This dissertation details the construction and infrastructure design of Detroit between 1914-2931. It examines how industrialists promoted modern worker’s housing, shifting the risk of housing construction costs to individual workers by pushing them to seek houses on the open market. The paper also reviews how real estate developers responded, with government support, by building tens of thousands of bungalows and duplexes for sale to workers on credit. Realtors presented homeownership as a source of financial security for workers, yet a realty culture of speculative investment and racial segregation undermined that security from the beginning.