Nicholas L. Caverly, "Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Dec 26, 2025

Nicholas L. Caverly, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UMass Amherst and author, delves into the complexities of urban demolition in Detroit. He discusses residents' support for demolitions due to safety concerns and the hope for change, contrasting this with the persistence of structural racism. Caverly shares his ethnographic insights on demolition processes and the emotional responses they evoke. He emphasizes that simply tearing down buildings won't achieve justice, advocating for a shift towards infrastructural repair and equitable solutions.

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INSIGHT

Demolition Was The Common Ask

Demolition emerged as the predominant community demand in Detroit rather than preservation battles.
Nicholas L. Caverly found people prioritized removing empty buildings when reuse seemed unrealistic.

ANECDOTE

What A Demolition Looks And Feels Like

Demolitions can be executed in minutes using excavators fitted with thumbs and then hauled away by semi trucks.
Caverly watched crews wet sites to control lead dust and later backfill basements before seeding or gravelling lots.

INSIGHT

Watching Demolition Is Both Joy And Doubt

Residents often watched demolitions with mixed emotions: relief and skepticism about future change.
Caverly observed celebration alongside mourning and doubt that demolition alone would deliver equity.

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In this episode, Nick Caverly talks about his new book, Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures (Stanford UP, 2025). For decades, Detroit residents, politicians, planners, and advocacy organizations have campaigned for the elimination of empty buildings from city neighborhoods. Leveling these structures, many argue, is essential to making space for Detroit's majority-Black populace to flourish in the wake of white flight and deindustrialization. In 2013, the city set out to demolish more than twenty thousand empty buildings by the end of the decade, with administrators suggesting it would offer an innovative model for what other American cities could do to combat the effects of racist disinvestment. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research with city residents, demolition workers, and public officials, as well as analyses of administrative archives, Demolishing Detroit examines the causes, procedures, and consequences of empty-building demolitions in Detroit. Contrary to stated goals of equity, the book reveals how racism and intersecting inequities endured despite efforts to level them. As calls to dismantle racist systems have become increasingly urgent, this book provides cautionary tales of urban transformations meant to combat white supremacy that ultimately reinforced inequality. Bridging political analyses of racial capitalism, infrastructures, and environments in cities, Nick Caverly grapples with the reality that tearing down unjust policies, ideologies, and landscapes is not enough to end racist disparities in opportunities and life chances. Doing so demands rebuilding systems in the service of reparative futures.

Nick Caverly is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Elena Sobrino is Lecturer in the Science, Technology, and Society program at Tufts University.

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