Karilyn Crockett

As the material expression of racialized wealth generation and wealth extraction in the postwar era, U.S. interstate highway plans were not all successful. This talk reexamines a failed highway plan in Boston and the urgent necessity of recovering grassroots counter histories of alternative futures.  

Dr. Karilyn Crockett’s research focuses on large-scale land use changes in twentieth century American cities and examines the social and geographic implications of structural poverty and racial formations. Karilyn’s book "People before Highways: Boston Activists, Urban Planners, and a New Movement for City Making" (UMASS Press 2018) investigates a 1960s era grassroots movement to halt urban extension of the U.S. interstate highway system and the geographic and political changes in Boston that resulted. In 2019 this book was named one of the “ten best books of the decade” by the Boston Public Library Association of Librarians. Karilyn holds a PhD from the American Studies program at Yale University, a Master of Science in Geography from the London School of Economics, and a Master of Arts and Religion from Yale Divinity School. She served for four years with the Mayor's Office of Economic Development as the Director of Economic Policy & Research and the Director of Small Business Development for the City of Boston and was later appointed the City of Boston's first Chief of Equity, a Cabinet-level position Mayor Walsh established to embed equity and racial justice into all City planning and operations. She is currently leading the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in a partnership with the Boston Federal Reserve Bank to revisit the 2015 “Color of Wealth'' report on closing the racial wealth gap.

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