Efforts of urban development and renewal set forth by city, state, and federal governments are central to the histories of postwar industrial cities and metropolises in the United States. As suburbanization, primarily abetted by federal policies, began to facilitate population loss, economic decline, corporate decentralization, and disinvestment within industrial city centers, cities like Pittsburgh, Dayton, and Detroit were forced to synthesize development and renewal strategies to alleviate mounting urban decay. Detroit—once the beacon of industry in the nation—has come to epitomize the worst of these issues, as the city has experienced over six decades of decline. The rapid exodus of predominantly white, middle-class residents to metropolitan suburbs and the correlated relocation of industries, residential and regional segregation, and consistent government mismanagement devastated Detroit’s urban core. After 1952, when the city’s population peaked at 1.85 million, considerable attempts at urban development and renewal were made to revitalize infrastructure, combat impending decay and blight, and lure private capital back to the city. These efforts, however, often came at the expense of Detroit’s most vulnerable communities—increasingly Black and poor—so much so that the Detroit Urban League came to refer to urban renewal and slum clearance as “negro removal” (Sugrue, 2014). The press and broader media industries in Detroit were instrumental in shaping narratives about proposed development and renewal strategies. Today, as many stakeholders speculate on Detroit's comeback and private capital pours into select parts of the city, its most vulnerable residents continue to struggle in areas ranging from housing to education to employment. These residents, still chiefly Black and poor, remain on the margins of Detroit's spotty progress. Discourses around development and renewal continue to be shaped by political and corporate agents, community members, and particularly the press. Currently, the sum of coverage pertaining to urban development and renewal is generally mixed and nuanced; nevertheless, mainstream media have not strayed from framing private development in the city as a markedly positive enterprise, even as some of this investment has facilitated further harm to the most socioeconomically vulnerable. This research focuses on the perspectives held by individuals a part of, or at least closely connected to, those vulnerable communities by centering Black, Detroit residents. Put simply, the central inquires of this research hope to uncover what sources of media Black Detroiters frequent to acquire news about urban development and renewal and what are their perceptions of that coverage. To address these questions, a quantitative survey was administered to Black undergraduate students listed as residents of Detroit at a large, Midwestern university. This university is the largest (by student enrollment) in the state where Detroit is located. Findings show that students relied largely on traditional media for news about urban development and renewal in Detroit and demonstrated high perceptions of media bias. Students’ trust in media differed significantly by income.
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