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I'm confused by this sentence a little bit. Wym mandatory?
I talk about it because I went to private school. As do a good number of middle-class black people living in certain inner cities. It's just an option. And more viable if youre child is gifted in one area.
I ronically the # source of black students for New England Boarding school is definitely NYC from my experience. NYC, probably immigrants kids too. There were so many of them.
The greater question form that quote is: is hood-adjacent something to be avoided?
Not you. I’m talking to the poster who is talking about private school. Why is that important?
It's mostly Black or diverse areas fighting development. White areas are mostly transient anyway so theyre generally more open to development. In black areas its often because the % income-restricted units is too low for their liking. In projects like this (a small 6 unit building is exempt from affordability requirements) its often old-timers who simply oppose the change to neighborhood character.
Readville is the more traditionally white, southern area of Hyde Park although nowadays its maybe only 33% white. But they all own their homes and want to preserve their property values. Because why else are you fightin to preserve this? AsIve said before its not surprising at all to me Boston as lower incomes and higher poverty and childhood poverty than DC because it looks it..once you really look around.
And because Boston allows mini-fiefdoms they will get their way. Readville very recently got a 640 unit apartment complex in a totally abandoned former industrial area, abutting the commuter rail...reduced to 270 units due to concerns surrounding traffic and neighborhood character.
DC has many sunbelt traits which is why I always group it in the South. People think because its dense and urban it's northern and I very much disagree. VA and Maryland also have tons of flat clear land to build on. MA has virtually none of that. All around Boston is protected dense forests in the suburbs or extremely rocky terrain (lots of sheer rock cliffs and Roxbury Puddingstone).
MA was settled so long ago most of the land that was cleared for agriculture in the 1600s and 1700s has long since reverted back to forested lands. With local control and environmentalism being what it is in a state with just 13 TOTAL Republican members of state assembly.... that not changing.
Hyde Park is not in need of investment as it is a middle-class area and always has been. Roxbury Dorchester are not really in need of investment outside of small pockets. Mattapan would be the only area I'd considered in need of investment.
Unfortunately under Mayor Menino (Mayor from 1993-2013) his idea of reinvesting in black neighborhoods meant shutting down bars, cracking down on liquor stores with loitering and litter issues or fights, and filling in vacant lots all over the city with 1-2 family suburban wood frame homes. IN ABUNDANCE. as a result most of the vacant chunks in Black Boston became suburbanized and many of the bars and some restaurants were forced to shut down. Yes, it made neighborhoods a lot safer but it also zapped the life out of them.
The thing here is Boston did most of its serious infill in Black Boston from 1990-2005 before density wasnt an ugly word. Most of it was highly successful in stabilizing neighborhoods and making them safer and cleaner, but also pretty boring. This coupled with the repeal of rent control in 1994 (IMO) put tremendous upward pressure on Boston housing Market from 1997-2006 and again from 2013-2019.
Almost all development in DC proper happens on land that is commercial or vacant. It's not in the neighborhoods really. It's on single story commercial buildings, auto centric shopping centers, or vacant lots. Why would the Black neighborhoods in Boston fight development in areas without housing? Has there been any proposals to redevelop the single-story commercial strip avenues in Boston that received pushback from the neighborhood?
Buckeye-Shaker in Cleveland would meet all seven of your criteria.
1. Located in the city, though a good chunk of the neighborhood is in the fairly prestigious Shaker Heights School District, for an added bonus. The nearest Cleveland Municipal School District high school is John Hay in University Circle, which is the top-rated high school in the city.
2. Probably 85-90 percent black.
3. Several, and are located on all three of the commericial strips (Buckeye Road ... almost all black owned; Shaker Square; and Larchmere).
4. It's right on the Blue-Green rail transit line
5. Rockefeller Park and Shaker Lake
6. Neighborhood is a mix between large brick apartments, Cleveland style up-and-down doubles (with small yards) and inner-ring suburban style SFH homes with decent sized yards.
