My research interests center primarily on questions of social justice and the city. I am especially keen on examining the process of urban redevelopment in metropolitan areas like Chicago, tracing the sociospatial effects of gentrification and displacement. This interest has propelled me, also, into exploring the place of ethnicity and class in the urban context.

Below are a some of my ongoing research interests:

From the streets of Chicago:
Neighborhood scale perspectives on gentrification in the neoliberal city

The transformation of select neighborhoods in central cities from predominantly working class and minority communities into upscale terrains for investment and consumption has led to waves of displaced incumbent populations. At the same time, neoliberal understandings of gentrification have been embraced by politicians, the media, planners, policy makers and some researchers, arguing that not only is gentrification beneficial to the health of the community, but that incumbent populations welcome neighborhood change as a positive contribution to their lives. This research offers a critical interrogation of the neighborhood scale perspectives shared by the people most affected by the unequal relations of power unleashed in gentrification and examines their claims to and visions for their neighborhood. What emerges is a vibrant field of rich perspectives that challenge the hegemonic tropes and reassert the rights of people to community and social justice.

Ethnoscaping in the global city:
Neoliberal urban redevelopment and the spatial politics of culture in a Chicago barrio

In the current neoliberal climate that has stoked an intense intercity competition for internationally footloose capital, many cities with global aspirations are encouraging urban redevelopment projects that brand and promote heterogeneous cultural enclaves as destinations for leisure and tourism consumption. Oftentimes, such enclaves emerge as "ethnoscapes" that ostensibly express the cultural identity of its residents, usually immigrant populations. In Chicago, municipal policies aimed at enhancing a visitor economy have been instrumental in the creation of the Paseo Boricua, a Puerto Rican "ethnoscape." This study examines the intersection of Chicago's urban redevelopment policies and the spatial politics of culture that unfold in the streets of the Humboldt Park neighborhood. Here, Puerto Rican nationalists have sought to subvert the intended consequences of the city's neoliberal agenda by appropriating the ethnoscaping process in acts of contestation, resistance, and transgression.  

Spatializing Hellenicity:
(Re)making Greektown in the Global Metropolis

As Chicago continues to transform from its Fordist-era role as a national manufacturing center into its post-Fordist role as an international advanced services hub, it has become especially important to the political and economic elites of the city to secure its place within the global urban hierarchy. To that end, it is deemed imperative to promote a "competitive identity" that positively distinguishes the city from other pretenders for the "global city" mantle. The post-Fordist transformation of the CBD, the emergence of new "high amenity zones," and the development of ethnic branding of select city neighborhoods have had significant ramifications on some Chicago communities. This is the case with Greektown. In this research project, I focus-in on the questions of "why" and "how" Greek identity became important to the (re)making of Greektown. But the "why" and "how" are more like a Trojan horse. Lurking in its wooden belly are a couple of perennial issues: the question of Greek-American identity and the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of Modern Greek Studies: "which" Greek identity? These are the central concerns of this project as they are examined from a sociospatial perspective.

Out of school in Chicago:
School reform and neoliberal restructuring in the global city

In an age of global economic turbulence and deepening socioeconomic polarization, entrenched neoliberal interests that dominate governance in North American cities have tapped new strategies to preserve and expand their agenda for urban restructuring. Chicago, one of modernity's paradigmatic cities and a pioneer in the proliferation of neoliberal plans, leads the charge with a reconfiguration of education policies that disempower local communities and facilitate the selective advancement of gentrification and the interests of potent political and business insiders. More than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, Chicago has enshrined a disgraceful separate and unequal school system that deepens class, ethnic, and racial disparities. Through a series of school closures that disinvest struggling communities of scarce educational resources and precious social capital, Chicago's managers are selectively cleansing poor and working-class minority neighborhoods that are being primed for the "reinvestment" appetites of speculators. This research traces the contours of these truculent sociospatial strategies and examines both their connection to the unfolding urban restructuring in the aspiring global city and their ramification on the structures of (dis)opportunity that confront the increasingly criminalized youth.