What is the Black City?

Abstract

The Black Metropolis existed at least since the Middle Ages, and through the Middle Passage shaped Black cities in the Americas from Salvador and Havana, to Miami and New York. It a place, a space and a state of mind animated by Black life, Black culture and Black history. As a place, its architecture and architects, shape and are shaped by built environments, creating a refuge that is more than “a city within a city.” As a space, the Black Metropolis is marked by class, gender, sexuality, work and time. It holds contested meanings, reflecting those who make it and how they navigate it. As a state of mind, the Black City is world building and placemaking evidenced in literature, art, culture, virtual spaces and being – in Blackness itself. The so-called “reckoning” of 2020 is at root, Black world making, a mass Blackening that shaped cities globally. If only fleetingly. The Black Metropolis, and Black scholarship about it, is oriented to a future that foregrounds Black thought and Black thinkers; demands accountability; and both is and about Black worldmaking. Black queer urbanism and Black memory work calls for scholarship rooted in Black knowledge production, in healing, reckoning, helping, restoring, honoring Black life.