Flint grew into a major center of automobile manufacturing, with enormous General Motors complexes employing tens of thousands of workers. Plant closures and population loss left large areas of the city filled with abandoned homes and industrial sites. The city’s problems deepened during the Flint water crisis, when a cost-saving change in water supply exposed residents to lead-contaminated water. Flint became a powerful example of the connections among deindustrialization, poverty, infrastructure and government responsibility.

I visited Flint in 2016 during the water crisis. Schools had shut off drinking fountains and bottled water was being distributed to families, while the remains of the automobile industry surrounded the city. Seeing those two landscapes together—the vanished jobs and the failure of basic public infrastructure—made Flint feel less like a story of decline than a story of decisions.