Arising from the Ashes? Environmental Health in Detroit

For most kids growing up in Windsor, Ontario, the intensely industrialized landscape of Detroit is easily seen from the Canadian side of the river but almost never visited, says writer Tim Lougheed. As one of those kids, Tim welcomed an invitation from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources to take an intensive tour of this challenging and controversial urban landscape. Many established industrial centers across the United States endured a rough introduction to the global economy during the second half of the twentieth century, but few matched the roller coaster ride of Detroit, Michigan. The city emerged from World War II as the triumphant forge for what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dubbed the “great arsenal of democracy.”1 Factories that had once churned out passenger cars and their components now supplied the U.S. military with all manner of vehicles, weapons, and other equipment. By the 1950s the city’s consumer economy had been restored, along with Detroit’s status as the epicenter of North American automobile production and a host of thriving smokestack industries. La’Miya, age 5, uses a nebulizer at her home in River Rouge, a suburb of Detroit. Although some asthma indicators have improved in recent years, Detroit’s hospitalization rate for the disease is three times the state average.52 But already an exodus had begun. The urban population peaked at more than 1.8 million in 1950.2 Today’s population sits at just over a third of that number,3 a statistic that speaks to how far this urban landscape has been reshaped during the past few decades. Race riots, economic devastation, political corruption, municipal bankruptcy—Detroit has withstood some staggering socioeconomic blows, mirrored by severe environmental health concerns.4,5,6,7,8 Without visiting Detroit, it is easy to imagine a ruined metropolis, but even the most cursory inspection offers evidence of a remarkable resilience. Environmental and public health problems can still be readily found, but so too can testaments to a desire to move past this legacy and create something new. In the words of the city’s official motto, Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus: We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes.