Urban Policy Scholar
Dr. Hyra's research focuses on processes of neighborhood change, with an emphasis on affordable housing, urban politics, and race.
He is a leading expert on gentrification and equitable economic development.
LATEST BOOK
In Slow and Sudden Violence, Derek Hyra links police violence to an ongoing cycle of racial and spatial urban redevelopment repression. By delving into the real estate histories of St. Louis and Baltimore, he shows how housing and community development policies advance neighborhood inequality by segregating, gentrifying, and displacing Black communities.
Howard Gillette, Jr., author of The Paradox of Urban Revitalization
By exposing the deep roots of contemporary racial unrest, Derek Hyra lays bare the failures of urban policy to overcome social inequalities as they have metastasized over time. His prescriptions for addressing the multiple effects of what he calls slow violence in such places as Ferguson and Baltimore cry out for action in the private as well as the public sector.
Patrick Sharkey, William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University
Slow and Sudden Violence goes beyond the immediate, surface-level explanations for the uprisings in Ferguson and Baltimore. Hyra provides a rich historical account combined with vivid interviews to make a powerful argument: What happened in Ferguson, Baltimore, Minneapolis and many other cities is not simply about the police. It is about social policies that have destabilized, oppressed, and in some cases destroyed Black communities.
Lance Freeman, author of A Haven and a Hell: The Ghetto in America
From the draft riots of the civil war to the urban unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, America’s cities have been the sites of episodic spasms of violence. Hyra revisits these spasms offering up fresh insights into their occurrence and possible solutions to dampen the likelihood of such outbursts. Slow and Sudden Violence is a must read for anyone seeking to understand cities and unrest.
IN THE MEDIA
Bloomberg
August 22, 2024
In his new book, Slow and Sudden Violence, Hyra connects historic urban renewal policies to modern urban uprisings. Hyra said he wants to give context to the frustration and anger that burst out after police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and Freddie Gray in West Baltimore’s Sandtown neighborhood in 2015.