Beginnings in Hunts Point
In the late 1990’s Majora Carter took a bold step into the world of urban planning. She simultaneously re-routing a Giuliani-era plan for additional waste handling in the South Bronx, and converting policy towards positive green development in environmental justice neighborhoods. One $1.25M Federal Transportation planning grant later, designs and plans for the South Bronx Greenway – an 11 mile network of bike and pedestrian paths meant to connect neighborhoods to the river front and each other with cost-effective, low impact storm water management capacity, local entrepreneurship opportunities, and active living features to improve public health and reduce traffic congestion – were set in motion.
Majora went on to spearhead the Hunts Point Riverside Park, South Bronx’s first waterfront park in over 60 years. In the process, Majora amassed a beautiful collection of strange bedfellows in urban renewal – from policy makers to business leaders, to active community members – all of whom were instrumental in making these pioneering projects happen. While the Hunts Point Riverside Park project, now completed and serving the neighborhood, is an important and very visible accomplishment, it is only a part of a larger strategy to move under-performing communities into a healthy and productive economic conditions.
Sustainable South Bronx
In 2001, Majora Carter founded a vanguard non-profit environmental justice solutions corp: Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx); serving as Executive Director until mid 2008. With a focus on goals over ideology, Majora Carter then built one of the nation’s first and most successful urban green-collar job training and placement systems within 2 years of founding the corp. In 2006, Majora was awarded the MacArthur
Founding of the Majora Carter Group LLC
In 2008, Majora Carter founded the for-profit consultancy, The Majora Carter Group LLC – aiming to bring the same values, leadership, and talent to cities, organizations, businesses and regions across the nation. The Majora Carter Group uses the green economy and green economic tools to unlock the potential of every place – urban, rural and everywhere in between.
Majora Carter Group, LLC helps clients connect the value of government, business & industry and community, bridging the gaps between clients and the interests we all want served. MCG will leverage its integrity and abilities to bring disparate parties together, helping to break the impasse between sustainability goals and entrenched inter-stakeholder distrust. We create an environment where all dreams can thrive. Based on research gleaned from seven successful years heading Sustainable South Bronx, and other findings from cities and universities worldwide, the services MCG offers to concentrated environmental problems are grounded in a progressive economic development approach.
Unlocking the Economic Potential in Environmental Justice Communities
Think energy consumption, public health, storm-water management, prison recidivism, school performance, social services, stagnant property values, climate change adaptation, and income & health disparities – all these can all be tied to environmental remediation on a municipal or regional scale. The communities of interest that make up a village, a city, a region, are all connected by the people and dollars circulating through them and the Majora Carter Group will opens the doors to solutions that benefit several shared concerns with the same dollars.
Money spent on public health & incarceration costs, imported energy resources, and conventional waste disposal, creates one-way movements of capital out of local economies. By contrast, robust distributed investments in SSBx-style solutions – adapted to local climactic conditions – pay for themselves through more effective economic multipliers as money works from the pockets of people who are presently regarded as problems. We help create new tax-bases, while removing obligations from the tax ledgers.
MCG is an inspirational and practical tool that opens opportunities for people to see and experience themselves and their community in a more powerful way. This is how real change will happen.
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