(CNN) -- "If power plants, waste handling, chemical plants and transport systems were located in wealthy areas as quickly and easily as in poor areas, we would have had a clean, green economy decades ago." -- Majora Carter, Powershift 2007 It was while walking her dog that Carter stumbled upon the disused stretch of waterfront that inspired her to act Majora Carter grew up in the South Bronx at a time when America's cities were emptying into the suburbs. Many of the buildings in her neighborhood were abandoned by the time she was ten years old. Landlords were burning their buildings to collect the insurance; light manufacturing industries were moving out of the Bronx; and waste facilities were moving in to take their place. As pollution rose, asthma rates, poor health and unemployment soared. To outsiders, those who were left were branded with the stamp of the ghetto: as Carter says, "If you lived here you were no doubt a pimp, a pusher, or a prostitute."
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Carter, who grew up in the Bronx, set up Sustainable South Bronx in 2001
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She wrote a $1.25M Federal Transportation planning grant for the South Bronx
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The 11-mile-long stretch is the first South Bronx waterfront park in 60 years
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Carter wants to see the South Bronx become a thriving community again
In 2001, after the defeat of the scheme, Carter founded the non-profit environmental justice solutions corporation, @placeholder.