Planning and Policy
When Diversity Lost the Beat: Reviving the Hidden Rhythms of Black Urbanism in U.S. Planning Literature from 1990–2020 by Dr. Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta (Journal of the American Planning Association; 2023)
"Since the 1960s, African Americans have advocated to be systematically represented and addressed in planning education and practice. Despite burgeoning diversity work, it is unclear how specifically planning scholars have listened. Using a bibliometric and content analysis of the 21 oldest and most-cited planning journals, I analyzed the presence of race, diversity, and African Americans in 19,645 peer-reviewed research articles published between 1990 and 2020. Of these articles, only 4.8% focused explicitly on racial diversity in the abstracts, titles, keywords, or within their main text. Within these 944 U.S. diversity articles, nearly one-fourth (24.47%, n = 231) focused on African Americans. Overall, just 1.17% of the total U.S.-focused planning research in these journals focused on African Americans in this 3-decade period. Of these Black urbanism research articles, an evolving set of 34 themes and 105 story beats built on each other in six story arcs: a) Black housing, segregation, and gentrification; b) Black entrepreneurship and employment; c) Black ecology and environmentalism; d) Black arts, culture, and politics; and e) Black intersectionality. In addition to offering the first quantitative study on Black urbanism since 1990, two main analytical insights are that Black urbanism is a small literature, and specific contours exist to grow Black urbanism beyond its small canon in planning. Limitations to these findings include the small literature size, the lack of engagement with Black urbanism in a broader context than planning, technological barriers for mining older articles from archived databases, and understanding Black urbanism beyond a provincial focus on the United States."
The Color of Law by Call Number: 305.800973 R847ISBN: 9781631492853Publication Date: 2017-05-02"Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation -- that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes it clear that it was de jure segregation -- the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments -- that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day."
(above) SHORT FILM: Segregated by Design directed by Directed by Mark Lopez (2019; 18 min)
"Examine the forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy." Written by Mark Lopez & Richard Rothstein.
PODCAST: NPR's Fresh Air - A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America (May 3, 2017; 48 min)
To promote The Color Of Law, Rothstein did a number of interviews including this one on NPR's Fresh Air.
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America by the Digital Scholarship Lab (University of Richmond)
This Digital Humanities project is a web portal that "lets you explore [the Home Owners' Loan Corporation] maps and the history of racial and ethnic discrimination in housing policy." Scans of the maps have been "georectified" and are available for free to download as GeoJSON raster format. The site also allows you to search the area descriptions and provides resources on teaching and understanding redlining.
“The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic, June 2014)
"Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole."
"Ta-Nehisi Coates Revisits the Case for Reparations" (New Yorker Magazine; June 10, 2019)
This article includes audio from The New Yorker Radio Hour episode featuring an interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates talks by Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker, David Remnick,
Land, Wealth, Liberation: The Making & Unmaking of Black Wealth in the United States (Indiana University Bloomington; Willa Tavernier, Project Lead)
"This digital resource surveys the experiences of African Americans in seeking to acquire land and create communities to achieve economic independence, secure their right to full participation in US society, and express their claim to citizenship. We offer this resource as a means of fostering intercultural understanding, in the hopes that it will spur meaningful conversations, and help explore paths and policies to achieve reconciliation."
Race and Real Estate by ISBN: 9780199977277Publication Date: 2015-10-28"Race and Real Estate' brings together new work by architects, sociologists, legal scholars, and literary critics that qualifies and complicates traditional narratives of race, property, and citizenship in the United States. Rather than simply rehearsing the standard account of how blacks were historically excluded from homeownership, these authors of the essays explore how the raced history of property affects understandings of home and citizenship."
Redline Archive by Walis Johnson
"The Red Line Archive is a mobile public art project that engages New York City residents in a conversation about race and the history of the 1938 Red Line Map that helped create the segregated urban landscapes of the city. This “cabinet of curiosities” is wheeled along city streets, inviting people to freely associate about personal artifacts and documents from the artist’s family history in gentrifying Brooklyn and ephemera collected during four artist walks in and along the periphery of redlined neighborhoods."
Undesign the Redline by designing the WE
"Undesign the Redline is a framework for unearthing our most deep, systemic and entangled crises. This interactive exhibit, workshop series and curriculum explores the history of structural racism and inequality, how these designs compounded each other from 1938 Redlining maps until today, and how WE can come together to undesign these systems with intentionality.
The exhibit travels nationally to cities, towns and communities to learn together, activate and mobilize us into a strong “WE” capable of transformation. We think the exhibit should go everywhere."
