planning as if people matter
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Planning as if PeoPle Matter
Marc BrenMan and ThoMas W. sanchez
Metropolitan Planning + Design Series editors: Arthur C. Nelson and Reid Ewing
A collaboration between Island Press and the University of Utah’s Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, this series provides a set of tools for students and professionals working to make our cities and metropolitan areas more sustainable, livable, prosperous, resilient, and equitable. As the world’s population grows to nine billion by mid-century, the population of the US will rise to one-half billion. Along the way, the physical landscape will be transformed. Indeed, two-thirds of the built environment in the US at mid-century will be constructed between now and then, presenting a monumental opportunity to reshape the places we live. The Metropolitan Planning + Design series presents an integrated approach to addressing this challenge, involving the fields of planning, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, public policy, environmental studies, geography, and civil and environmental engineering. The series draws from the expertise of some of the world’s leading scholars in the field of metropolitan planning and design. Please see Islandpress.org/Utah/ for more information.
Other books in the series:
The TDR Handbook, Arthur C. Nelson, Rick Pruetz, and Doug Woodruff (2011)
Stewardship of the Built Environment, Robert Young (2012)
Forthcoming:
Reshaping Metropolitan America, Arthur C. Nelson
Good Urbanism, Nan Ellin
Marc BrenMan and ThoMas W. sanchez
Planning as if PeoPle MatterGoverning for social equity
Washington | covelo | London
© 2012 Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the pub-
lisher: Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009
ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brenman, Marc.
Planning as if people matter : governing for social equity / Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61091-011-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-61091-011-7 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-61091-012-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-61091-012-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Political
planning—United States. 2. Social planning—United States. 3. Equality—Government policy—
United States. 4. Social justice—Government policy—United States. I. Sanchez, Thomas W.
II. Title.
JK468.P64B736 2012
320.60973—dc23
2011051594
Printed using Berkeley Oldstyle
Typesetting by Blue Heron Typesetting
Printed on recycled, acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Keywords: American Community Survey, citizen participation, civil justice, code of ethics, corporate
diversity, diversity, e-democracy, e-government, environmental justice, housing, human rights, infor-
mation and Communication Technology (ICT), land use planning, Leadership in Energy and Environ-
mental Design (LEED), Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), participatory planning, poverty,
public health, public interest design and planning, resilience, segregation, social alliances, social capi-
tal, social equity, social responsibility, unemployment, U.S. Census
Marc Brenman dedicates this book to his wife of twenty-eight years,
Barbara Bither.
Tom Sanchez dedicates this book to his parents, Ralph and Patricia
Sanchez, who have been a constant source of love and support, and also
to Nora and Erin, his pride and joy.
Contents
Preface | xi
Acknowledgments | xiii
1 Governance and equity: PlanninG as if PeoPle Matter | 1
2 chanGinG deMoGraPhics and social Justice | 15
3 ethics in the Public realM: the role of the Planner | 45
4 diversity and inclusion | 63
5 Public involveMent and ParticiPation | 95
6 technoloGy for social equity | 115
7 social equity interventions | 135
8 conclusions and recoMMendations | 159
Notes | 177
References | 179
Index | 195
xi
PrefaCe
As this book goes to print, the public participation and policy world con-
tinues to change around us. Few were prepared for the obstructionism
of the Tea Party and others who want to destroy the social safety net;
the Arab Spring, which has toppled some established dictatorships in the
Middle East and is struggling to create local forms of governance; or the
Occupy Wall Street movement, which may be a flash in the pan or a pre-
cursor to broader change like the early anti–Vietnam War demonstrations.
We are pulled in many different directions: global climate change has
social equity implications; the rise of the People’s Republic of China is
knocking the United States off its pedestal and calling into question the
“City on a Hill” paradigm that has dominated the history of the Global
North since World War II; economic constraints and decline in the Unit-
ed States cause us to question what we can pay for without asking what
needs doing; the first African-American president buoyed our spirits and
has dashed our hopes; US politics and infrastructure appear to be in a
shambles.
