In 2023, the City of Louisville, Kentucky, passed an Anti-Displacement Ordinance, a major victory for the Louisville Tenants Union which was championed by progressive city council member Jecorey Arthur. This talk shares the process of implementing the next step of the policy: developing an Anti-Displacement Tool, which had to be approved by the City Council prior to use (it was passed in late 2024).
The tool’s aim is to mitigate the displacement that can occur from publicly subsidized housing projects. The tool will also serve as an online, open access resource for the public. The dashboard we developed for the tool innovates on two fronts: First, it combines data inputs about proposed residential projects together with multiple sources of data to create a measure of displacement risk in and around the area in which the proposed project is to be built. Through a statistical model the tool estimates the impact of the project on local rent levels and home values. Second, the tool uses these quantitative outputs (the measure of displacement risk) with a matrix that enables the City to say no to some proposed projects, or yes but with certain changes as a condition of funding. Read more.
If you would like to attend, please register for a free ticket.
Meet our speaker and chair
Professor Loretta Lees (@LorettaCLees) (MAE, FAcSS) is an urban geographer and urbanist who is internationally known for her research on gentrification, urban regeneration, global urbanism, urban policy, urban public space, and urban social theory. She is currently Director of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University and a visiting professor at Singapore Management University’s Urban Institute and in Geography & the Environment at LSE.
Since 2024 she has co-organised the Boston Urban Salon; she previously co-organised 2009-2022 The Urban Salon: A London forum for architecture, cities and international urbanism and 2016-22 the Leicester Urban Observatory. She was Chair of the London Housing Panel 2020-22 working with the Mayor of London.
She has published 18 books and nearly 80 journal articles. Her lastest book, co-authored with Elanor Warwick - Defensible Space: mobilisation in English Housing Policy and Practice was awarded the International Planning History Society (IPHS) Book Prize #1 2024. In 2023 she was ranked in the top 2% of most highly cited scholars internationally (Scopus, Elsevier, 2023). In 2022 she was awarded the Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award by the Urban Affairs Association.
Professor Hyun Bang Shin (@urbancommune) is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of Department at the Department of Geography and Environment, LSE.
More about this event
The Department of Geography and Environment (@LSEGeography) is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change.
This event is in collaboration with the Department of Sociology and The Urban Salon.