Dr. C. Aujean Lee, an Assistant Professor in the Regional + City Planning Division, is the first author on the report Oil and Blood: The Color of Wealth in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This report is part of a series of reports that investigates the modern racial wealth gap in six major U.S. cities published by the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.
Oil and Blood explains how the Tulsa Massacre destroyed the economic gains previously attained by Black residents of Tulsa in the wake of the oil boom at the turn of the twentieth century. While Tulsa was once home to a thriving “Black Wall Street” in the Greenwood district, it now has the largest Black-white wealth gap in the six cities the Samuel DuBois Cook Center has studied. The average Black household in Tulsa possesses just 9% of the wealth of the average white household. The report finds that the specific Black-white wealth gap in Tulsa stems largely from differences in the rate of entrepreneurship and homeownership between the two groups. The differences in entrepreneurship and homeownership are likely the long-lasting effects of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre during which many businesses and homes of Black residents were destroyed.
Associate Professors Lee Fithian, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Pober have published a chapter in the recently released New Perspectives in Indoor Air Quality, published by Elsevier. Their contribution, titled “Chapter 16 – Architecture and the Challenges of Indoor Air Quality,” examines the relationship between architecture and indoor air quality.
Dr. Ladan Mozaffarian, Assistant Professor of Regional and City Planning, has been selected to serve as Co-Chair of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Planners of Color Interest Group (POCIG) for the 2025–2027 term.
The Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to recognize Tahsin Tabassum, a recent graduate of the college’s Master of Regional and City Planning program and current doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, for receiving the prestigious 2024–2025 American Planning Association (APA) Outstanding Student Award.
