Seeing Communities Flourish
In her January Series presentation on Wednesday, Jan. 21, Majora Carter spoke of her passion to see neighborhoods improved by and for the people who live in them.
As a real-estate developer and an urban revitalization consultant living and working in the South Bronx area of New York City, Carter believes, “You don’t have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one.”
That idea is also the subtitle of her book, Reclaiming Your Community, the glossary of which includes the term “low status” to describe the kind of neighborhoods that others might describe as poor, disadvantaged, or low income.
“We use ‘low status’ because the word “status” implies something larger is at work,” said Carter. “That inequality is a well-established fact. And low status communities are the places where schools and public health, air and water quality, trees, food options, and career opportunities are worse than in other parts of the same town.”
These neighborhoods can be found everywhere, Carter said, from inner-city areas to reservations to rustbelt towns, urban and suburban – all over the world.
A key to revitalization in low status neighborhoods is talent retention, said Carter. “We all know successful companies practice talent retention because they’re not trying to spend time and money on their team so that their employees can be hired away by somebody else. But we see that . . . billions are spent in low status communities, but overall outcomes don’t necessarily change, statistically.”
Part of the reason for the lack of improvement, Carter suggested, is an attitude among many young people growing up in low status neighborhoods: success is measured by how far away they can move from where they have grown up. Young people who are gifted and talented academically, artistically, and athletically go on to excel in their field and don’t usually return. Carter added, “We believe that talent retention strategies like those used to build successful companies can be used to build great neighborhoods for the people who are born and raised in them.”
Carter described some signs of “urban blight” that were evident in the South Bronx when she was growing up: a highway that split the community and displaced thousands of families when it took the place of apartment buildings, a crack house she had to walk past on her way to school, noxious odors from waste-treatment facilities, abandoned buildings. Some property owners would hire arsonists to burn down their own buildings so that they could collect insurance money.
In local newscasts, she added, most bad news came out of the South Bronx. “It was all pimps, pushers, and prostitutes. That’s all you saw,” Carter said. But she knew that didn’t tell the whole story. “It was just so weird to me. Not to say that there weren’t problems in the neighborhood; there were. But there were also amazing things in our neighborhood. I had beautiful people who loved and cared about us. There were folks who were artists and who just did all sorts of great things and supported their families and loved up on us. But that’s not what . . . the media represented. And it’s still not.”
Seeing possibilities for change and dreaming of more for her community, Carter and her team, the Majora Carter Group, started talking with local people, asking them about their dreams for the neighborhood, and what would make them stay and invest in it. The group spoke especially to young adults graduating from high school and going to college. The young people suggested investment in affordable housing for very low income households, homeless shelters, health clinics, and programs for children. When Carter asked if they planned to return to the South Bronx when they finished college, many said they did not plan to.
While some of this response was discouraging, said Carter, it was not surprising. The investments they suggested were the kinds of investments that low status neighborhoods are expected to aim for. The problem, said Carter, is that this thinking can lead to development that actually designs for poverty, as if poverty is an unchangeable cultural attribute.
Instead of providing more health clinics, community centers, and homeless shelters, Carter suggests investing in ways to improve people’s health such as parks, good grocery stores, and family restaurants with healthier menu options, places such as cafes where community residents will naturally gather, and jobs so that people don’t end up homeless.
As a real-estate developer, Carter has been accused by other South Bronx residents of contributing to gentrification and displacement. “There will definitely be people who say that gentrification starts to happen when you see things like cute cafes and doggie daycares in places where you never saw them before. And I actually argue that gentrification starts to happen long before that. It happens when people in low status communities themselves believe that there’s no value there and that they have no value by association. But it doesn’t mean that other people don’t see value. Predatory speculators absolutely see it.” In gentrification, people sell their property cheap because they don’t value it; others see the value, buy it, and turn it into rentals. Carter hopes to see more property ownership by the occupants themselves.
The talent retention strategy Carter suggests includes elements such as creating beauty and quality in the built and natural environments, commercially viable meeting spaces, home ownership, local entrepreneurship, business development, and good paying jobs.
An example of the success her group is seeing, she said, is the Boogie Down Grind Cafe, which opened in the space that used to be a crack house on her way to school. Today it draws book clubs, philosophy workshops, open mic nights, and comedy events, naturally helping to build and develop the community.
The group has had setbacks, however. When a part of the South Bronx came up for development, Carter’s group proposed a plan for mixed-income housing, manufacturing, and education, public space, and commercial and retail space. The city chose a different team that created the “expected” low income apartment building with a health clinic and an underused community center.
Undeterred, Carter’s group is now working on another proposal, partnering with AmTrak. This development will include a hotel, helping to draw tourism, restaurants, amenities, meeting spaces, and jobs.
Positive change, said Carter, can happen in different types of neighborhoods and communities, and she suggests using real-estate principles to help: “Create a living and local economy. Ask questions like, Where are people spending? Can we create that here? Do we have enough choices of different levels of housing, different types of businesses?”
While it can be hard to help others, especially people in municipal leadership, to catch this vision for improvement, there are success stories from a variety of communities. In Milwaukee, Wis., said Carter, a highway that had divided a community was removed, and the area was beautified. An unfinished highway in the Bronx was replaced with green space. In West Virginia, mountaintop removal strip mining was discontinued in favor of a wind energy development that will preserve the mountains for future generations.
During a question-and-answer session after her presentation, Carter was asked, “How much of your work comes from your faith?” She reflected, “I grew up in the church. I didn’t always love the church and religion, but I always loved Jesus, and I never stopped talking to him. As I got older, I knew I needed to be around others who love Jesus and talk to him. If I didn’t have my faith, I don’t like to think about where I’d be and how I’d handle things. . . . If we give what we have, Jesus loves it. I’m continuously bolstered by knowing that this is what love looks like.”
