City Forum: Rich Heyman

Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and pressure from activist groups calling for reparations resulted in the Austin City Council passing a resolution in 2021 commissioning a study of the “economic value” of past racist policies and practices in Austin. This presentation describes a collaboration between scholars at the University of Texas at Austin and the Equity Office of the City of Austin to quantify the cost of Black dispossession from two of these 20th-century practices: the racial segregation of public services that drove residential segregation; and the redlining of Black neighborhoods, which suppressed the value of Black-owned land.

Rich has taught at UT since 2006, in the Urban Studies, Geography, American Studies, and Community and Regional Planning programs. His research has appeared in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Geoforum, Antipode, Cartographia, American Quarterly, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, among other places. He received his PhD in geography from the University of Washington in 2004.