Urban Development: From Reconstruction to Gentrification

Lauren Hudson at Berg'n

Wed, Mar 27 at 7:30 p.m. | 90 minutes

We'll gather at Berg'n beerhall with urban geographer Lauren Hudson for the story of how U.S cities became what they are today. We'll discuss rural outmigration, changes in our food, homeownership, and gentrification over drinks and dinner.

Cities are inherently contradictory. For example, only about 3% of the land area in the U.S. can be qualified as ‘urban’, yet those areas host about 80% of our total population. Urban space is both a minority in its use and a majority in terms of how many people live within it. Another contradiction is how dependent urban space is on the rural; the cities that we see today are legacies of rural transformation.

This Olio will cover the historical flashpoints of urban ‘development’ in the U.S. from the rural outmigration from the South after the end of Reconstruction, to the urban displacement wrought by gentrification. Between these two periods, we see changes in our food production, homeownership, and the state’s role in economic development--all of which created outcomes that we are still struggling to deal with today. Let's talk about it.

Teacher: Lauren Hudson

Lauren Hudson is currently a doctoral candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center where she writes about anti-capitalist organizing among women in NYC.

Venue: Berg'n

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Think Olio is here to put the liberation back into the liberal arts.

Classically, the liberal arts, were the education considered essential for a free person to take an active part in civic life. To counter a humanities that has been institutionalized and dehumanized we infuse critical thinking, openness, playfulness, and compassion into our learning experience.

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