Princeton Initiative Forum // The Last House on the Block: Black Homeowners, White Homesteaders, and Failed Gentrification in Detroit

Forum on the Urban Environment // Cities Made & Unmade

Gentrification is not inevitable, reveals Sharon Cornelissen, in this surprising, close look at the Detroit neighborhood of Brightmoor and the harsh reality of depopulation and urban decline.

Sharon Cornelissen is a sociologist and national housing expert. As director of housing at the Consumer Federation of America, she leads research and advocacy to help end our housing crisis. She received her doctorate in sociology from Princeton University and previously worked at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Originally from the Netherlands, she now lives in Washington DC.

Jay Cephas is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. Cephas is an historian of architecture, landscapes, and cities conducting research that explores the relationships between labor, technology, and identity in the built environment. Jay analyzes both ordinary and critical spatial practices to recover the latent and as of yet invisible knowledges that are transmitted through the bodies and buildings of urban environments. In his forthcoming book, Jay deploys these frameworks to examine the agonism structuring Fordism and urbanization in early twentieth-century Detroit.