Gentrification and Health: Measured, Perceived, and Experienced

Join the Department of Social Sciences for this Great Problems, Great Minds seminar series event featuring guest speaker Yongmei Lu, professor and chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State University.

Gentrification refers to the process of urban neighborhood change due to influx of more affluent people and households. It is often accompanied by rent increase, shifts in neighborhood demographic characteristics, and resharing of economic and cultural landscape. Although gentrification may be considered as a stage of urban development, it is controversial in urban politics and planning and debatable for urban life and community well-being. By shifting a neighborhood’s characteristics and landscape, gentrification is a housing, economic, culture, and health issue. Adopting a geospatial analysis approach and looking through a social justice lens, Lu argues for a people-based exposure assessment framework when examining the health impacts of gentrification. This seminar talk will also discuss the empirical findings on health impacts of gentrification on the long-time residents in selected urban neighborhoods in Austin, Texas.

Join the event at go.iit.edu/greatminds.