Majora Carter is trying to change the way people think about revitalization.
At a recent event put on by the Civic Design Center, the native New Yorker and revitalization strategist presented her ideas about how to revitalize the parts of cities that have been left behind through the years — and doing it without forcing out residents, some of whom have lived there for decades. Her ideas center on “talent retention” and reshaping the status quo for neighborhoods living in poverty.
“Many of us don’t see the value in low-status communities, because we’re believing this hype that somehow or another our communities have no value while we’re in them,” Carter told an audience at Meharry Medical School’s Stanley S. Kresge Learning Resource Center on May 23. “And that’s one of the reasons why we measure our success by how far we get away from [where we grew up].”
In 1957, the construction of I-40 began. A significant portion of Nashville’s Jefferson Street, a thriving Black community with successful businesses and clubs, was destroyed by the construction of the interstate right through its center. Since then, despite various revitalization efforts, the neighborhood has never fully recovered.
Majora Carter
It’s a strategy that was widely utilized throughout the U.S. during the 20th century. In fact, the neighborhood Carter grew up in faced similar circumstances in 1948 with the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway: A once-thriving community was decimated by the construction of a highway and white flight. Over the following decades, companies began disinvesting from the community, and it became harder to find good jobs nearby — until eventually all that was left was municipal infrastructure such as waste facilities and power plants.
“My hometown in the South Bronx is actually the kind of neighborhood that had a talent repulsion strategy,” said Carter. She told the crowd that while the high school she went to was one of the best in the country, she would pass a crack house on her walk to school every day. Those conditions led to many people leaving as soon as they could, and Carter was no exception.
“When I was coming up, the last thing I really wanted to do was stick around,” said Carter. “I only came back to my neighborhood because I was so broke when I started graduate school that I needed to stay with Mommy and Daddy.”
It was during this time that Carter began advocating for her hometown. It started with speaking out against injustices being leveled against her community, but she quickly realized she wanted to do more, and that’s how her first project was born — the Hunts Point Riverside Park.
Much of Carter’s work has centered on the creation of what are known as third places: spaces for communities to hang out in that are neither home or workplaces — like parks and cafes. She explained that these types of businesses are typically scarce in communities like the South Bronx. Instead, pharmacies, fast-food chains and pawn shops represent the only ways people can spend money in their communities, and any new development either continues this trend or sparks gentrification.
Her hope is that projects like her Boogie Down Grind Cafe — a coffee shop that occupies the very crack house she used to walk by on her way to school — will help communities begin to invest in themselves, creating more pleasant places to live rather than places people want to leave.
“Successful companies or organizations, they’re not trying to pour resources into those folks so that they go work for somebody else,” said Carter.
Not everyone agrees with Carter’s methods. Nearly a decade ago, she was pushing for a mixed-income housing project in the Bronx that was shot down by the city. Instead it opted for a block of low-income housing, which she calls “the status quo.” And throughout her ascension as a revitalization strategist, she acknowledged during her presentation that some advocates have accused her of being a gentrifier herself, with some even protesting her coffee shop.
“Sometimes, when you stick your stuff out there, not everybody’s gonna like it,” said Carter. “But I promise you, if you know why you’re headed into these things, and you’ve really done your homework and you have every reason to understand that change sometimes doesn’t look really nice in some sectors, but it needs to happen? Then you do it, and you make it happen.”
