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Sep 1, 2020
Motor City Green
A Century of Landscapes and Environmentalism in Detroit
Summary
Joseph S. Cialdella's Motor City Green: A Century of Landscapes and Environmentalism in Detroit (University of Pittsburg Press, 2020) is a history of green spaces in metropolitan Detroit from the late nineteenth- to early twenty-first century. The book focuses primarily on the history of gardens and parks in the city of Detroit and its suburbs in southeast Michigan. Cialdella argues Detroit residents used green space to address problems created by the city’s industrial rise and decline, and racial segregation and economic inequality. As the city’s social landscape became increasingly uncontrollable, Detroiters turned to parks, gardens, yards, and other outdoor spaces to relieve the negative social and environmental consequences of industrial capitalism. Motor City Green looks to the past to demonstrate how today’s urban gardens in Detroit evolved from, but are also distinct from, other urban gardens and green spaces in the city’s past.
Joseph S. Cialdella is a public historian and educator with experience in museums, higher education, and the humanities. He writes about cities, nature, and the built environment. Currently he is a Program Manager at the University of Michigan, where he leads the Rackham Graduate School's Program in Public Scholarship.
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Tricia Keffer
Tricia Keffer has a BA in Psychology and an MLA in Landscape Architecture. The arc of her career path took her from beach portraits in Destin, FL to the parks in Paris, France. Her photography has been published in Delta Sky Magazine, BAE Defense Contractor Calendar, and two ADDY (Advertising) awards for Dale E. Peterson brochures. Her vacation portrait concept was featured on Good Morning America. She is working on her next adventure with her landscape design business Plants People Love Designs in Florida. In her spare time during the pandemic, she picked up an additional degree BA in Art and a certificate from Master Artist David Chang’s Portrait and Figurative Studio at FIU.