Planners and other public administrators are beset with ethical prob-
lems in a declining job market. Will new graduates ever be able to get
work? Will established workers be able to keep their jobs? Who dares to
tell the truth about what they see? Who dares to probe for the truth with-
out presuppositions?
xii | PreFace
In a period when information both yearns to be free and is worth
what we pay for it, who can be trusted? What is the veracity of anything
on an Internet fueled by advertising, pornography, and gambling, and
spied on in the name of data mining and national security? Computing
technologies make analysis of data quicker, but quality of life declines, un-
less measured in the availability of large flat-screen televisions and smart
telephones. Is that our fate, like in some science fiction movie, where ev-
erything is image and there is no privacy?
In this book, we have tried to provide some perspectives that we hope
have value beyond passing fancies, and that are rooted in the human expe-
rience. The richest among us can fend for themselves. They always have.
Those with the least deserve our attention. We recommend that planners
and public administrators critically examine the process of governance,
and this book is our effort to highlight some of the pressing issues.
We are not levelers; we enjoy many of the benefits of the good life. But
we have an obligation to serve, to go beyond doing no harm to actively
doing good. We believe that the planning and governance professions
have within them the seeds of such an effort. What will make those seeds
grow? We hope that this book will provide some of the right tools.
aCknowledgMents
Marc Brenman acknowledges the education and advice provided by a
wide range of civil rights advocates and experts. These include Richard
Foster, Robert Garcia, Paul Grossman, Elizabeth Keenan, Seth Kirby, Rich-
ard Marcantonio, Toby Olson, and Stephanie Ortoleva.
Tom Sanchez acknowledges Daren Brabham, Jacob Parcell, and Aaron
Smith Walter for their very helpful comments.
Both Marc and Tom acknowledge the unfailing support and wise ad-
vice of Heather Boyer of Island Press.
xiii
1
governanCe and equity: Planning as if PeoPle Matter
1
Very little has been written that spans governance, planning, and so-
cial equity. As practitioners and teachers in the fields of social jus-
tice and public administration, we want to help fill this gap. Great needs
continue to exist. Poverty statistics from the 2010 Census show that real
median household income declined between 2009 and 2010, and the
poverty rate increased between 2009 and 2010. Over 23% of the popula-
tion experienced a poverty spell lasting two or more months during 2009,
and 7.3% of the population were in poverty every month in 2009 (Short
2011). It has been noted that the United States has now created a larger
gap in the distribution of wealth than that in the Great Depression of the
late 1920s and 1930s. Today the top 0.001% of the US population owns
976 times more than the entire bottom 90% (Winter 2010). Many people
are angry about the increasing disparity, as shown by the Tea Party move-
ment, the “Occupation” of Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and the demon-
strations against Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
Government regulates infrastructure systems that keep cities econom-
ically vibrant, clean, safe, and livable, and it must ensure that systems and
services are available to citizens evenly—otherwise social inequality will
result. Planners and public administrators fall between elected officials and
the people, because they oversee the placement and use of public capital
facilities and systems such as streets, sidewalks, and bridges; open space;
2 | PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer
drinking water and sewage treatment facilities; stormwater systems; and
municipal buildings and services such as police and fire. Uneven infrastruc-
ture delivery, especially in health and transportation, led to the concept of
environmental justice. As defined by the EPA, environmental justice (EJ)
is “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless
of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development,
implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and
policies.” A 1978 study by Dr. Robert Bullard of the history and pattern of
waste facility siting in Houston on an African-American community’s class
action lawsuit (Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Inc.) to block
the siting of a sanitary landfill, marked a growing awareness that health
and environmental hazards like toxic dumps were disproportionately sit-
ed in communities of color and low-income people (Bullard 1999). In
fact, in 1983 the Government Accountability Office reported that three
of four hazardous waste facilities in the southeastern United States were
in African-American communities. In 1987 the United Church of Christ,
under the leadership of Dr. Charles Lee, published the groundbreaking
study “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.” The new environ-
mental justice movement joined the rising concern for environmental
degradation with civil rights concerns to respond to environmental rac-
ism, link grassroots struggles, and make agencies aware of environmental
justice concerns. Over five hundred organizations participated when the
UCC’s Commission for Racial Justice convened the first People of Color
Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991, resulting in a set of guiding
principles for the EJ movement. By the time President Clinton issued his
Executive Order on Environmental Justice in 1994, EJ came to encompass
fairness in the distribution of both the benefits and the burdens of pub-
lic decision making, and provided a new lens for structural inequality.
