This is The Black Urbanist Monthly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this monthly 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 monthly column, the one that flaps open as you start browsing that coffee table magazine or printed alt-weekly newspaper or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox. This is the one that will transition us from October to November of 2020.

I’m not naive to my role straddling the middle of design and social justice in the Place. What is the Place? I define the Place as the entity that comes up for discussion, dissection, or manipulation by policymakers, planners, residents, and developers. In essence, this concept is summed up in one word: Placemaking.

Place is more than the apartment block, the two-story house, the town center, the farm. If we don’t have people who can use the objects of Place, then we are useless. Even worse are people who can build Place but only for profit.

However, place should be where social justice and design meet.

Witness what’s going on here in Greensboro with public art and creative placemaking. The Greensboro Mural Project has revitalized a parking deck…

…and brought homeless individuals into creating public art.

They chose murals because:

• “[They build] bridges by painting walls.” This theory believes that beautiful, shared space helps breaks down social/cultural/political/etc. barriers for people to connect. Murals help beautify surroundings of any city.

• Anyone can be involved in the process who wants to be, regardless of talent, skill or experience.

• The process engages the community and forms a sense of commitment, creating community ownership.

• Murals have proven to assist in raising property values without gentrification.

• Quality murals make art available and free for the community.

• Murals become landmarks in the community.

• Murals define the cultural identity of a neighborhood or an entire city.

• Murals attract more artists, visitors and media coverage for the area.

So you say, hey, that’s just murals and of course murals won’t gentrify, they’re just a painted wall. Well, in Cleveland, a developer is starting to put small amounts of money into flipping homes, yet maintaining both a quality standard and a low price point for rentals.

We must take away all the barriers for people to build, yet give barriers that provide for easy access, basic safety, shared prosperity, and easy growth. When our places die, we need to be able to pick up the pieces ASAP and make something new. We need to let whomever wants to come in do so, but it needs to be a WE effort, not a ME or THEY effort. It’s great that some culture has been preserved in some areas, but what about current events and life. Can we make sure people can continue to live in these new “prettified” areas.

Design is not just for the developer. Social justice is not just for the downtrodden. Place needs both to be.

Images Courtesy: Alyzza May

Red and black and white inexplicably invigorate me. I need that for what I’m about to share.

So, for those of you wondering, I did have a good time at my class reunion. Here’s the handful of us who came (btw, we were in a hybrid space, but I had to sit outside because people couldn’t seem to keep the garage doors up to make it hybrid).

That image of #45 behind my head is supposed to be conveying him as a pig. The place is called the Pig Pounder.

And of course, I introduced Les to one of my family’s all-time favorite seafood restaurants, Harbor Inn Seafood in Burlington.

A wooden fish on a wall with the words Harbor Inn Seafood carved in black, Les seated in a booth in a denim shirt waving at the camera, a plate of delectable popcorn shrimp and catfish

And we stayed and ate at one of the most baller, yet green and air purified hotels in town, Proximity Hotel

The green luxury of the Proximity Hotel and PrintWorks Bistro in Greensboro, NC

We even had time to check out Reconsidered Goods, which has been hyped as one of the best craft thrift stores and in turn is one of the best thrift stores period.

Scenes from Greensboro’s craft reuse store, Reconsidered Goods

And of course, we stopped by my mom’s so she could fill us full of cake, with a side of caution against eating too much of it. I’ve always loved calling North Carolina home, even if I don’t always feel welcome in it.

Yes, I’m starting a trend, when I can, to stop by and snap a picture on each end of the VA/NC border.

And of course, I thought it would be easy 9 years ago to just dump her and her wealth of community, calm, and yes, judgments and find all the relief in the promised land of DC. However, in these 9 years, with a brief stop in Kansas City, I’ve been troubled with a deficit of community.

When you see that I’m going to be on panels like on tomorrow (Thursday 7/10/2024) with the Othering & Belonging Institute. (PLEASE REGISTER AND WATCH!)

