BOOK TALK
Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One
with author Majora Carter, Author of Reclaiming Your Community; Senior Director of Groundswell, Inc.; CEO of Majora Carter Group LLC; Owner of Boogie Down Grind Café; and Columbia Community Business Program Graduate
Monday, April 25
6:00-7:30 PM ET
Columbia Business School, Kravis Hall
655 W 130th St, Room 820
New York, NY 10027
How can we solve the problem of persistent poverty in low-status communities? Majora Carter argues that these areas need a talent-retention strategy, just like the ones companies have. Retaining homegrown talent is a critical part of creating a strong local economy that can resist gentrification. But too many people born in low-status communities measure their success by how far away from them they can get.
Carter, who could have been one of them, returned to the South Bronx and devised a development strategy rooted in the conviction that these communities have the resources within themselves to succeed. She advocates measures such as:
- Building mixed-income instead of exclusively low-income housing to create a diverse and robust economic ecosystem
- Showing homeowners how to maximize the long-term value of their property so they won't succumb to quick-cash offers from speculators
- Keeping people and dollars in the community by developing vibrant "third spaces"--restaurants, bookstores, and places like Carter's own Boogie Down Grind Cafe
This is a profoundly personal book. Carter writes about her brother's murder, how turning a local dumping ground into an award-winning park opened her eyes to the hidden potential in her community, her struggles as a woman of color confronting the "male and pale" real estate and nonprofit establishments, and much more. It is a powerful rethinking of poverty, economic development, and the meaning of success.
About the Author
Majora Carter is a real estate developer, urban revitalization strategy consultant, MacArthur Fellow and Peabody Award winning broadcaster. She is responsible for the creation of numerous economic developments, technology inclusion & green-infrastructure projects, policies and job training & placement systems. She currently serves as Senior Program Director for Community Regeneration at Groundswell, Inc. and is author of the best selling book, Reclaiming Your Community.
Carter applies her corporate consulting practice focused on talent-retention to reducing Brain Drain in American low-status communities. She has firsthand experience pioneering sustainable economic development in one of America's most storied low-status communities: the South Bronx.
She and her teams develop vision, strategies and the type of development that transforms low-status communities into thriving mixed-use local economies. Her approach harnesses capital flows resulting from American re-urbanization to help increase wealth building opportunities across demographics left out of all historic financial tide changes. Majora's work produces long term fiscal benefits for governments, residents, and private real estate developments throughout North America.
| Attendance Type |
| In Person |
| Virtual |