In neighborhoods around the country, architects, designers, and artists of color are rediscovering public places and building new ones that tell stories of and re-engage the local community. Architect Emmanuel Pratt’s Sweetwater Foundation and artist Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation are just two examples, both seeding new creative and urban energy on emptied blocks on the south side of Chicago, having been inspired by artist Rick Lowe’s pioneering Project Row Houses in Houston.

Artist Titus Kaphar discovered the historically African-American Dixwell neighborhood while studying at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, not far from a pair of one-story factory buildings that he has recently converted into NXTHVN, a 40,000-square-foot art and community incubator. After a difficult childhood with domestic tumult and a repeatedly incarcerated father, Kaphar discovered art in junior college, and ultimately received his Master of Fine Arts at Yale.