No city (or metro region) is defying gentrification. All of them are failing at it.
I feel that in my bones and soul when I step out of my creative studio and into a world where the train might be cancelled after I made the 15-20 minute walk to the station, and I can only get to McDonald’s on foot within 5 minutes.
A world where my younger cousins in school may not be valued because they’re Black, but maybe they have a good doctor, an amazing community recreation center, and someone to make their hair look dope? I know they probably don’t say dope for any reason anymore, but still, we are all aging and growing on this round planet with dwindling water together.
That’s why I decided to take cities back to school this fall and grade their performance!
I did a more qualitative measure of this back in 2018-2019, and now I want to put a number on this work, so you all can more easily measure your city’s progress and improve on areas that would be graded “needs improvement” on a traditional report card. A version of this report card is also in The Defying Gentrification Playbook.
I graded the six metros/cities I’ve lived in (Greensboro; Washington, DC; Baltimore; Kansas City; Raleigh; Durham) and four cities I would consider living in (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta)
I counted the core city elements and included adjacent counties if they behave as suburban satellite business districts and villages, not just the legacy city limits and their central business districts.
Still, my 13 rubric points for metro regions may not be your 13.
However, as a scholar of cities for nearly two decades and a multiply marginalized person as a regular human in cities for 40 years, I feel like my rubric covers everything.
I’ve created a JotForm survey to capture cities and specifically metro regions I haven’t been able to include in this series and to test the validity and reliability of my rubric so that this measure can be expanded. I also added a block so that you can tell me what I missed, so it can be added in.
My rubric is very US-centric, but a lot of what I’m grading is affected by US federal law. I’d love to see how a Vienna or Hong Kong or London would look in my metric. That’s where this survey comes in.
Take the survey.
Over the next few weeks, as I celebrate my tenth anniversary of dropping everything and moving from Kansas City to Washington, DC, out of my own volition, on the assumption that I could thrive in the District, I’ll share my personal grades of cities/regions I’ve lived in or frequently visited. Over time, I’ll update the grades based on what you’ve told me.
This is our bridge between our Black August series on what I can control as a Black queer feminist disabled urbanist, the elders that guide me spiritually, and the on-the-ground facts of what is and isn’t present in a city that tickles my Black queer feminist disabled urbanist spidey senses!
Now let’s get to those things I’m grading on!
What’s On The Report Card
Jotform will not let me give cities zeros in its automatic grade setting. It’s very similar to my retired middle school teacher mom, who always stopped her Fs in her classroom grades at a 60. Her logic is that a 0 is hard to recover from, but a 60 is fixable. 0.5 signals fixable, but needs fixing.
As I mentioned at the beginning, no city achieved a perfect score. The highest grade achieved was a 78, a low C, and the lowest grade was a 67, a high F. The average grade is a 73, which is a low D. Not failing, but barely passing. You’ll have to come back in subsequent weeks to find out which cities failed and why.
But I will tell you this week what I graded them on, in no special order of importance:
Art and creative spaces for all skill and desire levels
2- Both amateur and professional artists have somewhere to go that fulfills their need for creativity and a livelihood for their work.
1- Only amateur or only professional artists have somewhere to go to practice their art and craft. There’s also no real pipeline between the two types of artists, and professional artists are often not homegrown.
0.5- No art at all, at least not in visible spaces.
Thriving entrepreneurship and gainful employment are available to more than white, straight, abled, wealthy people.
2- Both thriving entrepreneurship and gainful (above a living wage based on the MIT calculator) employment are present in folks who aren’t straight, white, cis, male, and have family wealth
1- Only one or the other is present in non-straight, white, cis, male, and family wealthy folks. Tokens are made of the few people who stand out, because it’s not normal; it’s extraordinary.
0.5- Nobody is working or owning businesses besides the straight white cis male with family wealth. Or others are working, but for under a living wage.
Wraparound medical care
2- Yes, with a care center that’s not a hospital, with all specialties present or able to be referred in-house, an urgent care and pharmacy that are open 24 hours, and accept all insurances and genders.
1- Yes, the care center is there, but it’s not all inclusive of hours, specialties, genders, and insurances. Or there’s just a hospital.
0.5- No hospital, no care center.
Culturally competent non-medical hair and body care
2- You have hair salons for all textures, hair care for all textures in all of your beauty supply stores, and you have practitioners of all types of non-medical or quasi-medical body care sensitive to all skin types and tones and sizes.
1- You have these spaces, but they have documented issues with diverse hair types, skin tones, and body sizes
0.5- No spaces will even accept a non-white, skinny, straight-haired person into their establishments
Food that provides both joy and basic nutritional needs in all neighborhoods
2- The food is fun and nutritious
1- The food is fun or nutritious, not both
0.5- There’s no food at all. This is not a food desert; this is apartheid.
Public transit exists for more than just paratransit users
2- Public transit of all types runs for 24 hours a day
1- Public transit exists, but outside of paratransit, there are restrictions on its timing, where it takes people, and what type of vehicles/trains there are.