DIGITAL EXHIBITION: Mapping Prejudice: Visualizing the hidden histories of race and privilege in the built environment (University of Minnesota)
"Mapping Prejudice identifies and maps racial covenants, clauses that were inserted into property deeds to keep people who were not White from buying or occupying homes. From our base in the University of Minnesota Libraries, our interdisciplinary team collaborates with community members to expose the history of structural racism [in Minneapolis] and support the work of reparations."
Segregation By Design (by Adam Paul Susaneck, @segregation_by-design)
"Using historic aerial photography, this ongoing project aims to document the destruction of communities of color due to red-lining, “urban renewal,” and freeway construction. Through a series of stark aerial before-and-after comparisons, figure-ground diagrams, and demographic data, this project will reveal the extent to which the American city was methodically hollowed out based on race. The project will cover the roughly 180 municipalities which received federal funding from the 1956 Federal Highway Act, which created the interstate highway system."
People Before Highways by ISBN: 9781625342973Publication Date: 2018-02-02"In 1948, inspired by changes to federal law, Massachusetts government officials started hatching a plan to build multiple highways circling and cutting through the heart of Boston, making steady progress through the 1950s. But when officials began to hold public hearings in 1960, as it became clear what this plan would entail -- including a disproportionate impact on poor communities of color -- the people pushed back. Activists, many with experience in the civil rights and antiwar protests, began to organize. Linking archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, and oral history, Karilyn Crockett in People before Highways offers ground-level analysis of the social, political, and environmental significance of a local anti-highway protest and its lasting national implications. The story of how an unlikely multiracial coalition of urban and suburban residents, planners, and activists emerged to stop an interstate highway is one full of suspenseful twists and surprises, including for the actors themselves. And yet, the victory and its aftermath are undeniable: federally funded mass transit expansion, a linear central city park, and a highway-less urban corridor that serves as a daily reminder of the power and efficacy of citizen-led city making."
RADIO SEGMENT + ARTICLE: A divide over how to heal a community divided by a highway by Carly Berlin (Marketplace Morning Report; March 17, 2023; 2 min 30 sec)
"... one community in New Orleans is still trying to find the best way to heal the harm a highway has caused... the Claiborne Avenue Alliance Design Studio, submitted an application to the Reconnecting Communities program. It asked for money for a study to reimagine Claiborne — without the highway..."
Bike Lanes Are White Lanes by ISBN: 9781496222312Publication Date: 2020-12-01"The number of bicyclists is increasing in the United States, especially among the working class and people of color. In contrast to the demographics of bicyclists in the United States, advocacy for bicycling has focused mainly on the interests of white upwardly mobile bicyclists, leading to neighborhood conflicts and accusations of racist planning.
In Bike Lanes Are White Lanes, scholar Melody L. Hoffmann argues that the bicycle has varied cultural meaning as a “rolling signifier.” That is, the bicycle’s meaning changes in different spaces, with different people, and in different cultures. The rolling signification of the bicycle contributes to building community, influences gentrifying urban planning, and upholds systemic race and class barriers.
In this study of three prominent U.S. cities—Milwaukee, Portland, and Minneapolis—Hoffmann examines how the burgeoning popularity of urban bicycling is trailed by systemic issues of racism, classism, and displacement. From a pro-cycling perspective, Bike Lanes Are White Lanes highlights many problematic aspects of urban bicycling culture and its advocacy as well as positive examples of people trying earnestly to bring their community together through bicycling."
Lost in the Transit Desert by ISBN: 9780367207823Publication Date: 2019-01-17"Increased redevelopment, the dismantling of public housing, and increasing housing costs are forcing a shift in migration of lower income and transit dependent populations to the suburbs. These suburbs are often missing basic transportation, and strategies to address this are lacking. This absence of public transit creates barriers to viable employment and accessibility to cultural networks, and plays a role in increasing social inequality.
This book investigates how housing and transport policy have played their role in creating these "Transit Deserts," and what impact race has upon those likely to be affected. Diane Jones Allen uses research from New Orleans, Baltimore, and Chicago to explore the forces at work in these situations, as well as proposing potential solutions. Mapping, interviews, photographs, and narratives all come together to highlight the inequities and challenges in Transit Deserts, where a lack of access can make all journeys, such as to jobs, stores, or relatives, much more difficult. Alternatives to public transit abound, from traditional methods such as biking and carpooling to more culturally specific tactics, and are examined comprehensively."
A Letter to White Urbanists by Alicia John-Baptiste (June 1, 2020)
Written by the President and CEO of SPUR (the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association), a nonprofit public policy organization. "We bring people together from across the political spectrum to develop solutions to the big problems cities face. Based in San Francisco, San José and Oakland, we are recognized as a leading civic planning organization and respected for our independent and holistic approach to urban issues."
