April Jackson
Community Engagement Award - Honorable Mention (2024)
Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Policy
About
April Jackson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy and a Research Affiliate with the Natalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is also a Research Affiliate at the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University. As a community-engaged scholar-practitioner her research explores how to enhance planning practice and the built environment by promoting plans with a focus on equitable, inclusive, and just communities. Her work examines place-based, neighborhood-level affordable housing strategies that seek to embed racial equity in spatial plans and policies, highlighting inclusive planning processes that aim to improve communities of color.
Her current research explores how Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) facilitates racial equity in implementation of the built environment, community building practices, and neighborhood change in Chicago, IL. More recently, her work is exploring reparative planning and community wealth building initiatives to understand how local actors might pursue more holistic, integrative, and reparative planning practices to improve plans for mixed-income communities and their intended beneficiaries. She has expanded her work to address gentrification and implications for affordable housing and vulnerable populations through an evaluation of climate-driven displacement in Miami/Miami-Dade County, Jacksonville/Duval County and St. Petersburg/Pinellas County in Florida.
Relevant Publications
Melix, B., Jackson, A., Butler, W., Holmes, T. (2022). Locating Neighborhood Displacement Risks to Climate Gentrification Pressures in Three Coastal Counties in Florida. The Professional Geographer. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2022.2087695
Butler, W., Holmes, T., & Jackson, A. (2021). Addressing Climate Driven Displacement: Planning for Sea Level Rise in Florida. Leroy Collins Institute, Florida State University.
Khare, A., Jackson, A., Curly, A., McKinny, S., & Melix, B. (2021). Household and Community Change with the Woodlawn Neighborhood: A Research Report for the Preservation of Affordable Housing. National Initiative on Mixed Income Communities, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Jackson, A., Callea, B., Sanders, A., Stampar, N., De Los Rios, A, & Pierce, J. (2020). Exploring tiny homes as an affordable housing strategy to ameliorate homelessness: A case study of the Dwellings in Tallahassee, FL. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(2), 661, 40. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17020661
Jackson, A., Holmes, T., & McCreary, T. (2020). Gown goes to Town: Negotiating mutually beneficial relationships between college students, city planners, and a historically marginalized African American neighborhood. Societies, 10(3), 61, 30. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030061
Jackson, A. (2019). Accountability Matters: Beyond Commitment, the Role of Intermediate Mechanisms in Implementing Plans in Mixed Income Communities. Housing Studies, 35. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2019.1595536
Jackson, A. (2018). Barriers to Integrating New Urbanism in Mixed-Income Housing Plans in Chicago: Developer, Housing Official, and Consultant Perspectives. Housing Policy Debate, 35. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2018.1433703