Hoods are relative. Everybody deserves a great place to live, with ease. We must stop making it so hard for so many to live well.
Hi all, this is The Black Urbanist with Kristen Jeffers. Monthly, I’ll be coming to you with reflections on why I choose dense urban places as a Black-disabled queer feminist from North Carolina (living in DC). I’ll also be going into why others don’t do so and how we all can change that. Plus, sometimes I’ll share relevant articles and some of my pop culture favorites. I also occasionally run advertisements, like the job one you’ll see below.
For those of you who have been regular readers, I want to thank you for your patience over the last few months as I’ve figured out how I want to operate going forward. Thanks to this new apartment move, a lot of things are starting to make more sense and that’s going to be reflected in how I write my newsletters going forward.
Additionally, I had this sitting in my drafts for several days, but losing my Dad’s youngest sister and one of my favorite aunts who was only 66 was so tough. We just had the homegoing service over the weekend and I spent the weekend in Greensboro for it. I’m happy I can be there for her my cousin, who is a new mom herself, and a couple of newsletters ago I shared my utter joy at being back home for the first time in years for her baby shower and seeing my aunt for the first time in a very long time, which ended up becoming the last time. And of course, seeing my own mom for the first time since the onset of COVID-19.
But, I press on back here in DC and I’m excited to be doing a webinar with the Congress of New Urbanism on Tuesday, October 11, at 12 p.m. Eastern. It’s free and you can register here! And if you see this after we’ve started, don’t worry, here’s the recording!
Additionally, until I reach a critical mass of paid email subscribers or receive more seed and grant funding to pay staff, I’ve decided to officially post monthly, unless I really have something to say. You’ll still get a lot of quality information, but I’ve realized that between my client work and making sure I prioritize my health, I still need more time to get my bearings.
So this week, you’ll get my story, on how I believe “the hood” is a relative state of being, a policy prescription on how Eastover could be improved equitably, and I have another job announcement! Plus, my going to the Janelle Monáe concert at the now-in-walking-distance Anthem just eats up every other pop culture reference I could have included,
And finally, yes, those I Am A Black Urbanist shirts are available, along with other promotional goodies. This is another key way to raise awareness about both our work and Black urbanism in the world! So now, let’s have some story time.
Storytime
If you know me in real life, you know I love a good story and so we open up our first section of the newsletter by setting a tone with one. This month, I set up this idea on why hoods are relative.
When my parents separated with the intent to divorce in 1995, they told me they would be moving into separate places. My mom wasn’t eager to keep our old house and instead opted for an apartment a few miles away.
However, there were apartments down the street and I asked why we couldn’t move into them. My parents told me that they were public housing and left it at that.
Of course, I would learn later all the stigmas of public housing especially the stigma and interesting history of that particular complex.
However, I knew it as the place with the cute roundabout that had all the nice smiling seniors. Yes, there was one block that was a shooting range sometimes, but the nice seniors loved seeing me ride my trike around the roundabout.
Plus, my dad was a known and respected member of the neighborhood. People weren’t going to mess with me.
But, times changed. And so do reputations.
By the time you read this, my old apartment in Oxon Hill, Maryland which I shared with Les for nearly five years and she inhabited for the entire 11 years she’s been a DMV resident, will be empty and the keys are turned in.
I’m sitting in our nearly empty living room on our last full day there at the beginning of this post. It’s in a neighborhood called Glassmanor and across from a major neighborhood shopping center called Eastover.
These areas were built for white families in the 1950s. The Eastover Mall even had a JC Penney and a Woodard and Lothrop, one of DC’s legacy regional department stores.
However, around the 1970s, the area became a Black and brown working-class neighborhood.
And yes, like many areas abandoned by “white flight,” it’s had a mixed history.
For me, it was a place to lay my head, with a growing love, and a place to nurture this business. Also, it’s where I created my care regime as we manage living with this current airborne pandemic and all other illnesses and troubles that are indicative of our modern world.
I’ll talk more in this week’s policy prescription about what I want to see happen to this area because it truly is just coming down to policy.
At this writing, I’ve lived in 12 different places, across Greensboro, Raleigh, Durham, Kansas City, Baltimore, and DC. All 12 places are worthy. Yes, even the ones that are poorer, smaller, or have some other issue.
Environmental justice is needed. And it can start with us remembering that all hoods are relative.
Policy Prescription
This section is a call-to-action for those of us actively engaged in the work, however that looks for you, but the key is that we are doing something and can use some encouragement to do the right thing.
This edition’s policy medicine is simple — build out this plan! If this plan had been enacted, my former neighborhood in Prince George’s County would have still been my neighborhood. What I wanted to save for this section is that once the neighborhood changed, all the typical things that happened in American Black neighborhoods, especially over the past 50 years, happened. Drug dependency. Undervaluing of homes. Devalued retail.
