Review of Majora Carter’s Reclaiming Your Community
By Ann Mayhew | February 24, 2022
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
BOOK VALUE
In Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One, real estate developer and community organizer Majora Carter shares her vision for a new way to do community development. “I want to broaden the idea of who should do development and expand an approach that creates reasons for emotional and economic wealth creation in low-status communities, designed to retain talent, and not repel it.”
Writing from both research and personal experience as a South Bronx native and resident, Carter explains how people in low-status communities—places where “inequality is assumed by those who live there and by everyone on the outside looking in”—view success stories as those that culminate in moving away to a different community. “Public policies, internal and external attitudes and biases, and the built environment of low-status communities actively encourage a crucial portion of the population to measure their personal success by how far they get away from the community they were born and raised in,” she writes.
Carter calls out the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors and “poverty-level economic maintenance” development for maintaining the status quo. These grant makers, corporate funders, agencies, organizations, and businesses, she argues, exist to serve a state of persistent inequality.
Through research, Carter saw a discrepancy between what high schoolers in her South Bronx neighborhood believed the community needed and what sort of assets the community they want to live in as an adult would have. A talent-retention approach to community development seeks to ensure that the community features young people aspire to—coffee shops, family restaurants, and nice parks, among others—are developed by local community members and real estate developers, in addition to places such as affordable housing, health clinics, and nondescript community centers.
Real estate developer, community organizer, and author Majora Carter.
Reducing this “brain drain” is essential, Carter argues, for a future in which residents see their communities as valuable places with “day-to-day examples of success,” consumer spending that stays within the community, longer-term reinvestment resources, and opportunities for wealth creation. “Gentrification doesn’t start when you see middle-class white people, cute cafes, and doggie daycares in formerly poor communities of color or even when predatory speculators smell the blood of an easy victim,” she explains. “It starts when people in low-status communities believe that there is no value there.”
Carter asserts that, when the highest achievers stay, more residents are prompted to recognize the value in their community, and she notes that wealth-building programs related to credit repair, homeowner stabilization, and local business development can build up a community without displacement. “I practice an approach to real estate development that increases economic diversity in low-status communities from the inside out,” she writes.
Reducing this “brain drain” is essential, Carter argues, for a future in which residents see their communities as valuable places with “day-to-day examples of success,” consumer spending that stays within the community, longer-term reinvestment resources, and opportunities for wealth creation.
Throughout the book, Carter interweaves her research and arguments with stories of her own challenges, successes, and failures as a project-based community developer. These experiences include developing the Boogie Down Grind Café and a park along the Bronx River, and founding and leading Sustainable South Bronx as a Black woman in a white-male-dominant industry. She also shares examples of other inspiring community development projects, such as Jumpstart Philly, the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, and a community group pursing a development project in the Jane and Finch neighborhood in Toronto.
Carter acknowledges that the solutions she proposes “may be considered controversial by some because they openly embrace the tools of capitalism without doctrine or quixotic ideals meant to replace capitalism.” In the book, she often returns to the idea that resistance to her work is fueled by a resistance to change in general—as opposed to her detractors simply having different interpretations of gentrification, community, and culture. The depiction of her “fan club,” as she euphemistically calls her detractors, feels dismissive; they are often portrayed as angry people who refuse to engage with Carter or to express themselves.
One comment from a detractor stands out: “‘[Self-gentrification] means when people like you grow up and go to college and then come back to stay,’” said the community member. “‘What about all the other people that can’t do that? What about the poor people?’” Fortunately, some of the accompanying discussion-guide questions in the book prompt readers to explore their own perspectives and concerns on the intersections of gentrification, race, and class inherent to the topic of development in a low-status community.
“Re-examining long- and widely held assumptions about race, community, money, and so on is best done in conversation with other people to try to understand how we can stop repeating the same motions—despite not seeing meaningful improvements,” Carter writes. Whether used as reading material to spark discussion or as a tool to begin development that will retain local talent, Reclaiming Your Community is a valuable read for those looking to build a better built environment and community.
Purchase Reclaiming Your Community from an independent bookstore near you.