Planning History From the Lions’ Perspective

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

Planning history in the United States is deeply intertwined with Black history. Yet, mainstream planning history narratives center White male planners and either ignore or present Black communities as passive victims. Inspired by the periodization defined by June Manning Thomas, this review provides a counternarrative of dominant planning history by centering Black experiences. This review reframes planning history across five periods: the Progressive era, the Great Migration, public housing after 1937 including World War II housing and postwar urban renewal, the civil rights era, and the 1970s and beyond. The authors suggest an extension of the final period to include mass incarceration and ongoing police violence. Centering Black experiences in planning history highlights the agency, power, and resiliency that Black communities have enacted despite dominant racist planning policies and practices.

Takeaway for practice

With an understanding of planning history from the perspective of those oppressed by traditional planning, the oppressed will no longer be dismissed as passive victims but will be understood as active players in their lives and communities. Instead, the political, social, psychological, and cultural power dynamics are acknowledged and demonstrate the ongoing determination of an oppressed group to fight for empowerment and joy. This allows for power dynamics to be reimagined for a better future of planning with, for, and by Black communities and any marginalized communities.

Keywords:

• Black history
• insurgent planning history
• planning history
• racial equity

Revisiting Planning and the Black Experience

An African proverb states, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” This proverb rings true for city planning history in the United States (and worldwide). Planning in the United States is inherently linked to Black experiences (Baron, 1968; Gans, 1991; Thomas, 1998; Thomas & Ritzdorf, 1997). Yet, U.S. planning literature has been largely written from the dominant White perspective (Hunter & Robinson, 2018). For example, Hall described his own seminal account of planning history as “glaringly Anglo-Americocentric” (Hall, 2014, p. 6). These mainstream texts have situated professional planners as the subjects, with common topics including the origin of the planning profession and the “pantheon of the planning movement” as a litany of White men (Hall, 2014, p. 2; Reps, 1992; Scott, 1971). Widely used U.S. planning history texts have made scant mention of race or racism, with the discussion of race often limited to economic and social hardships faced by Black communities, race riots, and social unrest in the second half of the 20th century (Fitzgerald & Howard, 2006).

With White planners as the subject, Black communities have often been framed as passive objects (Hunter & Robinson, 2018). This framing is not only problematic but also inaccurate. Indeed, “African Americans have a long history of struggling to stand as subjects in a place where the dehumanizing impact of racism works continually to make us objects” (hooks, 2009, p. 148). Those with the most holistic understanding of race, gender, and class inequities are situated at the margins and experience intersecting layers of oppression (hooks, 2000). From this perspective, an understanding of current and historical city planning in the United States must center Black experiences.

In her seminal works uplifting the connections between Black history and planning history, Thomas suggested an alternative periodization of planning history that centers Black experiences (Thomas, 1994; Thomas & Ritzdorf, 1997). In this review, we examine narratives in U.S. planning history texts regarding Black people, leveraging Thomas’s periodization: The Great Migration, public housing after 1937 and postwar urban renewal, the civil rights era, and the 1970s and beyond. We have appended Thomas’s periodization to include the Progressive era and the contemporary prison nation (Richie, 2012). Notably, our review is limited to the U.S. context, and the time periods are not mutually exclusive. To develop this narrative review, we used backwards and forwards snowball sampling to select leading U.S. planning history texts. Building upon planning literature, we sought to integrate an interdisciplinary approach and expanded our search to include prominent historical and contemporary texts in aligned fields including critical race theory, Black studies, civil rights history, and other relevant social science disciplines. Texts were categorized based on their acclaim or connection to the planning field as well as how Black people were or were not centered in the text. The review juxtaposes the mainstream narrative in U.S. planning history with a counternarrative from Black perspectives. Each section begins with a period summary, followed by an assessment of the literature. Our review demonstrates the value of critical Sankofa planning, looking back to reclaim an empowered history to build a better future of planning with, for, and by Black communities (A. R. Roberts, 2018).

The Progressive Era: Racism and Black Resilience in the Progressive Era

The Progressive era was a pivotal period in U.S. planning history and is typically the first period addressed in planning history literature. U.S. planning history has acknowledged the importance of the late 19th- and early 20th-century Progressive era in advancing reforms intended to improve the quality of life for immigrant tenement communities (Reece, 2018). From this perspective, traditional planning history has focused on planners, plans, and planning movements of the period (M. C. Boyer, 1983; Hall, 2014; Krueckeberg, 1983; Reps, 1992; Scott, 1971; Ward, 2002). Mainstream planning history regarding the Progressive era, such as Scott’s (1971) commemoration of the American Institute of Planners, glorified the planning field and emphasized planning’s commitment to creating a neat and orderly city committed to public health, recreation, morals, and discipline pursued through zoning and the City Beautiful movement.

