All Climate Events

Friday, March 1, 2019. 9:00 AM. Displaced From Home/At Home Workshop. Rutgers Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. More details here.

It takes half a lifetime to build a house, make friends, find the perfect job and the perfect school for kids, and suddenly you learn that you need to pack everything ‘essential’ and move overnight. You are not a proud taxpaying resident of your city anymore; you are labeled as ‘Displaced,’ and you may have to spend much of the other half with the label. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 60% of all refugees and 80% of all internally displaced people live in urban areas. Displacement is an issue that affects both the cities from which refugees and internally displaced people are being displaced, as well as host cities, requiring creative solutions from urban planners and public policy professionals in nearly every major urban area across the globe.  While the issue of displacement is a major factor in areas that are experiencing conflict or disaster in the far corners of the world, displacement also takes place in many communities nearby from forces such as gentrification.

Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, in its continued effort to train planning and public policy professionals and scholars to be better equipped to deal with pressing urban problems, is conducting a one-day workshop – ‘Displaced from Home, Displaced at Home.’ We invite you to attend the talks of speakers working on the issue from their respective domains in Academia, NGOs, and the UN and to engage in a day of discussions, ideas, and solutions. The workshop is designed as a set of two panels – Displaced from Home discussing the influx of large numbers of forcefully displaced people internationally, questions related to post-conflict displacement, and what cities around the world can expect in the future; the second panel, Displaced at Home, ponders the challenges faced by displaced people domestically, where forces like gentrification and urban changes lead to displacement, even though physical uprootedness is less overt. These effects may include rising housing costs, political marginalization etc. People’s coping strategies, both individually and collectively, therefore become an important planning and research topic. The workshop is intended to be an immersive experience where we aim to learn about present strategies for how cities are balancing fostering inclusive societies while addressing basic needs of diverse group of displaced persons worldwide.