Neighborhoods

Receuved via e-mail:

"Why Stories Matter: An evening of performance and discussion about development and gentrification in Chapel Hill-Carrboro."
>
> Tuesday, Nov 11
> 8:00 PM
> Bingham 103

Join us as we watch sections of a promotional DVD put together by Greenbridge developers during their plans to build ten story building adjacent to Northside.  We will watch the film in sections, with group discussion and performances by Spoken Word artists and others in between.

-Come out and learn how Chapel Hill and the University are caught up in the globalizing force of development, and the discourse that produces certain understandings of progress and progressive.

-Come out and see the amazing power of performance as an intervention in oppressive discourses and practices.

-Come out and help us think about how the stories we tell about ourselves and others have material and real impacts on humans and communities, how contested definitions of sustainability and community come out of different histories.

Greenbridge is a $50 million mixed-use project going up on the Graham, Rosemary and Merritt Mill Road block of Chapel Hill, bordering the Northside neighborhood, one of the few historically African-American communities in Chapel Hill.  The building will be 10 stories high, more than three times as tall as any surrounding building.  As the group started working on their application for a Special Use Permit from the Town Council for their project, they produced a "documentary" of the history of the community, weaving stories of elderly residents in the area and their vision of "sustainability" in the LEED certified building.

Northside, one of Chapel Hill's most historic neighborhoods, has been a community of  African American families for more than a hundred years. It was an active site of Civil Rights activism, a pioneer in public education for African-Americans in the South, and a place known for vital church communities.  In the 90s there was a community push to clean up the neighborhood, which also made it more lucrative for development.  Now student renters and bigger developments like Greenbridge threaten to price out people on fixed income, long-term residents and keep out families from moving to the area.