Does Urban Planning Play A Role In Racism?

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Hello Everyone:

It is a very lovely summer Monday afternoon and the start of a new week.  Yours Truly is still getting used to the nuances of a re-vamped blog app.  Nevertheless, she persists.

Before we get started on today's topic, Does urban planning perpetuate racism," a little Candidate Forum news.  First, VPOTUS Joe Biden (D-DE) is set to announce, finally, his running mate.  Each of the finalist brings with her an array of a breadth of experience, strengths and weakness that would make her an ideal vice president.  The top candidates include, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), Representative Karen Bass (D-CA), and former Obama administration National Security Advisor Susan Rice.  VPOTUS needs to put his skates on because the Democratic National Convention virtually begins next week.  Speaking of which, our second news, the national conventions begin next week with Democrats gathering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, albeit online.  The Republicans are set to meet in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Both VPOTUS and POTUS are expected to formally accept their respective nominations from remote locations.  The Candidate Forum will find a way to bring you convention highlights.  Onward

fastcompany.com

Cities are complex organic entities, shaped by the planners and their policies that guide them for decades.  At the core of these policies and practices is a legacy of institutionalized racism and discrimination.  The racial justice protests, that erupted in the wake of the killings of Ahmud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and too many names on this too tragic list, brought into sharp focus the issues that contribute to make cities unequal places for BIPOC citizens.  One of the issues that make cities unequal is the question of whether urban planning perpetuates racism.  The question is not a recent one.  Lisa Bates, a Portland State University planning, had message for a gathering of Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Conference in 2015, one year after the tragedy of Michael Brown, in Houston, Texas.  Prof. Bates the group: "Urban planning has a race problem that it doesn't want to acknowlege" (kinder.rice.edu; Oct. 29, 2015; date accessed Aug. 10, 2020).

The motivation for her message was her frustration with "ongoing efforts to try to 'lift up' impoverished people of color by using affordable housing programs to steer them from predominantly black to mixed-race neighborhoods where they--theoretically--may have more opportunities" (Ibid).  Prof. Bates considered this shortsighted (perhaps discriminatory).  She argued that homogeneous neighborhood are not the problem (Ibid).  The crux of the problem is the way society and government deals with these neighborhoods.  She said The problem is racism (Ibid) and this is the challenge that needs to be met.  Prof. Bates argued that planners should concentrate on ways to address institutionalized racism that have undermined African American communities.  Specifically,

Our entire urban history has been about moving people to solve problems,... We only try to make people move...when they're poor and people of color (Ibid)

Black Lives Matter protest
curbed.com

The following year, in 2016, racism in urban planning was acknowledged as contributor to inequality in cities.  The Black Lives Matter have made these inequities a regular part of the national discourse, prompting a reassessment of the ways planning practices continue these problems and how can we fix them.

The first step to addressing the problem is understanding how we got here in the first place.  Dian Budds wrote in Fast Company, "For decades, planners slashed through neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal and slum clearance, underwritten by federal funding from Housing Act of 1949 and the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, displacing resident using tactics like eminent domain and condemnation laws (fastcompany.com; July 18, 2016; date Aug, 10, 2020).  The result was much of our highway systems courses through black neighborhoods--which is why they often become spaces of civil protest.  Urbanist Jane Jacobs, the author of the most influential planning of all time Death and Life of Great American Cities, wrote

This method fails,... At best it merely shifts slums from here to there, adding its own tincture of extra hardship and disruption.  At worst, it destroys neighborhoods where constructive and improving communities exist and where the situation calls for encouragement rather destruction (fastcompany.com; July 18, 2016).

Examples of American public transportation
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Another challenge is access to public transportation-which affect everyone in urban areas but disproportionately impacts low-income and minority neighborhoods.  For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area the lack of public transit in specific neighborhood is an intentional tactic to keep communities isolated and increasingly segregated.  Robert Moses, the "master builder" of the 20th-century, intentionally designed overpasses on Long Island deliberately too low for buses to pass through, segregating one the beaches from low-income residents.  He told his biographer, biographer Robert Caro,

Legislation can always be changed.  It's very hard to tear down a bridge once it's up (fastcompany.com; July 18, 2016).

