Episode 1: Penntrification

What should the relationship between a university and its surrounding community look like? Is Penn actually a model, as it is so often described? This episode of ABC interrogates Penn’s community relations with a guided walk through Penn’s spatial politics, a debrief of Penn’s construction, development and physical expansion, and a critical discussion of what’s happening and what’s next. What might we produce, and reproduce, when we refer to Penn as a physical space? Who benefits from the university’s relationship with Philadelphia? How does the university govern its students’ relationships with Philadelphia? In this episode, students Dorothy, Connor, Henry, and Betsy bring their research and personal histories to work these critical questions.