The Black Urbanist Weekly #30 — The First Leg of My Covid-19 Revolution Came From Within | The Black Urbanist

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this weekly digital newsletter to share my Black, Spiritual, Diasporic North Carolinian, Working/Lower Middle-Class, Educated, Queer, CisFemme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my weekly column, sitting on your proverbial print paper’s editorial page or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox.

This is edition #30 and my Essential + Quarantine Revolution continues. I first thought that I would have more to say about the things I want you as fellow urbanists to do. And that’s coming. 

However, I’ve found myself shoring up my own proverbial house and foundation. I’ve been studying online business sites I enjoy, namely this one created by a former architectural designer who had to pivot after the 2008/2009 recession and this one created by someone who worked a ton of jobs before emerging as a life coach and regularly talks about how it took nearly two decades to get to her ideal mission.

Those of you who work in long-range planning, who are nowhere near construction administration on your next building project or who are serving communities who are in a long journey of healing through trauma from addiction, violence, root shock, displacement, or something similar — know what this is like.

However, I’m a millennial and those of you who know that and have known me from the time I started this platform 10 years ago know that I’m no stranger to change or evolution. I’m also no stranger to being impatient to change or inpatient period in the things I do.

However, this time, especially for those of us who have satisfied the bottom rungs of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs and are looking to what’s next, has been very healing and centering in its own way. 

It has to be because where there hasn’t been healing and centering, there’s been death, exploitation, grief, and famine.

And so when I came across a private clarity challenge from another coach and colleague of mine, I jumped on it, as I too was moving back up the triangle as it comes to this Covid-19 pandemic. 

My MPA folks and anyone else who has studied organizational behavior will know this chart well. But recently, in an iFundWomen webinar, I learned that this could apply to how products and services are marketed to people as well.

All this being said, I’ve really started to center myself in a black queer feminist urbanist ethic and practice, that also allows me to start the journey to truly allow myself to earn, counsel and just be at my full potential, so I can give back and create the communal and healing spaces my heart yearns for and I believe our world needs.

If you watch the video of my joint panel presentation with Montgomery County Planning, APA’s Transportation Planning, APA’s LGBTQ and Planning Division, and my colleagues, I give you a taste of what that ethic and practice are. (All of the webinar is great, but my part starts at 44 minutes in.)

And as I continue to present on webinars, including a private one today to select design leaders and one on social media next Thursday… AND get ready to return to regular publishing of my own talk and news show (Think of this as The Black Urbanist Radio Show 2.0)… AND stop hiding and make my work clearer…

that ethic courses through my veins and enhances my life. I can’t claim it’s what’s kept me immune from the big disease. However, I can tell you it’s healed my heart and mind.

Finally, for this week, I leave you with the incomplete, but growing syllabus of books and podcasts and resources I’ve used to not just build my ethic, but build the site over the years. And of course…