Featured Speaker & Facilitator

An Overview of Gentrification Studies and Perspectives

Mahesh Somashekhar, PhD

Assistant Professor of Sociology
at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Mahesh Somashekhar is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focuses on how economic development and social inequality affect one another in urban and suburban neighborhoods. He is currently working on several research projects that explain why gentrifying neighborhoods can experience diverging social and economic outcomes. In addition to these projects, he studies the economic foundations of immigrant neighborhoods and gay villages.

Student Speakers

Urban Bicycle Infrastructure and Gentrification: A Quantitative Assessment Across Major American Cities

Gabe Morrison

Senior Thesis in Geography, University of Chicago

In recent years, cities across the United States have expanded their bicycle infrastructure. In some instances, community members and local politicians have criticized these developments and noted the link between bike lanes and gentrification. In response, recent studies have assessed the quantitative associations between bicycle infrastructure and gentrification in a handful of major American cities. Their results were mixed but generally supported residents’ claims of linkages between gentrification and bike infrastructure. However, research is often limited to a handful of large central cities. And, even as they have developed large bicycle networks, other metropolitan areas have been relatively understudied.

Community Protection and Gentrification in Berlin: a Quantitative Analysis

Clyde Schwab

Senior Thesis in Geography, University of Chicago

Berlin has emerged as one of the fastest gentrifying cities worldwide in the past 20 years. While the city government has struggled to prevent displacement amidst rising rents, Berliners have sought to use the legislative tool Milieuschutz (translated as community protection) to prevent changes in the city’s urban fabric and slow property changes. Despite the prevalence of this legislation in Berlin, no analysis has been done to evaluate the policy’s effects on gentrification. In this paper, I establish a new quantitative method for analyzing gentrification according to the invasion-succession model, and apply it to explore the potential effects that Milieschutz has had on gentrification in Berlin on a micro level.