But none of it had to happen. In fact, the neighborhood is one of the most dramatic examples of how neighborhoods change and how hoods are relative.
As I alluded to in the storytime section, when it opened in 1955, Eastover was one of the first examples of suburban shopping. However, like similar shopping centers of its age, it languished, and tragic things began to happen there. Then, it was redeveloped in 1996, but not in a very sustainable way and so now we are another 30 years in the future, and it needs more help, both as a commercial center and to keep more tragedies at bay.
However, there could be a Metro station coming. With the favorable federal funding environment and the area being the preferred alignment for Metro’s next expansion (stay tuned for a future policy prescription with the Metro alignments I want DC to choose), this is the time to model a sustainable placekeeping and placemaking practice.
The blueprint is already there to provide housing subsidies, transportation improvements, and wraparound community services, by learning about similar initiatives in neighboring jurisdictions. I still see and hear of people having the same issues and challenges with transportation to the shopping center and access to grocery stores in this part of the region as if nothing has changed since this 2002 Washington Post article featuring a Black grandmother taking two buses to reach the center from her home just 1.5 miles away further into DC.
But will profit and lack of vision get in the way? I’m signing off on this prescription this week by challenging us to rethink this paradigm. Why do we make plans for neighborhoods, especially ones that will bring better outcomes, then never follow through? I challenge us, especially in positions of power, to follow through.
Links of Note
Here are a few links to things I saw this month that I felt like I should share!
— I love this Money Diary for keeping it real. I had these kinds of finances several times over my 20s and 30s but stopped short of losing my vehicle by choice and enlisting in the military
— I really enjoyed this interview on @Culture Study on being a working-class person of color in media making a piece of media examining just that.
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
This is where I gush on the pop culture that I’ve consumed across the month
I’ll save more of my thoughts living so close to amenities for my next newsletter, but it was great to walk down to one of my favorite venues, The Anthem, and see one of my all-time favorite artists (and my almost birthday twin) Janelle Monáe. Just like there’s an Emily King album for all my eras, there’s a Janelle one too and I adored seeing how she reinterpreted her AfroFuturist music in the current dystopia, with a dash of pleasure activism.
Before You Go
This is the section where we pay the bills. Ads live here, both ones that you can purchase, along with ways you can financially support me and others. In lieu of putting everything behind paywall, this section allows me to offset the basic costs of producing this version of the newsletter.
First and foremost, I’m grateful for those who have chosen to get a paid subscription and advertise in the past. However, realistically, this will be a monthly newsletter, especially as I have other client work and obligations elsewhere, along with being just short of realistically hiring again anytime soon. However, I do love having a space where I can share relevant things like my virtual CNU talk on my journey to Black queer feminist accessible urbanism. And I’ll be running this job ad for the November and December newsletters as a thank-you for their advertisement!
UC San Diego: Assistant Professor in Urban Studies and Planning
Apply link: https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03697
POSITION DESCRIPTION
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor working in the area of urban studies and planning, anticipated to begin July 1, 2024.
USP is a rapidly-growing department with strategic emphases on social and spatial justice; climate justice; and multinational planning. The selected candidate will be expected to contribute to our mission by building and maintaining a record of high-quality scholarship in transportation planning and/or spatial analytics; developing curriculum to meet department needs; mentoring and teaching graduate and undergraduate students, including teaching courses in quantitative methods; and engaging in university and public service to help build an equitable and diverse environment.
For applicants interested in spousal/partner employment, please visit the UC San Diego Partner Opportunities Program website: https://aps.ucsd.edu/recruitment/pop/index.html
Department:
https://usp.ucsd.edu
POSITION OVERVIEW
Salary range: A reasonable salary range estimate for this position is $109,600-$132,200. The posted UC Academic salary scales set the minimum pay as determined by rank and/or step at appointment. See the following table(s) for the salary scale(s) for this position: https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/2023-24/oct-2023-acad-salary-scales/t1.pdf.
The base salary range, from the salary table(s), for this position is $74,600-$97,200. “Off-scale salaries” and other components of pay, i.e., a salary that is higher than the published system-wide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions, qualifications, and experience. Additional UCSD salary information can be found here: https://aps.ucsd.edu/compensation/apo-salary.html
APPLICATION WINDOW
Open date: September 14, 2023
Next review date: Saturday, Oct 14, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.
Final date: Sunday, Mar 31, 2024 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.
QUALIFICATIONS
Basic qualifications (required at time of application)
A Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning or a closely related field, or one who is in the all-but-dissertation stage of earning the PhD.
Additional qualifications (required at time of start)
Must hold a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning or related field by start date of appointment as Assistant Professor.
The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.
Again thank you for being here and I’ll see you in November, possibly sooner!
Until next time,
Kristen