Somos de Langley Park: The Fight for Fair Redevelopment along Maryland’s Purple Line.

ecture by Willow Lung-Amam, Associate Professor, Urban Studies and Planning and Director of Community Development, National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, College Park This talk will focus on the concerns raised by two intersecting trends affecting U.S. metropolitan areas today—rising suburban poverty and redevelopment. In a case study of Langley Park, Maryland, a low-income, predominantly Latino immigrant inner-ring suburb that is home to the future Purple Line light rail, it explores the community’s fight against transit-induced gentrification and displacement. It will highlight how place matters to how equitable development strategies are pursued and achieved in increasingly diverse and disadvantaged suburban communities. The case study is part of a larger book project on equitable development politics in the Washington, DC suburbs, tentatively titled, The Right to Suburbia: Redevelopment and Resistance on the Urban Edge.