The Harvard Graduate School of Design is pleased to welcome Renee Tapp as the Pollman Fellow in Real Estate and Urban Development for the 2018–2019 academic year.
Tapp completed her PhD in geography at Clark University. Before that, she earned a Master of Arts in geography and urban studies from Temple University and a Bachelor of Arts in international affairs and religious studies from Butler University. Tapp’s PhD dissertation, entitled Taxes, Banks, and Renters: Urban Redevelopment in the United States after the 2008 Crisis, examined the governance, financing, and political outcomes associated with the redevelopment of modernist buildings in Los Angeles, California and Kansas City, Missouri.
Tapp’s work has received widespread recognition and awards including the Urban Geography Specialty Group Graduate Student Paper Award at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, and an invitation to attend the Summer Institute in Economic Geography, as well as a research grant from the National Science Foundation. At the GSD, Tapp will examine the political-economic impacts that shell companies and tax evasion have on rental markets in the United States. Her research program for this project covers seven cities including Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. She will continue to engage qualitative, quantitative, and GIS methods in innovative ways that demonstrate how tax regimes influence urban development processes and decision-making.
One of the seven fellowships and prizes administered by the GSD’s department of urban planning and design, the Pollman Fellowship was established in 2002 through a gift from Harold A. Pollman. The fellowship is given yearly to an outstanding post-doctoral graduate in real estate, urban planning, and development, who spends one year in residence at the GSD as a visiting scholar.