Or listen to the podcast

https://open.spotify.com/embed/show/42B2Nv3X0Ar831SXLmQSeR

Or watch/listen to my many speeches and podcast interviews over the years

I don’t blame you for not understanding how I can still get so depressed that I write these kind of messages on my Twitter account (yes, I do support deadnaming this site)

Well, I think the key words are the DC urbanism space. I had this fantasy writing the early versions of this newsletter and blog posts in 2010 in my room at my mom’s house, at a tender millennial age of 25 that I would be able to write myself into not just proximity to Metro, but a thriving community full of all my favorite foods.

What I’ve realized over the past 14 years is that I can write. I can even craft. But I can’t control people.

Hence, my community starvation. Here’s more of what I mean, some of which I shared in the thread and some of which I’ve shared here for you.

Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about bills, but the months that I did I’m recovering from. Yes, I’m bitter that it’s come to me yet again having to leave the industry for employment, even though I adore my new job and the culture they’ve built and being able to use my muscles there.

And of course all the fiber art I do and I realize that in another life, where Metro was already at my front door, I would have been a master sewist and crocheter and editor in another space years ago. 

But what hurts is the last two years happened and it left me financially and emotionally broken.

For clarity, this is a regional problem. My NC, GA, and other urbanists in southern and western states always come through. Baltimore, you’re exempt too. 

But DC and a few select mentors, it’s a different story.

And others recommending me get into stuff that doesn’t end well or never ends well just for a check. Y’all should know me better by now. And just because this is always how its done doesn’t mean it’s going to work in this new normal.

And we need real honest community right now. And some of y’all are going to need me, when all these shitty schemes fall down and you need someone. But, I’m tired of only hearing from y’all when I’m palatable or when you’re in trouble.

Everyone else, thank you for still rocking with me. I’m working on getting the book, podcast, and newsletter up and running again for the fall. But I will need to hire and I will make that announcement when the money and the hire are set.

So here I am. In a world that’s becoming more repressive, I need the kind of community I can call at 3 am. When I was in the ER yesterday (for what we know is high blood pressure and possibly other things), I had all of my close folks on text, but I worried about the money I was losing taking off the afternoon. Yet, those folks were all reassuring me that everything would be ok.

I need more of that kind of community that doesn’t constantly remind me that I didn’t get here in time to enjoy the Obama years, struggle through my English Basement, and be able to cash out into a rowhouse anywhere in the legal boundaries of the District of Columbia. I need people who instead of scoffing at my car (and their own, think of all the people they leave behind when they argue over the semantics of what is public transit.

I need fish that tastes like its breaded with love, not dishwater. I need to feel all my feelings, unlike the person who told me without telling me when I was in a moment of crisis that I should join them in dissociation. I need my craft with a healthy dose of talking about our reality and not just putting it in a box of politics that might as well be making spooky ghost sounds like one of those fake Scooby Doo ghost villains.

So, this summer, on my newly ungentrified proverbial front porch, I’m searching for my real one.

Can you help me find it? And keep my blood pressure down and out of the ER too? Keep me from the kind of treatment June Jordan got in the architecture space?

Until next time,

Kristen

I have always owed a great debt to the work of Sara Zewde, especially the usage of the term black urbanist and talking about black urbanism. Zewde is currently a principal at Asakura Robinson a designer at the Seattle-based firm GGN and in 2010, published her MIT graduate thesis, Theory, place, and opportunity: black urbanism as a design strategy for the potential removal of the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans.

When I started this page, she had the only reference I could find online to the concept of black urbanism, especially as an architectural vernacular (style). Later on, fellow planner and blogger Pete Saunders addressed the term here and here. These authors have provided an African continent-centered focus on black or African urbanism. The most compelling chapter I’ve found in a recent Google search to see if other writers had used the term in recent years. Somehow I missed this chapter in Adam J. Bank’s  2006 book Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground.

