MPC's first Urban Speaker Series event of the semester will feature Dr. Willow Lung-Amam, an Associate Professor in the Urban Studies and Planning Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she also serves as Director of Community Development at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and Director of the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network. Her scholarship focuses on how urban and suburban policies and plans contribute to and can address social inequality, particularly in neighborhoods undergoing rapid racial and economic change. In this talk, she will discuss her latest book, The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge (University of California Press, 2024), which investigates how marginalized communities in the suburbs of Washington, DC—one of the most intensely gentrifying metropolitan regions in the United States—have battled the uneven costs and benefits of redevelopment.