The Black Urbanist Weekly for June 13-22, 2022
It’s just weird to be repping borders and boundaries so hard when in reality they were often created forcefully and for economic means that don’t support our current goals or grant us full humanity.
Y’all know that I’m a “take your shirt off and twist it like your head like a helicopter” representative of my home state of North Carolina.
If you don’t and this is your first time reading anything I’ve written, that’s how this whole project started, really about 15 years ago, when I started my first “serious” blog on Blogger.
One of the first big questions I asked on that blog was demanding answers to why Greensboro didn’t have heavy rail transit.
Of course, I learned the words and the distinctions between heavy rail transit and light rail transit over the course of these 15 years asking this and so many other questions about why my existence, was bound by the boundaries and the rules that it is.
While I’ve done it under the banner of these two words for 12 years, I’m constantly parsing the words Black and urbanist, wondering how queer and feminist fit in or don’t.
Same with the words urban, rural, and suburban, in a regional context, especially with everything that’s heightened itself negatively in our world in just the past 2 years.
When I wrote about regionalism in 2017, it was a call to action to folks to understand the word jurisdiction and how this tied into who would come in a medical emergency (or not), who would quench a fire (or not) or lastly, who would protect them (or shoot them).
I also admitted in that post that I thought every city should be Sesame Street. Probably why I felt at home in New York City the other week, because that series was geared, especially in its early years, for young Black children to feel at home and learn from their neighbors and the neighborhood.
But, as an adult, the bubble has clearly burst.
I’ve now lived in two regions that overlap state lines, and the overlap happens in residential areas. I can look out right now as I’m writing this and see into DC, while my fingers are strictly typing in Maryland at a table firmly above my feet in Maryland.
In Kansas City, if I needed underwear, I would have to hope that midtown Costco had some since I could walk there or I would have to take a bus or drive at least 30 minutes to locations adjacent to or over the state line to get underwear. I could get groceries and I could get lumber 2x4s within walking distance, but no underwear.
This is before I thought of Amazon deliveries for such and before Prime really cranked up. Oh and at this time I only saw hosiery at the CVS and even that was about a 30-minute bike ride and an hour walk up and down hills.
Being regionally prejudiced — say vowing to not shop in a state, in a multistate region, or not ordering from a global behemoth, would mean I would go without major needs.
Wants too, there would be no Kristpattern because most craft shops or big box hobby stores aren’t centrally located in neighborhoods like mine, although until the early 2000s North Carolina wasn’t so bad on this because of our connection to the textile industry.
But, let’s talk about needs.
Being regionally prejudiced today would shut me out of my medical care because my best doctors and hospital are 15 minutes to an hour away.
I wouldn’t have someone who could really do my hair and it stays on my head, because my one stylist who makes my hair do all it does, moved even further from my home, so she could afford to stay in business.
Until last year, it meant having to go into a different jurisdiction to celebrate Pride.
And even this year, it’s looking like I can only afford certain jurisdictions for housing and yes, redlining is real and it’s really starting to feel like I have to be a supertoken to get rent control or ownership. What kind of Juneteenth is this going to be for me, when we aren’t really all that free.
But that’s how it was supposed to go. Stolen lands, continue to create odd taxes and random, unproductive competitions over who’s real or not real or who’s a tourist or a gentrifier. Who gets to be out, proud, and provided for, not just out and proud and forgotten on July 1st.
If you’re reading this and you’re a local elected official who hasn’t looked at your budget and your governing practices and seen how unequal boundaries and regional prejudice has put pressure on your professional staff, your frontline staff, and even your citizens, let that be your homework this week after reading this newsletter.
Start with reading one of my two book selections for this week.
Book one for this week is Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital by Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove. When this book first came out I couldn’t understand why we needed another book like this, didn’t Dream City do this a few decades ago.
That’s kind of the point, this book takes us all the way back to the District’s inception and it really shows how much some things have changed, but other things have shifted. It confirms that the DC square is a rectangle now because of Alexandria’s slavery-fueled retrocession. It reminds us that there were people here before colonialism and those people differed on how to best receive these new “visitors”. And yes, it touches on the last 50 years, but towards the end.
In fact, the book is so comprehensive I’m still working my way towards the end and I think it’s something worth sitting with especially as someone who is making policy to govern cities and regions, especially after dealing with a common global threat, that’ still managed to affect people in different ways, good and bad.
Book two is Kansas City and How it Grew by James R. Shortridge. I was gifted this book by a friend of the platform when I first arrived in Kansas City in the summer of 2015 and I haven’t finished this one all the way through. Not because I didn’t want to, but I started to see how I was living the effects of bad policy and it was too much. But, if you are in the position to change the policy, you need to understand it. This book is on backorder, but if you’re local to KC, you may already have it on a bookshelf, or one of your many public libraries does.
When we make our grand urbanist proclamations, or we lay claim to a particular hood, let’s be mindful that many of these current distinctions are rooted in colonialism and as we decolonize, may we choose a way of being on these lands that one, allows our stolen and stolen from Black and Indigenous siblings to determine our next direction and that honors that bodies come in all shapes, sizes, and abilities and we need to lift that up too.
By the Way
These are other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week. Watch me expand more on these items in our weekly Tuesday livestreams at 4 pm Eastern on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter.
If you’re still trying to understand how Pride and Juneteenth are celebrations and calls to action that shouldn’t be capitalized, this Fast Company video can help.
I’m also linking that entire Supertoken Fast Company article here again because it’s directly relevant to those of us in firms that are sandwiched between servicing government and developers and servicing citizens. Citizens, especially marginalized citizens and your workers who are also those marginalized citizens, are tired and tokenism never works.
Here’s more on how a recent effort to change a street name that I just call by its state highway number, failed (for now).
I also want to shout out and thank the YarnPunk Instagram account, for not just acknowledging my fiber work, but also shining a light on this newsletter as well.
Before You Go
Here’s how you can financially support this work + access our weekly livestreams, now on Tuesdays at 4 Eastern.
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If you just want to support me for any reason, but don’t need anything in return, you can donate to my capital campaign, or Venmo or Cash. App me. Even with all the visibility on my work this month, funding is really short and I would really be grateful if you could send something, as some new partnership opportunities come through.
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My bookshelf over at Bookshop.org is very much alive and well, purchase your copies of the books I talked about above, plus more that I’ve designated part of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist canon, the general urbanism canon, and other lists because you can never have too many books. This is also another way to financially support my work.
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My very first official crochet pattern is for sale. It’s been tested and reviewed and you can join the club of folks making their own Kristfinity Scarves!
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I’ll be live on LinkedIn and YouTube and Twitter talking about everything I mentioned above and then some for my Open Studio/Office Hours at 4 eastern on Tuesday, June 14, 2022. Don’t worry if you can’t watch live, it will be archived publicly on all spaces. Also, all of my prior video chats under the Public Lecture/Open Studio label are now available on Patreon and will be making their way to YouTube little by little over the next few weeks.
Until next time,