Manufacturing/ Deindustrialization in Detroit
Manufacturing/ Deindustrialization in Detroit
Order Description
Assignment Instructions: Congratulations! You’ve just joined a non-partisan policy research group1 as an intern. You are thrilled to
be working with an interdisciplinary team of experts who are investigating the thorny challenges
associated with ameliorating the problems facing everyday people in America’s rust belt cities and small
towns. The issues raised by J.D. Vance in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy can be the starting point of your
reflections, but you are not limited to the issues raised through this book. One of your first tasks is to
develop a briefing paper about a specific planning issue that affects these small towns. You will clearly
describe the issue, describing its scope and impacts. Then, you will identify some policy
recommendations to address the challenges you identified. You are strongly encouraged to spatially
contextualize your analysis within a town or a small city anywhere in the USA that is reminiscent of the
socio-economic and demographic characteristics of Middletown, Ohio, for instance, towns in western
NY. You can think about policies that can be enacted within a year and have an impact in three to ten
years. Each student is expected to have a unique and distinctive submission. You must list all the sources
and supporting materials you use. Your writing style should be accessible to the general reader, but not
casual. The memo should demonstrate your understanding of the issues; however, it is also an
opportunity for you to showcase your creativity by proposing and arguing for innovative solutions.
Themes that can be addressed (do not spread yourself too thin, select no more than 2):
• Access/ Jobs; Housing; Transportation; Healthcare
• Addiction
• Architecture/Built Environments
• Class
• Community/ Formation; Meaning of
• Demography; Shrinking cities and towns
• Education; Schools
• Jobs/ Jobs-Skills mismatch; Job training
• Manufacturing; De-industrialization
• Nature/Natural Environments
• Race
• Religion
• Violence
• Other themes you may identify
Electronic submissions only, as PDF files, uploaded on Blackboard
Additional Guidelines:
• Maximum length 1500 words, excluding references and other ancillary materials
• 12-point font, double spaced pages
• 1-inch margins
• Reference your work using Chicago Manual of Style, author-date system
• File Naming Convention <YourLastName>.pdf
1 Most think tanks, despite their claims of being non-partisan have a distinct bias in how they approach urban
planning and policy issues. However, for the purposes of this assignment, lets agree to leave party politics and party
rhetoric out of the discussion