This talk will focus on the concerns raised by two intersecting trends affecting U.S. metropolitan areas today—rising suburban poverty and redevelopment. In a case study of Langley Park, Maryland, a low-income, predominantly Latinx immigrant inner-ring suburb that is home to the future Purple Line light rail, it explores the community's fight against transit-induced gentrification and displacement. It will highlight how place matters to how equitable development strategies are pursued and achieved in increasingly diverse and disadvantaged suburban communities. The case study is part of a larger book project on equitable development politics in the Washington, DC suburbs, tentatively titled, The Right to Suburbia: Redevelopment and Resistance on the Urban Edge.
Willow Lung-Amam, PhD is Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning and Director of Community Development at National Center for Smart Growth at University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focuses on issues of urban and suburban inequality, particularly related to issues of redevelopment, gentrification, racial segregation, immigration, and neighborhood opportunity. She is the author of Trespassers? Asian American and the Battle for Suburbia, and a forthcoming book on redevelopment politics and equitable development organizing in the Washington, DC suburbs.