Business boosters believe connectivity is the key to spurring new businesses. But can that model work in chronically disinvested communities?
Vewiser Dixon leans forward behind his wide wooden desk and waxes on about his neighborhood. Dixon has lived in this corner of Kansas City his whole life; it was once and perhaps remains the beating heart of African-American life here—18th and Vine, made famous by Charlie Parker, Count Basie, and that set. Dixon now owns property along the rough-strewn blocks around the jazz district, and he has a vision.
“It was our mecca for black business, you know?” he says. “That’s my dream—to restore that in the 21st century.”
Dixon’s immediate plans are modest ones: He wants to open a coffee shop—a little café, with some entrepreneurial space upstairs and a market-rate apartment complex nearby. But that could serve as the cornerstone of a newly vibrant neighborhood—a “black Silicon Valley” full of startups and business incubators.
[For more on this story by Ron Knox, go to https://www.citylab.com/equity...al-ecosystem/540555/]
Photo: In Kansas City, economic development has been elusive in African-American neighborhoods. Orlin Wagner/AP
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