Win Curran notes in her new book Gender and Gentrification (Routledge 2018): “Gender is just one of the lenses through which we can view how gentrification reinforces urban inequalities, but given how important it is to the shaping of urban space, it has been profoundly under-studied, and the work that has been done is under-cited in the literature.” This panel aims to change this course and bring light to the work of scholars who are interested in gender in the re-shaping of urban space, and vice versa. This includes questions about social reproduction, the right to the city, planning processes, the gendered division of labor, housing markets, schools, and policing policies, and community and displacement in the context of mixed-income public housing redevelopment, among others. We aim to go beyond the stories and case studies often used to describe gentrification and its effects, to develop and advance theoretical frames that expand our understanding of the mass redevelopment of urban space through a gender lens. This involves recognizing gender as a foundational, organizing principle underlying and shaping urban processes, rather than as a secondary or incidental set of relations to those of capitalist urban development.
Moderator: Janet Smith, University of Illinois at Chicago
Gender and Gentrification Win Curran, DePaul University
Gender as a Foundational, Organizing Principle Underlying and Shaping Urban Processes Leslie Kern, Mount Allison University
Gender, Planning Process and Working With Communities Janet Rongerude, Iowa State University
Social Reproduction and Urban Dynamics Janet Smith, University of Illinois at Chicago
