About this ebook
Beginning with an 1816 encounter between the Ojibwa population and the neighborhood's first surveyor, William Bunge examines the racialized imposition of local landscapes over the course of European American settlement. Historical events are firmly situated in space--a task Bunge accomplishes through liberal use of maps and frequent references to recognizable twentieth-century landmarks.
More than a work of historical geography, Fitzgerald is a political intervention. By 1967 the neighborhood was mostly African American; Black Power was ascendant; and Detroit would experience a major riot. Immersed in the daily life of the area, Bunge encouraged residents to tell their stories and to think about local politics in spatial terms. His desire to undertake a different sort of geography led him to create a work that was nothing like a typical work of social science. The jumble of text, maps, and images makes it a particularly urgent book--a major theoretical contribution to urban geography that is also a startling evocation of street-level Detroit during a turbulent era.
A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication
Discover more
About the author
William Bunge lived in the Fitzgerald neighborhood and taught geography at Wayne State University while writing this book. In 1970 the House Un-American Activities Committee included Bunge's name on a list of sixty-five "radical" speakers. Blacklisted and unable to find academic work, he fled to Canada, where he taught at several universities and (like the founder of critical geography, Henri Lefebvre) drove a cab. He is the author of three other books.
