Direction of Money Transfers in Metropolitan Detroit
- Title:
- Direction of Money Transfers in Metropolitan Detroit
- Alternate Title:
- Direction of Money Transfers in Metropolitan Detroit
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Bunge, William
- Date:
- 1971
- Posted Date:
- 2017-04-14
- ID Number:
- 2156.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2156_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1960 - Present
- Subject:
- Poverty/Prostitution/Crime
Politics & Government
Unusual Graphics/Text - Measurement:
- 15 x 15 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This map is from "Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution," a detailed study of an impoverished Detroit neighborhood by William Bunge, a radical geographer, peace activist, and self-styled revolutionary. The arrows show a wide range of forces draining wealth from the "slums" of the city to the "middle class" and "affluent suburbs" of surrounding Wayne and Macomb counties: "police payoffs," "slum rents," taxes for schools and parks not provided, "insurance fires," "racketeering and vice," "job discrimination," "commuter carpetbagging," etc. On the page facing this map, Bunge acknowledges the kindness and generosity of the rich, including his own family, but makes clear his view that they "perpetuate a system that sucks the poor dry." "When I confront the physical aspects of The Movement, my family's money falls away and I find my ultimate legitimacy." Bunge, Fitzgerald 135.
William Bunge is a colorful and fascinating figure in the history of post-World War II cartography: “spatial scientist,” “cult hero,” “disciplinary bad boy” and “radical geographic crusader.” Barney 2015, 192; see generally ibid. 192-214. As a young academic at Wayne State University in the early 1960s, Bunge moved to Fitzgerald, a one-square mile ghetto neighborhood of Detroit. The social turmoil of the time, particularly the 1967 Detroit riots, led him to undertake an extensive "democratic as opposed to an elitist expedition" of the neighborhood. Barnes 2011, 713. His work, eventually published as Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution (1971), is described - even by one of its enthusiastic supporters - as "a tortured book, controversial, angry, partial, withering, and hyperbolic. . . . at the polar end of traditional academic scholarship." Ibid. 712.
Bunge was denied tenure by Wayne State as a result of obscenity charges. In 1968 the House Un-American Activities Committee blacklisted him, along with other "radicals," from speaking on American campuses. (His name was listed between H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael.) At that point, he moved to Canada and became a "nomad cartographer," seeking visiting lectureships, working with underground publishers - and driving a cab in Toronto. Barney 195; Barnes 714.
In 1982, he produced the first version of his "Nuclear War Atlas," ID #2364. This work is in the form of a large poster, folded down to a pamphlet-sized 5 x 8 inches, and it was distributed at peace rallies and demonstrations. Barnes 200. Bunge greatly expanded the number of maps (from 28 to 57) and the supporting text for the eventual publication of the Atlas in book form in 1988. See ID ##2188.01-.09. Bunge wrote in the Preface to the book (at ix), "Hopefully, at last my fellow revolutionaries will show some keen interest in conducting revolution without annihilation." Three of the maps in the collection from the Nuclear War Atlas are based on Bunge's earlier Detroit research: ID #2188.06, Children's Automobile "Accidents" in Detroit; ID #2188.08, Detroit's Infant Mortality Compared with Foreign Countries, and ID #2188.09, Region of Rat-Bitten Babies.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Source:
- Bunge, William. 1971. Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, page 134
- Repository:
- Private Collection of PJ Mode
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.