In the executive order, planners are charged with overseeing the con-
nection of their work to nondiscrimination. Similarly, the National Envi-
ronmental Policy Act requires a series of analyses before projects can be
built with federal funds. These analyses include one on socioeconomic
impacts. Socioeconomic status (SES) is the sum of a person’s circumstance
GoVernance anD eQUITY: PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer | 3
or context in society, which may be expressed or measured using criteria
such as income, educational level attained, occupation, health, and value
of dwelling place. A good definition of planning is hard to find. The Ameri-
can Planning Association definition states that planning is “a dynamic pro-
fession that works to improve the welfare of people and their communities
by creating more convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient, and attractive
places for present and future generations” (American Planning Association
2012). It involves design and physical and social arrangements, the built
environment, and uses of a given area and set of relationships. It involves
consideration of infrastructure, needs, and resources. Planners work to-
ward the deliberate improvement of the spatial organization and design of
human settlement and human movement. It does necessitate working for
a future that is better than the present, rather than maintaining the present
conditions into the future. Planners engage with the human experience, as
well as the material reality, of constructed space.
While aiming for social justice is aspirational, it is not possible to do
justice in the abstract—real people are affected. Thus planning has the ad-
vantage of being a direct linkage to the public. Medea Benjamin, cofounder
of Global Exchange and Code Pink, has said that social justice means
moving toward a society where all the hungry are fed, all the sick are cared
for, the environment is treasured, and we treat one another with love and
compassion. These are not easy goals (quoted in Kikuchi no date).
Social equity is an aspect of environmental justice but it goes well
beyond environmental issues. It has been defined as “the fair, just, and
equitable management of all institutions serving the public directly or by
contract, and the fair and equitable distribution of public services, and
implementation of public policy, and the commitment to promote fair-
ness, justice, and equity in the formation of public policy” (National Acad-
emy of Public Administration no date).
Today social equity not only is a problem of conscious public policy,
but can also be seen as a failure of governance processes administered by
the leaders of our implementing institutions. Individuals, institutions, and
governments make decisions every day, consciously and unconsciously.
4 | PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer
Lack of action often constitutes a decision. The social relationships among
groups of people are an important aspect of the infrastructure of cities.
City decline begins with the erosion of social capital, justice, and deliv-
ery of basic social and public goods. The Kerner Commission, which was
created in response to the race riots of the 1960s, called for, among other
things, a national fair housing law, and found that the United States was
becoming “two nations—one black, one white—separate and unequal”
(US National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968). The Na-
tional Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the formal name of the
Kerner Commission) issued a report in March 1968 that painted a stark
picture of American society dividing into two worlds. The commission
placed much of the blame for the riots on conditions in African-American
ghettos, neighborhoods separated not by law but by practice (US National
Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968).
There are numerous governance successes, such as the Voting Rights
Act of 1965. Such successes fill needs, usually as identified by those who
have suffered inequality. Our focus is more on where there are continuing
or neglected needs. One way of identifying these needs is to have met-
rics to determine what equality and fairness look like, and to provide a
comparison. We provide a number of metrics in this book. Several are
required due to the complexity of the issues, in the same way that numer-
ous tests are needed in the medical community to determine the health of
humans. We look at metrics for issues such as income equality, poverty,
literacy, access to health care, education, proportion of citizens incarcer-
ated, quality/availability/affordability of housing, and homelessness. Plan-
ning for social equity requires such yardsticks and a firm concept of hu-
man rights. To have legitimacy, a government must protect and preserve
human rights.
