Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City

Urban parks have become profitable in recent years, as city governments, corporations, real estate developers, philanthropists, and other elites have rediscovered parks’ cultural and economic potential. Embodied by linear postindustrial spaces like New York’s High Line, Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail/606, and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, new green interventions serve as civic shields for elite-oriented investments. Loughran reveals how elites deploy the popularity and seemingly benign nature of parks to achieve their cultural, political, and economic goals, and discusses the implications for parks equity.

• Kevin Loughran is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Temple University.
•  Visit the Columbia University Press website to pre-order a copy of Dr. Loughran’s book Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City.
• Event Recording Link

Local Public Finance Dynamics and Hurricane Shocks

Since 1980, over 2,000 local governments in US Atlantic and Gulf states have been hit by a hurricane. We study local government revenue, expenditure, and borrowing dynamics in the aftermath of hurricanes. These shocks reduce tax revenues and expenditures and increase the cost of debt in the decade following exposure. Municipalities with a racial minority composition 1 standard deviation above the sample mean suffer expenditure losses more than 2 times larger and debt default risk 8 times larger than municipalities with average racial composition in the decade following a hurricane strike. These results suggest that climate change can exacerbate environmental justice challenges.

• Dr. Rhiannon Jerch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Temple University.
• Zoom Event Registration Link

Strike from the Record? Administrative Burdens in Take-up of Criminal Record Clearance 

Too few people eligible for clearing their criminal record take-up the program, creating a “second chance gap.” While the policy was designed to help mitigate the collateral consequences of an arrest or criminal conviction – such as boosting employment rates, wages, and reducing re-offending – only a small share of justice-involved individuals proceeds through the administrative process, leaving many disqualified from public benefits. Why do so few people with criminal record petition for relief? This project explores different administrative burdens and how they affect record-bearers and record-clearance.

• Dr. ​Nyron Crawford is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Temple University.
• Zoom Event Registration Link

Privilege and Punishment in an Era of Mass Criminalization

The number of Americans arrested, brought to court, and incarcerated has skyrocketed in recent decades. Criminal defendants come from all races and economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly different ways. How and why is the criminal court process unequal? This talk draws on findings from my book Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court (Princeton University Press, November 2020). Drawing on fieldwork and interviews in the Boston court system, I show that lawyers and judges often silence, coerce, and punish disadvantaged defendants when they try to learn their legal rights and advocate for themselves. These dynamics reveal how unwritten institutional and organizational norms devalue the exercise of legal rights among the disadvantaged, and that ensuring effective legal representation is no guarantee of justice. Drawing on other research and activism on the courts as an instrument of racialized social control, I conclude with reflections on how we might reimagine the criminal courts in relation to the movement to abolish police and prisons.

• Dr. Matthew Clair is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. 
• Zoom Event Registration Link