"Reclaiming Black Settlements" Final Presentation and Community Roundtable
TOP STORY
The final presentation and community roundtable for the SOM Grant Foundation, "Reclaiming Black Settlement," was held yesterday, August 11, 2021. It was a remarkable event concluding serval semester-long projects of researching, planning, and studying these Historic Black settlements. The Community Roundtable brought together more than 30 members from the Joppa/Joppee community, The Bottom, Bear Creek, Mosier Valley, and Garden of Eden to collaborate and discuss practical strategies for these communities' successes.
The event was led by Dr. Diane Jones Allen, Director of landscape architecture, Dr. Kathryn Holliday, Professor of Architecture and director of the Dillon Center, and Dr. Austin Allen, associate professor of practice in architecture. Interim Dean Maria Martinez-Cosio also graced the occasion to support and commend the faculty, students, and community members for their commitment to this project. Doug Voigt partner at SOM joined virtually and gave some remarks and their decision to fund this project. Dr. Bryan Samuel, Vice President for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, and other UTA leaders attended the event. Latosha Herron-Buff, Senior Vice president of Community Engagement (Dallas Regional Chambers of Commerce), Brenda McClurkin, Head of Special Collections and Archives, UT-Arlington Libraries, Jason Shelton, Director of UTA’s Center for African American Studies, and other CAPPA faculty were present to show their support and be part of the conversation regarding the Historic Black settlements.
Dr. Bryan Samuel talked about his experiences growing up in a black community in Knoxville, Tennessee and how things have changed vastly since his formative years. He is enthusiastic about how important it is to guide our community in fostering a more inclusive, cooperative spectrum both inside and beyond the UTA Community. Historic Black settlements in urban areas across the United States are subjected to environmental and industrial hazards that jeopardize their health and survival. The "Reclaiming Black Settlement" project brought together faculty, students, landscape architects, and historic preservationists to create a design Playbook tailored to the needs of historic Black settlements in Dallas-Fort Worth that are jeopardized by leading development of the City's explosive growth and sprawl.
This project started with the Dillon Symposia organized by UTA’s Dillon Center, held in 2017 at Paul Quinn College, followed by the 2019 symposium held at the African American Museum of Dallas and organized in partnership with bcWorkshop, Dr. Austin Allen says there is a long-seated desire to tackle these communities' issues, now on the verge of losing their historical significance. This project is an extension of the Master of Landscape Architecture studio, LARC 5660, ARCH 5670 studio, funded by the SOM Foundation. And with other contributions the team received from the Dallas Regional Chamber, there have been successful collaborations with historic black communities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This project develops a comprehensive community design playbook by mapping the connections and problems of Black communities along the Trinity River, with a particular focus on the Joppa/Joppee community. The research team is working with the South-Central Civic League to establish best practices for negotiating complex regulatory policies, including approaches and tactics applied to other areas affected by structural discrimination. The design playbook will emphasize the voices of Black communities in the design and decision-making processes with an emphasis on grassroots storytelling and development.
For the final presentation, the students are assigned one neighborhood to work with, analyze, and develop a plan. For several weeks, students traveled to the freedman’s town and Joppa, a South Dallas neighborhood that has received national attention for the impact of illicit industrial pollution on its residents. They were divided into smaller groups to explore how the six DFW cities deal with land use, zoning regulations, preservation rules, and industrial and housing development. During the event, they each took a turn to share their discoveries. Some students went back to the Freedmen's town and drew out a thorough plan outline to aid with the "Design Playbook" project. As they went through each concept, the students ensured that most of their findings and ideas for this area reflected people's views and current needs
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The presentation was outstanding, and it was evident that a lot of effort had gone into this project—the methodology, the research findings, maps, data analysis, and a historical extract from each town. Everyone got the chance to walk around the room and look at process work that included guidelines, strategies, assets, and challenges in each category. Questions were raised as everyone had the opportunity to move around the room.
Part of the community roundtable discussion was sorting through the process's realities, including challenging talks about implementing change, realistic time for attaining outcomes, resources needed to accomplish those objectives, and where to get those resources. The Future Plan strategy is using historical guides that determine ways to collectively capture metropolitan tourism that focus on and benefit the communities, promoting funding and support for these freedman's towns, create ways to meet regularly to organize and share issues, progress, and stories, and take advantage of shared occasions such as Juneteenth. And, to encourage new development that benefits neighborhood residents, we must honor descendants of community founders and give these grassroots groups influence over design and decision-making.
We are so grateful for the trust these communities have in us to partner together to create a vision for future development that is sustainable and honors the past.
For more information on the project, please visit the Reclaiming Black Settlements project webpage. Digital essays prepared by students and Graduate Research Assistant Lauren Wardwell can be viewed there. https://blog.uta.edu/dilloncenter/reclaiming-black-settlements/