ABSTRACT
While metropolitan environmentalism held the promise of uniting all Detroiters in the struggle to improve Southeast Michigan, environmental inequalities continued to grow during the 1970s. Suburbanites utilized environmental politics and new laws like the National Environmental Policy Act to assert the protection of a high quality of life in the suburbs, based on access to green spaces, freedom from environmental hazards, and local control of their landscapes. While suburbanites effectively wielded environmental politics to protect their property values and quality of life, residents of Detroit, where African Americans were becoming the majority, found very little success in defending their homes and neighborhoods from environmental health hazards. While suburban and urban residents could each use the language of environmentalism, they met on an unequal playing field, where suburbanites would be far more successful at protecting their local environments.
