The Black Urbanist

Welcome to a Black, Queer, FeminIst, Disabled, Urbanist Guide, Toolkit, and Companion for modern life on earth from one of the world’s most notable contemporary urbanists where we defy gentrification, craft liberation, and in turn gentrification is destroyed.

We all know the rent is too damn high, and everything, from getting our hair done to eating our soul foods from across the African Diaspora, is increasingly out of reach and touch, despite being practices our ancestors perfected. And let’s not even get started with being surveilled, policed, incarcerated, denied, and killed just for who we are as Black folks.

But I, Kristen Jeffers, don’t believe gentrification is inevitable, and I’m done with taking gentrification on the nose.

After years of trying to convince my urbanist colleagues to reform their publications, organizations, local governments, community groups, and even their own attitudes around cultural diversity, equity, inclusion, and the ills of gentrification, I stepped away from the global urbanism scene for awhille, wrote a maniefesto and started to test out how to live as much of their lives as they could, while preserving energy to clapback just in time.

Or maybe never, because as a Black autistic nonbinary person who has been socialized and perceived as a woman their entire lives, rest is resistance.

This newsletter and its companion workbook are the result of that necessary pause. It’s here for you as a fellow sista-sibling to learn how to embody rest as resistance, even if the rent is coming due. It’s built around my Defying Gentrification Manifesto mantra: 

“I can have faith, I can engage in cultivation and creativity and self-care, but I need community care, access, infrastructure, and convenience to defy gentrification.”

Oh and sometimes I share my crochet, sewing, coloring and other art adventures, because like I said, I can be creative and I can cultivate things! In fact, as much as possible, I like to embody pure, unaduterated joy, in public spaces!

Please make sure you’re on my email list, as I’ll share when I’ll be in your town (or my town) for a workshop and you’ll get real time thougths on what it means to Defy Gentrification and Craft Liberation. You’ll also have all full archive, along with being here, on what it means to Defy Gentrification and Craft Liberation.

And you can double support me by purchasing The Defying Gentrification Playbook on Bookshop

This has been a birthright mission. My (late) Black North Carolinian dad was a key influence in my being interested in the city. We used to bike around our working-class neighborhood, walk to the neighborhood ballpark and go downtown to all the festivals. He also took me to more school buildings than I would care to share. My Black North Carolinian mom taught in some of those school buildings and encouraged me to write my first books, make my first crafts, dance on beat and have a moral center. Between the two of them and my years in Greensboro, Raleigh, Durham, Kansas City, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, I grew up and into a love of architecture, streets, trees, buses, trains, and lots of other things in the environment. Now I bring this to you in a format that is straightforward about who I am, a Black urbanist, a young queer nonbinary, femme-presenting of African-American, specifically North Carolina, descent who likes all things built environment, especially when it comes to cities.

What this platform/my work is NOT:

• A complete slam of suburban and rural living. I’m all for better design, communities, and planning, no matter if you are highly dense (urban) or you are unincorporated (rural).
• Consciously classist, sexist, queer/transphobic, xenophobic, ableist.
• The only expert analysis from a Black queer nonbinary femme presenting Southern person on these issues.
• Your one Black (or Disabled,Queer, Feminist) friend, colleague, preferred design team consultant, or constantly unpaid educator on issues of racism in urbanism and design.

What this platform and my work IS:

• A place that centers Black Queer Disabled Feminist Urbanist thought, practice, and ethics by defying gentrification through crafting liberation.
• My livelihood– support me by checking out my resource list, becoming a Patreon to support the information I share on my social media accounts, as well access my educational audio and video content.
• A learning experience.
• A chance to change the world.

My Formal Bio

Photo Credit: Philip Smith 1 L Photo

Kristen Jeffers (she/they) is the creator and managing editor of The Black Urbanist and Kristpattern multimedia platforms, which strive to bring a Black queer feminist dynamically disabled perspective to the greater urbanist sphere through a newsletter, workbook and podcast on Defying Gentrification, and facilitating crochet and other needlcraft workshops and spaces. She’s held a variety of communication and public affairs positions over the last decade and a half and is one of Planetizen’s 2023 100 Most Influential Contemporary Urbanists. Most recently, they were the contributing editor for Greater Greater Washington and have been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Streetsblog the Commericial Appeal, and on NPR affiliates, WAMU, WUNC and KCUR, along with bylines in House Beautiful, Sierra Magazine, Streetsblog, Next City, and Grist. They live in Baltimore, Maryland with their wife Les Henderson and was born and raised in Greensboro, NC.

