Derek Hyra has a new book coming out August 5, 2024. In Slow and Sudden Violence, Hyra weaves together a persuasive unrest narrative, linking police aggression to an ongoing cycle of racial and spatial urban redevelopment repression. By delving into the real estate history of the St. Louis region and Baltimore, Hyra shows how housing and community development policies advance neighborhood inequality by segregating, gentrifying, and displacing Black communities.
Despite moments of racial political representation, repeated decisions to “upgrade” the urban fabric and uproot low-income Black populations result in pockets of poverty inhabited by people experiencing chronic displacement trauma and unrelenting police surveillance. These interconnected sets of divestments and accumulated frustrations erupt powerfully in response to tragic, unjust police killings. To confront the core components of U.S. unrest, Hyra urges that we must end racialized policing, stop Black community destruction and displacement, and reduce neighborhood inequality.
Derek Hyra is a professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy and founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University. His research focuses on neighborhood change, with an emphasis on housing, urban politics, and race.
See more at https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520401471/slow-and-sudden-violence