I especially want to draw attention to Melvin Mitchell’s theories which are highlighted in the chapter, which I’ve taken a snapshot of below:

With this being said, and with the new political environment that we are facing, what’s next for black urbanism? I’d like to take a stab at naming a few things that need to happen:

Insist Black buildings and Black neighborhoods (and other ethnic and poor and marginalized neighborhoods) are just as deserving of historic preservation as others. While it saddens me that so many of the historic Victorian and Warder row-homes here in DC are so expensive, at least they are still standing in their present form. Additionally, the modern homes in the wealthier Black areas of Chicago are just as worthy as anything Frank Lloyd Wright has built. If we can keep the D.C Chinatown and even enhance it by building the archway, we can also prioritize historic structures even as we densify. Likewise, being mindful  (again)that black urbanism is also an architectural vernacular. This gets back to Mitchell’s ideas. I will say that strategically placed public buildings like the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture can be culturally sensitive and still help the black community, even though they were built for primarily white institutions.

Create and honor homeownership or long-term leases, as well as create shopping centers and service plazas that service all income levels. As much as I’d love a certain bullseye-clad big box store to be a bit closer to my home, I’d like it even better if we had neighborhood businesses that are smaller, more focused sections of the department store, such as a stationary store, or grocery or clothing. Neighborhood businesses that are co-ops or otherwise under less pressure for profit and more pressure to create livelihoods and provide good service. Likewise, continuing to promote and provide home purchasing and renovation services, as well as a wide variety of rental options for multiple budgets.

Push for the restoration of the traditional public school system, and turn the charter system into an alternative educational mechanism. I get it, charters promise parents more control and you can do things in charters that the regular public instruction doesn’t allow (like boarding schools, religious instruction, etc.). However, nothing is stopping a group of parents from creating extracurricular education groups for their children, even in marginalized areas. This is where the new charter apparatus would come in, by providing supplemental funding for programming outside of the classic school day, as well as forming a coalition with other adult and child social service providers. I think we need to push for a strong public education system and we need to focus our own extracurricular activities into ensuring that all children have opportunities for after school art, sports, and extra career and trade education. We need our youth to know they can be creative and they can create a new future out of the ashes.

Acknowledge climate change, especially the kind done by fracking,  regular oil pipelines. mining and even landfills near residential areas. I feel like this will be the one thing that the administration has pushed that will affect everyone and potentially exterminate us. So many black communities have battled living near factories, landfills, and other toxic waste for years and many lives have been lost silently to cancers and other diseases. 

File civil suits for every constitutional amendment or social issue violation that happens. I’ve been kicking money back to the ACLU for years and I’m going to increase that donation to them and the Southern Policy Law Center. Also, not just court cases, but standing up for all kinds of marginalized people and recognizing that there are many successful kinds of lifestyles for adults, children and families and creating communities that allow for diverse lifestyles and cultures, without pushing the supremacy or harm of one or the other.

Being careful that we make it clear online when we are speaking our opinion, being satirical or using facts. Yes, facts still exist, and so does opinion. I want to do my best to only spread ideas as ideas that I think better society and make it clear where facts come from.

Recognizing that activism for black folks and other marginalized people does not disqualify a person from professional or political practice or office. Activism is also a form of tactical urbanism. Recognizing that people of color and marginalized folks are going to be even angrier and oppressed and the microaggressions and outright neoliberalism and the systemic classism, racism, and homophobia are going to be worse. Don’t be that person in your planning or architectural practice, your pursuit for good governance or internally with your friends and colleagues.  Understand fully or try to understand the righteous anger and/or the burden of practice, especially against oppressive systems.  Constantly check yourself. Also, there’s fine line between a practice that is rooted in cultural vernaculars and only being the voice for that culture. Let’s be mindful if and when we choose to token and know that while it can be necessary, it can also be just as harmful. Also, having a culturally-sensitive urbanism doesn’t exclude or excuse anyone, if practiced properly. 

And if you are marginalized, rail against the system, but also tap into your creative side. If we had better, more sustainable systems, we could abandon the old ones causing us harm. I know for many of us, we just want to survive or get a piece of the pie. But what if we knew how to bake our own pies and could share? Forgive yourself and forgive those who are evil. You don’t have to forget, but you will need all that energy for the new creations and new worlds we are walking into. Let go of the shame of the words of the oppressor and remember they are wrong and you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a purpose.  Don’t do things that turn you into the oppressor. Teach or find someone willing to teach others how to respect cultural tradition and vernacular. Oh, and this is the part where I type SELF-CARE, SELF-CARE, SELF-CARE, SELF CARE…in all caps and repeatedly.

