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In January 2021, urban studies professor Aaron Passell published the book Preserving Neighborhoods: How Urban Policy and Community Strategy Shape Baltimore and Brooklyn with Columbia University Press. Challenging the idea that historic preservation is exclusively an elite project that causes gentrification, the urban sociologist investigates distinct processes of preservation by looking at specific neighborhoods and activists in Brooklyn and Baltimore. Passell's work is born out of an interest in how social life and urban environments intersect, and reveals how historic preservation can facilitate resistance to neighborhood change in communities of color and foster investment in neglected neighborhoods.