March 25, 2015
The Center for Urban and Regional Studies sponsored a talk today by Allan Parnell, Ph.D., vice president of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities, called “Local Political Geography and Racial Inequality: Spatial Evidence from Advocacy and Litigation” in the New East Reading Room at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Parnell discussed local government policies on annexation, zoning and provision of infrastructure that can create and perpetuate racial inequality. Parnell presented GIS and other spatial evidence documenting social and racial inequities and discussed how it has been used in advocacy and civil rights cases, including Kennedy v. Zanesville and Inclusive Communities Project v. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.
Allan Parnell, Ph.D., a demographer, is Vice-President of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities. His AB (Geography), MA (Sociology) and Ph.D. (Sociology) are all from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His current work focuses on demographic analysis for policy and economic development and demographic analysis to support social equity.