Thus one of our major thrusts in this book is for an effective govern-
ing process. Effectiveness is the extent to which the objective of a project,
plan, or initiative is achieved, or is expected to be achieved, taking into
account their relative importance, the magnitude of the challenge, and the
resources and time devoted to it.
GoVernance anD eQUITY: PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer | 5
We recognize that even in a democratic society, the Civil Rights Move-
ment and other movements to increase the rights of constituent and
discriminated-against groups have sometimes had to bend or even break
restrictive, unethical, and immoral laws. However, in this book one of
our basic assumptions is that effective and positive change can be ac-
complished without breaking laws. Sometimes laws have to be tested and
changed, and those who administer them have to be creative. For laws to
have force and effect, they must be created with all the people in mind,
and enforced by duly constituted official governmental bodies. Otherwise,
they are hortatory, or just full of positive feelings. Not all enforcement is
of equal value and effectiveness. Sometimes there are laws that do not de-
serve to be enforced, such as the Jim Crow laws that grossly disadvantaged
African-Americans in the southern and border states from the 1880s to
the 1960s. The Jim Crow laws, such as segregation in day-to-day activities
like education, eating, and riding public transportation, perpetuated the
forced inferior status of African-Americans that grew out of slavery.
The planning, legal, and judicial systems should be independent of
the government, so that it can serve the interests of its citizens rather than
a particular political party. In this way the civil rights of its citizens are
protected against a predatory and even a nominally beneficial executive
structure (Abdellatif 2003).
We believe in a strong civil society. The concept of civil society com-
monly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors, and institutional forms, vary-
ing in their degree of formality, autonomy, and power. Civil societies are
often populated by organizations such as registered charities, nongovern-
mental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-
based organizations, professional associations, trades unions, self-help
groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions, and advocacy
groups. It includes the arena in any community of voluntary collective ac-
tion around shared interests, purposes, and values distinct from those of
the nation.
We believe in collective as well as individual action. The individual in
a civil society has a social responsibility. Social responsibility is the duty of
6 | PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer
people and organizations to behave ethically and with sensitivity toward
others and toward social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues.
There is much debate about where social responsibility comes from—a
social contract, a Darwinian concept of group survival, even theories of
an altruistic gene. Social responsibility becomes embodied in planning in-
stitutions and planners, on the theory that it is better to plan than to let
events happen randomly, anarchically, or with malice.
If governance is representative of the people constituting a society,
then it will reflect a range of cultural values. Cultures can come into con-
flict, and have implications for governance processes. Conflicts, dispari-
ties, and suffering in society become events for which being an active, car-
ing person is a primary mode of participating in public life, and in which
issues are simultaneously both local and national. If a person has chosen
to be a member of the planning profession or a governance structure, she
or he has already chosen to be involved. Successful planning emphasizes
the importance of effective involvement.1
The planning profession has long had ethical codes, as have other
professions. In addition to the examples we give, more resources can be
found at http://www.planning.org/ethics. These ethical codes have not
necessarily prevented harm, due to disregard for the condition, needs, and
perspectives of traditionally discriminated-against people. We therefore
offer concrete recommendations in the ethics chapter for what new ethical
codes might look like that take into consideration social equity principles.
One of our recommendations is to move ethical rules from aspirational to
adopted and followed.
The planner needs to understand the dynamics of the larger soci-
ety. But lest this sound overwhelming, that larger society is composed of
smaller, manageable parts. The smallest unit is the individual, and we en-
courage those who participate in planning and governance to undertake
self-education and commitment to this new ethical approach to social jus-
tice. The legal approach to social justice mandates nondiscrimination by
all parties. The benefits approach to social justice provides subsistence
GoVernance anD eQUITY: PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer | 7
and incentives to those in need. The ethical approach underpins action by
providing a built-in evaluative mechanism, a conscience for infrastructure
before it is built and when it is modified or repaired.