"Under the Banner of ‘Urbanism’: An Interview With Kristen Jeffers" by Kea Wilson (Streetsblog.com; June 3, 2020)
"As founder, convener, and editor in chief at the The Black Urbanist, Kristen Jeffers explores land use, planning and transportation systems while centering the black, queer, and feminist voices. A native of North Carolina, she is also an author, textile artist and designer, urban planner and activist. Streetsblog sat down with her to talk about how she sees the conversation about street safety shifting in light of the most recent extrajudicial murders of PoC by police, the subsequent uprisings, and the COVID-19 pandemic."
How America's Ugly History of Segregation Changed the Meaning of the Word 'Ghetto' Daniel B. Schwartz (Time Magazine; September 24, 2019)
The article provides a summary of how the term "ghetto," which was linked to Jews starting in the early 16th Century, began being used by African Americans in the early 1910s and later
Red Hot City by ISBN: 9780520387645Publication Date: 2022-10-11"An incisive examination of how growth-at-all-costs planning and policy have exacerbated inequality and racial division in Atlanta.
Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, central Atlanta has experienced heavily racialized gentrification while the suburbs have become more diverse, with many affluent suburbs trying to push back against this diversity. Exploring the city’s past and future, Red Hot City tracks these racial and economic shifts and the politics and policies that produced them."
Just Urban Design by ISBN: 9780262544276Publication Date: 2022-11-22"A critical examination of the role and scope of urban design in creating more just and inclusive cities..." This is an open-access publication and can be accessed in full online.
A ‘futuristic vision for Harlem’ by James Nevius (Curbed New York; January 10, 2018)
" This long form article provides the historical context for two approaches to re-imagining Harlem: one by June Jordan with Buckminster Fuller and another by Architects’ Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) led by Max Bond Jr. "
Skyrise for Harlem
- "Instant Slum Clearance" June Meyer (nee Jordan) (Esquire; April 1 1965)
This article was publishing under June Jordan's married name, June Meyer, and was the result of a collaboration by her organizing with architect Buckminster Fuller whereby the two presented a new vision of Harlem. Jordan submitted the article with the headline "Skyrise for Harlem," however editors at Esquire changed it (see "Letter to R. Buckinster Fuller (1964)"). [This link is provided for reference, but is unfortunately behind a paywall.]
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Letter to R. Buckminster Fuller (1964) by June Jordan in Civil Wars
Jordan provides some context for "Skyrise for Harlem" as well as a letter she wrote to Fuller early in their collaboration on the project. -
Place, Emotion, and Environmental Justice in Harlem: June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller's 1965 "Architextual" Collaboration
Cheryl J. Fish (Discourse; Spring & Fall 2007)
"This essay examines the nexus between environmental and social justice as an intervention into the materiality of urban planning in a collaboration between two leading public intellectuals: June Jordan and R. Buckminster Fuller. Both interdisciplinary thinkers and civic environmentalists, they illustrate the concept that "environmental quality and economic and social health are multually constitutive."' -
When June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller Tried to Redesign Harlem
Claire Schwartz (The New Yorker; August 22, 2020)
" "... a collaborative architectural redesign of Harlem,” in which she joined forces with the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, champion of the geodesic dome. Jordan and Fuller called their collaboration “Skyrise for Harlem”: a plan for public housing that was attuned to the well-being of two hundred and fifty thousand of the neighborhood’s residents, most of them Black. The project may have seemed a left turn for Jordan, who came to prominence through her essays and poetry. But she had always conceived of her work as falling under the umbrella of environmental design—“that is,” she explained, “in general, an effort to contribute to the positive changing of the world.”" -
How a Harlem Skyrise Got Hijacked—and Forgotten
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (The Nation; July 14, 2021)
"The fate of June Jordan’s visionary reimagining of Harlem, like the “progressive” design for IS 201, shows that when it comes to Utopias, the key question is always: “Whose?”" -
“An Elegy of Place”: Affective Mapping in June Jordan’s Civil Wars
Jennifer D. Williams (a/b: Auto/Biography Studies; 2023)
"Most people know June Jordan the poet, the activist, the political essayist, and perhaps even the fiction writer. Fewer perhaps know her as an architect, urban planner, Black ecofeminist, and spatial theorist. This essay uses Jordan’s theories of place as a framework for her autobiographical writing, turning primarily to Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines of America (1981), a compilation of essays, letters, lectures, scenarios, diary entries, and reportage. An interdisciplinary approach that incorporates Black feminist autobiography scholarship, trauma and affect theory, and queer theory uncovers Civil Wars as both an autobiography of feeling and an archive of intellectual development. Jordan’s theory of place in Civil Wars functions as an architectural aesthetic that facilitates affective mapping—the movement of feeling between the self and the collective. Affective mapping allows Jordan to narrate a relational self by drawing on Black feelings that emerge within the intimacy of place and in the frequencies of Black sound."
