Community and Sustainable South Bronx
I like Ted Talks, can you tell? I think it’s an amazing database full of amazing videos featuring amazing people and their amazing ideas!
The video above features Majora Carter, founder of an organization called Sustainable South Bronx which works to promote holistic community and sustainability developments in New York’s South Bronx. Carter speaks passionately in this Ted Talk about the connections between economic degradation, environmental degradation, and social degradation. It’s an inspiring presentation and definitely worth watching!
In terms of community, I think Carter hits on a couple of important points, as follows:
- Healthy communities need healthy environments. Carter mentions how the residents of South Bronx have higher rates of obesity and asthmatic inflictions. A community that does not or cannot care for its common space cannot fully prosper even at the basic health levels.
- Sustainable, holistic development carried our from a bottom-up and people-first approach can lead to long term economic and social success.
- Sometimes identifying with a community can have negative implications for a group of people. As Carter says, ”If you are told from your earliest days that nothing good is going to come from your community, that it is bad and ugly, how could it not reflect on you?”
I never thought of community in this light. I’ve always assumed it was 100% positive, and that people need and thrive in a community atmosphere. While I still maintain that people need community, I think it makes sense that sometimes the ’shared’ or ‘common belief’ that knits a community together can be negative, especially if the community ethos has been defined by society as negative. Food for thought!
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- 17 Rules For Sustainable Economy (Where Economy = Community)
- Green Is Not A Color For Beer… A Stout Rebuke
- Elinor Ostrom on the Need for Institutional Diversity
