This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week Kristen is taking us back to her very first neighborhood and the first time she met the concept of a community center.
Community centers do exist, do provide lots of needed and wanted services well, and can continue to be pillars of the community, no matter who funds them or who runs them.
I used to take lots of walks in my neighborhood with my dad when I was a kid.
If you’ve been around me long enough, on or offline, you know a version of this story but I want to tell you a slightly different version of the story you’ve heard, with a little more context.
Dad and I used to walk around the neighborhood, not just to the ballpark to our west, but sometimes to the elementary school to our east where I went to kindergarten. There was this amazing playground and of course, my school and next to this school was this building called a recreation center. It had a name I struggled to pronounce for years — Caldcleugh
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was basically a neighborhood indoor basketball court, some exercise machines, and meeting rooms where folks of all ages could do crafts, discuss community issues and celebrate special events.
It was and is run by the City of Greensboro Parks and Recreation.
For a long while, it was branded as a “multicultural” center and hosted things like hip-hop dance classes and language lessons, along with a branch of the city-run Drama Center.
As of last summer, it rebranded again as a teen and youth-focused safe-space, along with programs for younger children and their caretakers.
Recreation centers seem to be something that those of us who grew up in Greensboro, DC, Baltimore and other places with this concept take for granted, that the city will provide centralized locations in all neighborhoods, regardless of density, racial makeup, or age.
At least in Greensboro, not all centers had all things. Some were geared to seniors and others to teens and younger children. Some have community gardens and indoor courts. Others playgrounds and fully-outfitted production stages. Having a pool at your neighborhood “rec” was like hitting the jackpot.
And sometimes they close as we’ve seen in some of the other cities with this concept.
But they are what I envisioned being the starting place for comprehensive community service centers in incorporated municipalities when I made this wish as part of this year’s wish journey.
With the advent of technology, rec center computer labs could do more than just provide opportunities for lessons and open gyms for the neighborhood’s next basketball superstar.
They could be staffed with people who could help those without adequate access or without access to a major expensive software (Adobe, I’m looking at you), to help with managing household budgets, studying for professional exams, and incubating small, web-based businesses.
And most recently, I voted and picked up rapid Covid-19 tests at my local rec here in Prince Georges County. This facility sits on several acres of fields but still has transit access. Other recs in my current area are more walkable, and others back home similarly sat on the outskirts of town surrounded by fields and new suburban-style homes.
And I started crocheting again in the first place at library and rec center meetups in DC proper.
Other places exist that can step in as centralized community centers and fill in that “third place” gap. They can have various levels of healthcare, education, and recreational services.
Ultimately, we should and can make them stronger so we can depend on them every day, not just in an emergency.
Before You Go
I’ll be doing my first Twitter space conversation Today (Tuesday) at 1 Eastern right here.
I will be discussing my feature in the New York Times on people of color running restaurants in the suburbs unpacking the host of assumptions that topic creates and previewing next week’s email where I talk about how the press can better serve audiences of color and others who are marginalized.
Until next time,