Racial Equity in Planning Organizations

Abstract

In this Viewpoint, I urge public planners to examine how planning departments’ internal rules and norms reproduce racial inequity. I first explain how public planning departments’ inner workings are racialized and then offer racial equity in planning organizations (REPO) as a framework and directive to align public planning racial equity goals with internal rules and norms. I argue that organizational change will position planners to advance racial equity in the United States. REPO can lead to local change and recalibrate how planners envision their role in changing their communities.

Keywords:

• departments
• equity
• organizations
• planners
• race

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their incisive and constructive feedback.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be found on the publisher’s website.

NOTES

Notes

1 DuPois et al. (2017) examined long-range transportation plans from the 50 largest U.S. cities. Of those plans, 19 were adopted after 2010 and the rest were considered regional long-range transportation plans.

2 Schrock et al. (2015) examine a representative sample of 28 cities that adopted climate and sustainability plans between 2005 and 2012.

3 These groups are racialized “others,” but they experience and participate in racialization in different ways. For example, Latinx identity is an ethnoracial category, or what Rosa (2019) calls “a particular coordinate within a broader assemblage—note, not a spectrum!—of racial categories” (p. 4).

4 I adopt a basic, commonly used definition, although theorists continue to debate organizational forms and goals (Scott, 2008).

5 Planners have a tradition of drawing from the field of sociology in their quest to better understand race and inequality. Studies of segregation (Massey & Denton, 1988, 1993) and urban politics (Molotch, 1976) have been particularly influential in the field.

6 I participated in the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s GARE team in 2016 and 2017. Through this experience, I attended several GARE trainings and two of its annual member meetings. However, I did not and do not conduct formal research on its activities, nor do I hold an affiliation with the organization.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miriam Solis

MIRIAM SOLIS ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin. She conducts research on the intersections of race, the environment, and infrastructure.