This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we usually have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist, and Before You Go. You can read all archives right here, on my homepage of our normal format. We also normally drop on Fridays.
However, you might have noticed we skipped a week and a couple of days. I injured my back on Juneteenth and took this as a reminder that I need to get back on my personal Nap Ministry, especially if I want to model better systems for us.
So, I found an assistant. Thanks to everyone who applied! Several of you will be hearing from me about future opportunities as I raise money and ramp up my business activities. I’ll also share who that person is in a future email.
Second, so I can work on these special projects and create the new systems I want to create with this assistant AND REST MY BACK, we will be biweekly through July and August. We’ll be working together to pack these emails + an audio/video component, with lots of great stories from me and useful information. They’ll also help me get my book ready, so you’ll finally get that in your hands.
You can support our efforts by making a pledge on Patreon or upgrading to paid on Substack.
So, after today, I won’t see you again in my inbox until around July 28th, as we continue our summer schedule. And now, my story of the week, my principle of the week, and my favorite pop culture things of the week.
Story of the Week: I Went Home Again
Let me repeat this, I went home again.
But Kristen, weren’t you just in North Carolina?
Yes, and we do tend to clump together in a group when we see each other in the wild. The day before I got on the road, I almost tapped a Black man on his shoulder who was decked out in UNC-Chapell Hill gear on the Metro to see how well he was adjusting to DC.
However, I was running late to a meeting and I didn’t want to throw him off or assume that just because he had on his hat and lanyard, he would also want to talk trash about our opposite Tobacco Road sports teams, but also how being in DC is both a blessing and a curse, in a specific way Black millennials from NC discuss these things.
Alas, I stepped back, but in just a matter of hours, I would once again cross the threshold into the Old North State, with the goal of briefly coming out of my bunker to reconnect with family.
This was Les’s first time meeting my mom and several of my Dad’s siblings, nieces, nephews, and some folks from their church community. After my sibling-cousin’s baby shower, I had no real concrete plans, besides maybe returning to our textile-history-themed hotel that popped up since the pandemic started or taking her to our Barnes and Noble, so she could understand why it’s far less superior than Borders was.
But, my muscle memory took us from Guilford College Road to Friendly Avenue, down Friendly to the base of the now Lincoln Financial building, past the northern edge of UNCG’s campus and past the shopping center, then looping Elm Street thinking I was going to do a Battleground Avenue odyssey, but instead, I saw the open light in Gate City Yarns.
The last time I was there about a decade ago, I could barely make a crochet chain. However, they fed my soon-to-return tabletop loom habit and I wanted to see if they had changed since I’ve now become quite the yarn snob. Especially since they were open late on a Saturday! I needed to quickly find a parking space, so I could see if going to my local yarn shop again would actually be positive.
It exceeded expectations. Same with chilling inside Scuppernong Books, eating at Crafted, walking down Elm to find that most of our street mural from 2013 that was supposed to have been erased years ago was still there (it is!), seeing the new configuration of LeBauer Park and Tanger Center and stopping by my mom’s to grab a few things the next day in route back to DC.
My heart is overflowing and I can’t wait to go home again.
Plus, I learned in researching this post, that it was an editor who attached the idea of Thomas Wolfe never going home again, to his work posthumously. The real story of Thomas Wolfe is something I’ll save for another day, but I’ll end my story with a very happy ending, that in many cases, home is ready. Give it time, but in its own way, it’s ready.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
So with the flowery reflection out of the way, this wouldn’t be a post or newsletter about Greensboro, if I didn’t give y’all a little tough love on what do you need to do to make sure you stay golden for me, Les, and anyone else both visiting and living there:
— Pilot a sliding scale inclusionary zoning program city-wide, especially as you increase missing-middle housing the way you’re doing on Friendly Avenue in front of Friendly Center.
Additionally, housing should be offered based on our ACTUAL median income, not a desired median income for the pumping up of tax revenue. Plus, Greensboro is affordable now, but it won’t be for folks still making North Carolina’s pitiful minimum wage and in many ways, it isn’t affordable for those making North Carolina’s pitiful minimum wage.
