Federal Fire Sale: Selling Surplus Property in Cities Across the United States
Funding period: 1 July 2020 – 1 July 2023
Type of funding:
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
Dr. Renee Tapp is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Urban Planning and Policy. She is a geographer whose current work focuses on state restructuring, the privatization of public assets, and financial investment in real estate. Through case studies that compare the changing ownership, use, and profitability of federal buildings in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC, she is analysing the political and economic consequences of privatization on the country’s most expensive cities and the people that live there. Situated in a moment of fiscal-financial crisis, her work considers the legacy and future of the welfare state.