Race, Real Estate and Education

“Epstein presents a nuanced, textured history that is enriched by personal accounts, informative maps, and wonderful, vivid illustrations. In clear prose and with thorough documentation, he fleshes out the many ways that good intentions, naivete, and idealism have combined with greed, concentrated power, and racism to shape West Philadelphia.”—Hidden City

“Epstein provides a careful, well-documented delineation of the synchrony between local public education improvement efforts in West Philadelphia and attempts to stabilize (reputationally and financially) the neighborhood’s major institution of higher education. He shows how the initiatives, while effective in some ways, also reproduced privilege and provided less help than they might have to historically disadvantaged K–12 students. Race, Real Estate, and Education is novel in centering education policy as an element of ‘revitalization’ near Penn’s campus.” — Laura Wolf-Powers, Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at the City University of New York–Hunter College, and author of University City: History, Race, and Community in the Era of the Innovation District

“By showing how universities have used K–12 education as a tool to shape their urban environs, Race, Real Estate, and Education adds an important dimension to the literature on university-driven gentrification and, more broadly, on present-day urban transformations. Epstein takes a deep dive into the history and context of the University of Pennsylvania’s participation in post-war urban renewal efforts that set the stage for a decades-long, agonizingly slow, and fitful process that eventually succeeded in transforming West Philadelphia from a kind of ‘urban village’ to an ‘innovation district,’ as the planners originally intended. Epstein brings richness to the story through interviews with displaced residents and former students that illuminate the experience of loss and change and being in the crosshairs of contention about race and community futures.” — Elaine Simon, former Codirector of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and coauthor of Schools for Sale: Disinvestment, Dispossession, and School Reuse in Philadelphia