The Black Urbanist Weekly for August 17-30, 2022, Part 3 of the Black Queer Feminist War on Cars.
Are we equipped to win this war when the battleground — literally, the actual ground we are supposed to stand on, is made of quicksand, moats, and castles guarded by people or their systemic ideas that keep us from all experiencing enhanced and enlightened mobility– some would say accessibility?
Ok, we aren’t in medieval times, but sometimes, the Earth we are supposed to navigate outside of a car, looks more like the environment of Super Mario and its various iterations, than a place where anyone who doesn’t use a car is at ease in using.
And yes, that matters on this so-called battlefield, because what good is fighting if you’re always going to be dodging proverbial (and real) bombs and missiles on the ground? Or if you make it to the castle, there are fire-breathing dragons, loose cannons, and snakes jumping up and biting you out of the moat. Oh and the moat itself, what if the bridge is too narrow or drawn up?
I had to sit on this newsletter a day or two, because my hypothesis this week — that the minute a Black neighborhood, especially in the United States, becomes a true carless village that everything is within 15-minute or more of walking, biking, or rolling distance, goes through its own dark magic “poof” of its own and disappears.
Historically, that poof was burnt down neighborhoods and towns, like the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
And as of late, it’s been neighborhoods here in DC, where rent rates and home prices, and property taxes are calibrated to the highest median income, despite there being a clear racial disparity in household median income that’s well documented and has been for years.
Jobs, especially those that pay well, are sometimes on the other side of hours-long transit commutes, that become more expensive as you go further away from your home and sometimes don’t start or end before it’s time to go home, so your destination and journey become even more expensive, maybe impossible.
However, I couldn’t completely say that every neighborhood in DC that’s Metro-accessible and amenity-rich and car-light is un-friendly on the surface to Black folks. Especially when I go to every neighborhood and see us laughing at outdoor restaurant tables, serving in every job function, enjoying all of the Smithsonians, not just our own, and cheering for all the sports, not just the ones we’re overrepresented in.
I especially saw it when I was in Navy Yard on Monday, a Metro Green line neighborhood that is emblematic of what the “new DC” has become. Tall, shiny apartment towers with optimal access and views of the waterfront. Surrounded by office towers of all configurations, where both my partner and I have hot desks in our respective work buildings. Flanked on the lower floors are all kinds of public services — except clothing stores, which still seem to elude Navy Yard.
But, if you don’t mind wearing all Washington Nationals-branded clothes from the ballpark, tourist T-shirts from CVS and Harris Teeter, or the earthy clothes at Whole Foods, you could just do your whole life from Navy Yard. Same with the books on the magazine shelf, even though there are some great bookstores in nearby Capitol Hill.
But speaking of access, let’s break that down for a moment. The one thing that is still missing from Navy Yard, at least for me, is a clear spot that does Black hair. Queer folk’s hair, yes, but what if it’s really tight and densely curly and I want it to be longer than 2 inches? If that’s you, and your salon, please let us know. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping my car to go to my hair person in South Fairfax County that’s made the magic on top of my head known as the blurple hydrate-and-define.
I also would be remiss if I didn’t add that my partner has an amazing Black feminine-presenting primary care physician who is very attentive that just happens to be in Navy Yard. I’m in the Kaiser system for similar reasons and yes, for that, I’d have to go to Capitol Hill.
Even though we don’t live in Navy Yard (yet), we still live just down the green line of the Metro and several key bus lines, in another neighborhood that has a lot of stuff, but just happens to have a six-lane highway bisecting it. At least there are crosswalks, but there could be so much improvement.
And there will be, Metro has plans to go down that road, literally, and it has a lot of popular support so I don’t see how they wouldn’t just go ahead and let that happen in about 20-30 years.
But what about today?
Even in a high-end neighborhood like Navy Yard with “everything,” with no limits on who can live there if you have one of DC’s inclusionary zoning vouchers or the income from your labor to live there, for Black folks, something is still missing within that 15-minute walk/bike shed.
However, in looking up recent efforts to create a true 15-minute city for all, there’s hope that I’m not the only one flagging that we need to do this in light of the place-based discriminations and disparities that Black folks and other folks of color face, along with ensuring that people can move in the ways they naturally move. We need to leave behind this particular engineering notion of mobility and work on access, especially as we experience the changes brought by major pandemics and major changes in climate and access to capital as an entire human race.
More cities need to break down their median incomes, rent burdens, and commute times, and cross-reference by race, gender, sexuality, and ability, by local service jurisdictions (wards, districts, or sections, depending on how the city council is structured).
More transit authorities need to realistically serve every jurisdiction in its power and no region needs to make a transit system that only works for people who commute to an office, during daylight hours.
Just like we can’t plan for one universal human, we can’t plan for one universal city and one universal Earth, as if the Earth doesn’t re-kindle and reset itself, even if that reset seems violent to us humans! We have time to reset our relationships, so instead of racing to one point, we can go at ease to many places.
By the Way
If you’re new here, I write out my grand thesis of the week above, then I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section.
If you missed parts one and two of this Black Queer Feminist Urbanist War on Cars series, go here.
Benbow Park, one of Greensboro’s most legendary Black mid-20th century built neighborhoods, is closer to getting a historic district designation. I grew up in the shadows of these legends and if I could talk to my dad today, I’m sure he’s fixed a light or two in one of these homes and surrounding others as well. Also, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen such a verdant aerial image over a Black community and definitely my first time seeing one like this over predominantly-Black East Greensboro.
Meanwhile, not only were the Talley and Weatherspoon Student Centers the nucleus of my life at NC State in the mid-aughts, I sat in on one of the focus groups back in 2006-2007 to assess what the centers needed to do. I’m sad that I didn’t get to be a student on campus and experience using the current configuration and renovation of the Talley Union, which is impressive even as a proud alumna and family legacy, and I’m especially sad that this couldn’t be done without the debt load being on the students, especially since many who paid for the renovation were long gone when the full changes happened. But reading this article about the evolution of the student centers brought back so much good nostalgia of a time I did live in a “15-minute-city” and that my generation wasn’t the only one facing what it meant to be living in a rapidly changing campus and surrounding city of Raleigh.
And speaking of the Triangle area of North Carolina, a reflection of what it’s become, or not.
Before You Go
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Finally, I wanted to announce that with my shifts in workload, I’ll be launching these newsletters on Wednesdays, still at 11 am, going forward and I’m taking next week off, to give my body some surgery recovery time, hence why this is the weekly for two weeks, lol. I’ll be back on Wednesday, August 31 to conclude this series on the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist War on Cars
Until next time,