Seminars

I study the long-run effects of displacement and neighborhood division by looking at individuals affected by the construction of the Interstate Highway System. To do so, I track individuals over time by linking the 1940 census to administrative mortality records from 1995 to 2005. I find that displaced individuals die three months younger, are more likely to leave their neighborhoods, and reside in areas with lower socioeconomic characteristics at the time of death. I also find highly localized spillovers: individuals living within 100 meters of a highway are more likely to leave their neighborhoods and relocate to lower socioeconomic areas, yet they do not experience increased mortality. The neighborhoods where individuals relocate after displacement explain 30% of the displacement-mortality effect. Accounting for the mortality effects of displacement would have increased the cost of building the highway system by 10%. Together, these results enhance our understanding of the costs displacement imposes on individuals and their communities and provide new insights for the design of future infrastructure projects.

Self-help Housing: Incremental Approaches to Shelter since 1965 traces an intellectual history of “incrementalism,” an approach to the provision of shelter that relies on residents — often low-income populations facing housing insecurity — to help build, adapt, and customize their homes long after any formal design process has concluded. Between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s, this approach was adopted in distinct contexts by different disciplines: architecture, international development, and housing policy. Examples of incrementalism in all three fields spring from a single intellectual origin which remains insufficiently examined among contemporary scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. This talk will summarize fieldwork undertaken in incremental neighborhoods in Lima, Mumbai and New York City, tying together an international constellation of ideas, assumptions, and implementation strategies with much to offer our present global housing emergency.