Planning history covering the Progressive era has overlooked a critical blind spot regarding the Progressive era’s conflicted position on race (Southern, 2005). Historians have identified the Progressive era as one of the most active periods of racial disenfranchisement in the 20th century. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), laid the foundation for the emergence of Jim Crow by legitimizing and legalizing what had already emerged as major political efforts in the South to segregate people, whereas a series of local laws and policies were implemented to disenfranchize Black communities politically and economically (powell, 2021; Reece, 2021; Ware, 2021). In addition, leaders within the progressive movement advocated for openly discriminatory policies such as voter literacy tests and racially restrictive zoning. Racist and xenophobic views were common among most progressive scholars and political leaders of the time (Leonard, 2016).

The Beginning of Racialized Zoning

The role of progressive reformers was evident in implementing the first racial zoning ordinance in Baltimore (MD) in 1910. Progressive reformers and segregationists aligned in the ordinance’s stated purpose of “…promoting the general welfare of the city by providing, so far as practicable, for the use of separate blocks by white and colored people for residences, churches, and schools” (Ordinances and Resolutions of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore Passed at the Annual Session, 1910–11, 1911, p. 377). As described in Nightingale’s (2006) transnational study of residential segregation, an alliance of progressive elites united to justify the discriminatory ordinance by organizing the first City-Wide Congress of Baltimore without any representation from local Black communities. U.S. planning historians have emphasized the economic impact of racialized zoning on real estate investors rather than the negative impact on racially marginalized communities (M. C. Boyer, 1983). Later studies have confirmed the racialized motivations for zoning and demonstrated the detrimental outcomes of racialized zoning on Black communities, including disproportionate exposure to industrial environments (Shertzer et al., 2016).

The City Beautiful Movement

Flourishing from the 1890s to the 1920s, the City Beautiful movement has received ample attention in mainstream U.S. planning history. An operationalization of physical determinism, the City Beautiful movement sought to remove filth with the goal of moralizing the poor (Hall, 2014). For example, the purpose of the Chicago Plan (1909) was to “restore to the city a lost visual and aesthetic harmony, thereby creating the physical prerequisite for the emergence of a harmonious social order” (P. S. Boyer, 1997, p. 272). Although City Beautiful has been framed as a moralistic crusade, the movement was led by and benefited the business class. Planning history texts critical of rational and capitalistic planning have demonstrated that City Beautiful was ineffective in rationalizing the city through a commitment to classical antiquity (M. C. Boyer, 1983; Foglesong, 1986).

Notably, mainstream texts often have not addressed race or racism in the Progressive era (Hall, 2014; Krueckeberg, 1983; Monkkonen, 1988; Reps, 1992; Scott, 1971; Ward, 2002). Instead, the mainstream narrative surrounding the City Beautiful movement has glorified planners without recognizing how the plans were inequitably detrimental to Black communities and continued the long arc of displacing marginalized communities in the name of progress (Foglesong, 1986). For example, New York’s Central Park has been championed as a successful feat of planning and engineering without acknowledging the destruction of the thriving Black community, Seneca Village, that previously occupied the space (Meyerson, 1997). In ignoring race, race and ethnicity are conflated with socioeconomic status, with euphemisms used to describe the slum-dwellers and the poor who were moved to create a desired aesthetic (Foglesong, 1986; Hall, 2014). Importantly, racism cuts across class lines and is not properly addressed when conflating race and socioeconomic status (B. M. Wilson, 2000).

The Chicago World’s Fair is another example of conflicting narratives in planning history. Although Burnham’s Chicago World’s Fair has been regarded as a triumph in mainstream U.S. planning history (Reps, 1992; Scott, 1971), Black people were excluded from attending and were also on display with other people of color as primitive spectacles in the Midway Plaisance (Kutz Elliott, 2021). In a pamphlet protesting exclusion, activist Ida B. Wells wrote:

The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom as against 250 years of slavery, would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and progressiveness of American institutions which could have been shown the world. [Wells, 1895]

Clearly, for Black communities, the “White City,” which showcased a classical Western style, reflecting a nostalgia that Black people did not share, became a site of political contest (Nieves, 2008).

Just as Burnham whitewashed Chicago to create the White City for the World Fair, U.S. planning history regarding the Progressive era has been whitewashed with scant mention of Black people. This omission has demonstrated a disregard for Black people’s experiences in space and time in the United States. Reading these histories could lead one to believe that Black people were not living in these areas or affected by the planning field. This, of course, is false. Black people formed various urban and rural communities during the Progressive era. For example, in his history of Cleveland’s (OH) Black middle class, Michney (2017) highlighted Mount Pleasant’s flourishing during the Progressive era that fostered agency in Black families by providing the means to grow their own supplemental food. In addition, A. Roberts (2017) provided a compelling case study of African American community building during this era though the Farmers’ Improvement Society and the Women’s Barnyard Auxiliary of Texas and highlighted the unique values of Black mutual aid groups in the rural South, including land accumulation, cooperative buying, advanced farming methods, and a rejection of the credit system. Rejecting U.S. planning history’s narrow focus on planning in the North can help to uncover additional community development practices that fostered communal sustainability.

