Metropolitan Mining: Institutional and Scale Effects on the Salt Mines of Detroit

Abstract

Mining, as with most industrial activities, is constrained by logistics, which involves technological matters of transportation, material conversion and energy costs. Convention and law also influence the activity. These are institutional matters involving mineral rights and access to resources. Both logistical and institutional configurations exist in a space/time context and in motropolitan areas, where geographic space is a complex mosaic of private and public property, the limits to an industrial activity are nicely illustrated in the example of the salt mines of Detroit.