In a time when politics is polarized, the individual cannot wait to act
until political guidance is received. Martin Wachs (1985, p. 55), one of
the deans of transportation planning, quotes Norton Long: “The ques-
tion is not whether planning will reflect politics, but whose politics will it
reflect? Plans are in reality political programs. . . . In the broad sense they
represent political philosophies, ways of implementing different concep-
tions of the good life.”
In this book, we expand on themes of our first book, The Right to Trans-
portation. We are going beyond a particular aspect of planning related to
physical infrastructure to the notion of social infrastructure—which like
public capital facilities and systems requires design, construction, mainte-
nance, and evaluation. And like physical infrastructure, social infrastruc-
ture experiences shocks and disruptions that test its strength, durability,
and resiliency. Also like physical infrastructure, social infrastructure helps
to keep cities and other public areas economically vibrant, clean, safe, and
livable. Social infrastructure is uniquely the responsibility of government.
As discussed above, government’s role in infrastructure is to build and
maintain social interconnections and services that no individual or small
group could do alone. Government represents the people and must ascer-
tain its will. In a democracy it does not follow all whims of small groups,
but must balance benefits and burdens. It is not entirely utilitarian, be-
cause minority rights are preserved through due process, basic fairness,
and nondiscrimination concepts. These do not happen by themselves, but
take real people to implement. These people are often planners and public
administrators.
We are concerned about the quality of life of all people in the United
States. However, we recognize the limitations of what government can do,
what the people will tolerate—even for their own benefit—how much
inertia there is in social situations, and how obstacles like racism can pre-
8 | PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer
vent doing what’s right. While we generally trust in collective wisdom,
we know that crowds have not always made wise choices. Education is a
constant requirement. It is possible to succeed, at least at the margins, at
least in some places and at some times. As President Calvin Coolidge said,
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”
Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (1993) point out, “The search for a
universally applicable account of the quality of human life has, on its side,
the promise of greater power to stand up for the lives of those whom tradi-
tion [read economic and political forces] has oppressed or marginalized.
But it faces the epistemological difficulty of grounding such an account in
an adequate way, saying where the norms come from and how they can be
known to be the best.”
We have a commitment to social improvement, and hope that we
show a realistic ability to separate the possible from the utopian. To ac-
complish the task we have set for ourselves, we are providing elements
of the previously missing framework and methodology. We believe that
inequality is unsustainable, and that equity has an important role in sus-
tainable development. Our inability to promote the common interest in
sustainable development is often a product of the relative neglect of eco-
nomic and social justice within and among nations (van Wyk 2009).
Sustainability is a method of using resources so that they are not de-
pleted or permanently damaged. It is a set of practices used by people
or groups designed to promote the long-term sharing of resources with
future generations. This includes reducing demands on the environment,
promoting economic opportunity, and increasing social equity. It includes
meeting the needs of current generations without compromising the needs
of future generations. To determine if something is sustainable, three ele-
ments must be considered: economics, environment, and social equity.
These are known as the “three Es”:
• Economic—factorsorcriteriamightbe,butarenotlimitedto,jobs,
cost, business, trade, production, manufacturing, human hours,
and so forth.
GoVernance anD eQUITY: PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer | 9
• Environment—factorsorcriteriamightbe,butarenotlimitedto,
air quality, water quality, land use, open space, safety, ecology, and
so forth.
• Socialequity—factorsorcriteriamightbe,butarenotlimitedto,
diverse populations, low-income people, traditionally discrimi-
nated against people, people with disabilities, indigenous popula-
tions, number of people positively affected, weighing benefits and
burdens on local populations, increased lifestyle efficiency, and so
forth.
In planning, social equity is often neglected. One can speculate that
this is because social systems are immensely complex and dynamic. “As
agents of the capitalist state, planners are inherently unable to deal suc-
cessfully with problems that result from capitalistic accumulation. At best,
they can throw up a smokescreen of good intentions behind which capital
is free to pursue its relentless pursuit for private gain without concern for
the intricate web of communities and people’s lives” (Friedmann 1982).
