"A Texas Community Takes On Racial Tensions Once Hidden Under The Surface"

"The idea behind "new urbanism" is that a planned environment, designed with pedestrians and social interaction in mind, can create a meaningful community.

The celebrated Mueller project in Austin, Texas, is one such place. This master-planned development seems to have it all: electric cars, solar panels, green buildings, walkability and native landscaping.

But what happens when one of Austin's most progressive, welcoming neighborhoods experiences racial incidents involving some of its own African-American residents who don't feel so welcome?

In Mueller, where construction began in 2007, the incidents quietly accumulated to the point where the community realized it had a problem — and needed to be confronted...

At the neighborhood meeting, the one thing people agreed on is that, in general, white people need to get to know more black people in Austin.

"Everyone always hypes this, 'Oh, you moved to Austin, you didn't really move to Texas. Austin is ... the center of liberalism in Texas.' What I'm finding is that people here haven't had the opportunity or the experience of interacting with people that aren't like them," says Daniel Colimon, a first-generation Haitian-American and real estate investor who lives in Mueller."

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/13/385495327/a-community-takes-on-racial-tensions-once-hidden-under-the-surface?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nprpresents&utm_term=aboutnpr&utm_content=20150213

Wait, I totally love how this is explored. This is the second article in short series (actually, the whole series might be 2...) and I happaned to open the first one totally independently of the second and I love love love that they were like 'look at this utopia!' that featured all pictures of white people and then were like 'but also, let's shift the lens and explore who the utopia is for'