Carl Anthony

Abstract

Claire Peeps: Your work brings together issues of racism, poverty and the environment. How did you come to make these connections?

For more than two decades, Carl Anthony has been a leader in the urban land reclamation movement, an effort to revitalize the habitat of our most neglected inner-city neighborhoods. He came to the field in the 1960s, at the peak of the civil rights movement, as a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in architecture. A young African American man, he struggled to find a professional path between the interests of corporate developers and the inner city — between midtown Manhattan and Harlem. He turned to the inner city but only by carving out his own path, one that links urban development with environmental and social justice.

Anthony founded the San Francisco-based Urban Habitat in 1989. The organization has helped to expand the agenda of the environmental movement to include issues of public transportation, housing, health, economic stabilization, and access to parks and open space. On Earth Day in 1990, Anthony published the first issue of the Race/Poverty/Environment newsletter, a publication that explores the relationship between socioeconomic and environmental concerns, such as the siting of toxic waste dumps in poor communities of color. From 1992 to 1995, Anthony organized and chaired EDGE, an alliance of environmental and social justice organizations, institutions that historically have not been aligned and have even been seen to have an oppositional relationship. “It’s great to say, ‘Recycle aluminum,’” says Anthony, “but what about the people we’re throwing away?” Though EDGE no longer operates as a formal alliance, Urban Habitat continues to play a leadership role in fostering dialogue between the sectors and identifying common ground for collaboration.