UCI, UCLA and USC

February 11, 2019. This talk, Downtown Gentrification and the Mexican City of Santa Ana, was a return to my alma mater, UCIrvine and the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy. I did my best to stay focused and limit my flashbacks to my days attending class and colloquiums on campus. I now had the podium and it was positively surreal. The room was full with students from various departments, former professors of mine, more recent professors, a local city council member, among others. I thank everyone for that heartwarming one afternoon homecoming. Thank you Dr. Walter Nichols for coordinating the day. 

   

January 14, 2019.  We began the year at USC at the Urban Growth Seminars, Sol Price School of Public Policy. Click here for the talk highlights, courtesy of Sol Price of Public Policy. As usual, the best part was hearing from graduate students and their research and applied-activist work. I really enjoyed having lunch with Dr. David Sloane and learning about his research and journey with communities and USC! Thank you Dr. Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, Dr. Lisa Schweitzer, and Dr. Marlon Boarnet for coordinating.

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Nov. 15, 2018. I ended 2018 book talks locally thanks to Dr. Genevieve Carpio's invitation to present in her undergrad class "Race, Space, and Place" at UCLA's Department of Chicana/o Studies. The fun part is learning from student experiences and views about gentrification in places that they grew up or currently live in So. Cal--from Boyle Heights, South Central, Anaheim, and Santa Ana. Here is a picture (courtesy of Dr. Carpio) of two students sharing their interest in pursuing a Ph.D. in geography and urban planning!    

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Latino City Goes to Boston

Sept. 26th, 27th, and 28th 2018. Latino City heads out to Tufts University, Boston University, and UMassBoston! The first stop was at the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning's Colloquium in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Tufts University. About 50 students and faculty members helped make this Wednesday afternoon talk a success! Below left is a picture of the opening of my talk, courtesy of tufts_uep Instagram. Thank you Dr. Julian Agyeman for organizing the day. The next day took me to Boston University's Initiative on Cities. We had a unique set up: two presentations and two books with the same title: Latino City. Thanks to Dr. Jonathan Calvillo's creativity, Llana Barber, author of Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and I presented our work and explored commonalities and differences between Santa Ana, CA and Lawrence. Click here for a nice write up of this talk. 

The next evening, Friday, I was very honored to give the UMass Boston Urban Planning and Community Development Fall Lecture at the UMass Club-Beacon Street. 

This included a warm reception by Dr. Kenneth Reardon and his students, current and former (as well as students from Mount Holyoke College). City planners, housing advocates, student leaders, and faculty members attended and I learned a lot more about what they have tried to do about gentrification and housing displacement than they could have learned from my research. We continued conversations at a post lecture dinner at a delicious Sicilian restaurant (bottom right picture courtesy of Violeta Alvarez). Dr. Reardon was kind enough to give me a neighborhood style tour the following day that included Dorchester, Quincy, and Downtown Boston. We ended the tour perfectly with good conversations about our families over a yummy lunch at the No Name Restaurant.