7. The ward is assuredly to be represented at the local, state and U.S. House level by an African American. Newly elected Mayor Justin Bibb is originally from the ward as well (which also includes the Mount Pleasant neighborhood), though he never held citywide political office. The former councilman, who ran the ward as his own personal fiefdom for 40 years, however, was convicted on 15 Federal corruption charges last year. Federal because nobody locally really was going to challenge him for writing off monthly invoices to himself and family and friends for work that was never done. Even when some other council members started calling him on it, he basically flipped them the bird and continued to do it until the Feds investigated. Hopefully, the new council member cleans that up because whoever represents that ward moving forward will have a very powerful voice in the city, especially since gentrification concerns could be a real issue in the coming years as development is extending south beyond University Circle and into what is an affordable and relatively stable black area. You're really seeing that along Larchmere, which while it has maintained a decent sized white population (15-20%), still has been majority black for decades.
Almost all development in DC proper happens on land that is commercial or vacant. It's not in the neighborhoods really. It's on single story commercial buildings, auto centric shopping centers, or vacant lots. Why would the Black neighborhoods in Boston fight development in areas without housing? Has there been any proposals to redevelop the single-story commercial strip avenues in Boston that received pushback from the neighborhood?
People are traumatized by the effects of gentrification. Before anyone knows anything extreme skepticism is brought forth: and in Boston there’s actually an ability to fight it. Also due to the city’s racial history/legacy it’s way harder than DC to just tell the black community to ‘deal with i’t. Everything in Boston is hyper localized and hyperracialized. There’s a lot of things that can’t be done due to the reputation/optics/politics that in my experience with other cities isn’t so deeply considered. The thing is when people bring up Boston racial inequity you really can’t just shrug it off especially not when blacks are the largest racial group born and raised in the city and this make up an important demographic. Things can be written about forced displacement and gentrification that couldn’t be written for DC. That plausible deniability and leeway really just is not there. So it’s hard to explain to the average Joe what really going on.
Add to this there’s fewer diverse suburbs that are desirable for black to relocate to + lowish crime. So they fight tooth and nail to remain in the city proper.
So in short? no ,I’ve never seen a 1 story building in a black neighborhood in Boston up zoned. Actually no there’s in building in Washington street in Dorchester. There are plenty stores in the ground floor of triple deckers… but Boston mostly builds infill on one of the what we’re thousands of small vacant lots that pockmarked the city. There are still many small vacant lots to put housing on it just depends— are they going to be 2 units? 6? 10? Any development I see in Black Boston is 95/100 times on vacant land or simply a rehabilitation. This hold even more true for commercial development (which isn’t lacking). The biggest lack is black social spaces- you simply get bored of the same venues.
Unlike DC there’s less empty space right near downtown or in general (see the density of Boston). So housing is pretty much jammed into any space but not often big projects without demolishing light industrial areas- which is contentious because they provide jobs and Boston suburbs can stonewall movement of business into their borders. Boston is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle- no grid, no city planning department, ad hoc and variances are life. And the mayor is possibly the strongest mayor in the nation- with no term limits. They can change affordability requirements and a host of other regulations virtually overnight. The BPDA is just a rubber stamp entity for the mayor.
People are traumatized by the effects of gentrification. Before anyone knows anything extreme skepticism is brought forth: and in Boston there’s actually an ability to fight it. Also due to the city’s racial history/legacy it’s way harder than DC to just tell the black community to ‘deal with i’t. Everything in Boston is hyper localized and hyperracialized. There’s a lot of things that can’t be done due to the reputation/optics/politics that in my experience with other cities isn’t so deeply considered. The thing is when people bring up Boston racial inequity you really can’t just shrug it off especially not when blacks are the largest racial group born and raised in the city and this make up an important demographic. Things can be written about forced displacement and gentrification that couldn’t be written for DC. That plausible deniability and leeway really just is not there. So it’s hard to explain to the average Joe what really going on.
Add to this there’s fewer diverse suburbs that are desirable for black to relocate to + lowish crime. So they fight tooth and nail to remain in the city proper.
