Anacostia Building
One Physics Ellipse Drive, First Floor
College Park, MD 20740
United States
Please join us to celebrate the launch of The Right to Suburbia: Combatting Gentrification on the Urban Edge by Dr. Willow S. Lung-Amam.
At this event, Dr. Lung-Amam will be joined in conversation with scholars and activists whose work focuses on issues of gentrification, displacement, and equitable development in the Washington, D.C. region.
Panelists
- Willow Lung-Amam, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Maryland
- Dan Reed, Regional Policy Director, Greater Greater Washington
- Tanya Golash-Boza, Executive Director, University of California Washington Center
- Sabiyha Prince, Cultural anthropologist, filmmaker and visual artist
- Sheila Somashekhar, Director, Purple Line Corridor Coalition
About the Book
In recent decades, American suburbs have undergone a so-called renaissance as multiple forces have transformed them into denser urban landscapes. Yet at the same time, suburban racial diversity, immigration, and poverty rates have surged. The Right to Suburbia investigates how marginalized communities in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.—one of the most intensely gentrifying metropolitan regions in the United States—have battled the uneven costs and benefits of redevelopment.
Willow Lung-Amam narrates the efforts of activists, community groups, and political leaders fighting for communities' "right to suburbia"—that is, their right to stay put and benefit from new neighborhood investments. Revealing the far-reaching impacts of state-led redevelopment, The Right to Suburbia shows how patterns of unequal, racialized development and displacement are being produced and reproduced in suburbs—and how communities are fighting back.
In-person registration Zoom registration
About the Event
Date: Thursday, October 3, 2024
Time: 3 to 5 pm EST
Location:
Anacostia Building
One Physics Ellipse Dr., First Floor
College Park
Maryland, 20740
Reception to follow.
Biographies
Willow Lung-Amam,
Willow Lung-Amam, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. At UMD, she serves as Director of Community Development at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, Director of the Urban Equity Collaborative, and Director of the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network. Dr. Lung-Amam’s research focuses on suburban poverty, racial segregation, immigration, gentrification, redevelopment politics, and neighborhood opportunity. She is the author of The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge and Trespassers? Asian American and the Battle for Suburbia. Her research has appeared in popular media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, National Public Radio, New Republic, Bloomberg’s CityLab, and Al Jazeera. Dr. Lung-Amam holds nonresident fellowships at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center and the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program.
Sabiyha Prince
Cultural anthropologist, filmmaker and visual artist Sabiyha Prince has been researching and writing about African American life and culture for over 2 decades. Dr. Prince is the founding director of AnthroDocs, LLC, a qualitative research firm based in Washington, D.C. A published author of ethnographies and journal articles, Prince has also led anti-apartheid, environmental justice, and racial equity campaigns for the Washington Office on Africa, Greenpeace, and Empower D.C. She co-directed the award winning documentary Barry Farm in 2021 along with Diminished Returns (2024) and has exhibited at 11Eleven Gallery, The Anacostia Arts Center, The Art League, and Zenith Gallery among other locations. Her media appearances include MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera English, Sirius XM, WHUR, WOL, WPFW, and WYPR. Prince’s work can be viewed on IG @anthro_artz and at www.sabiyhaprince.com
Sheila Somashekhar
Sheila Somashekhar is the Director of the Purple Line Corridor Coalition (PLCC). With its administrative home at the University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth, PLCC works to prevent displacement and support equitable development along the 16-mile Purple Line transit corridor. Sheila leads strategic relationship building for coalition-led activity across PLCC's goal areas: affordable housing, small business preservation and growth, workforce development, and vibrant communities.
Before joining PLCC in 2020, Sheila served as Director Before joining PLCC in 2020, Sheila served as Director of Community Impact and Engagement for United Way of the National Capital Area. Prior to that she spent six years working in community-based nonprofit and public sector roles in New York City. She holds a Master of Urban Planning and Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor’s degree in biology from University of Maryland, College Park.
Dan Reed
Dan Reed, AICP (they/them) is Greater Greater Washington’s regional policy director, focused on housing and land use policy in Maryland and Northern Virginia. For a decade prior, Dan was a transportation planner working with communities all over North America to make their streets safer, enjoyable, and equitable. Their writing has appeared in publications including Washingtonian, CityLab, and Shelterforce, as well as Just Up The Pike, a neighborhood blog founded in 2006. Dan received a Master of City Planning degree from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Maryland. Dan lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with Drizzy, a rescued pitbull mix and occasionally fosters dogs.
Tanya Golash-Boza
Dr. Tanya Golash-Boza is founder of the Racism, Capitalism, and the Law (RCL) Lab, a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced, and the Executive Director of the University of California Washington Center. She has spent her scholarly career working to understand why racial and economic disparities exist, how racism intersects with capitalism, and how our legal system upholds these inequities. She is the author of over 50 academic articles and six books. Her latest book, which was awarded the Robert E. Park Book Award of the Community and Urban Studies Section of ASA, is Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC’s Racial Wealth Gap. Professor Golash-Boza is also the creator of the blog, Get a Life, PhD, which focuses on faculty success and wellbeing and has 4.6 million pageviews. For this and other mentoring work, she received the UC Merced Senate Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentorship in 2019.