Finally, don’t give up. We will survive someway and somehow, as we always have as a people. Even if that means we are a people in exile.

I’m Kristen. Six years ago, I started blogging here to make sense of the built environment around me. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can find out more about me at my main website, www.kristenejeffers.com. Support me on Patreon.

This is a companion bibliography, reference sheet, and toolkit to the work I’ve built over a decade, which reflects my journey to a black queer feminist practice and ethic. 

Just over a decade ago, I was a curious curator and voracious reader of thought around urban planning, architecture, public health transportation, and other elements that govern how humans create and maintain societies. Plus,  I was someone starting the process of decomposing my Christian faith, decolonizing my thoughts around my ethnicity and nationality and way of making a living and learning my sexuality and gender identity were not as straightforward as I once believed.

I am using this page  to provide you with resources and books to understand and practice urbanism from this perspective, especially if you too share intersections with these identities.

 This is a living document, which means I will add and subtract as I see fit and find that resources and books have changed and updated and I ask that if you choose to share it, please note that it came from Kristen Jeffers, The Black Urbanist.

If you want to join me on a more guided journey with these and other resources, the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School is re-launching soon.  Join my newsletter list to find out more information on our relaunch date.

However, you can be part of our pilot groups, one for Black, Indigenous and others who experience being marginalized as  People of Color that’s free-of-charge and one for those who would consider themselves allies, accomplices and who otherwise don’t identify as a marginalized person of color, by pledging at least $40 monthly on Patreon.

You can also support this work with a one-time donation/tip via Venmo, or  Cash App. Plus resources with an asterisk (*) are affiliate links.

If you are a member of the press and you would love to get my expert commentary on deadline, you can reach me at (301) 578-6278.

You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,  and LinkedIN.

More About Me

Kristen E. Jeffers (she/her)  is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Black Urbanist multimedia platform, as well as an author, textile artist and designer, urban planner and activist.  She holds a Master of Public Affairs focused on community and economic development from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and a Bachelor of Arts in communication with a concentration in public relations from North Carolina State University. She has presented at the annual gatherings of the Congress for New Urbanism, YIMBYTown, Walk Bike Places, CityWorksXpo, APA Virginia, NACTO and to communities around the US and Canada, using her personal story to illustrate what land use and planning really means and really does, plus encourage practitioners, both young and old in best practices. She is a Streetsblog Network member and has also contributed articles to CityLab, Greater Greater Washington, [Greensboro] News & Record, Yes! Weekly, Grist, Next City, Better! Towns and Cities, Triad City Beat,  Urban Escapee and Urbanful and appeared on several NPR affiliate stations (KCUR, WAMU and WUNC)  as a commentator and expert. 

Books

Purchase all Bookshop.org and support both me and independent booksellers They have e-books in addition to print*

Find any of these books on WorldCat in your closest local library

My Most Relevant Articles from The Last 10 Years of Running the Platform

Are There Really Too Many Planners in Certain Metro Areas?

The Continuous Quest to Mentally Cope With Modern Civic Life as a Young Black Woman Professional

How Do You Define Your City? And Does Your City Define Itself in the Same Way?

Building on Theories and Practice of Black Urbanism in Our New World

Questions to Ask (and Traps to Avoid) When Considering a Career in Placemaking

The Quest for a Forever Home in an Era of Mass Gentrification

Place in A Time of Terror and Inequality

Why Road Gentrification Is Good Gentrification

Putting Place and Experience Back Into Retail

Why We May Never Have the Right Words for the Places We Live

Things that Should Never Be in Driving Distance

Whose Suburbs are We Talking About Again?

Can We Let the People Gentrify Themselves?

The Privilege of Urbanism, The Democracy of Placemaking 

Everything I Learned About Place, I Learned on Campus

The Common Man’s Legacy in A City

Coming Back to the Streets, Coming Back to Action

The American Expat, In America

Does it Matter Who Owns the Corner Store?

The Creative Class: Off the Record and On The Money

The One Key Reason Those Scary Housing Discrimination Maps Are Still True

Are There Really No Things to Do for Young Black Professionals in North Carolina?

