Community | Zeitgeist

ZEITGEIST COMMUNITY

What’s in a street, a neighborhood, a transportation network? Who makes decisions and who lives the outcomes? Historically in our country, decisions about health, transportation, and street design have happened to communities rather than with them.

Zeitgeist’s Community Development team takes an equitable and inclusive approach to the work we do. Across the community, we are not just partnering with neighbors and organizations but intimately collaborating with them to envision and activate a healthy and thriving shared future.

2023 ZEITGEIST COMMUNITY REPORT

Building Great Places: Reshaping Our Neighborhoods Through Community Vision & Investment

Our neighborhoods, like our natural environments, are able to thrive when there’s a diversity of resources and relationships all engaging with one another. As our streets across the Twin Ports undergo once-in-a-lifetime redesign and redevelopment, how can we leverage these infrastructure investments to spur smart, healthy neighborhood growth that supports a thriving local economy while investing in who and what is already here? Zeitgeist’s annual Building Great Places Event brings in local and national experts to speak on the power of catalyzing transportation infrastructure changes for neighborhood redevelopment that embeds community vision in equitable, resident-focused design. The Building Great Places Event is for community organizers, city planners, transportation engineers, developers, local leaders, and engaged citizens to learn and discuss how to shape a new era of reconnected communities and thriving neighborhoods across the Twin Ports region. Join us as we gather together to highlight community ideas for neighborhood development, discuss national best practices, and hear from local policy and community leaders about how we can build great places for people to thrive.

Thursday, May 9, 2024 | 12-1:30pm

At Zeitgeist | Free

Program Schedule (subject to change):

Welcome from Zeitgeist
Investing in Community Vision in Duluth-Superior – Mayors Reinert & Paine
Keynote: Urban Revitalization Without Displacement – Majora Carter
Hillside Coalition Panel: Community Solutions for Neighborhood Revitalization – Panelists TBA
Closing & Calls to Action by Zeitgeist
Networking Social Hour

Free to attend!

REGISTER HERE

Special thank you to our event sponsors: Citon, Continental Bike & Ski, Duluth Aging Support, Duluth Transit Authority, Healthy Northland, Lake Superior Dental, LISC Duluth, Lum Studio by CF Design, Mardag Foundation, Metropolitan Interstate Council, MN Dept of Health, MPECU, Northland Foundation, Ordean Foundation, SHIP, St. Louis County Public Health, St. Luke’s, UnitedHealthcare, Whole Foods Co-op

About Majora Carter

Majora Carter is a real estate developer, urban revitalization strategy consultant, MacArthur Fellow and Peabody Award winning broadcaster. She’s responsible for the creation of numerous economic development, technology inclusion & green-infrastructure projects, policies and job training & placement systems. She is also a lecturer at Princeton University’s Keller Center. Majora is quoted on the walls of the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture in DC: “Nobody should have to move out of their neighborhood to live in a better one”—which is also the subtitle of her 2022 book, Reclaiming Your Community. Carter applies corporate talent-retention consulting practice to reduce Brain Drain in American low-status communities. She has firsthand experience pioneering sustainable economic development in one of America’s most storied low-status communities, the South Bronx, as well as cities across North America and abroad. She and her teams develop vision, strategies and the type of development that transforms low-status communities into thriving mixed-use local economies. Her approach harnesses capital flows resulting from American re-urbanization to help increase wealth building opportunities across demographics left out of all historic financial tide changes. Majora’s work produces long term fiscal benefits for governments, residents, and private real estate developments throughout North America. Learn more about Majora Carter here.

WHAT WE DO

We focus on Transforming Transportation by uncovering cultural, structural, and infrastructural barriers in the Twin Ports to having a fully inclusive, safe, and connected transportation network that provides people of all ages and abilities with mobility choices and connects them to vital resources.

Healthy Hillside builds grassroots community leadership in the Hillside neighborhood, delivers health resources to enhance wellbeing, and is convening a community-led health vision to break down existing disparities.

Safer 6th Avenue East applies the transportation work and neighborhood vision to reimagine this harmful street as a great place of connection that prioritizes the people who live there; a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the place we call home.

OUR APPROACH

Because art and community are central to all that we do, we’re able to facilitate change from the ground up with neighbors creatively deciding what they’d like to see and leveraging their power to build great places where they can thrive. We center Seven Core Components to our Community Change: