Reckoning With Root Shock Webinar

Between 1949 and 1973, 2,532 federal urban renewal projects were carried out in 993 US cities. Seventy-five percent of the people displaced were people of color, leading to James Baldwin’s famous remark, “Urban renewal is Negro removal.” In honor of the 20th anniversary of Dr. Mindy Fullilove’s book Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, this webinar will revisit the importance of understanding the social and cultural impacts of neighborhood disruption and the displacement of communities of color that has occurred since the federal urban renewal projects.

In this webinar, Dr. Mindy Fullilove will engage in conversation with community development practitioners to discuss how the learnings from Root Shock can help us move towards more sustainable and democratic communities. The path forward must include a reckoning with our past as well as taking up the tasks of reweaving the social fabric and reknitting our physical spaces. Join Molly Rose Kaufman at the University of Orange, Terri Baltimore at the Hill District and Evelyn Burnett at ThirdSpace Action Lab in an engaging conversation around how understanding the history of community displacement and its impacts on neighborhoods’ physical, psychological, cultural and economic well-being can help us navigate the pressures that cities are facing across the country and the world.

This webinar is hosted by Next City and sponsored by The Kresge Foundation.