Intensive: Economic Architecture: (Re)Designing Our Markets to Value Assets in Black Neighborhoods

This three-session intensive, a partnership with Ashoka, The Brookings Institution, and InnovateHealth Yale, will look at structural innovations that address devaluation and change the architecture of inequality.

Black-owned assets are systematically devalued in the United States today. The effect of this has been to dramatically deplete the wealth of the Black community. Restoring that wealth requires structural innovations that address devaluation and change the architecture of inequality.  Over the course of three sessions co-hosted by Andre Perry, PhD, Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Stuart Yasgur, PhD, VP of Ashoka, we will learn about the devaluation of Black-owned assets, explore emerging innovations, and begin to design or think about innovations for change.

This intensive is free and open to all. As the sessions will build on each other, we encourage you to attend all three sessions if possible.

 

9/24, 12pm-1:15pm | Pre-Session: Listening Session for the Community

An open listening session where participants can give feedback and ask questions about the intensive.  We welcome all members of the community.  

 

10/1, 12pm-1:15pm | Session 1: Learning About the Devaluation of Black-Owned Assets 

View Session 1 recording

In the first session we will look at the fact that devaluation of Black-owned assets is nearly ubiquitous in the US today and discuss the magnitude impact of devaluation.  Participants will also learn about the principles of Economic Architecture that can guide the development of structural innovations with the potential to address devaluation.  

Speakers:

• Karen Dubois-Walton, Executive Director of the Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of the City of New Haven
• Anika Goss Foster, Executive Director of Detroit Future City 
• Anne Price, President of Insight Center 

 

10/8, 12pm-1:15pm | Session 2: Exploring Emerging Innovations

View session 2 recording

In this session we will learn about emerging innovations that seek to address devaluation and discuss their potential impact.  
Speakers:

• Anna Blanding, Managing Director, Impact Investment at ConnCAT/ConnCORP
• Alexis Highsmith Smith, Executive Director of New Haven Legal Aid 
• Diarra McKinney, Founder and CEO of Rosewood Strategies; Real Estate Advisor, Martha’s Table
• Tahirih Ziegler, Executive Director of the Detroit Local Initiatives Support Corporation

 

10/15, 12pm-1:15pm | Session 3: Design Session for Innovative Approaches

View session 3 recording

In this final interactive session, we will invite participants to design innovative approaches to address devaluation and share details on Ashoka’s $1 million collaborative innovation challenge to address devaluation.  

Speakers:

• Anika Singh Lemar, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, YLS Community and Economic Development Clinic 
• Billy Huang, Founder of WISSP, Yale SOM '21
• Arthur W. Thomas III, Director of Entrepreneurial Initiatives and Inclusive Economic Opportunity for the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven

 

Suggested Readings:

• Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities by Andre Perry
• Ashoka’s Economic Architecture 

• 139 Square Miles

• Build Black Women’s’ Wealth, Heal America by Anne Price and Andrea Flynn

• Centering Blackness: The Path to Economic Liberation for All by Anne Price, Jhumpa Bhattacharya and  Dorian Warren

• COVID-19: Future Resilience Demands Greater Equity Today

• Don’t Fixate on the Racial Wealth Gap, Focus on Undoing its Root Causes by Anne Price

• Growing Detroit’s African-American Middle Class: The Opportunity for a Prosperous Detroit

• Insecurity Deposits: Addressing the Challenges of Rental Housing in Detroit