Detroit lays stunned as the product of abusive parenting. The loyal workhorse of the American Dream wallows in the dedicated obsolescence of an economic monoculture and fiends for the opiate of capitalism. Yet despite the neglect, a new vitality is brewing amongst the shadows of post-fordist residue. Within the labeled obsolescence breeds a new existence which emerges out of the deviance from the skeletal remains of modern urbanism. A city branded as devastated is actually the epitome of owning the margin.

This thesis amalgamates disenfranchised city islands by accelerating Detroit's underlying and inherent urbanism of transgressive circulation and communication pathways through such techniques as urban scarring, blanketing, disruption, and smoothing. The development does not erase the contemporary attempts at reconciling the norm of the city image but in turn fortifies the inventions spurred by its shortcomings. By reframing a city's legibility, [D]Urbanism engenders a new urban ideology attentive to the local collective.