Below is a copy of a letter Selden just sent the Richmond mayor. It is a shame that residents of Westwood, a tiny but important community at Willow Lawn Drive and Patterson Avenue, have to once again band together and resist yet another legalistic assault by an indifferent and uncaring City administration. The importance of this neighborhood can’t be underestimated, and the threat to it is very real. The Shockoe Examiner explored the significance of Westwood years ago – please read this entry that illuminates the history of the neighborhood, its role in the struggle for Civil Rights, and why an appeal to the Mayor is so important.
Dear Mayor Avula:
The historic neighborhood of Westwood is again under attack, and it is remarkable how often this tiny African-American Richmond community has faced destruction and persevered. Richmond has a terrible record of destroying its Black neighborhoods: Jackson Ward was gutted by I-95, Fulton was turned into an urban prairie, and Navy Hill was bulldozed into Shockoe Valley.
As horrific as all that sounds, none of these disasters of civic planning was fueled by the overt racial prejudice that once drove an effort to erase the entire Westwood neighborhood down to the ground and disperse the families who had been there for generations. And yet, Westwood prevailed and survived.
In recognition of its astonishing past and fragile present, the community has been recently named to the list of Preservation Virginia’s “Most Endangered” list. Nevertheless, Westwood is again under siege by an insensitive bureaucratic assault called “Code Refresh.” This ham-handed revision of the city zoning code would allow more density on the existing street grid. The affordable homes and lots in Westwood have already felt the attention of developers in their neighborhood, builders who are snatching up houses and properties.
Mashing more density into Westwood’s existing housing stock will forever alter the character of the neighborhood and rising taxes will disperse the current residents. This triumph of the developer is the result of insensitive and poor planning on the part of the “Code Refresh” proponents. Places like Westwood desperately need to be exempted from “one size fits all” planning, and Richmonders look to your office to provide the kind of leadership and vision to understand this.
Mayor Avula, a myth in our country exalts real estate developers as kings. Let’s not allow Richmond’s future to become yet another victim of that horrid idea. Revise “Code Refresh” to accommodate our past – it is ours to have or lose, and as they well know in Westwood, it is up to us to defend our history. We need your help and support.
Sincerely,
Selden Richardson
To contact Richmond Mayor Danny Avula, call the Mayor's Office at (804) 646-7970 or email RVAMayor@rva.gov.
You can also visit or send mail to the office at 900 E. Broad St., Suite 201, Richmond, VA 23219
2 comments:
Thank you so much for publishing this and Selden thank you so much for standing up for Westwood!!! It means so much!!!
Selden, ever since I became aware of your writing and advocacy I have admired your commitment to honoring Richmond's history. However, I believe the way you here characterize the effort to amend our current zoning code falls short of your usual curiosity and depth. Westwood may well deserve special treatment as code is revised - but the larger goal of revising our code is far less cartoonishly conspiratorial than your article suggests. Many of the most committed Richmonders I know are deeply engaged in this work, and driven by values that you share, including a passion for history. The central goal of code refresh is to bring existing parcels into conformity with code. At present, neighborhoods filled with the attached rowhomes, and small apartment buildings that define the character of Richmond's historic neighborhoods illegalize these very same building styles. Westwood was built before Ex parte Quong Wo, created the first zoning-like regulations as a means of restricting the mobility of asian Americans in California, and before Euclid v. Ambler founded the legal basis of exclusionary zoning. Our 1970s code sought to restrict the construction of multifamily housing to all but a few politically disenfranchised corridors just as the "Neighborhood Schools Movement" worked to negate the efficacy of even hyper-local bussing. Overall, Richmond's historic neighborhoods have lost 40% of their populations since 1950, according to a powerful recent story map published by the Partnership for Smarter Growth. Much handwringing about density reflects a failure to account for a half century of population loss and disinvestment driven by white flight and urban renewal. There is much in our past that zoning reform could recover. And there is character in our neighborhoods that a commitment to changeless form jeapordizes. But we must look also to the present to dispel some of the aspersions you cast here. Similar zoning reforms in recent years in Portland (and statewide in Oregon), Minneapolis, Colorado and, recently, Charlottesville, have been careful and, nuanced and data on these efforts dispels fears of abrupt or overwhelming change. Our neighborhoods were once places of opportunity and possibility and incremental change. That is an important part of the character that Code Refresh can recover, I believe, if it is not derailed and undermined by suspicion, misinformation and fear of change. I am part of a coalition of 22 affordable housing, urban planning and climate advocacy groups with deep and credible commitments to racial justice and sustainable growth working to advocate for a healthy revision of Richmond's outdated zoning code. It is called Homes for All Our Neighbors, and I encourage you to check it out. Let's meet up soon, and discuss! I'll bring books, maps and stats. You do the same. With gratitude for your work. Respectfully, B.O'K
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