0.5- Even disabled folks can’t get transportation
Spiritual spaces of all faiths that affirm and delight in Black, disabled, feminist and/or queer lives
2- All faiths have somewhere to go where their gender, sexual orientation, skin color, size, national origin, and their politics are affirmed and loved in the pursuit of good morality or a divine presence. These places also honor that there are different faiths, or lack thereof, and that’s ok. These places respect a gray area, but have clarity on right and wrong that doesn’t dehumanize people.
1- Some houses of faith behave like the above, but they are few and far between, making it harder for people to plug in and for the communities to have a positive impact on the community.
0.5-Houses of faith are all hateful, dogmatic, and even actively terrorizing those that don’t believe in their tenets.
Schools that affirm Black children K-12, no matter their ability level or perceived behavior.
2- Every school, no matter who runs it or how much that might put a target on their backs, believes that Black children can thrive. This investment in Black kids reaps across all children, as in many schools, they are the most marginalized.
1- Only a handful of schools, and they are ones you have to apply to and/or pay for, are affirming of Black children.
0.5- No schools affirm Black children, and they may be terrorizing them and contributing directly, without shame, to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Bookstores and libraries that affirm all authors and all readers.
2- Specialized bookstores and libraries exist, and the regular ones honor books that aren’t written by white, straight, cis, and male authors.
1- Only specialized bookstores and libraries exist, or the regular ones are hostile to readers that aren’t white, cis, straight, or male.
0.5- No bookstores or libraries exist at all, except for maybe an aisle in Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, or Dollar General
Parks, playgrounds, waterfronts, and other natural resources/outdoor activities are not closed off to the public.
2- These resources and activities are free and open to the public.
1- These outdoor resources have a price tag, or they are partially operated by private entities.
0.5- They don’t exist at all or are all privatized with no kind of public access
Black, LGBTQ, disabled, feminist, and other community centers and community events.
2- All community centers and events understand that communities overlap and could need support services and culturally competent activities and vendors. They also provide safety for their primary audience of people, while being welcoming.
1- Community centers and events for specific groups exist, but they don’t serve others or understand intersectional identities or the need for core community safety.
0.5- No community centers at all
Basic housing that doesn’t exceed 30% of one’s income at the poverty level and for those under the area median income.
2- Housing that meets and exceeds these standards, happily and fully.
1- Housing that meets these standards, but begrudgingly and with an outside emphasis on mixed-income areas and market rate areas, without ensuring those who need housing and have no or low income are housed.
0.5- People who can pay for housing are unhoused, and of course those who can’t are unhoused by default.
A way to get out of town that’s not your personal vehicle (if you even have one).
2- You have an airport that flies internationally, a train station that can take you to all corners of your country and possibly into others, and you have rental cars, rideshares, bikeshares, and trails connected to other cities.
1- You have a handful of the above, but not everything
0.5- You have none of this besides private vehicles
What else stood out with these cities and their initial grades
Most cities had perfect scores on the following measures:
* Art and creative spaces for all skill and desire levels
* Culturally competent non-medical hair and body care
* Spiritual spaces of all faiths that affirm and delight in Black, disabled, feminist and/or queer lives
* Bookstores and libraries that affirm all authors and all readers.
* Parks, playgrounds, waterfronts, and other natural resources/outdoor activities not closed off to the public.
This is not surprising in that these are the easiest things for any city to provide, often without political pushback, although some libraries are under fire for being so diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
This is also in line with how movements and lifestyle changes that emerged and became more mainstream during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic have affected and stuck with certain sectors of society, like houses of faith and arts spaces.
No city scored above 0.5 on housing, because most cities, even the most progressive ones in the spaces above, meet the standard that warrants a 1. This is a measure I am most looking forward to your feedback on. Same with community centers. I’ve heard some community centers really struggle with how to be in community and properly handle conflict resolution and intersectional identity. This might actually go down because of things you share with me.
In the meantime, Greensboro, my beloved hometown, is up first on a deep dive analysis. I’ll be sharing its scores and sharing specific places that fill in the gaps, along with city-specific ways the gaps that aren’t filled can be filled.
Your city might be a failure now, but by the end of this, it will be a winner!
Before you go…
I’m bringing classifieds back! All you need to know about how this will work, plus an order form, is right here in the application. All ads will follow my announcements in this section of the newsletter and can start running as soon as the next newsletter. I also have a solid editorial calendar in place through the end of the calendar year, so we can talk about ideal placement too!
I am currently in Greensboro for a panel on my colleague and friend Marrianne LeGrecco’s book on food justice in Greensboro, Everybody Eats. We’ll be at Scuppernong Books on Elm Street this afternoon from 4-6 pm.
If you want my guidance on anything, especially on how to respond to ads in the classifieds, I’m booking 90-minute strategy sessions! This is a great way to have me help you plan something, namely your career or funding strategy, and they are rebookable!
Thanks to everyone who came to the inaugural Making New Fantasies: A Defying Gentrification Workshop, which we decided to do on every third Thursday as a virtual journaling workshop around processing what cities do and don’t do for us. Registration is free, and you can register at this link. Join us in September if you want encouragement to write your own stories and make your own plans to make your community better.
Get The Defying Gentrification Playbook full-color PDF for just $19.99
Finally, for one last time, grade your city!
Until next time,
Kristen
Get full access to Defying Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers at theblackurbanist.substack.com/subscribe
