Urban Emergency (Mis)Management and the Crisis of Neoliberalism

Terressa A. Benz received her Ph.D in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine (2011). She is the author, most recently, of Black Femininity and Stand Your Ground: Controlling Images and the Elusive Defense of Self-Defense (Critical Sociology, forthcoming). Graham Cassano received his Ph.D in Sociology from Brandeis University (1991). He is the author of numerous books and articles on social theory, racial and ethnic history, and the sociology of culture, including A New Kind of Public: Community, Solidarity, and Political Economy in New Deal Cinema, 1935-1948 (Brill, 2014).

List of Figures and Tables

Notes on Contributors



Introduction: The Flint Sacrifice Zone

  Terressa A. Benz and Graham Cassano



PART 1

Structure in Context



1 Neoliberalism, Urban Policy and Environmental Degradation

  David Fasenfest



2 Colorblind Michigan

 The Legal Impossibility of Environmental Justice in Flint and Southwest Detroit

  Terressa A. Benz



3 Stockton Isn’t Flint, or Is It? Race and Space in Comparative Crisis Driven Urbanization

  Raoul S. Liévanos and Julie Sze



4 Too Close to Home

 The Incidence and Health Effects of Neighborhood Neglect in Flint, Michigan

  Katrinell M. Davis



5 Housing Waste

 The Lakeside Public Housing Complex, Pontiac, Michigan

  Graham Cassano, Jon Carroll and Daniel J. Clark



PART 2

Reaction and Resistance



6 Technocracy and Populism

 Remaking Urban Governance in Post-Democratic Flint

  Jacob Lederman



7 Waging Love from Detroit to Flint

  Michael Doan, Shea Howell and Ami Harbin



8 Bottling Public Thirst

 Scarcity, Abundance, and the Exploitation of “Need” in Mid-Michigan

  A.E. Garrison



9 Lead Does (Not) Discriminate

 Environmental Racism in Expert and Popular Discourse

  Benjamin J. Pauli



 Afterword: The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism

 Written Testimony Submitted to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission Hearings on the Flint Water Crisis

  Peter J. Hammer



Index