Jennifer Roberts, UMD Kinesiology
When |
Feb 10, 2025
from 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM |
---|---|
Where | 2208 LeFrak / Online |
Contact Name | Jennifer Doiron |
Contact Phone | 301-405-6403 |
Add event to calendar |
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About the Presentation
Roughly 10 years after the design and unveiling of New York City’s Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead was recruited by Buffalo, New York planners to design a similar greenspace. Yet, Olmstead had a different vision. He wanted to create a mixed use park system with multiple parks and parkways throughout the city, including the Humboldt Parkway located on Buffalo’s east side. As a healthy living space with a wide, tree-lined median and a series of geometric water features, many Buffalonians enjoyed the pleasures of nature filled walks and bike rides along the parkway. Designed with distinctive Olmstedian features, this idyllic landscape became filled with luxurious homes and a thriving business district that attracted many Black American families who were in most instances restricted to living on the city’s east side. However, a sequelae of events, from White Flight and suburbanization to highway construction and urban renewal, undergirded by racist housing policies and practices, decimated this urban oasis in the 1960s. Over a 25 year period, Humboldt Parkway, surrounded by neighborhoods predominantly by Black Americans, was bulldozed over and replaced with a six-lane intrusive highway, the Kensington Expressway, in the name of easier access to Buffalo's suburbia. This presentation will tell the Queen City’s story of environmental racism, how the Kensington Expressway bifurcated a Black American oasis, and share the current reparation efforts that are planned to atone and this social and environmental injustice.
About the Speaker
Jennifer D. Roberts is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Her scholarship focuses on the impact of built, social and natural environments, including the institutional and structural inequities of these environments, on physical activity and public health outcomes of marginalized communities. She is also the Executive Founding Director of the Wekesa Earth Center, Co-Founder/Co-Director of NatureRx@UMD, and Director of the Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory.
Seminar Format
Location IN PERSON: 2208 LeFrak Hall. We are requesting advanced registration so that we can track capacity. Please use this link to RSVP for in-person attendance.
Location ONLINE VIA ZOOM: Zoom Registration Link. Upon registration, you will receive an automatically generated email with the direct link for the seminar
If accommodations are needed, please send request to meeting organizer (mprc-support@umd.edu) at least 72 hours prior to the event, if possible, to allow time to discuss and implement alternatives.
MPRC public events for Spring 2025 will be a mix of in person and online via Zoom. For in person events, all event attendees must follow current protocols.