In his recently published book “Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City” (University of Pennsylvania Press), author George Galster probes why his hometown once enjoyed prominence as a symbol of American industrial might yet now is the international poster child for urban decline, decay, and dysfunction.

Galster, Hilberry professor of urban affairs in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University, a fifth-generation Detroiter and an internationally known urbanist, sets out to understand why Detroit developed its deserved reputation of being the best and worst of what cities can be – all within the last half century.

“Driving Detroit” invites the reader to travel along the streets and into the soul of the metropolitan area to reveal what drives the Motor City. Galster shows how Detroit’s cultural, commercial and built landscape has been radically changed and uncovers the three forces driving these changes: (1) an unplanned, speculation-driving housing development system; (2) a dependency on an automotive economic base; and (3) enduring tensions along lines of race and class.

Galster argues that these three forces have chronically frustrated the population’s quest for basic physical, social and psychological resources (“respect”).  Their predictable responses have been distrust, scapegoating, identity politics, segregation, unionization and jurisdictional fragmentation.  Ironically, these adaptations proved collectively irrational, producing a dysfunctional, uncompetitive, unsustainable metropolis.

Throughout “Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City,” Detroiters tell their stories through songs, poems and oral histories, offering an intimate and insightful view of their city – and the spirit of resilience.

For more information, visit http://clasweb.clas.wayne.edu/2012/08/29/Professor-Galsters-new-book-has-been-published/News/1955

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 370 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 29,000 students.