Architect’s Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH)
"The Architect’s Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH), one of the best-known examples of an advocacy planning organization, was started in 1964 by Richard Hatcher, a young white architect who was joined by John Bailey, a city planner, in 1967. Max Bond joined ARCH as its new executive director in 1968.
This was a period of urban renewal throughout the country, which for many in black neighborhoods meant removal and relocation. ARCH was envisioned as a community facilitator, helping the community communicate ideas of renewal of their own neighborhood. At a press conference, Bond advocated for the creation of a “planning review board of representatives from community organizations” that would enable Harlem to determine if projects planned for their community would, in fact, help the community.
ARCH gave voice to residents who had few means to challenge plans being proposed by local government. ARCH was able to examine and explain community development plans proposed by city agencies to the residents and propose new plans that favored those who lived there. Dozens of graduates from Howard University and other HBCUs, as well as socially conscious white planners and architects, flocked to ARCH to work as paid employees or volunteers.
In 1970, with Art Symes at the helm, Architecture in the Neighborhoods, a program to recruit local black youth to become architects, was initiated. Architecture in the Neighborhoods offered college scholarships to those who made it through a rigorous prep period.
As Art Symes once stated, “Architecture and planning are just too important to be omitted from the lives of people who happen to be poor.” (Roberta Washington for Now What?!)
- Architect's Renewal Committee in Harlem by Roberta Washington (Now What?!; November 27, 2018)
- Poor People's Plan by Priscilla Tucker (The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin; January 1969)
This article is on Architect's Renewal Committee Harlem's (ARCH) radical approach to city planning - what the writer refers to as "Soul architecture" - and includes their interview with then Executive Director of ARCH, Max Bond.
- East Harlem Triangle Plan by ARCH (August 1968)
This is the final report to the City of New York of the East Harlem Triangle Renewal Plan prepared by ARCH and the New York Housing Authority as submitted by J. Max Bond, Executive Director of ARCH. "The following planning process and its organizational structures represent in[sic] an urban renewal innovation. For the first time a community participated fully in the decision and planning process from its inception hiring its own consultants to translate its ideas into a renewal plan. In actuality this is the community's report not the planners" (from the cover letter attached to the report).
Previously a monthly newspaper called "The Harlem News", this monthly magazine ran from March 1972 to at least October 1973 and published articles, opinion pieces, and letters relating to planning issues and grassroots organizing in the Harlem community and beyond.
- A proposal for a community controlled Harlem high school system / Architects' Renewal Committee in Harlem, Inc. ; prepared by Carl Anthony. (1969)
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- Housing in central Harlem. Part one, The potential for rehabilitation and new vest pocket housing Prepared by John M. Bailey, Jr. and King Harvey (1967).
"In the wake of a uprising in March 1935, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appointed a ten-member Commission to research conditions in Harlem, a geographic and cultural center of Black life. The Commission contracted with noted sociologist E. Franklin Frazier to conduct studies and draft its eventual report. The Commission held multiple hearings at which 160 witnesses testified. Unlike many government hearings, the audience was permitted to directly question, and sometimes contradict, the witnesses.
The end result was a 118-page report, plus appendices, submitted to the Mayor but never issued by City government. The New York Amsterdam News did publish the report which included chapters on the events of March 19, 1935, the Commission and Public Hearings, The Problem of Making a Living, the Relief Situation, the Housing Problem, the Problem of Education and Recreation, Health and Hospitalization, Crime and the Police, and Conclusions and Recommendations." This site revisits that report including the chapter on housing.
There Goes the Hood by ISBN: 9781592134373Publication Date: 2006-06-16"In this revealing book, Lance Freeman sets out to answer a seemingly simple question: how does gentrification actually affect residents of neighborhoods in transition? To find out, Freeman does what no scholar before him has done. He interviews the indigenous residents of two predominantly black neighborhoods that are in the process of gentrification: Harlem and Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. By listening closely to what people tell him, he creates a more nuanced picture of the impacts of gentrification on the perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of the people who stay in their neighborhoods. Freeman describes the theoretical and planning/policy implications of his findings, both for New York City and for any gentrifying urban area. There Goes the 'Hood provides a more complete, and complicated, understanding of the gentrification process, highlighting the reactions of long-term residents. It suggests new ways of limiting gentrification's negative effects and of creating more positive experiences for newcomers and natives alike."
