General Motors’ Buick City complex in Flint, Michigan was once a symbol of the city’s industrial might, comprising a massive cluster of factory buildings staffed by some 28,000 workers. The shuttering and demolition of the factory in the early 2000s left behind one of the largest brownfields in the country. As difficulties with environmental remediation—particularly of soil and groundwater contaminated by recently-discovered PFAS—complicate plans for redevelopment of the site, Buick City has also come to represent the stubborn and toxic legacy of industrialism. Flint’s recent experience with contaminated water has served as a reminder that this toxic legacy is deeply present in the day to day experience of living in this community. When Flint switched its water supply in April 2014 to the much-maligned Flint River, which winds past the Buick City site to the east, it was, for many residents, tantamount to funneling the river’s noxious industrial history directly into their homes. The revelation that one of Buick City’s storm water outflows drains into the river upstream of the Flint Water Treatment Plant’s intake pipe further fueled popular speculation about all of the industrial chemicals residents may have been exposed to over 18 months of drinking and bathing in Flint River water. Buick City now joins Flint’s infamous lead pipes as a reminder that historically-accumulated, dormant toxicities can be re-mobilized under the right conditions. Breathing new life into industrialism’s dead spaces will, however, require more than just a fuller reckoning with its toxic inheritance: it will require fresh thinking about new industries that support a healthy economy, landscape and community.
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