Years ago I encouraged every jurisdiction to tax major multimillion and billion-dollar corporate entities and not to incentivize them. Yet, I opened my email this morning and saw that Guilford County’s again incentivized another corporation. However, the Boomerang incentive program for folks like me is also promising. No, I’m not ready to do the complete leap, but I would love to tap into small business and individual resources to help pump up my hometown in a sustainable and loving way.
— Use the success of the downtown circulator The Hopper to pilot fare-free, frequent service all across the city.
Everyone deserves free, frequent bus service, not just those who have the money and time to spend at the downtown businesses. I’m also excited to hear that the Piedmont train has added headways to and from Raleigh and Charlotte. No, there’s not a lot of car traffic, but there could be even less and Greensboro could be one of the first cities of its size to reduce the need for cars to get to necessary services.
— Move social service and key survival institutions back downtown.
This would be a huge catalyst for getting us to car-lite because a good chunk of existing bus usage is to these major services that provide a safety net for those with lower incomes and less opportunities.
When I was a kid in the 1990s, I would go with my parents to the Melvin Municipal Building for a number of things, like paying the water bill or other city taxes. In addition, the health department was downtown along with a number of regional charities AND the Greensboro Record Center, where Scuppernong Books is now (they could sell more records!).
The vacated News-and-Record Building (another public service that should return downtown), could become a mid-rise complex of sliding-scale housing and 24-hour service centers for bill-paying, healthcare, and other major needs. The office complexes and hospital centers in other parts of town could still be there for specialists, but the emergency services apparatus should be connected to the central point of the public transit system. We should also not shame folks who need to use public transit to access these services. If we can go downtown for local businesses and public arts, we can go downtown for public services.
Or another option is to do as we’ve started to do in the DC region and build out multiple nodes of central resources at different price points in each quadrant of the city. We were kind of doing that along our corridors, but corridors aren’t as walkable as blocks.
I have faith that these things are doable and folks want to do those things. Outside of me encouraging everyone to continue to take COVID and their health in general seriously, let’s all keep working together to make Greensboro even better.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
I have to be honest, I’m disappointed that I didn’t make it to the 100 list on Planetizen. I know, as one of my LinkedIn commenters said “It’s silly to rank people”. I know, that only 920 people voted and some votes were eliminated because of being duplicates (something that wasn’t clear in the voting process was not allowed), and Jane Jacobs has a chokehold on those 920 voters, despite all the raised awareness that she’s not the business. I also realize in the final tally there are no Black Americans in the top 25. And yes, I made it into the top 200 in the first place, only one of a handful of nonbinary folks (or am I counted under the 15 women of color, not quite sure here).
But in this capitalistic system, namely our urbanist capitalistic system, you’re only as good as your last tweet thread or these rankings. Hence one reason I’m anti-capitalist; because this isn’t fair. In the previous section, I linked to one of my five-year-old posts that’s still true. And maybe it’s too truthful because it questions capitalistic logic.
Plus, I could make a list of 200 Black Urbanists and not even scratch the surface of how many Black folks hold down their various communities all over the world. And yes, to the Instagram commenter who said that we need to make our own lists, I see you and you’re absolutely right. Plus, to everyone who holds it down on the daily, who isn’t white-adjacent and capitalistic enough to get on these lists, I see you too.
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If I seem a little salty about myself, I’m really salty about these reports that people have been offering academic jobs, then rescinding the offers when it seems like the person is going to be too “threatening”. The most egregious example of this I saw recently was Texas A&M University having a whole signing day for Black tenured journalism professor at U-T Austin Kathleen O. McElroy, then watering down her offer, including the one she signed in public on that day, because of pressure from trustees and the recent banning of DEI programs at Texas universities. It echoed what happened in Chapel Hill with Nikole Hannah-Jones. This is another reason North Carolina and its cities have to be proactive in being progressive, despite the temptation of the conservative tide and using personal faith beliefs to govern people who have no desire or need to follow similar beliefs.
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I’m empowered to share these reflections with this tenor because I realize I’m not alone in seeing these things and being willing to speak up about them.
