze instances when the moral economy of land becomes visible, including a truth and reconciliation process, the period when the state of Michigan placed the city under emergency management, and a tax foreclosure auction. An examination of these events reveals alternative ways of knowing and being in relation to land that we might build upon to confront displacement in cities today.