Having lived in the suburbs of Detroit from birth until the age of 18, I was surprised to learn how little I actually knew about the city. While most of my experiences with the city were in the context of either (a) attending a sporting event or (b) doing community service, I felt that I could see through these obscured presentations\u00a0of the city\u00a0and that I knew what Detroit was truly like. Having now lived in Detroit for the past 6 weeks I am beginning to realize that I was very wrong. I wasn\u2019t able to see through the contexts with which the city was presented to me despite my best efforts. To be frank, I still don\u2019t think I am able to break the context created by my experience working downtown and living in Midtown. While I do realize that almost all of the revitalization effort is focused to these two areas, I have a hard time gaining a full understanding of city as a whole. In all honesty, I am not sure how to see past the ways in which the city is presented to me (whether that be active or passive\u00a0presentation). I read the news, have watched various documentaries, and done other research into the makeup of Detroit, however I feel as though I am experientially missing key elements that speak to\u00a0the realities faced by\u00a0many of the communities within the city limits. For my placement I have been required to travel around the city a couple of times and just from those quick trips\u00a0I can tell that I am not hearing both sides, so to speak, by working downtown and living in Midtown. I genuinely would like to mitigate the effect of these geographical barriers, however I am not sure how to do so. Merely traveling to neighborhoods wouldn\u2019t achieve this goal and there exists a selection bias when attending the public comment section of City Council meetings or other public forums. Considering my placement, I feel it is vital for me to gain as genuine of an understanding as I can regarding the true nature of the city\u2019s various communities and sub-populations. I truly hope that the next 4 weeks of this program will enable me to accomplish this goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having lived in the suburbs of Detroit from birth until the age of 18, I was surprised to learn how little I actually knew about the city. While most of my experiences with the city were in the context of either (a) attending a sporting event or (b) doing community service, I felt that I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1669,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dcbrp-2015"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1669"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16123,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962\/revisions\/16123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}