ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the limitations of relying on traditional forms of investment and economic activity, an exploration into how a city might conceptualize responses to urban decline, and a counterfactual example of a solution that might have enabled Detroit to create the core of a viable local subeconomy. The key benefits of cooperatives organized along the principles of worker control and self-management is the ability to decide what to produce, how to produce it, how to allocate work in the production process, and what to do with the social surplus. By focusing on worker interests, a cooperative necessarily concerns itself, implicitly or explicitly, with the conditions of the communities in which workers live. The benefits of worker-run cooperatives can improve job quality, may improve job creation and retention, and cluster in more labor intensive sectors. The jobs in the community would have been saved, and payroll taxes that ended up being lost could have been earmarked for operating expenses.