Podcasts 

Research Reports

Race, Space and the Poetics of Planning: Toward a Black Feminist Space-Making Practice —  Chandra Christmas-Rouse

Tools

***RESOURCES COMING SOON!***

Workshops

Speeches

Projects

I’m asking this question, in particular, this week, because last Sunday, November 10th, Sesame Street celebrated its 50th anniversary. To be honest, for the folks at Sesame Workshop, the production company behind the long-running show, have been celebrating all year. They came by NPR back in the summer to be interns and to perform at the Tiny Desk.

However, the article about all this coverage that really got my attention, was this one, The Unmistakable Black Roots of Sesame Street that ran on the Smithsonian magazine website.

In it, it talked about how they built the original set of Sesame Street to be modeled after the Bronx, Upper West Side, and Harlem, areas still solidly black in 1969. And the book Street Gang, which goes into the complete back story of the series up to its 40th anniversary in 2009, admitted that their original target was the “4-year-old inner-city black youngster”.

Which, once upon a time, that was me. We still lived in the center city at the time. After taking my dad to work at the school maintenance department, but before my first nap or a trip to bible study or the grocery store or the mall, depending on the day, I’d catch the 9 am airing. Then, on some days, just as my dad’s co-workers would deliver him home, I’d be waiting right for him at the door as I was glued to the 4 pm edition, on days my mom hadn’t decided to turn on Oprah and see what was going on on her show.

I couldn’t get enough of the songs, and the fluffy and feathery Muppets. And yes, the people on the show looked like the mix of people I saw outside. I even can trace my urbanist sensibilities to seeing people laughing and smiling on a stoop that was supposed to be dirty.

My blocks were in North Carolina, so blocks look more like a Long Island suburban street, but nevertheless, this show seemed like it was talking just to me. I’ve carried my foot-sized Big Bird push with me since the crib.

Even today, as it’s gone mostly behind HBO’s paywall with classic episodes airing on PBS , the show continues to include social commentary in the midst of basic childhood lessons. Like that pinball machine. 

Especially watching the 40th season opener from 2009 with a pre (outside of Broadway) fame Lin-Manuel Miranda as they troll gentrification and still teach the very real concepts of migration and habitats in the animal kingdom, as well as the very human concept of community and friendship was priceless. They’d already failed in the early 90s to add a more “upscale” element to the street, with Around the Corner. Even then, the block was seen as being open to everyone, not in-spite of everyone. Big Bird wasn’t arrested and his feathers fluffed when he was seen in front of the new hotel around the corner.

Meanwhile, that season 40 opener is the one where my forever first lady Michelle Obama first showed up at 123 Sesame and helped Elmo and Big Bird, and a typical-to-the-show mixture of Muppets and kids, plant some seeds, that later grew into talking Muppet veggies. Plus all our human favorites from the old days, in their twilight years, plus some of the newer, younger faces were there as well.

Even as I fast-forwarded back to a show from earlier this year, in this new HBO-era of the series, the show still packed it’s punch, despite most of the adult authority figures being either white-presenting humans or BIPOC in costumes or in the mouth of a worm (literally), the show only being 30 minutes long (with supposedly more money to spend on programming now that it’s on HBO first), I also don’t like that there’s a parental advisory rating on the first season episodes and so many of those episodes aren’t available, even with so much of the back catalog being on-demand on HBO.

This gets me to something that’s been cooking in my head for a while and I’m thrilled to use Sesame Street as my example for this principle— Certain things cannot be gentrified. 

Things like food, tv-shows, music— basically anything that’s cultural and in theory, can be picked up and moved around, no matter how high the rent, property taxes or the mortgage get. I know people love to think artists and gay people raise rents just by their own bodies, but honestly, that’s speculation. Just like cultural appropriation, colonization, all the isms can apply to just about anything. Just like urban renewal, redlining and flat out arson, usury, theft, rape, and murder are at the root of many traumas that gentrification sometimes causes and sometimes amplifies.

