Mieko Tarrius:
My inspiration
To what extent does tech-led gentrification intertwine with race and white privilege?
Born and raised in Belleville in the 1990s (pre-gentrification), a popular ethnically diverse Parisian neighborhood, I was faced early on with the impact of class, race and gender on human geography. More recently, my personal experience residing in gentrifying Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York, has also greatly influenced my research as it prompted me to question my positionality — as a white French woman — and my role in the area’s tragic socio-economic restructuration. Facing our cities’ mutations and their harmful repercussions on social cohesion and communities’ wellbeing, I hope my research will help individuals, leaders, and associations better understand how the gentrifying process reproduces racial oppression.