Please join the Displacement Research Action Network (DRAN) at MIT on November 14, 2017 for our upcoming talk, “Grey Space & Displaceability: New Foundations of Contemporary Urban Regimes” with Professor Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University, Bersheeba. Details below:

“Gray Space” & “Displaceability”:

New Foundations of Contemporary Urban Regimes

Prof. Oren Yiftachel, Ben-Gurion University, Bersheeba

The lecture will offer a discussion about the changing nature of urban regimes, using a 'southeastern' perspective. It will focus on the growing prevalence of 'gray spacing' and the impact of 'displaceability' to the making of urban citizenship. The lecture will draw on research from Israel/Palestine used comparatively with other global locations.

Tuesday, November 14

12:15 – 1:30pm

9-255 City Arena

A light lunch will be served.

Are you passionate about housing rights? 

Interest in strategies to address gentrification and displacement in US cities? 

Want to know more about equitable land policies in the global South? 

The Displacement Research and Action Network (DRAN) at MIT is pleased to announce a very special event:

Municipal Strategies To Address Evictions and Displacement

Thursday, February 23 @ 12:30pm in room 9-255

Lydia Edwards, Director of the Office of Housing Stability for the City of Boston &

Augusto Barrera, Former Mayor of Quito and Director of CITE FLASCO. 

A first of its kind office in the nation, the Office of Housing Stability is a municipal level department established by the Mayor of Boston to directly address the displacement and housing crisis impacting residents in the City. Director Lydia Edwards will speak to the strategies and programs the office is putting in place as well as the important municipal level legislation Mayor Walsh is moving forward known as his "Anti-Displacement Package.” 

From 2009-2014 Augusto Barrera served as the Mayor of Quito, Ecuador. In his time in office Dr. Barrera led groundbreaking initiatives to address the crisis of precarious housing affecting thousands of Quito residents and to push towards more equitable land use policies. Dr. Barrera continues to be a leading voice in the region on urban issues, currently as Director of the Centro de Políticas Publicas y Territorio (CITE) at FLACSO Ecuador. Dr. Barrera will join us by Skype to share his experiences.

See you there!

LESSONS FROM THE PAST FOR THE COURSE AHEAD

Hosted by the Displacement Research and Action Network (DRAN), the workshop will bring together academics, international NGO and community group representatives, as well as representatives of international institutions the likes of the World Bank to discuss the state of hydropower projects around the world today. 

Spaces for the workshop are limited. To reserve a place please RSVP at your earliest convenience to Aurora Bassett at abassett@mit.edu. 

Venue: MIT Room 9-450
Date: May 6th, 2016
Time: 9:30am to 4:30pm

WHEN: Fri. 11/9/12
WHERE: MIT Building 9

SPEAKERS: Liliana Pimentel and Movement from Persons Affected by Dams 

The Movement of Persons Affected by Dams (Movimento do Atingidos por Barragens) present their advocacy work on behalf of displaced communities; their struggles for alternative Brazilian energy models; and their recent actions on the Belo Monte and Tapajos River in the Amazon. SPURS fellow Liliana Pimentel draws on her work in Brazil as an architect and urban planner on watershed management and environmental assessment to respond. 

WHEN: Wed. 5/8/13
WHERE: MIT Long Lounge

SPEAKERS: Sirisha Naidu and Balmurli Natrajan 

Sirisha Naidu is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Wright State University and Balmurli Natrajan is Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the University Core Curriculum at William Paterson University of New Jersey.
 

South Korean Steel giant POSCO's proposed mining project in India is the largest foreign direct investment in the country and will displace thousands of indigenous people. Panelists discuss the political economy of the project, the social and environmental costs and benefits of such development models, and frameworks for understanding and challenging such models in the Global South.

WHEN: Fri. 2/28/14 all day
WHERE: MIT Room 10-105 

SPEAKERS: For a the event program which contains a list of speakers please click here. 

The symposium results from a research project on property rights in land through the Displacement Research and Action Network at MIT, and is a collaborative project between MIT and the University of Louvain, Belgium, and co-sponsored by the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School.

We will bring together leading academics and other distinguished scholar-practitioners from over 12 countries across many disciplines including law, planning, urban theory, sociology, development studies, economics, and political science, posing some of the most innovative questions regarding property rights in land today. The Symposium will address the key dilemmas of property theory in the context of global commodification of land that has led to widespread dispossession and contributing to the current world food, housing, energy and environmental crises, and explore alternatives to dominant property rights paradigms such as the commons, social mobilization, and peasant rights.

WHEN: Tue. 4/15/14
WHERE: MIT Building 9 room 450a

SPEAKERS: Professor Larry Vale (DUSP), Karilyn Crockett (DUSP MLK Visting Scholar), Michael Kane (Mass Allience of HUD Tenants), Steve Meacham (Vida Urbana), Karen Chen (Chinese Progressive Association), Jennifer Raitt (Planning Council)  

This panel brought together activists, scholars and planners working on the front lines of the struggle to maintain and strengthen communities affected by gentrification and displacement in the greater Boston area.