American realtor
realtor.com

Realtors have also contributed to racial segregation through selling practices like blockbusting--"using scare tactics to convince white homeowners to sell cheaply" (fastcompany.com; July 18, 2016)--and racial steering--"guiding prospective homebuyers to certain to certain neighborhoods based on race"(fastcompany.com; July 18, 2016).  This strategy has led to increased racial tension, similar to what happened in East New York, in 2016, when a low-income neighborhood in Brooklyn was threatened with gentrification.

These are just some of the ways racism has influenced the modern city, a representation of their complexity and just how deep-rooted the problem is.  Is there a way to make cities more equatable?

planning.org

Recently, a group of 650 urban planners signed a letter, to the American Planning Association, supporting the call to defund the police.  Defunding the police may seem like a criminal justice issue but in the letter, the planners to their professional organization "how neighborhoods that were racially segregated by a range of planning policies have become further denigrated by police violence and harassment of Black people--and that planners have done little historically to help change this dynamic" (bloomberg.com; Aug, 6, 2020; date accessed Aug. 10, 2020).  The letter, date July 24th, reads,

Historically, planners have been responsible for manifestations of institutional racism including redlining and the construction of freeways and toxic industrial development in poor Black and Brown  neighborhoods among many others,... These actions have had reverberating effects, including creating the preconditions of communities of color and disinvestment in community health and safety (just to as they created the conditions for safety, wellness, prosperity, and limited policing in predominantly white suburbs)...(bloomberg.com; Aug, 6, 2020).

Although the APA has not specifically opined on defunding police departments, it did address police violence in a May 31 statement, saying that the 

impact of Mr. Floyd's death and other recent grave injustices like it must be viewed in light of the historical trauma inflicted on African American communities, including discrimination wrought by the planning profession itself, which led to structural disadvantages in housing, transportation, education and employment that last to this day (bloomberg.com; Aug, 6, 2020).

Breonna Taylor
cnn.com

The death of Breonna Taylor, at the hands of the Louisville, Kentucky police department highlights the possible connection between policing, housing, and gentrification.  In a lawsuit filed on behalf of Ms. Taylor's family, the city is accused of "engaging in aggressive police tactics in pursuit of a redevelopment project in the neighborhood of of Jamarcus Glover--a suspected drug deal that police were targeting when they barged into Taylor's home on March 13.  The lawsuit claims that police pursuit of Glover was inextricably linked to the 'political need' clear the block where he lived for a real development projects,... notes that eight homes on Glover's street had been demolished in the months leading up to the shooting" 

The complaint also reads,

The origin of Breonna's home being raided by police starts with a political need to clear out a street for a large real estate development project and finishes with a newly formed, rogue police unit violating all levels of policy, protocol and policing standard...While there is no doubt that gentrification of west Louisville neighborhoods could be a very good thing, the methods employed to do so have been unlawful and unconscionable (bloomberg.com; Aug, 6, 2020).  

For the record, the city of Louisville denies it has any role in Taylor's death, and also rejects the theory that its community improvement plans were abetted by aggressive or violent policing (bloomberg.com; Aug, 6, 2020).

Although calls for defunding the police do not enjoy widespread support, the fact of the matter remains that urban planning policies and practices have contributed to the legacy of institutionalized racism.  This legacy has led to the marginalization of communities of color leading to a lack of access to education, employment, entrepreneurship, housing, healthcare, and transportation opportunities.  The lack of these opportunities has led to the creation of circumstances that contributed to more aggressive policing in communities of color.  One way to defund police is addressing the way planning has historically created the situation that has led to more violent and aggressive police enforcement in communities of color.  Once we begin a sober and serious discussion of how urban planning perpetuates racism, then we can look for ways to constructively defund the police