DIY Detroit, by Kimberley Kinder, University of Minnesota Press, 248 pages, $24.95
In 1950, roughly 1.9 million people lived in Detroit. Fewer than 700,000 are left there today. In the bankrupt, crime-ridden city, the government has largely lost the ability to provide the services it once promised. And so residents have taken to plowing streets, picking up trash, and maintaining public facilities on their own. "When public schools performed poorly, parents looked to homeschooling alternatives," Kimberley Kinder writes in DIY Detroit
"When public libraries closed, residents set up mobile book shares. When ambulances were unreliable, neighbors organized dial-a-ride phone trees to get people to hospitals." And when streetlights failed, a computer programmer named Ellison tells Kinder, people started to "leave their porch lights on all night."
DIY Detroit is filled…