Greater Boston, where destruction and displacement associated with urban renewal have shaped the metropolitan region we know today, is now experiencing some of the greatest gentrification pressure in the country. Rising rent burdens, real estate speculation, and substantial losses of subsidized units signify a new gentrifying dynamic with immediate consequences for communities. The time to rethink responses at the community and governmental levels is now. This event seeks to generate dialogue between activists, scholars and planners about the current challenges for Greater Boston with an emphasis on the strategies these actors are using in the struggle against displacement.

WHEN: Wed. 9/10/14
WHERE: MIT Room 9-450

SPEAKERS: Mohan Das Manandhar

The MIT Displacement Research & Action Network (DRAN) hosted a discussion with Mohan Das Manandhar, Executive Director of the Niti Foundation, on the intersection of displacement disputes, social inclusion and energy policy.

Having worked in Nepal, India, UK and Japan, Mohan Das Manandhar is the first Executive Director and founding member of Niti. He brings over 25 years of experience in social inclusion, development management, and private sector development. He had been a policy advisor to Nepal’s National Inclusion Commission at the Prime Minister’s Office in Nepal. He helped establish the Norwegian-funded Social Inclusion Research Fund in 2005 and worked as Senior Policy Advisor in 2008/10. He is also the founding partner of and currently working as the Senior Advisor at Organization Development Centre, a prestigious development and management firm in Nepal.

WHEN: Sat. 9/13/14

Across the globe, urban re/development continues to displace lives and livelihoods, creating contests over land and belonging. This one-day global symposium will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of psychologist Marc Fried’s seminal publication, “Grieving for a Lost Home,” a study on the psychological impacts of redevelopment in Boston’s West End neighborhood. We will bring together scholars, practitioners, advocates and others to explore the enduring impact of this tradition of work to the field, to take stock of what we have learned, and to chart new directions for research, practice and public policy worldwide.

WHEN: Thurs. 10/16/14

SPEAKERS: Miloon Kothari, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, and Huma Gupta

Members of DRAN traveled to Geneva, Switzerland to share preliminary findings on their report in collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

Please see the agenda for more information.

WHEN: Wed. 10/22/14
WHERE: MIT Room 9-450

SPEAKERS: DUSP Graduate Students

Please join MIT’s Displacement Research & Action Network for a mini-symposium on efforts to confront displacement in India. The event will feature a presentation by students from this summer’s Delhi practicum, which aimed to bolster the capabilities of local groups working to prevent displacement.

Following the presentation, a panel of scholars in the field will react and broaden the discussion to their own work on displacement. Professors Asher Ghertner (Rutgers), Vyjayanthi Rao (The New School), and Michael Levien (Johns Hopkins) will kick off the second part of the event.

WHEN: Fri. 11/21/14 from 2-6pm
WHERE: MIT Building E-15

SPEAKERS: For list of speakers click here

This global conference, hosted by the MIT Displacement Research Action Network and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-NYC, drew together leading activists, civil society leaders, and academics from Brazil, India, South Africa and the US, as well as global policy figures from the UN system, to discuss strategies against the increasing incidence of development-induced evictions and displacement.

View the Statement of MIT/RLS Global Convergence on Evictions and Displacement Conference Participants to State and City Leaders Regarding the Long Island Shelter Crisis 

WHEN: Wed. 4/22/15 from 5-7pm
WHERE: MIT Room 9-450 

SPEAKERS: Lee Farris, Kathy Watkins, Jonathan King, Karen Narefsky

This panel will explore issues of housing, gentrification, and displacement in Cambridge. Members of the Cambridge Residents Alliance (CRA) will present their experiences and findings on evolving housing dynamics as Cambridge undergoes redevelopment on and around its university campuses and across its neighborhoods. The panel will also feature housing rights activists working in the Greater Boston area to discuss the effects they see in their neighborhoods and at the metropolitan scale. The event aims to make space for dialogue about both the larger political-economic forces shaping the present and future of housing in Cambridge, as well as MIT’s role and responsibilities around these issues.

This event is co-sponsored by the MIT Displacement Research & Action Network (DRAN) and the Technology & Culture Forum.

WHEN: Tue. 4/28/15
WHERE: MIT Building 9 Room 450

SPEAKERS: Huma Gupta, PhD Candidate

Recent trends in displacement to urban areas as a result of conflict, natural hazards and other drivers show that half of world’s internally displaced people (IDPs) now live in such settings. At the same time, protracted displacement is increasingly the norm. Most IDPs find themselves living in displacement for years or even decades, unable to achieve durable solutions and with ongoing needs related to their predicament.

The full report is available here. 

WHEN: Tue. 11/10/15
WHERE: MIT Building 66 Room 144

SPEAKERS: Karen Jacobsen (Tufts), Nadine Walicki (IDMC), Filiep Decorte (UN-Habitat) 

Please join DRAN for a symposium on planning and humanitarian responses to situations involving urban displacement. Our event will bring together a diverse range of speakers – from operational organizations to scholars involved in humanitarian and development responses – in order to consider key findings and recommendations across their work.

The symposium aims to focus on a more policy-oriented discussion on the various aspects of the urban-specific recommendations being put forth at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul, Turkey next May 2016 and Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador October 2016.