A "viable" urban community?
I just returned from a couple of days in New Orleans, tagging along with my friend Scott Lundeen. Scott was part of the Issachar Community when he lived in Denver. Now he’s on the staff of a church in NO’s Central City neighborhood, just across the highway from the Superdome. Scott and his wife Melanie train groups of volunteer interns, helping them kindle a passion for life and service among the poor.
At least, that’s what they did before Katrina. Scott and his friend Michael, who was a youth pastor pre-Katrina, were among the first people back into the neighborhood after the flood. Even as they surveyed the ruins of their community, they began to hear rumblings about “gentrification” – the impending arrival of developers who would surely find in Central City a virtual “blank slate,” and a chance to start over and build a new neighborhood, right next to downtown, full of trendy brew pubs and upscale lofts to replace the neighborhood’s housing projects and tiny shotgun homes. In other words, to replace the neighborhood's residents.
Scott and Michael determined to make sure that enough low-cost housing would be built so that the poor could return to the community. After all, it had been their neighborhood before; shouldn’t it still be theirs when they return?
It’s been inspiring to watch these guys rise to the occasion. They’re working ‘round the clock, cramming years of education into just a few weeks, aware that some big decisions about the future of Central City are going to be made in the next few weeks.
And now that their church-based CDC is nearly ready to open for business, they’re forced to ask some difficult questions: Was Central City a healthy neighborhood before the flood? After all, more than 80% of the kids lived in poverty, the schools were horrible, crime and drugs were everywhere. Is that the kind of neighborhood we want to re-create?
Would it be so bad if gentrification did take place, bringing some neighbors with money to spend, connections and professional expertise to invest in the community? How much gentrification is helpful, and how much is too much? At what point does the culture of the neighborhood change so much that it’s no longer home, no longer the ‘hood?
What percentage of people in a neighborhood can be poor and still make a viable community? 80%? 50%? 30%? What makes a neighborhood “viable” anyway? And who gets to answer these questions?!
Of course, New Orleans is a completely unique situation (thank God). But similar questions about neighborhoods, gentrification, culture and community are being asked in our city.
What is your vision of a “viable” urban community? If a break in the levee (or, um, some other natural disaster) wiped-out your Denver neighborhood, and you were invited to help define the new community; what would it look like? Who would live there? Who wouldn’t?
Isaiah 65
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
20 "Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
he who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere youth;
he who fails to reach [a] a hundred
will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the works of their hands.
23 They will not toil in vain
or bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
but dust will be the serpent's food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,"
says the LORD.