Detroit 101: History, Race, and Real Estate

DETROIT 101 Lecture Series
View poster 

Wednesday, March 30 @ 6p

History, Race, and Real Estate

Thomas Sugrue, Author of The Orgins of the Urban Crisis

Dan Kinkead, Director of Projects, Detroit Future City

Jerry Paffendorf, CEO of Loveland Technologies

Thomas J. Sugrue is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at New York University. The author of four books including The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Sugrue contributes to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the London Review of Books, The Nation, and Salon.  He is a frequent commentator on modern American history, politics, civil rights, and urban policy.

Dan Kinkead is an architect and urban designer. He is the Director of Projects for the Detroit Future City Implementation Office – a team of urban strategists and thought leaders driven to transform Detroit through strategic coordination and catalytic pilot projects.

Jerry Paffendorf is Co-Founder and CEO of LOVELAND Technologies, a software company based in Detroit, Michigan whose mission is to publicly map and survey every parcel of property on the planet to understand how humans own and use the world.

The DETROIT 101 Lecture Series
Curated by Marc Maxey

The story of Detroit is well known: A once thriving ‘motor city’—the fourth largest in the country—now deindustrialized, underpopulated, and struggling to rebuild itself after bankruptcy. Academics are quick to speculate on solutions for the city’s rebirth, tourists visit the ruinous neighborhoods with awe, architects and artists see the city as a blank slate for imaginative proposals. Yet the real story of Detroit goes quietly untold.

The Detroit 101 lecture series at Princeton University’s School of Architecture will focus on the underlying causes that perpetuated Detroit’s decline, and use this as a lens to supplant the usual disciplinary rhetoric and explore new territories across multiple fields of study. With increased attention on Detroit and urgent calls for social justice in America, many disciplines are retelling the city’s history while others are projecting its future. We must ask ourselves: is the contemporary narrative of Detroit based on a fact or fiction?

All events will be held in Betts Auditorium located in the School of Architecture. Lunch will be provided, and all are welcome. For more information, please visit the Princeton University School of Architecture’s main page: soa.princeton.edu

Marc Maxey is a recpient of the 2015 Princeton University Dalai Lama Fellowhip for his project:

A Citizen’s Guide To Real Estate Investment

Detroit 101 was made possible with generous support from the Princeton University Community:
The Lewis Center for the Arts
American Studies Department
Department of African American Studies
Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies
Office of the Vice President for Campus Life
Office of the Provost
Politics Department
Princeton University School of Architecture
Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities
Dalai Lama Fellows
Architecture Association of Princeton
Woodrow Wilson School
Undergraduate Student Government
Graduate Student Government