Conference: Gentrification and Displacement: What Can We Do About It?

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

Gentrification and Displacement: What Can We Do About It? is the first international conference on gentrification studies in over 20 years. The conference program advances understandings of how to predict gentrification and how to measure and mitigate displacement. It provides a rare opportunity for scholars to engage with activists and practitioners who face gentrification on the ground in their day-to-day work. Invited speakers, panelists, and session organizers represent a diversity of career stages, disciplines, methodological and theoretical orientations, and demographic groups. The conference charts a path forward for the next decade of gentrification scholarship and provides recommendations to decision-makers facing housing crises around the globe. Gentrification and Displacement: What Can We Do About It? is a dynamic two-and-a-half-day event, that includes three keynote speakers, two plenary panel discussions, 18 topical sessions, mentorship opportunities, poster displays, a book display, a documentary film screening, and a morning of site visits/field trips to community-based organizations focused on gentrification. The program interrogates questions about how to identify, measure, and predict gentrification, and about how best to assess and mitigate the consequences of gentrification-induced displacement. Intellectual outputs include a white paper; a special journal issue; an edited volume published with a university press; and a community practices report on avoiding and mitigating gentrification. The conference shapes and advances the research of the individual scholars who attend, and takes the field in an inclusive, equitable direction that includes perspectives from across disciplines, career stages, methodological and theoretical traditions, and from around the globe. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.