Urban Forum III: a Past Idea

So I know it's now been almost a month since I was at the 614 Network Urban Forum in Atlanta. I am still processing a couple of things I heard there. Thanks to Delta, I arrived exactly 3 hours after I was supposed to. I missed the beginning of a talk given by Bob Lupton who runs FCS Urban Ministries in Atlanta. He also serves on the board of Christian Community Development of America. I walked in just in time to hear him say, " the idea of building a big building in a poor neighborhood is a past idea. We shouldn't be doing that anymore."

This statement shook me as I am occupied entirely right now with a project that is set to build the largest center The Salvation Army has ever built in the Northeast. His point was that gentrification is sweeping the urban landscape in North America. Once blighted neighborhoods are being revitalized largely due to an influx of wealthy professionals returning from their exile in the suburbs. I say that because many of those people returning to cities are actually the children or grandchildren of a generation of wealthy professionals who fled the cities to populate and perfect the suburban landscape following WWII. White flight and the resultant abuse brought on by insurance fraud, municipal negligence and life conditions of the urban poor have destroyed these neighborhoods and now gentrification threatens to reinvent them by vacating the poor, pricing up real estate and "starting over." Lupton's point is that we can not stop this continental trend and so we ought to be careful not to tie ourselves to a new building in a poor neighborhood as it might not be that way for long. We need to be nimble enough as urban ministries to keep up with the geography of the people we're trying to serve.

I should tell you a bit about the 614 crowd if you're unfamiliar with them. The network is made up of a number of courageous people (mostly Salvationists and some Mennonites) who have moved into poor urban neighborhoods to live, work, go to school with the longtime residents of these communities. They are doing incarnational ministry, experiencing a good deal of injustice themselves--cramped grocery stores, no good plumbers, negligent response from city agencies--and a lot of the richness--the cultural mosaic, the interconnected support structures formed by residents, the hope of a brighter day--that is experienced in places like Regent Park in Toronto and downtown Birmingham, Alabama. As a rule, they mistrust bureaucratic authoritarian structures, preferring a streamlined God-inspired ministry model without all of the red tape and politics.

As I spent time there, I found that some people had assumed that we were just going to plop a huge corps (church) community center in the midst of this landscape and not ask anyone's advice about it. One guy even went so far as to tell me that the people in the community don't want the center. As far as I know, he's never been to Dudley. The assumption was that we were going to pump millions of dollars into a changing neighborhood only to end up with egg on our faces when gentrification rolls through and transforms the neighborhood. They were also bothered by what better work could be done with the funds. When I described the process we'd been through to gain trust in the community, listen to the concerns and partner with agencies and residents, very few were hopeful, most were cynical. That same guy wanted to throw out academic terms around community process to make me look foolish for being such a neophyte.

Here's the thing, though. Everything Lupton said was true. Unchecked, gentrification will develop urban neighborhoods by displacing those that stayed when everyone left, leaving them without a place to live and most without any economic advantage for having been displaced. It's true if a community has not stepped up to prevent it from happening. All of that will take place if the residents have not organized to plan a way through this new wave. In Dudley, they are committed to development without displacement. This means they want to preserve it as a mixed-income community, where those with means are living side by side with those living with less. They have strategized around it and done groundbreaking work to ensure permanently affordable housing and to protect the values of the neighborhood they committed not to leave decades ago. And, oh by the way, part of the strategy has included a community center on Dudley Street next to the tracks for 20 years. We have listened to, learned from and engaged that planning process.

Unfortunately, not every neighborhood has this united force to mitigate the coming changes. I fear some of the Kroc Centers will end up being exactly what Lupton and the 614 folks fear most--a monumental waste of resources as wealthy people move into a poor neighborhood and force out the current residents. So isn't it important that the Bob Luptons and Geoff Ryans of the world engage those of us planning Kroc Centers and the communities in which they'll be built?

I guess I'd prefer that to being kicked in the shin and being told that my current calling is a fool's errand.