Urban Apartheid & the 2016 Summer Olympics"
Friday, March 23rd, 2018 • Noon to 1:15pm, 3911 Posvar Hall
Tyeshia is an urban planner whose work examines housing, urban governance, and social policy. Before receiving her Ph.D. in Design, Construction, & Planning from the University of Florida, she was employed by DeKalb County Government as an economic development and housing research analyst in the metro-Atlanta region. Her most recent work examines the forcible evictions preceding the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Redden argues that the evictions, coupled with a strategic disinvestment in transit nodes, were a component of a larger municipal plan of urban apartheid. The study links hyper-commodification of the urban landscape to urban governance failures and asserts a healthy community of scholar-activists exists globally, leveraging their academic skillsets to address social inequalities. Redden is currently a Visiting Professor at Gettysburg College and conducting a grant-sponsored neighborhood resilience study in Gainesville, Florida.