When my wife and I built our home in a poor, predominantly Black neighborhood 10 years ago, I didn t know what gentrification was. Intellectual curiosity and the nerdiest interest in neighborhood building took me on a deep self-educating tour about the topic.
For almost 10 years now, my construction company, partnered with dozens of other small infill developers, has been slowly filling in the gaps left in downtown Little Rock from white flight, urban sprawl and a tornado in our neighborhood of Pettaway.
My family supported politicians like Ronald Reagan, both Bush presidents, and Bob Dole. They used "conservative" to self-describe more often than "Republican."