Plus, what kid doesn’t like Big Bird. What adult doesn’t like Big Bird. Yes, certain other Muppets that shall not be named, red ones especially, can be annoying. But for every annoying Muppet and streaming service price tag, I can still turn on PBS and at least once a day for 30 minutes, I’m welcome on the stoop at 123 Sesame Street, tattered old Big Bird in hand.

Again, no Sesame Street isn’t gentrified. Digitized? Yes. Capitalized and Paywalled? Yes. Still funny and cute and fun? Absolutely.

Speaking of Lin-Manuel Miranda— here are his recent thoughts on what makes art political and how he’s incorporated gentrification into his work. 

How one of my other favorite kid shows, which addressed neighborhood dynamics, fits into this modern political scene.

And how a couple of other New York brownstones have been models for other TV sets.

I think that there’s merit in speaking directly to Black Americans who are descendants of folks who were enslaved, especially in the United States. I don’t agree with limiting immigration and I don’t agree with preventing or the criticism in which we give to folks with recent continental connections for portraying our Stateside experiences on film. However, we have to be mindful of our classism and how all of us have endured unique oppressions, sometimes from our own skin folk, sometimes from a litany of colonizers.

This is just heartbreaking, how we are just finding out that this former black woman mayor of Harford, Connecticut died.

I’m dabbling back into my Twitter threads, because I want this community here to grow larger and sometimes, a hot take is needed. Here’s one on the BART sandwich incident and what Maryland and Virginia should be spending money on transportation-wise to aid in DC’s growth. 

—Check out the job board. I’m working on a job board improvement. Look out for that soon. Also, let me know if you get any of the jobs or opportunities listed on the board. 

—Buy a bag or t-shirt from The Black Urbanist  store or greeting cards from Les’s Lighthouse. Yeah, the holidays are here, folks. And these are great black queer woman-owned gifts you can give this season!

— Let me come and talk to you about killing your civic-inferiority complex Book me for a lecture, workshop or both.  Also Les, my wonderful life partner and sales director is great at hyping you up, making you laugh and helping you or your organization make radical changes in your life and health Book her too. And listen to my wonderful podcast mentee’s The Crossroads Podcast, which also discusses environmental issues from a black woman’s perspective.

–Finally, encourage others to join you in making a monthly pledge on Patreon. As we close out 2019 and close out the decade over the next year, I’m going to be even more visible and visible about what it takes to do the work. I’ve revamped the levels and I’m still adding more giving options.  I’m grateful to all of you. Every day is a day of Thanksgiving and I reclaim that day at the end of the month in the spirit of love, liberation, and hope.

I’ll be back next week to dig even deeper on gentrification and clear up how I see it, as my views have evolved, especially as my home state has started to encounter it. Just like Sesame Street.

Thanks for reading! You can get these messages in your email, support the platform financially on Patreon (you know, be my “Viewers Like You”) and get special bonuses; follow the platform on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and Instagram and if you missed some of the previous weeklies, check out the archives.

Welcome to Kristen’s Gentrification Defying Summer Vacation log! This summer, well, until about the middle of August, I will be taking a break from the podcast and livestreams starting tomorrow, when my season finale podcast finally posts after technical difficulties. This week, some fun at Capital Pride in the midst of another week of bad news.

Yes, it’s true. I really did ride a CaBi with Les and her DDOT colleagues in the Capital Pride Parade. And yes, I wore the red shirt, which I was tickled that also lined up with the call to wear red in solidarity with the White House protest for Palestine. And yes, I also nearly passed out in Thomas Circle, hopped in the DDOT truck, and came to enough to wave my Progress Pride fan at the folks further down 14th Street NW and on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Watch highlights from the parade here.

And today not only did I get to pick up some of the better merch from the Pride festival, I got to catch up with a lovely old friend and colleague, Wanona Satcher as her company Mahkers Studio’s tiny home was highlighted in the HUD Innovative Housing Showcase. Here’s me on the way to do all of that. I forgot to get a picture at the Mall.

And between all of that Saturday night after we rested from the parade, we walked down to Pride on the Pier, which while nice to have a Pride party in our front yard, the lack of Progress Pride Flags on the pier and any Pride flags on the main Wharf promenade was disturbing and serves as yet another reason, of many, that folks are staying away from the bigger Pride festivities as those festival only want to party and not want to aid in advancing the wellbeing of all queer people, not just the wealthiest and most connected to state power.

