Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan
Joan and Sanford Weill Hall
Assistant Professor of Geography and Urban and Regional Studies at the UM-Dearborn
Dr. Akers is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. His research and writing examines the intersection of markets and policy and their material impacts on urban neighborhoods and everyday life. He is particularly interested in the transition of property markets in the wake of the financial crisis, the exploitative practices that emerged, and their impact on low income urban residents and communities of color. He works directly with organizations and activists in Detroit focused on housing and tenancy issues and developed a web mapping tool to assist communities working to slow speculation and its affects on local neighborhoods. This work may be found at propertypraxis.org. It is part of the Urban Praxis Workshop, which he also directs. Akers was appointed to the City of Detroit Mayor’s Open Data Advisory Commission in 2016 and sits on other boards that advise non-profits, and foundations in Detroit on issues of community engagement, technology and open data. He is a contributing editor for Metropolitics, a journal of public scholarship.
Ph.D. University of Toronto; B.A. The University of New Mexico
The Partnership on Economic Mobility between Poverty Solutions and the City of Detroit is a joint effort to identify and implement concrete, evidence-based strategies that significantly improve economic opportunity and reduce poverty in Detroit.
