Thursday, January 25
Armitage Hall, Faculty Lounge
12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.
Presented by Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores
Associate Professor of Sociology and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University
“Location, location, location…” so goes the trope for how real estate properties derive their value. But how does race figure in the attribution of value for a property and a neighborhood? Based on ethnographic and mixed-method research in two demographically-transitioning neighborhoods in 21st Century Brooklyn, Dinzey-Flores considers how neighborhood spaces and property interiors are aesthetically, discursively, and materially produced and crafted by real estate actors in ways that render previously socially de-valued neighborhoods “valuable” and “worthy” of investment. Of particular focus, is the way in which racial conceptualizations—of “blackness,” “Latino-ness”, or “whiteness”—are codified and “built in” in the social desirability and economic valuation process of properties and neighborhoods.
About the speaker:
Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Latino &Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on understanding how the urban built environment mediates community life and race, class, and social inequality. Her book, Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City (University Of Pennsylvania Press: 2013), was the co-winner of the 2014 Robert E. Park for best book in urban and community sociology. She is working on a few projects focusing on housing and neighborhood design in the United States and the Caribbean. Among them, is an examination of race and class distinctions in the production of urban residential spaces in real estate markets. Dr. Dinzey-Flores serves as a mayoral appointed Board Member for the New York City Housing Authority and a member of the Afro-Latin@ Forum. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Sociology and a Masters in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan, a M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University.