Laura Wolf Powers

Dr. Laura Wolf Powers, Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Policy & Planning at Hunter College, will discuss her new book, University City: History, Race, & Community in the Era of the Innovation District, published by University of Pennsylvania Press. The book chronicles five decades of planning in and around the communities of West Philadelphia’s University City to illuminate how the dynamics of innovation district development in the present day both depart from and connect to the politics of mid-twentieth-century urban renewal. 

She teaches economic development, community planning, and real estate finance, and is particularly interested in how to make the outcomes of land value capture strategies more just and reparative. She is currently a co-PI on a Ewing Marion Kauffman-funded project designed to redirect anchor institution supply chains to Black-owned businesses in East and Central Brooklyn.

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