George Charles Galster (born 1948) is the Clarence Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning at

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

, USA.

Education

Galster received his B.A. in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

''summa cum laude'' from

Wittenberg University Wittenberg University is a private liberal arts college in Springfield, Ohio. It has 1,326 full-time students representing 33 states and 9 foreign countries. Wittenberg University is associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. ...

, his B.S. in organizational science, also ''summa cum laude'', from

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

, and his Ph.D. in economics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

Career

Galster joined the

Urban Institute The Urban Institute is a Washington, D.C.–based think tank that carries out economic and social policy research to "open minds, shape decisions, and offer solutions". The institute receives funding from government contracts, foundations and pr ...

in 1993 as a principal research associate, and was its director of housing research from 1994 to 1996, when he joined Wayne State University.

Research

Galster is known for studying urban housing markets, economic segregation in American cities, and

housing discrimination Housing discrimination refers to patterns of discrimination that affect a person's ability to rent or buy housing. This disparate treatment of a person on the housing market can be based on group characteristics or on the place where a person liv ...

against

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

Views

Galster has been critical of the Detroit light rail program,

QLINE The QLine (stylized as QLINE), originally known as M-1 Rail by its developers, is a streetcar system in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Opened on May 12, 2017, it connects Downtown Detroit with Midtown and New Center, running along Woodwa ...

, arguing that it will benefit property owners in the city, rather than those who are too poor to live near the Woodward Avenue corridor. He has also criticized

blight Blight refers to a specific symptom affecting plants in response to infection by a pathogenic organism. Description Blight is a rapid and complete chlorosis, browning, then death of plant tissues such as leaves, branches, twigs, or floral org ...

removal programs in Detroit for not addressing the root causes of the problem, and has compared them to "putting a Band-Aid on a wound" in this regard. He argues that the root causes of this problem include the construction of thousands of excess homes in Detroit since the 1950s due to the city's deregulated housing market.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Galster, George Charles 1948 births Living people Wayne State University faculty MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Wittenberg University alumni Case Western Reserve University alumni 21st-century American economists