James C. Fraser, Ph.D. · Virginia State University

Research for more just cities.

Urban and environmental scholar — bringing peer-reviewed research, federal testimony, and funded studies to the cities, agencies, and communities that need them.

Explore the work Curriculum vitae
The Work

Four through-lines of a career.

Three decades of inquiry into how cities decide who belongs — and what it takes to build them more justly. Selected works below; the complete catalog lives in the Library.

01Urban

The engineering of exclusion

Gentrification, the Over-the-Rhine People's Movement, and the right to claim the city.
2019After Gentrification — AntipodePDF 2004Beyond Gentrification — Urban GeographyPDF 2016Disrupting the Order of Things — CitiesPDF
02Environment

Living on the floodplain

FEMA buyouts, repetitive-loss properties, and community-based flood policy.
2017Historical Waterscape Trajectories — J. Political EcologyPDF 2011Repetitive Flood Victims — DisastersPDF 2006Creating Effective Flood Mitigation — Eos, AGUPDF
03Housing

Why affordable housing needs an income floor

The POAH / Over-the-Rhine study on mixed-income neighborhoods and mobility.
2024Thriving, Not Just Surviving — POAH ReportPDF 2016Housing Publics Lost in Transition — City & CommunityPDF 2013HOPE VI & the Production of Difference — Urban Affairs Rev.PDF
04On the Record

Stopping displacement in a booming city

From congressional testimony to inclusionary zoning — research that shapes policy.
2009Future of Public Housing — U.S. House testimonyRecord 2016Inclusionary Zoning Feasibility — Metro NashvillePDF 2014Equitable Development — Metro NashvillePDF
In Brief

Hear the work.

Short audio and video overviews of each research area, in Fraser's own words. Select a theme, then press play.

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Urban
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Current

Current projects.

The newest of the work — manuscripts in preparation and peer review, and sponsored research in development — extends three decades of asking how cities decide who belongs.

Housing, land & the just city

The largest body of current work returns to the core question of urban development: when cities grow and capital arrives, who is it for? New studies test whether tools like Opportunity Zones actually produce housing or simply capitalize land, and build decision-support methods that help agencies steer investment toward more equitable outcomes. Companion manuscripts examine guaranteed income and the reproduction of urban precarity, and the contested politics of property, home, and the right to stay put.

Race, repair & the spatial politics of belonging

A second strand traces the long struggle over who belongs in the city — more than a century of Black organizing and place-making, reparations and the racial-capitalist politics of repair, the carceral geography of homelessness and the policing of public space, and the collective organizing through which communities produce locality on their own terms.

A smaller, separate line of inquiry asks how emerging AI tools support — or substitute for — critical thinking in the classroom.

Selected Writing

From the library.

A first taste — the full catalog of articles, books, reports, and op-eds lives in the Library.

UrbanBeyond Gentrification: Mobilizing Communities and Claiming SpaceUrban Geography, 2004Download PDF EnvironmentHistorical Waterscape Trajectories That Need CareJournal of Political Ecology, 2017Download PDF HousingThriving, Not Just Surviving: Making Mixed-Income Neighborhoods WorkPOAH Communities, 2024Download PDF UrbanTwentieth-Century Urban Renewal & Reparative PlanningThe Performative City, 2025Download PDF UrbanAfter Gentrification: Social Mix, Settler Colonialism, and Cruel OptimismAntipode, 2019Download PDF On the RecordCurriculum VitaeAppointments, publications, awards & serviceView the full CV
James C. Fraser standing on a tree-lined university campus in autumn
About

The person behind the work.

James C. Fraser is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Sociology Program Coordinator at Virginia State University. For three decades his research has asked a single question from many angles — how cities decide who belongs, and what it takes to build them more justly.

That work moves between peer-reviewed scholarship, invited federal testimony, and studies built with the communities they concern — on gentrification and the right to the city, flood policy and the floodplain, mixed-income housing, and the spatial politics of repair.

Read the full CV →
Connect

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For research collaborations, speaking, or press.

@Email
jfraser@vsu.edu GSGoogle Scholar
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