ULI Philadelphia: A Conversation with Richard Rothstein

Webinar Summary: ULI District Councils Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington held a conversation with Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

Rothstein refutes the common notion that housing segregation in the United States is the result of millions of individual private choices and instead proves with exacting precision and fascinating insight how it is the byproduct of a century of explicit racist government policies at the local, state, and federal levels. The impact has been devastating, denying generations of African Americans the constitutional right to live where they wanted, the right to raise and school their children where they thought best, and the opportunity that whites were afforded to build generational wealth through homeownership.

Following his remarks, Eleanor Sharpe, Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission moderates questions from the audience and engage in conversation with Rothstein on the lasting impact of those policies in our cities today.