Category Archives: gentrification

Cities, gentrification

Can We Let the People Gentrify Themselves?

Taking to the streets at the 2013 Thanksgiving in Spring in Durham

As I finish up this week’s theme of sprawl repair,  I want to ask one last question. Can we let the people gentrify (or de-sprawl) themselves? As much as I love the tactical urbanism, the push to return to the neighborhoods left behind, and to fix the broken ones that have been built and broken rapidly, in the back of my mind I worry that our bad development history will repeat itself, much like some of this good history.

Exhibit one is in Durham. I’ve mentioned the Warehouse/Central Park area before. It’s a little bit north of downtown, the DPAC, the DBAP and the ATC. It maintains a degree of quirk and fun. It was a self-made redevelopment,  catalyzed by the 2010 addition of the FullSteam Brewery and Motorco Music Hall. Yet, the long time garden store on the block still remains and the streets and sidewalks and parking lots still have a little grit on them. Nothing’s over two stories either. According to landscape architect Mark Hough, who recently wrote about the area in Planetzen, people seem to love the grit and want it to stay.

However, a recent article in the Durham Herald-Sun about new apartments and other developments in the area gave me pause. As they will be new construction and come at market rates, I am concerned that the DIY ethos will not remain in the community. The area even has a hipster name now, NoCo. Now, if it was the community gathering together to build the homes themselves or operate the buildings as a co-op, I wouldn’t be so concerned. Not to say that the community will always have its best interests at heart, but if the community’s already been a “DIY” community as the Planetzen article stated, then let it stay that way. One good thing is that all the current owners and even some of the new ones like the spirit and the DIYness of the area, as well as believe that the community as a whole wants to stay laid back. In fact, Motorco’s owner is a New Yorker. Yet, towards the end of the article, a long time business owner expressed a similar spirit to mine, that he likes all the changes, but he hopes the area maintains character.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Sheryse Noelle DuBose’s admonition to “gentrify your own self!”  She reiterates the point to not leave behind assets because you don’t think they are cool enough. After all, so many people want what others don’t have, especially when it comes to “prime lands” along coasts, near mountains, in good farming shape and the center of cities. Think about the folks in Rosewood and Tulsa and to some extent Durham in the mid-20th century when the Durham Freeway was rammed in over Black Wall Street, who didn’t have the choice to stay or go. The Trail of Tears. Chinatowns that are such in name only.

The truest way to deal with sprawl and its cousin dis-investment, in essence gentrifying oneself, is to do what you can to build wealth and funnel it back into maintaining a sustainable community. We also have to have lawmakers and power brokers on the same page. The Warehouse District folks seem to be both powerful and humble enough to recognize the strength in a low-density, yet urban-style neighborhood and commerce center.

If we don’t exert our innate power, we will constantly be asking those who do have all the land and power, if we can gentrify ourselves. If we can maintain the simplicity that we love so much, along with the things that make us unique, yet still have the basics and a few luxuries and provide for the common good of our neighborhoods and the greater municipality as a whole, then we have in fact gone beyond gentrification. We have sustainability.

 

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Cities, Family and Place, gentrification, Rural

Are Historically-Black Towns History?

Photo credit: Drew Grimes/Wikimedia

Recently, I came across two sets of articles about Historically Black towns in Oklahoma and in Missouri. Part as a means of segregation and part as a means of dignity, self-respect and control of the civic space, African-Americans established or had help establishing their own towns after slavery. Unfortunately, the promises of economic growth and civic engagement were short-lived in many of these towns. Some were burned down. Others were disenfranchised or had other restrictions placed on them. Others died thanks to integration and increased opportunities for Blacks. In North Carolina, the town of Princeville, the first incorporated Black town in the United States. was nearly washed out by Hurricane Floyd in 1999. It has recovered, but as recently as 2012 had its town accounting taken over by the State of North Carolina.

Yet the opportunity exists for some of these towns to improve. Some can restore what architecture is left. Others can launch efforts to lure entrepreneurs and others interested in the slow food, do-it-yourself, and community placemaking movements. Plus, for those seeking refuge from higher rents in the city, but still wanting a walkable and vibrant neighborhood, they could become a newer version of whatever inner city neighborhood has died. For those who have outlived their usefulness or are too damaged for repair, care should be taken to preserve history through monuments and exhibits and folk festivals. Fellow planner and author Sheryse N. Dubose has called upon those, namely fellow Black Americans, who see themselves as being victims of gentrification, to gentrify their own selves, i.e. return to older towns and neighborhoods, purchase these homes that have value to other cultures and maintain unique characteristics such as eateries, music venues and corner stores that sell specific foods.

Something else that’s interesting, is how the struggles of black towns compare to struggles of black neighborhoods in bigger, integrated on paper, cities. It appears that in the times of segregation, that black towns were able to avoid issues of redlining, urban renewal and gentrification by enacting their own self governance. Their main threat, if the surrounding white towns did not care that they succeeded, appeared to be loss of commerce, no different than those predominately white small towns and rural townships. Other questions that arise are their ability to accept people of other cultures, such as Mexican farm workers or Asian refugees to regrow their population; if some major cities are defacto black towns now (i.e. Detroit) ;and can we continue our quest for integration, while preserving history and unique cultural businesses?

It is ultimately the question that has been the center of my blogging for the past 3 years: is black urbanism still a thing?

And with that, I invite you over to North Carolina Placebook for something that’s quite living, the latest news on governance and placemaking throughout North Carolina.