@article {Slager:2020:0272-3638:124,
title = "Ruin tours: performing and consuming decay in Detroit",
journal = "Urban Geography",
parent_itemid = "infobike://routledg/rurb20",
publishercode ="routledg",
year = "2020",
volume = "41",
number = "1",
publication date ="2020-01-02T00:00:00",
pages = "124-142",
itemtype = "ARTICLE",
issn = "0272-3638",
url = "https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rurb20/2020/00000041/00000001/art00008",
doi = "doi:10.1080/02723638.2019.1637194",
keyword = "place politics, Detroit, urban redevelopment, tourism, post-industrial city",
author = "Slager",
abstract = "In the face of economic, demographic, and infrastructural decline, Detroit, Michigan, has become adestination for those interested in viewing the citys iconic ruins. Paradoxically, such tours represent aform of economic development that takes urban decay as its object.
Using data collected through participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, this study examines how such tours operate in relation to broader practices of urban redevelopment. It argues that tours are not only away of turning the city into asite of consumption, but
also amore complicated response to failures of industrial capitalism in which tour operators suggest different political modes of responding to the citys decline. This is demonstrated by tracing the development of ruin tour programs and examining three representative cases of
ruin tours. Examining how local actors respond to urban decline in this way strengthens urban geographic understandings of the post-industrialcity and its recapitalization..",
}