We need to consider the actual level of power (or lack of power) that plan-
ners have. Although planners often consider themselves to have relative-
ly little power, they help predict, evaluate, analyze, and make decisions
about infrastructure matters that can have major effects. The designed life
of a civic project in the United States is about forty years. With the current
decline in revenue, many are being forced to last much longer than that.
The physical environment and economic systems are far more easily mea-
sured and managed, and therefore are regarded as more easily controlled.
Recently, the concept of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
(LEED) has become popular in evaluating and awarding building con-
struction, to measure sustainability and resource conservation. We recom-
mend adding “equity” as another “E” to LEED—to bring about greater
awareness of the effects of development on equity in our communities,
and of the strengths of true diversity.
Not everyone agrees that racial and other social divides should be
bridged or eliminated. Walter B. Miller (1973) stated that right-wing ideo-
10 | PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer
logues have this assumption: “A major device for ordering human rela-
tions in a large and heterogeneous society is that of maintaining distinc-
tions among major categories of persons on the basis of differences in age,
sex, and so on, with differences in religion, national background, race, and
social position of particular importance. While individuals in each of the
general categories should be granted the rights and privileges appropriate
thereto, social order in many circumstances is greatly facilitated by main-
taining both conceptual and spatial separation among the categories.”
Traditionally, the way we plan for transportation, housing, and educa-
tion has worked to maintain that separation. Transportation projects have
thrown up physical barriers between schools and school districts, result-
ing in physically enforced segregation by race. Similarly, transportation
projects such as the Interstate Highway System of the 1950s and 1960s
made it much easier for whites to flee older central cities, leaving Afri-
can-Americans behind. Lack of public transportation makes it harder for
people from central cities to get to jobs. Housing segregation has resulted
in part in lower values and lower property taxes, thus providing fewer
funds to public schools attended by people of color. When new housing
has been built in the suburbs, schools were often located in the center of
the new developments, thus continuing the vestiges of former segregated
systems. While we do not dispute the desire of some group members at
some times to maintain separateness, we believe that in general, enforced
separation leads to one group being advantaged over another, and that
this disadvantage grows and manifests in numerous ways. These include
lower access to fresh food and the creation of “food deserts,” decreased ac-
cess to jobs, fewer amenities such as parks and open space, deteriorating
water and sewer systems, lower quality and fewer hospitals and medical
facilities, and absentee landlords.2 And so we encourage people from di-
verse groups to work together to face, meet, and overcome social needs
and challenges. Diversity theory indicates that there are many benefits to
previously separated groups coming together.
In the United States, problems of inequity in planning were evident
during the time of “urban renewal.” Between 1948 and 1973, urban re-
GoVernance anD eQUITY: PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer | 11
newal displaced a million people in 2,500 neighborhoods in 993 Amer-
ican cities. Of those neighborhoods affected by the far-reaching federal
program, approximately 1,600 were predominately African-American
(Fullilove 2004). This, in effect, concentrated and segregated low-income
residential areas of the city. Into the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, more exclu-
sionary zoning, highway construction, urban renewal, and public housing
developments further segregated neighborhoods within cities and limited
opportunities for blacks and other people of color. Interstate highway
construction often cut through African-American communities, and the
new freeways erected barriers to integration.
Cautions
We draw evidence, studies, and lessons from a wide variety of fields, in-
cluding housing, transportation, education, sociology, law, ethics, and in-
tergroup relations. We have tried to carefully select those that we think
have applicability to social justice. For some, arguments could probably
be made that their findings are not transferable to the topics covered in
this book. Unfortunately, there is relatively little available directly on our
subjects that meets accepted social science standards. This may be in part
because it is difficult to separate out moral, ethical, and faith-based be-
liefs from evidence-based ones. Where possible, we’ve tried to rely on evi-
dence. In some areas, the evidence base is thin. We have relied relatively
little on law-based arguments, since the law is a social construct that var-
ies from time to time and place to place. While we refer to civil rights
and nondiscrimination, we have not dwelled on its misfortunes and lack
of enforcement, since that is the province of law enforcers, not planners.
