Ariel Bierbaum: Schools for Sale — Disinvestment, Dispossession, and the Promise of Reparative Planning in School Building Reuse | City & Regional Planning Lecture
Ariel Bierbaum (PhD in City & Regional Planning) shares her decade-long research into Philadelphia’s public school closures and the afterlife of its public school buildings. She shows how school closures and reuses change the spatial and social arrangements of neighborhoods amid broader urban transformations and point to how planners and communities can envision new possibilities for public buildings.
About the Speaker
Ariel Bierbaum is associate professor of urban studies and planning at the University of Maryland, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, and affiliate faculty with UMD’s National Center for Smart Growth and Maryland Transportation Institute. Her cross-disciplinary research connects urban studies, planning, and public education to examine how neighborhood, city, and regional policies interact to perpetuate inequality. She advocates for political action and collective resilience to advance educational justice and urban development.
Bierbaum is co-author of Schools for Sale: Disinvestment, Dispossession, and School Building Reuse in Philadelphia (University of Chicago Press) and widely published in leading academic journals. She brings more than 25 years of experience in the nonprofit and public sectors, working across public policy, community development, and community arts. Bierbaum holds a PhD in City & Regional Planning from UC Berkeley, an MCP from MIT, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.
This lecture is part of the Department of City & Regional Planning’s fall lecture series.
If you require accommodations to fully participate in this event, please contact dcrpadmin@berkeley.edu.