Detroit Never Left
Black Space, White Borders, Latino Crossings
Book •
Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán's Detroit Never Left examines how abstractions about urban decline and strategic investment practices produced new opportunities for outside investors while disadvantaging long-term residents.
Drawing on interviews with Latino youth, ethnography, media analysis, and policy reports, she shows how narratives about vacancy and crime function as 'empty abstractions' that obscure political and economic actions shaping space.
The book highlights continuities of racialized spatial practices—like contemporary forms of redlining and demolition-driven redevelopment—before and after Detroit's bankruptcy.
Trujillo-Pagán foregrounds residents' lived experiences and the ways they contest portrayals of the city that occur 'to' them rather than 'for' them.
Ultimately, the work links local urban change to broader tensions between democratic inclusion and racialized capitalism.
Drawing on interviews with Latino youth, ethnography, media analysis, and policy reports, she shows how narratives about vacancy and crime function as 'empty abstractions' that obscure political and economic actions shaping space.
The book highlights continuities of racialized spatial practices—like contemporary forms of redlining and demolition-driven redevelopment—before and after Detroit's bankruptcy.
Trujillo-Pagán foregrounds residents' lived experiences and the ways they contest portrayals of the city that occur 'to' them rather than 'for' them.
Ultimately, the work links local urban change to broader tensions between democratic inclusion and racialized capitalism.
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Mentioned by 
Miranda Melcher
Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán, "Detroit Never Left: Black Space, White Borders, Latino Crossings" (NYU Press, 2025)
Mentioned by 
Miranda Melcher
Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán, "Detroit Never Left: Black Space, White Borders, Latino Crossings" (NYU Press, 2025)