What I am most excited about is that everything that was done, from the White House Red Line, to the Dyke March, to the regular Capital Pride march, went smoothly. Yes, some folks were booed. And yes, those were the preachers and the Zionists. But unlike in many places globally, we got to practice pleasure activism as much as direct activism for just one day, without life-altering violence. Now, I get to spend my summer reading and cuddling with the best plushy friends a person could ask for.

Until next time,

Kristen

Previously, I’ve written about why words matter. Especially when we talk about what’s a town and what’s a suburb. Once again, people are people and places are places. So how should we talk about places?

First of all, if you have a city, with either two large cities, that are economic powers surrounded by several small towns with less economic power, then you have a metropolitan area. If you have a larger town with economic power, with smaller towns around it, you have a micropolitan area, the Census Bureau’s new word for smaller areas of concentrated economic power. A farm is still a farm.

I know, sounds technical right? And maybe a bit harsh. After all, one of my good urbanist friends reminded me that economically, some larger metros are justifiably suburbs. Yet, we’ve never really been good at this labeling the places we live anyway. Are all our streets streets? Or are they really roads, highways, boulevards, avenues,courts, ways, alleys, etc. Oh and some of those alleys aren’t really alleys. And when do you know when a road is a street? What if the road turns into a freeway after that traffic signal up ahead. Or is it a stoplight.

Anyway, thanks to our nuances in language by region, we don’t all use the same names for the places we live. And that’s ok. As long as you don’t make the racial euphemism mistake, you are ok by me. However, it’s worth checking out the thoughts of Ben Ross, the author of the new book Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism. This excerpt published on Greater Greater Washington has a lot to say on the many euphemisms we use in urban planning and other more casual conversations about place.:

In Briarcliff, New York, a spurned builder once wrote, the aim of zoning is to guarantee “that each newcomer must be wealthier than those who came before, but must be of a character to preserve the illusion that their poorer neighbors are as wealthy as they.” 

Such frank talk about land use is rare indeed. If you don’t want something built, an honest statement of objections invites defeat in court. If you do, plain speaking is unlikely to convince the zoning board, and it risks offending any neighbors who might be open to a compromise. 

Each party has an illusion to maintain, so words become tools of purposeful confusion. One side directs its linguistic creativity into salesmanship. Rowhouses turn into townhomes; garden apartments grow parked cars in the gardens; dead ends are translated into French as cul-de-sacs. The other, hiding its aims from the world at large and often from itself, has a weakness for phrases whose meaning slips away when carefully examined.

I couldn’t have written a better paragraph. Check out the rest of that excerpt here for more euphemism fails.

Another great wordsmith of place is my friend and colleague Steve Mouzon. When asked to not write so technically about the urban to rural transect and its effect on how people chose to walk, he went back and crossed out the technical language and added new, more concise and friendly language. Need I mention that this article is about a concept he calls Walk Appeal,  one of his many catchy phrases that help us all learn about how to live in and create better places.

I end with one more reminder for all of us to be literary when it comes to describing people and places. Add as many adverbs and adjectives as you need. Say what you really mean, even if it is slightly mean. It’s better than empty euphemisms, with meanings that come back to haunt you later.

Judging debate with my CNU NextGen Colleagues in Buffalo, NY, June 6, 2014.

So let’s just say the remainder of CNU and my weekend was a whirlwind. But it was fun. And for those of you sick of me using the words CNU, be patient, I’ll be done by Thursday, and you’ll have that podcast I promised last week, On the Privilege of Travel, for your listening pleasure as well. You may see a CNU-themed video on Friday, but that’s all. Tomorrow I’ll answer both an open letter that brings up valid criticisms, as well as address the lingering diversity elephant (bison for Buffalo?) in the room. For now, click here for the Storify and we’ll see you bright and early tomorrow for our next post.

(In the meantime, check out North Carolina Placebook, for a brand-new explainer driven format).

