Toni L. In general, I think Black architects, planners, and designers are becoming more visible. I have to get you a copy. TLG There really is a little creative Renaissance happening here. I ended up in Harlem sort of randomly. Have you read it? There was another woman who was also always there, working on a laptop. I was so fascinated with this question that I was inspired to open my design practice here.
As Black designers of the built environment, this very question that the book proposes is often at the crux of our thinking. We have this sense of what places can be, despite what they are, and the huge chasm in between. I think designers working on physical space are wrestling with all three of those things simultaneously. What drove me here was not so much professional as personal. I was coming from working for Cory Booker as planning director during his first term as mayor of Newark.
The first time I lived in New York, which was after the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard GSD, I loved being in a city where I could see people who looked like me, but also spoke different languages and represented so many different cultures.
Coming back here a second time, after living in Newarkβwhich is a very Black and Brown city, but also a very economically depressed cityβI was just like, you know what? I want amenities and I want to live among people who look like me and share similar experiences to me. I want accessibility, identity, community, and coexistence. I want balance. What inputs has it provided to your practice? TLG Super interesting question.
This block in particularβth Street and Lennoxβwas, at the time, predominantly Black, but still mixed race. I was grappling with the decisions I made about leaving Newark and recognizing that I, in fact, was a gentrifier, what that meant to me, and how we unpack what gentrification truly is. Gentrification is white folks moving into Black neighborhoods, displacing poor people, and especially displacing poor Black people. Economic displacement, when rents go up, means that a broader span of people are subject to being priced out.
