“There Were Black People in the Past: Gentrification, Displacement, and the Making of a Food Oasis”

Workshop on Race and Social Science

Waverly Duck combines stakeholder interviews, site observations, and GIS mapping to explain the development of a “food oasis,” a concentration of seven supermarkets within a quarter-mile radius in East Liberty, a lower and working class Black neighborhood in Pittsburgh, PA. Duck explores how the creation of this food oasis produces gentrification and destabilizes the local interaction order, which, in turn, displaces Black residents.