Itinerary

• 5:00 - 5:10 pm: Attendee arrival
• 5:10 - 5:50 pm: Presentation
• 5:50 - 6:00pm: Q&A

Presentation Abstract

Local and national governments are channeling significant funding into mitigating climate change in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Though intended to make urbanization more sustainable, these investments – on urban greening, infill development, transit, and active transportation – may cause land values and housing costs to rise, thereby displacing low-income residents. Yet, researchers continue to disagree about the extent and nature of this displacement. In this talk, I explore these questions through the lens of a decade of research on the displacement impacts of California climate change mitigation portfolio. Our mixed methods approach reveals that climate change mitigation has unintended – but small – consequences in terms of household mobility. I conclude by proposing tools to empower local communities to keep residents in place.

Speaker Bio

Karen Chapple, Ph.D., is the Director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, where she also serves as Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning with a cross-appointment in the Faculty of Information. She is Professor Emerita of City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as department chair and held the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Urban Studies. Chapple studies inequalities in the planning, development, and governance of regions in the U.S. and Latin America, with a focus on economic development and housing. Her recent books include Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions: Towards More Equitable Development (Routledge, 2015), which won the John Friedmann Book Award from the American Collegiate Schools of Planning; Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities (with Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, MIT Press, 2019); and Fragile Governance and Local Economic Development: Theory and Evidence from Peripheral Regions in Latin America (with Sergio Montero, Routledge, 2018).

Contact: karen.chapple@utoronto.ca