Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to reflect that approximately dilapidated 430 homes have been torn down in the Mansfield’s North End.
MANSFIELD — Growing up in the South Bronx, Majora Carter was told she had potential — and the best way to reach that potential was to get as far away as possible.
Carter is a real estate developer, urban revitalization strategist and author of Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One.
She still lives and works in the same New York City borough, where she spearheaded the conversion of a riverside dump into a park and turned a former crack house into a cafe.
Carter shared her story and lessons learned along the way Tuesday night at the Renaissance Theatre. Her talk kicked off Kaleidoscope Community Conversations, a four-part speaker series focused on bringing the community together for new perspectives and connections.
Carter described her hometown as a “low status” community — a term she said implies something much larger and deeper is at work. “There’s a high status and there’s a lower status, and inequality is simply assumed,” she wrote in her book.
“It’s the places where the health outcomes are lower, where the educational attainment is lower. Yes, poverty exists more frequently in those areas as well, and there’s often a lack of hope in terms of the future of the community, both for people in the neighborhood and outside it,” she wrote.
On Tuesday, Carter said low status communities have plenty of dollar stores, pawn shops and fast food restaurants, but few options for purchasing fresh, healthy food. They often lack parks and green spaces. Career options are limited and incomes are low.
“They’re everywhere. They are in the cities, they can be in rural areas, they can be in suburban areas, white Rust Belt towns, and they can be Native American reservations. They’re all over America and they’re all over the world,” she said.
Carter said the biggest challenge to revitalizing low status towns is the expectation that a good life can only be found elsewhere.
“The bright kids who were born and raised in them are led to believe that they should measure success by how far they get away from those neighborhoods,” she said.
“It’s almost as if we are expecting the best and brightest born and raised in our communities to flee. It doesn’t just happen in the developing world. It happens right here in America’s hometowns.”
So what’s the solution?
Carter believes it starts with locals willing to invest in the community. Development work has to focus on talent retention and creating the kinds of communities people want to live in.
“It doesn’t take everybody and not everybody’s gonna do it. People will just sit around waiting for somebody to make the first move,” she said.
“You have to start somewhere and somebody’s got to do it.”
‘People care’
Deanna West-Torrence, founder and CEO of the North End Community Improvement Collaborative, said many of Carter’s points reminded her of issues addressed in the organization’s 2017 North End Community Economic Development Plan.
“If anybody has talked to me, they’ve heard me talk about the concentration of poverty, mixed-income housing,” West-Torrence said.
“We talked about the preying on the poor by some of those more predatory businesses like buy here, pay here (institutions) and cash advance.”
West-Torrence agreed revitalizing communities will require leveraging existing assets, including urban farms and vacant lots that were once home to blighted housing.
“There’s 430-something houses down,” she said. “There’s an area now ripe for redevelopment.”
She said the NECIC’s proposed community center is another way the north end can focus on talent retention.
“What we did was infuse small business development and economic development and looked at it as an opportunity for kids to see pathways and careers,” she said.
An estimated crowd of close to 300 people attended the event, with multiple attendees participating in a question-and-answer session afterward.
Mansfield Mayor Jodie Perry, one month into her first term in office, described the talk as thought-provoking.
“(Carter) looked at difficult things with a different lens. I appreciated that,” said Perry, the former CEO of the Richland Area Chamber & Economic Development.
“I think the more we can encourage our residents to help make things better, the stronger the community will be,” Perry said.
Audience member Ebanee Bond said she was encouraged by the size of the crowd.
“I didn’t expect that this many people would be here,” she said. “It was good to see that. I hope there’s cognitive resonance for them to realize that a lot of what she was talking about, that you can apply that here by investing into the north end.”
Greg Frankenfield said the turnout demonstrated a willingness to work together — something he’s sensed among Mansfield residents for years.
“People care,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of energy to be tapped in the community. It’s been tapped so many times, by so many people over many, many years.”
Audience member John Caldwell said he hopes the event inspires community members to dig deep and think about Mansfield’s potential for revitalization.
“My question is, how do we get money together to be able to start developing and getting somebody like (Carter) who has the skills to look at what’s going on and what’s needed?” said Caldwell, who lives in Washington Township.
“I don’t think people have asked the right questions.”
Get involved in the next Kaleidoscope event
The Kaleidoscope Series is the result of a joint effort by the Richland County Foundation, Mansfield/Richland County Public Library, Renaissance Performing Arts Association and Richland Source.
The speaker series will continue throughout 2024 with events featuring Matthew Desmond, Amanda Ripley and Andrew Ramsammy. Explore the topic of poverty through the next conversation on Tuesday, May 7.
Tickets are specially designed to ensure accessibility for all. With a suggested ticket price of $25 and a pay-what-you-can model, organizers said they are committed to making Kaleidoscope a place where all people have a place in the conversation.
Click here to reserve your seat for future conversations.
