Detroit, the great city of America's return. On May 5, 2013, this slogan was chosen to be the new slogan representing Detroit in a nationwide advertising campaign that began last July. Why is Detroit making a comeback and where did it come from? The era of mass production emerged in Detroit in the early 20th century, when the Henry Ford factory in Dearborn opened in 1913. Much of the subsequent development was linked to the automobile industry. The social geographies of the city reflected the highly racialized organization of labor within the industry. The city's racial segregation was worsened by the city's suburbanization which took many of the city's wealthier white residents to new settlements beyond the city limits. This left predominantly black residents to occupy increasingly blighted inner-city suburbs. The combination of a narrow economic base, heavily rooted in automobile manufacturing, and a deep racial divide between downtown and the suburbs is at the root of the current crisis facing the city. However, the abandonment of such large areas of the city center has opened opportunities for artists and entrepreneurial urban agriculture projects to use these spaces productively (Barrett and Hall, 2012). When looking at the history of Detroit, it would be inevitable to ignore Detroit as an icon of the modern world. Yet Detroit has now become a symbol of the curse of the modern world's metropolises. Downtown Detroit is shrinking, while the suburbs continue to grow. Shrinking cities, also known as urban shrinkage, has become a huge problem all over the world. In the United States of America, the consequences of shrinking cities are becoming increasingly visible. Not only shri...... middle of paper ......enges of Globalization, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Mitchell, C. J. A. (2004). Making sense of counter-urbanization, Journal of Rural Studies. Elsevier. Pallagst, K., Aber, J., Audirac, I., Cunningham-Sabot, E., Fol, S., Martinez-Fernandez,… Wiechmann, T. (2009). The future of declining cities: issues, models and strategies for urban transformation in a global context. Center for Global Metropolitan Studies. Pallagst, K. Martinez-Fernandez, C. and Wiechmann T. (2013). Cities in decline: international perspectives and policy implications. New York: Routledge. Power A., ​​Plöger, J., and Winkler A. (2010). Phoenix Cities: The Fall and Rise of Great Industrial Cities. Bristol: The Policy Press. Schlappa, H. & Neill, W. J. V. (2013). From crisis to choice: reimagining the future in declining cities. Saint-Denis: URBACT.