Walmart store in Chicago’s West Loop by Flickr user Ifmuth

Yes, Joe the Trader is still my friend. Why? Because he has good cookies.

My silliness notwithstanding, the decision made yesterday by Trader Joe’s to not invest in Greensboro for the second time is not surprising. Honestly, it’s not the politics that I feel drove them away. It’s the inability to take risks. Stores like that, you know, the ones that have cheapish stuff, but a somewhat upscale atmosphere, I believe are only taking advantage of what they think youth or boomers with disposable income or some other magical unicorn person will buy and will buy repeatedly. Unfortunately, magical unicorns tend to not have strong political views or bank accounts that hover around or appear to hover around zero. Stores that don’t take risks don’t like cleaning up old parking lots or making sure even the folks who carry EBT cards have the opportunity to have shiny electronics or even just basic food items.

Walmart, however, goes directly after that market. We talk about the exploitation that they do, but there’s a degree of exploitation in the pretty but cheap store market too. They exploit the emotions of those of us who make just enough to spend at least $50-100 at Target each month, 60% of the cart being non-food items that may or may not be adult toys or pure junk. They make us feel better as a town when they show up promising more Salted Caramel Chocolate cookies for cheap. They allow us to buy more clothes, even though those clothes fall apart at the end of the season.

But back to Walmart. Not only have they gone into the High Point Road area and thrived, they are now going into Quaker Village, the one place many of us privately wanted Trader Joes to go, had they been willing to spend the funds to revamp the shopping center like the Walmart. But Walmart is the world’s largest retailer, so if it fails, then it’s no big deal. These other retailers, they aren’t as big as we think. Ask Harris Teeter. Yes, the bigwigs got golden parachutes in their deal with Kroger, but everyone else and the name itself took a hit. If it weren’t for Kroger understanding the impact of the name on the market, then there’s just one more “luxury” name gone away.

I think the lesson learned here is that sometimes, it doesn’t matter what your name is or what your perception is as a store. At the end of the day, it’s all about the bottom line, customers are just props to be lured in like the Pied Piper, with colorful patterned displays and cheap wine.

Just my two cents. After the word from our sponsors, other news:

The Black Urbanist and Placebook are powered by Bluehost. Learn more about Bluehost and how they can make your website dreams come true here. (Clicking that link and signing up for Bluehost sends some of the proceeds back to me. This is a way to help us keep the lights on and keep the news coming to you every weekday).

News from North Carolina

The Greensboro City Council has approved an operating agreement for the performing arts center, allowing the project to move forward.

How the ban on electronic devices at the Guilford County Courthouse is working, one month into the new regulation.

A profile of Bounce U, one of the successful businesses at Quaker Village being replaced by the new Walmart.

A newly formed committee in Wilmington will debate which road projects are worthy for a proposed $250 million dollar bond referendum.

Charlotte police are trying a more holistic and caring approach to the homeless community in the Uptown area. Additionally, several Charlotte businesses are still accepting Bitcoins.

Winston-Salem home prices are rising.

Raleigh City Council has officially started having lunchtime meetings. They are only work sessions though and not visible or open to the public.

This conversation is really about the media climate in the RTP area, but it’s really an oral history of RTP in the last ten years by a Durham native.

Buncombe County Commissioners have approved funding for the next iteration of Asheville Moogfest.

Asheville will fix the sidewalks in front of their Trader Joes and a new Harris Teeter.

Prompted by the Seeking Safety series by the Fayetteville Observer, the City of Fayetteville is cleaning up problematic properties.

News and Lessons from Elsewhere

Could Las Vegas reinvent car ownership?

Can Philly successfully combat gentrification with tax rate changes? Governing‘s analysis of the issue takes it beyond black and white. A perspective on it from a San Francisco fair housing leader.

Where it’s the hardest for the poor to make rent. These are the most expensive cities in the world (and NYC is not one of them).

Nashville really, really doesn’t want bus rapid transit.

Why Sweeden has fewer road deaths.

A reflection as Ross Capon steps down from running the National Association for Railroad Passengers.

What Walmart does when it commits to building urban.

And finally, do you agree that these are the things you learn from growing up in the South?