I’ve dug into Inclusive Transportation by Veronica O. Davis. Veronica was one of those Black folks who was here in this space when I got here and tamika l. butler was also the same way when it came to the bike space. tamika, along with Les and Dan Reed and Jerome Horne were some of the first Black queer folks I met in this space and made it safe for me to tell you everything about me, not just that I was Black and urbanist.
I’ll admit I don’t see Veronica and tamika as much as I used to (the TRB Black Professionals mixer event in January was the first time we’d all seen each other in person in years!). I’ll also admit that I wish that we all weren’t fighting for the same projects and the same dignity and respect.
But, it was this quote in particular in tamika’s foreword of the book that struck me and made me realize I’m not the only one seeing that 2020 was a dream deferred and a promised delayed when it came to Black liberation and inclusive urbanism, not just transportation:
National planning organizations and conferences have returned to organizing events that cater to their predominately White, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, and privileged leadership and membership. Organizations that continue to tout equity, diversity, and inclusion are still hiring and voting in all-White leadership structures that fail to represent the diverse tapestry that is the backbone of the United States.
This book joins the chous of the many Black professionals who have been asking their peers to engage in new ways of thinking, listening, and governing. Most important, it does so by offering concrete advice that planners and allied professionals can take to assess their own privilege, interrogate power, and actively shift those dynamics in their work. For many of us, 2020 was just another year of injustice. We know that the anti-racist future we believe in has not arrived. This lack of progress is due, in part, to the lack of action taken by those in positions of power. Too often, those in power with an ability to bring about change cite an inability to know where to begin. I hope those leaders, as well as scholars, students, and anyone interested in justice, read [Veronica’s] manifesto for repairing divided communities.
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
So, what else am I consuming that’s not urbanism-related?
I made it to Broccoli City this weekend. I will return, but I was not a fan of the extremely long walk, even with the shuttle, to the actual venue.
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The new Jon Batiste record is going to be dope! I’m still in awe of We Are and especially Tell the Truth.
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I also adored Survival of the Thickest on Netflix. It’s not reinventing this genre’s wheel, but in centering Blackness, queerness, and fatness, as Brooke Obie stated in her review of the show, Michelle Buteau has advanced this genre and she did it in just four hours of episodes!
The actors have said not to cancel subscriptions and streaming yet as they rightfully strike, so please go out and stream all the BlPOC and queer stuff you can, because, to me, this is the pinnacle of the battle, paying and putting on marginalized creatives fairly, and not scanning them and making robots out of them.
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And I’m trying to finish another sweaterdress if my yarn doesn’t break first! You can always support my yarn and fiber work over at www.kristpattern.com
Before You Go
Here’s how you can keep me and this platform running, along with support some other mutual aid efforts:
I’m determined to not let what I shared above keep me from continuing to tell the truth. Our communities deserve the truth and I’m happy to be a messenger.
However, for me to continue to be a messenger and have the proper support to do so, your Substack subscriptions and your Patreon pledges are vital. With the help of my assistant, we will be launching new merchandise and research reports, along with an annotated version of my book — A Black Urbanist Journey to an Accessible Queer Feminist Future. Patreon will be your best bet to pledge if you are after merch and Substack for the annotated book and first look at research reports.
Support me here on Patreon.
And Substack (if you’re already there, just mash the upgrade to paid button up top!)
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Mutual aid will continue to be part of any version of this platform I dream up.
For those of you who can and I know it’s tough out here for a lot of us, let’s keep lifting up our colleague who could still use our support with her partner’s chronic health challenges and of course Les’s endometriosis support and resource platform endoQueer as it embarks on its first major fundraiser to provide more support for LGBTQIA+ folks to navigate the health care system
Project N95 is an amazing source of masks for everything that’s in the air that we have no business breathing and other testing and air purification equipment, at reasonable prices, that also go into helping distribute those supplies in communities that need them. Also, check into your community’s mask distribution services if you have them. I’m also adding a link for the Entertainment Community Fund and for those in WGA and SAG-AFRA to have relief while they take necessary action to get the funding they deserve for being one of the few industries that can’t be erased (at least for now).
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns, two amazing yarn stores run by Black women that are fundraising to expand their physical equipment and footprint, and Knit the Rainbow, a group that works to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
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Until next time,
Kristen