Hennepin County Board of Commissioners approved a contract with the Center of Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) to establish an Anti-Displacement Workgroup related to the design and construction of the METRO Blue Line Extension light rail. This action to invest in anti-displacement is intended to support corridor residents, businesses, and equitable development in the corridor.

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Workgroup will comprise diverse perspectives

With community input, the project team designed an initial work plan, and local groups submitted proposals for the contract. A committee with corridor community and business…

In the past 20 years, after decades of disinvestment and decline, central cities have seen a reversal of fortune and are experiencing rapid growth, particularly in the urban core. Many large cities are now struggling with housing shortages and affordability problems. There is vigorous debate amongst policy makers, scholars, and activists about the role that new market-rate apartments play in alleviating housing affordability issues. Prior research suggests that new market-rate construction may result in more affordable housing in the long-run, but much less is known about how this type of new…

CURA researchers and research projects were well represented at the recent Urban Affairs Association (UAA) conference in Los Angeles, April 24-27, 2019. In addition to the sessions below, Dr. Brittany Lewis was asked to participate on an activist scholarship panel by Professor Lisa Bates from Portland State University.

Sessions presented by CURA researchers:

• Gentrification and concentrated poverty by Professor Edward G Goetz, Anthony Damiano, Dr. Brittany Lewis, and Molly Calhoun
• Typologies of Fear in the…

Please join the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) for the first Thomas Scott Seminar.

The Urban Displacement Project: Urban Data Science for Policy Change 
presented by Karen Chapple, Ph.D.

About the seminar

The overheating of the housing market, as well as the planning of new infrastructure systems, has led to new interest in understanding neighborhood change, specifically in the form of gentrification and displacement. Researchers have devised online “neighborhood early warning systems,” interactive maps that describe change processes and even predict future transformation. In 2015, we launched the…

In January of 2019, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) released its study of gentrification in Minneapolis and St. Paul between 2000 and 2015. “The Diversity of Gentrification: Multiple Forms of Gentrification in Minneapolis and St. Paul” used a mixed methods approach that combined a statistical analysis of neighborhood-level data with an in-depth qualitative analysis of interviews with public officials, community leaders, and neighborhood residents. The study found significant evidence of gentrification in the two cities.

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African American communities, enclosed and excluded by discrimination and disinvestment, are now being dismantled by gentrification in many of our cities. In the face of impending erasure, communities of color are organizing to demand not only mitigating anti-displacement policies, but de-gentrification and the right to stay in place.

Addressing this demand requires more than just a gesture towards equity concerns, but analyzing and correcting for the unjust distributional impacts of investments. How can we grapple with these issues of housing and neighborhood revitalization in our cities in ways that…