Join us for the School of City & Regional Planning 2021 Fall Research Seminar Series! This year our lecture series will take place virtually via BlueJeans Meetings. We have a great line up this semester and hope to see you online!

"Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality, and Urban Land"

Friday, August 27, 2021 | 2 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. ET | BlueJeans

In this seminar, Prof. Patrick Condon will discuss his recent book “Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality, and Urban Land.” 

This book addresses a host of overlapping crises that America is confronted with. The current pandemic, systemic racism, economic inequality and housing affordability are all at a critical stage. His hypothesis is that urban land, its location, ownership, price, and the sacrifices people have to make to gain access to it, is a large part of the problem and can be a large part of the cure for these overlapping crises. 

What distinguishes this volume from other works on these topics is the contention that it is the land under the building, and its price, that is far more important than any other single factor in determining who gets sick, who struggles to keep a roof over their heads, and who lives pay- check to paycheck.

"Communities as Stakeholders: Impact of Corporate Bankruptcies on Local Governments"

Friday, September 17, 2021 | 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. ET | BlueJeans

I will present the results of our study that finds the bankruptcy of a publicly listed manufacturing firm increases bond yields of the counties in which the firm has a significant presence. Affected counties that are subject to budgetary restrictions on debt, revenue, or expenditure, reduce their investment in education and other public services. This negative impact is amplified when the county is more dependent on the industry of the bankrupt firm and its upstream suppliers. However, counties located in pro-business states are less affected. Our results highlight how local communities are a major stakeholder in public firms and can be adversely affected by their financial distress.

"Truce: Lessons from an LA Gang War"

Friday, October 1, 2021 | 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. ET | BlueJeans

This talk will focus on the process of conducting an ethnography of a gang war in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Oakwood, just blocks from the famed Venice Beach boardwalk. The study provides a rare eyewitness account of the urban violence pervasive in the recent history of the United States. With seventeen people killed and more than fifty injured, the hostilities over ten months in 1993 and 1994 marked the peak of gang violence in the history of Los Angeles, a city that has been labeled the "gang capitol of the nation." The conflict began as a quarrel among individuals, some of whom had gang affiliations.  Over time, the feud engulfed families and soon grew into a sustained clash between African American and Latino gangs. Eventually, victims fell who were not members of opposing gangs, but who fit certain racial and gender profiles. The conflict began to take on the attributes of what one local media sensationalized as a "race war."

Karen Umemoto lived nearby during this time period and undertook two years of ethnographic research during and immediately following the spate of killings. Her interviews with gang members, neighborhood residents, business leaders, police officers, gang-intervention workers, and others reveal the complexity of contemporary American urban conflict.  She will discuss her research approach for handling the differences in interpretations among combatants, witnesses and interveners whose actions often had unintended consequences.