Takeaways from Annual Luncheon 2020: Part 1

Leading Change in… Economic and Community Development from within Neighborhoods

5 minute read 

The following is a summary of key takeaways from this Breakout Session during the virtual Annual Luncheon that took place on November 13, 2020. This session was led by Majora Carter, Eddie Hamilton, and Ed Henley III, and moderated by Gary Gaston. 

Engagement must be meaningful

For local economic and community development to be effective and sustainable, core decision-making and planning efforts must come from within neighborhoods. Engagement with and participation from community members must be meaningful for the entire project to be realized as planned. Majora Carter, Eddie Hamilton, and Ed Henley III all have extensive experience and critical perspective on how to channel equitable development and growth. They discussed the essentials for successful community participation and the role of history as it relates to community development today. 

Action #1: Provide meaningful collaboration opportunities for communities to engage with local development. 

It's about who gets to develop a community. When people from within the community are developing it, they are going to engage their neighbors, build relationships, and provide a space for connection. 

Opportunities for meaningful collaboration must directly discuss what type of power participants will have in decision-making and the anticipated impact of their efforts. Opportunities relating to economic development and local business activity are crucial because this can promote investment in community-identified resources that will ultimately lead to greater self-sufficiency. Additionally, these opportunities can blossom into economically diverse neighborhoods which can positively affect an entire community. 

The Boogie Down Grind in The Bronx is an example of economic investment driven by local residents. Owned by Majora Carter, this cafe provides the type of experience that founders used to have to leave the Bronx to experience. "People come here to engage in the act of community," Ms. Carter says of The Boogie Down Grind.

Ms. Carter, hailing from the South Bronx, opened the first hip hop themed coffee shop in the neighborhood, The Boogie Down Grind Café [from Medium.com]  

“We’re actually creating the infrastructure that concentrates poverty, and keeps it in that condition, as opposed to creating a much more economically diverse system where you have, you know, people of different economic and educational backgrounds, all from the same community, mind you, but you create the infrastructure that makes everybody feel welcome.”

— Majora Carter

Action #2: Build confidence among community members. 

How can we trust developers in our communities? Trust can start with knowing that developers and professionals external to communities will allow them to make decisions on projects as proof that their voices are listened to and their perspectives matter. However, getting to that point includes working with communities to build their personal confidence. Throwing community members into multimillion dollar projects without support is not necessarily setting them up for success. Rather, having them start on smaller projects to build their experience and expertise will allow them to have a larger impact on bigger projects. 

Design Your Neighborhood summer camp students assess their surrounding neighborhood where they are creating a vision for a street crossing

For developers, beyond community engagement sessions, go the extra mile and do a Health Impact Assessment for a project that outlines potential adverse neighborhood health impacts and recommendations for mitigating those effects. Then make changes to your project plan so that it does not negatively affect the community.

A tool that neighbors can use is the Neighborhood Assessment Toolkit (NAT) that be used to take notes that outline neighborhood assets and opportunities and guide developers to contribute positively to the community. 

Action #3: Invest more capital in Black communities that are under community control, particularly in North Nashville. 

After legacies of exclusionary zoning and redlining, capital is needed to even begin a conversation about equitable economic opportunity. These historical legacies of harm have been extensively studied in Nashville as well as elsewhere. For example, Dr. Catherine Ross published the Health Impact Assessment of the Atlanta Beltline and found changes in access and equity to trails and greenspace had major health benefits for residents.

Nashville has its own history of intentional highway construction cutting through Jefferson Street, a decision that had irreversible damage to the historical economic and culture center for Black Nashvillians. Currently, this is happening in the Bordeaux neighborhood of North Nashville where residents have been fighting landfill dumping and expansion since the 1970s. 

We can act on these issues together. A few ways to contribute to economic development are:

Councilwoman and J.U.M.P. Nashville CEO, Sharon Hurt, shows her HBCU pride when receiving her Friend of Public Space award.

1. Visit J.U.M.P. Nashville to donate to J.U.M.P.—a merchant partner organization group that specifically supports economic and community development on Jefferson Street in North Nashville. 

2. Support your local HBCU—they are not only deeply immersed in the local community, but they strive to keep higher education affordable for their students. Nashville alone has 4: Meharry Medical College, Tennessee State University, Fisk University, and American Baptist College.

3. Buy from Black-owned businesses and invest your money with Black-owned Banks. Visit Bank Black USA to make an informed decision about moving your own capital into Black-owned banks.

Ultimately, progress is sidelined until these historical acts of violence against Black, Indigenous, and people of color are addressed head on through direct funding and collaboration with organizations that have been resisting these harms. The people who know best about how to make the most immediate impact are those directly affected by it. 

“[The] George Floyd moment has caused a lot of people to kind of reassess things; but it takes more than a T-shirt and a slogan, it takes more than yellow lines on the street. They’ll paint right over those.  

We got to really commit ourselves to funding this properly and empowering the right people to do this. So, I think it’s a collaboration, it’s committee engagements, all those things that we know about. But who’s going to be in charge of it? That’s the real question.”

— Eddie Hamilton      

Do you know of any examples of Leading Change in Economic and Community Development from within Neighborhoods? Comment below! 

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Speaker Bios

Majora Carter is a real estate developer, urban revitalization strategy consultant, MacArthur Fellow and Peabody Award winning broadcaster. She is responsible for the creation and successful implementation of numerous economic developments, technology & green-infrastructure projects, policies and job training & placement systems.

Eddie Hamilton is a practicing pediatrician in Nashville since 1988. He is also a businessman and entrepreneur, mostly commercial real estate involving health care. Most recently, he started an organization in North Nashville called Career Path Equitable Development.

Edward Henley III is the founder of Pillars Development, a land use planning, management and development firm in Nashville. As a Principal and Project Executive, Edward has managed large-scale projects in surplus of $500 million to projects with budgets under $1 million. Edward studied at the University of Tennessee (UT), and graduated in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in Finance and Enterprise Management. He is a Civic Design Board Member. 

Gary Gaston is the CEO of the Civic Design Center and serves as Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Tennessee Knoxville College of Architecture + Design. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from UTK, and a M.Ed. in Community Development and Action from Vanderbilt University. Gaston helped lead numerous planning and design efforts for the Design Center, including its visionary The Plan of Nashville: Avenues to a Great City, published in 2005.

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Takeaways summarized by Gretchen Trast, Civic Design Center Research Fellow

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Jump to other Annual Luncheon Takeaways:

• Part 1: Leading Change in Economic + Community Development Within Neighborhoods

• Part 2: Leading Change through Diversity in Design Education and Practice

• Part 3: Leading Change by Celebrating Neighborhood Identity in the Face of Gentrification

• Part 4: Leading Change in Affordability through Transportation and Housing Advocacy

• Part 5: Leading Change in Safe Pedestrian Infrastructure for All