Photo by Arielle Cai '27.
Dr. Vanessa Rosa reads from her new book for the event hosted by Odyssey Bookshop on Nov. 15.
By Arielle Cai ’27
Staff Writer
A bustling crowd gathered at the Odyssey Bookshop for the unveiling of the book “Precarious Constructions: Race, Class, and Urban Revitalization in Toronto” by Dr. Vanessa Rosa on Nov. 15.
Rosa, an esteemed urban socialist and critical race theorist, is also the associate professor of Latinx studies and co-chair of the Department of Critical Race and Political Economy at Mount Holyoke College.
During the talk, Rosa shared that her inspiration for the book stems from her previous experience driving through New York City with her father. The inequality they observed in the neighborhood then triggered Rosa’s interest in gentrification and intersectionality, leading to a senior thesis and further research.
Rosa’s research concerns urban revitalization, the phenomenon where urban neighborhoods are torn down, rebuilt by private developers and co-managed by private developers and public housing authorities. Rosa’s book mainly focuses on the redevelopment of two public housing neighborhoods in Toronto, Canada.
The original community in these two neighborhoods was replaced by mixed-income and mixed-tenure units, with new businesses and amenities introduced. During the event, Rosa mentioned that she spent over two years attending various meetings and community events, analyzing around 2,000 pages of documents published between 2002 and 2015.
She then held transformative interviews with various community contributors in Toronto. She says she was amazed by their generous sharing of their experience living in the community, and this gave her a deeper understanding of their opinions about living within the neighborhood.
In her book, Rosa structured the outcome of her research around three key themes: diversity, surveillance and participation. As the professor explained, these factors all work together to legitimize revitalization. One of the themes of the book is to challenge and question these themes.
“Contradictions along the ways that residents navigate the planning process were found, and it comes out that the revitalization is not reflective of what the residents want,” Rosa said during the event.
Rosa explained that the book’s title questions the impacts of technologies on neighborhoods. “[It] captures the centrality of the material and to the discursive in revitalization, the ways that [the] built environment, planning documents and policy are interconnected and impact everyday life in something I believe is not considered enough in urban studies,” Rosa said.
The book brings attention to the structural conditions of vulnerability in housing.
Rosa used the first chapter to discuss the centrality of housing inequalities. “The management of public housing and housing policy more broadly has much to tell us about political priorities and whose lives are seen to be worthy of basic care and adequate shelter,” Rosa said.
Mount Holyoke students who attended the event were heartened to hear Rosa’s words. “It’s just so refreshing and also so encouraging to see that there’s actually people that care about [urban revitalization], and they’re trying to research about that and to know more about the issue,” Domenica Salazar ’26 shared in an interview with Mount Holyoke News after the event.
Students who are interested in cities, urban planning, racism and politics might be especially interested in the book. “This book started with a small idea and a broad curiosity about all things urban,” said Rosa. “I decided to write a senior thesis on gentrification and intersectionality. I built from those very early ideas in my master’s thesis, where I wrote about the racial geography of Toronto. So, keep exploring those ideas; your books are next.”