Industrial policy in Detroit: The search for a new regional development model in the home of Fordism

Outline

This article reports on the efforts of State government in Michigan in the 1980s to develop interventionist regenerative economic policies for the ageing industrial district of Detroit. This is a region which is almost synonymous with a whole production and consumption system, Fordism, now deemed by many theorists to be in decline (eg Albrechts and Swyngedouw 1989, Harvey 1989, Murray 1989). Federalism in the United States permits regional economic experiment and debate going beyond the US notion of free market privatism which has inspired many policy ideas in Britain in the 1980s (Barnekov et al, 1989). The article reports on a policy practice experiment in Michigan which was inspired by developing theories of “flexible specialization”. While short lived, the initiative has lessons for possible future regional industrial policy and the work of economic and physical planners in Britain.