Hella Town by ISBN: 9780520381124Publication Date: 2021-09-28""Oakland is a well-kept secret, a port city of dramatic topography and physical beauty, varied social groups and one-off neighborhoods. In his incisive history, Mitchell Schwarzer examines the development of Oakland's built environment from the onset of the twentieth century to the present, especially in light of its status as a second city playing underdog to glamorous San Francisco across the bay. His book emphasizes the ways transportation networks, housing, industry, commerce, and civic and park projects together shaped a social and political terrain that continues to be defined by class and racial inequalities."
Root Shock by ISBN: 9781613320198Publication Date: 2016-11-01"Root Shock examines 3 different U.S. cities to unmask the crippling results of decades-old disinvestment in communities of color and the urban renewal practices that ultimately destroyed these neighborhoods for the advantage of developers and the elite."
America’s Cities Were Designed to Oppress by Bryan Lee Jr. (Bloomberg; June 3, 2020)
"Architects and planners have an obligation to protect health, safety and welfare through the spaces we design. As the George Floyd protests reveal, we’ve failed."
Race, Architecture and Tales from the Hood by Bryan Lee Jr., (TED Talk; 2016; 9 min)
"Bryan Lee Jr. is the Place & Civic Design Director for the Arts Council of New Orleans. With a background in architecture, Lee is tasked with creating, advocating for, and contributing to the creative intervention of public art and social impact design in civic spaces across New Orleans. Before joining the Arts Council, Mr. Lee spent time at 2014 AIA National Firm of the Year, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple (Architecture) in New Orleans. Additionally, Mr. Lee leads an award winning architecture + design curriculum for high school students through the National Organization of Minority Architects Louisiana Chapter (NOMA). As a devoted member of the NOMA, Mr. Lee serves on the National board as the Design Education Chair. He was selected as the 2014 NOMA member of the year and his chapter received the 2014 NOMA Chapter of the Year. Bryan was also selected as a 2015 Next City Vanguard Fellow and a 2015 international British American Project Fellow."
Mapping Detroit by ISBN: 9780814340264Publication Date: 2015-03-16"One of Detriot's most defining modern characteristics--and most pressing dilemmas--is its huge amount of neglected and vacant land. In Mapping Detroit, editors June Manning Thomas and Henco Bekkering illustrate how Detroit moved from frontier fort to thriving industrial metropolis to today's high-vacancy city. It offers a unique perspective to the historical causes, contemporary effects, and potential future of Detroit's transformed landscape."
The South Side by ISBN: 9781250118332Publication Date: 2017-04-04"In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago-native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; with a memoirist's eye, she showcases the lives of these communities through the stories of people who reside there. The South Side shows the impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact."
Urban Planning and the African-American Community by ISBN: 0803972334Publication Date: 1996-12-10"The book explores four major topics: zoning and real estate, planning and public policy, African American initiatives and responses, and planning education. In addition, it includes key race-related excerpts from many essential planning-related documents, such as pivotal court cases and federal housing manuals. Individual chapters examine the racial origins of zoning in American cities; how Eurocentric family models have shaped planning policies applied to African American families; the rise of equity planning and its effects; and the role of race and empowerment in the Model Cities experiment. It also looks at the influence of African American experiences on the planning of such cities as Los Angeles, Greensboro, and Birmingham."
(above) VIDEO: Racism has a cost for everyone by Heather C. McGhee (TEDWomen 2019; 14 min)
Racism makes our economy worse -- and not just in ways that harm people of color, says public policy expert Heather C. McGhee. From her research and travels across the US, McGhee shares startling insights into how racism fuels bad policymaking and drains our economic potential -- and offers a crucial rethink on what we can do to create a more prosperous nation for all. "Our fates are linked," she says. "It costs us so much to remain divided."
The Sum of Us by ISBN: 9780525509585Publication Date: 2022-02-08Supplemental resources include a podcast hosted by author Heather McGhee, a discussion guide, and an adaptation of the book for Young Readers. More information can be found on McGhee's website: https://heathermcghee.com/
PODCAST: The Sum of Us (9 episodes; length of episode varies)
"On the heels of her bestselling book, Heather McGhee embarks on a road trip across COVID-era America, unearthing stories of American solidarty and hope in a time of great division and peril for our democracy. Join Heather as she travels from rural Maine to the California coast and everywhere in between, meeting extraordinary Americans who are crossing demographic, cultural, and political lines to build a better future for all of us." The podcast website includes an Episode-by-Episode Guide and resources for taking action (Discover YOUR Activist Style and Organize with Color Of Change).