Nevertheless, we do sometimes cite the law, particularly international hu-
man rights law. At times, we rely on individual experience.3
One example of a cautionary tale is President Clinton’s Initiative on
Race. He had good-hearted, bright people initiate a discussion about race
in our nation, but it foundered badly. Perhaps the nation was not ready for
12 | PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer
such a discussion. Perhaps it will never be ready. Perhaps more is required
than conversation. Certainly, many civil rights advocates are weary of talk
and want to move beyond it to real accomplishment.4
Definitions of Terms
We try hard in this book to define the terms we use, especially those par-
ticular to the fields of planning, social equity, and justice. Equity is an
inherently vague and controversial notion. Especially concerning race, the
attempts at definition themselves are fraught with controversy. Language
changes over time and place. Some usages are permitted only within a
group, and not by outsiders. An example is the so-called N-word. Mis-
use is often punished in the media, and the Right attacks “political cor-
rectness.” Some issues are extremely difficult to talk about in the United
States, such as class. Ilana Shapiro (2002), of the Project Change Anti-
Racism Initiative and the Aspen Institute, stated:
Race and racism are notoriously difficult to talk about in the US. Conver-
sations often are politically and emotionally charged, fraught with dissent-
ing opinions and experiences, and mired in complex, interrelated issues.
The many terms used to describe groups (e.g., “race,” “ethnicity,” “cultural,”
“minority”), issues (e.g., “prejudice,” “oppression,” “racism,” “intolerance,”
“race relations”) and approaches (e.g., “prejudice reduction,” “anti-racism,”
“healing and reconciliation,” “diversity management,” “multiculturalism”) are
laden with unspoken assumptions. They allow people to talk past each other
without really communicating. It is not necessary to reach consensus, but it
is essential to understand the nuances of our language if we seek productive
conversations and unified action on racial issues.
GoVernance anD eQUITY: PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer | 13
A Work in Progress
The nature of planning, social justice, and equity is that they are fluid and
dynamic processes, heavily dependent on culture, history, demographic
and social changes, geography, and power dynamics. Therefore, we can-
not hope to provide final answers to the very difficult and long-standing
problems that exist. Inevitably, something we say will seem like an anach-
ronism by the time you read this. Like everyone else, we are prisoners of
our time and place. To help avoid being left behind by history, we try to
provide a variety of examples and possible solutions. Unlike many others,
we have not heavily emphasized social media and electronic solutions,
although we talk about their potential in the communication process in
chapter 6. In and of themselves, we believe them to be tools, which can
be used by people for good or ill. They are not a panacea. Their utility is
still playing out. Sarah Reginelli, principal planner for the City of Albany,
New York, said, “On a recent family vacation, I was struck by my dad’s
well-organized and well-stocked tackle box. When I asked him if having
50 different types of lures was really necessary, he replied, ‘If you only use
one type of lure, you only catch one type of fish’” (Rodgers 2011). That
one sentence sums up the way planners should be thinking about com-
munities. If the goal is to attract as many different members of the public
as possible, then a tackle box is a more appropriate metaphor than a tool-
kit. We should be using diverse methods to attract diverse populations.
We see this book as having both tools and tackle, hopefully leading to
increased awareness and encouraging action.
The Structure of This Book
This book is intended in part to highlight how planners and public admin-
istrators can incorporate social justice principles into their governance ac-
tivities. We start by providing a summary of demographics trends (chapter
14 | PLannInG as IF PeoPLe MaTTer
2) and explain how these changes have important implications for policy
and the future of social justice in the United States. The next two chap-
ters on ethics in the public realm (chapter 3) and diversity and inclusion
(chapter 4) discuss concepts fundamental to social justice. Public involve-
ment and participation (chapter 5) is integral to social equity and democ-
racy, and we mention several important traditional and emerging aspects.
Next we talk about the evolution of communications technologies (chap-
ter 6) and how they may play a role in governance related to social equity.
Drawing from the foregoing chapters, chapter 7 focuses on interventions,
which are integral to effecting change and social action. Finally, in chapter
8 we conclude with a summary and mention some particular challenges
that our society will continue to confront.
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