Learn more about me and view my full professional and artistic portfolio.

Members of the press on deadline can call me at (336) 317-3054 and leave a detailed message for me to follow up. All others can email me at kristen@theblackurbanist.com and I will then send along a Calendly link to set up a time to discuss speaking gigs, partnership opportunities, and platform sponsorships.

Or, you can get to know me a little better by:

• Listening to my podcast, Defying Gentrification

Black folks can be agents and victims of gentrification, nothing more and nothing less. Oh, and I'm going to be doing my art in peace. – Defying Gentrification

Hey y'all! This is an update on the future of this platform. My health has dictated that instead of leading with defying gentrification, I need to lead with crafting liberation. Or in other words, I need to center my art projects and imbue them with the values about community and collectivity that I've always honored. I'm tired of being sick and broke trying to make folks listen. So this podcast will be shifting focus, but keeping the same name for now. Oh and to make it clear from what the episode title is and why, here's my final word on Black folks and gentrification:Black folks, especially in the diaspora, but sometimes even in heavily colonized areas of our home continent, can facilitate gentrification over their own people. And of course it can happen to us. But until the day we globally admit that Black folks that aren’t named Oprah, Beyonce, Tyler Perry, and other documented Black billionaires and millionaires can’t be gentrifiers, we are done as a movement and as a people. Those people I named aren’t above being followed, sanctioned, denied financing opportunities, and the like for what they are intending to do with their work, because of global white supremacy over the financing markets and sometimes just the pettiest of racisms and other isms we do need to process as a people.Also, I will have 15th anniversary celebration this falll, a showcase of what the future of Kristen Jeffers Media will hold. Get full access to Defying Gentrification, Crafting Liberation at theblackurbanist.substack.com/subscribe

1. Black folks can be agents and victims of gentrification, nothing more and nothing less. Oh, and I'm going to be doing my art in peace. 06:50
2. Gentrification is fascist, but it's not too late to stop either. 39:46
3. Making Plenty Good Room with Rev. Dr. Andrew Wilkes 01:15:23
4. The Grief that Gentrification Brings 20:35
5. [PODCAST] Past and Present Black Migrations for Liberation with Arionne Nettles 01:25:09

• Subscribing to my newsletter on Substack or LinkedIN (These come out when I feel like I have something to say) Advertise in the newsletter.
• Subscribing to the Defying Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers YouTube
• Reading through my free resources or watching this video to aid in Understanding Black Queer Feminist Urbanism
• Following me on Twitter, Instagram,
• Watching some of my prior speeches and workshops.
• And finally, reading some of the posts from this site’s blog-only days that really set the tone for who I am now, who I’ve been and what I hope to do.

Are There Really Too Many Planners in Certain Metro Areas?

The Continuous Quest to Mentally Cope With Modern Civic Life as a Young Black Woman Professional

How Do You Define Your City? And Does Your City Define Itself in the Same Way?

Building on Theories and Practice of Black Urbanism in Our New World

Questions to Ask (and Traps to Avoid) When Considering a Career in Placemaking

The Quest for a Forever Home in an Era of Mass Gentrification

Place in A Time of Terror and Inequality

Why Road Gentrification Is Good Gentrification

Putting Place and Experience Back Into Retail

Why We May Never Have the Right Words for the Places We Live

Things that Should Never Be in Driving Distance

Whose Suburbs are We Talking About Again?

Can We Let the People Gentrify Themselves?

The Privilege of Urbanism, The Democracy of Placemaking 

Everything I Learned About Place, I Learned on Campus

The Common Man’s Legacy in A City

Coming Back to the Streets, Coming Back to Action

The American Expat, In America

Does it Matter Who Owns the Corner Store?

The Creative Class: Off the Record and On The Money

The One Key Reason Those Scary Housing Discrimination Maps Are Still True

Are There Really No Things to Do for Young Black Professionals in North Carolina?

You can invest in my work and this platform via Patreon on a monthly or annual basis, invest in the currency of your choice via PayPal or send a little something via Cash.App or Venmo. Our store is open at our sister site, Kristpattern.