Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies Online Launch
Join us for the online launch of Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies by Leslie Kern.
Date: Wednesday, October 12th, 2022
Time: 7pm EST
Join here.
Join Leslie Kern as she discusses her latest book, Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies, with geographer, urban planner and housing policy analyst, Samuel Stein, and Thorben Wiedtiz, an urban geographer who works at the intersection of labor, community and big tech.
Gentrification is no longer a phenomenon to be debated by geographers or downplayed by urban planners—it’s an experience lived and felt by working-class people everywhere. Leslie Kern travels to Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London, and Paris to look beyond the familiar and false stories we tell ourselves about class, money, and taste. What she brings back is an accessible, radical guide on the often-invisible forces that shape urban neighborhoods: settler-colonialism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, and more.
Gentrification is not inevitable if city lovers work together to turn the tide. Kern examines resistance strategies from around the world and calls for everyday actions that empower everyone, from displaced peoples to long-time settlers. We can mobilize, demand reparations, and rewrite the story from the ground up.
Hosted by Between the Lines and Verso Books.
Leslie Kern, PhD, is the author of three books about cities, including Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. She is an associate professor of geography and environment and women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. Kern’s research has earned a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award, a National Housing Studies Achievement Award, and several national multi-year grants. She is also an award-winning teacher. Kern’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vox, Bloomberg CityLab, LitHub, and Refinery29. She is also an academic career coach, where she helps academics find meaning and joy in their work.
Samuel Stein is a geographer, urban planner and housing policy analyst living and working in New York City. His writing on planning politics has been published by Jacobin, The Journal of Urban Affairs, The Guardian, and many other magazines, newspapers and journals
Thorben Wieditz is an urban geographer by training and the co-founder of MetStrat, a public interest campaign firm that provides comprehensive research, analysis, government relations and communications support. Thorben also serves as Director of Fairbnb Canada, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for fair rules for short-term rental platforms like Airbnb as well as for Fairbnb Co-op, a short-term rental platform cooperative that supports community land trusts. Prior to co-founding MetStrat, he was a researcher and campaigner with several labor unions.