Stitching the Wound or Sealing the Portfolio? The $200 Million Paradox of Detroit's I-75 Cap
On the evening of February 24, 2026, Detroit residents gathered at the MSU Detroit Center to discuss a project framed as “healing”—a plan to build park-like structures over the sunken I-75 freeway. But beneath the “Vibrant Hub” renderings and storytelling booths lies a starker architectural reality. In his latest essay, Sven-Erik George Nyberg argues that the I-75 Cap is a masterclass in “Rentism”—a condition where the elite provide the vision, the public provides the capital, and the private sector extracts the rent. Is this a genuine effort to reconnect neighborhoods, or is it an infrastructure subsidy for the city’s most heavily subsidized developers? ...