So in short? no ,I’ve never seen a 1 story building in a black neighborhood in Boston up zoned. Actually no there’s in building in Washington street in Dorchester. There are plenty stores in the ground floor of triple deckers… but Boston mostly builds infill on one of the what we’re thousands of small vacant lots that pockmarked the city. There are still many small vacant lots to put housing on it just depends— are they going to be 2 units? 6? 10? Any development I see in Black Boston is 95/100 times on vacant land or simply a rehabilitation. This hold even more true for commercial development (which isn’t lacking). The biggest lack is black social spaces- you simply get bored of the same venues.
Unlike DC there’s less empty space right near downtown or in general (see the density of Boston). So housing is pretty much jammed into any space but not often big projects without demolishing light industrial areas- which is contentious because they provide jobs and Boston suburbs can stonewall movement of business into their borders. Boston is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle- no grid, no city planning department, ad hoc and variances are life. And the mayor is possibly the strongest mayor in the nation- with no term limits. They can change affordability requirements and a host of other regulations virtually overnight. The BPDA is just a rubber stamp entity for the mayor.
I didn't know that. So Boston doesn't have a planning department? Nothing is every rezoned? That is interesting and problematic. How do communities petition for revitalization if they need it? Don't you think the housing crunch is contributing to the high cost of living in Boston? I guess this explains it.
Do you think with the right ingredients included with Black affluence, a community could create the same feel and energy of a 1920's Harlem or U Street Corridor? I have noticed that most Black neighborhoods with affluence have high-end suburban auto centric shopping centers or no retail at all. There are tons of examples of bustling corridors like NYC's Harlem/DC's U Street of the 1920's across cities if the Black population is low in the neighborhood, but I can't think of any bustling urban walkable corridors in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Sure retail strips exist, but not vibrant retail strips like many affluent urban areas with low Black population.
So I guess the question for the board is, with careful planning and investment, could these corridors be built in affluent Black neighborhoods currently? Even if they had to be built from scratch because of a lack of retail square footage in residential neighborhoods, could they be built in 2022?
I didn't know that. So Boston doesn't have a planning department? Nothing is every rezoned? That is interesting and problematic. How do communities petition for revitalization if they need it? Don't you think the housing crunch is contributing to the high cost of living in Boston? I guess this explains it.
Boston hasn’t had a zoning overhaul since 1961. No there is no Planning Department at all. The Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) was founded in the 1950s as an agency to modernize Bostons downtown and stoke corporate investment: until 2015 it was known as the Boston Redevelopment Agency (BRA). It isn’t under City Hall control via councilors or any city department and only “answers” to the mayor. There aren’t a ton of planners involved even till this day.
The current mayor wants to abolish it and establish a Planning Department because it absolutely contributes to the high COL..: but it requires state approval and we usually have a Republican Governor to put the “controls” on our mind-knowingly democratic legislature. Boston was a legitimate economic and social backwater for a looong time.::: so the state controls its liquor board, development process, rent controls etc etc the school are facing eminent take over right now.
The lack of modern zoning means back door deal corruption and variances/favors/ad hoc committees are the norm rather than the exception.
In the past when neighborhoods needed revitalization grassroots and neighborhood groups were formed which is why they’re so large and powerful today and why Boston has a ridiculous amount of such groups and other nonprofit that really borders on insanity. Many aren’t well funded but they’re popular. This increases neighborhood divisions and balkanization and sort of keeps neighborhoods extremely different unlike DC where I found neighborhoods and development to be much much more uniform. Many small residential lots are split and seemingly random and overcrowded.
Are there any lesser known or smaller cities that would have such areas? I was thinking of maybe a place like Mount Vernon NY, which is about 65% black, has plenty of black owned businesses in its Downtown(along Gramatian/South 4th Ave) and some in other business districts, has the representation, has the walkability/transit(has about 68,000 people in only 4 square miles), it has SFH neighborhoods with yards(and those that are middle class and predominantly black like Oakwood Heights and Parkside/Vernon Park).
I believe it is the most population dense predominantly black city in the country.
Are there any other smaller or even mid sized cities with areas that fit the criteria?
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