Although not as neglected as race, perspectives outside of cis-male planners have also been neglected in U.S. planning history. Although mainstream narratives have emphasized Riis’s How the Other Half Lives for heralding in the settlement house movement (Foglesong, 1986; Riis, 1890; Scott, 1971), women played a pivotal role in influencing settlement houses, movements for playgrounds and public baths, housing reform, and public health.

The neglect of women’s perspectives becomes even more evident when considering the contributions of Black women in planning history. Although not commonly acknowledged in the narratives of the Progressive era, historians have identified the tremendous contribution of Black women in serving the needs of Black migrants through community and religious organizations (Hounmenou, 2012; Lasch-Quinn, 1993). For example, although Jane Addams’s work establishing the racially segregated Hull House receives ample attention, Black agency in establishing settlement houses has gone unacknowledged in mainstream U.S. planning history (Hall, 2014). Janie Porter Barrett’s Locust Street Settlement in Hampton (VA) and Lugenia Burns Hope’s Neighborhood Union in Atlanta (GA) were settlement houses created by Black women to serve Black communities (Spain, 2001). Moreover, Black women–led organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women and the Woman’s Auxiliary to the National Baptist Convention continued Black women’s legacy of self-determination, self-improvement, and community development by conducting community organizing and providing schools and other social services to Black communities when the racist government would not (Holcomb, 2000; Shaw, 1991).

Though U.S. planning history has emphasized traditionally defined planners and plans in the Progressive era, little attention has been given to Black scholars, activists, and community members’ engagement with the urban condition (Fitzgerald & Howard, 2006). Notably, the Progressive era included the rise of leaders including Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington. A fierce advocate for Black agency, Ida B. Wells protested exclusionary planning practices and lynching and contributed to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP; Wells, 1895). The Urban League was another important community organization founded in this period. Du Bois conducted rigorous studies on the conditions of Black communities and concluded that the legacy of enslavement, prejudice, and environmental factors was responsible for poor conditions, rejecting the popular acceptance of biological differences (Du Bois, 1899, 2013; Morris, 2017). Du Bois also developed typologies for Black geographies (Du Bois & Edwards, 1903). Washington’s leadership in the Rosenwald school building program at Tuskegee Institute was one of many examples of his critical work to uplift Black communities in the Progressive era (Table 1; see also Hoffschwelle, 2008). Researchers should consider the Progressive era ripe for exploration for community-building strategies that foster sustainability in Black communities.

Table 1 The Progressive era: Historical policies, legal decisions, practice, and Black agency and resistance.

Policies, legal decisions, and practices affecting racial justice	Significance
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)	The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy presented a legal justification for the expansion of “separate but equal” across multiple domains (Ware, 2021).
Baltimore Plan of 1911	Baltimore introduced the United States’ first racial zoning ordinance and cities throughout the United States enacted similar ordinances (Nightingale, 2006).
Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917)	The U.S. Supreme Court deemed racial zoning unconstitutional. Policies and practices evolved to use facially race-neutral zoning, comprehensive planning, and restrictive covenants to enforce segregation (Silver, 1997).
Forms of Black agency and resistance	Significance
Litigation for civil rights	Local chapters of the NAACP legally challenged racial zoning ordinances, including successfully challenging Louisville’s ordinance in Buchanan.
The rise of Black scholars	Black scholar-activists including Du Bois, Washington, and Wells took action to improve Black lives.
Black leaders and community members established social infrastructure in Black communities	Black mutual aid groups supported community building and agriculture (A. Roberts, 2017). Black women created settlement houses, conducted community organizing, and provided social services to Black communities (Shaw, 1991; Spain, 2001).

The Great Migration: An Act of Collective Agency

The Great Migration is the first period that Thomas highlighted in the intersection of Black experiences and planning in the United States. With interviews from more than 1,000 people, Wilkerson (2010) recounted the Great Migration, one of the most significant demographic events to occur in the United States when approximately 6 million Black southerners redistributed themselves across the Northern and Western United States. The Great Migration had a major effect on the North, which begrudgingly, and often violently, received Black migrants, and the South, which lost a large portion of its native-born Black population, and on all Black Americans as family and kin became geographically dispersed (Tolnay, 2003; Wilkerson, 2010).

Numerous motives contributed to the Great Migration. Motives included changes in immigration policy that limited European immigrants, agricultural distress caused by the boll weevil, and tenacious recruitment from northern recruiters and Black newspapers (Desantis, 1997; Tolnay, 2003; Warner & Whittemore, 2012). Black southerners also moved for family and kin connections in the North, for improved working and living conditions, for educational opportunities, and to flee the racial violence and dehumanization of Jim Crow, including to claim the right to vote (Blow, 2021; Lemke-Santangelo, 1996; Tolnay & Beck, 1990). Black migrants were especially attracted to destinations that offered ethnogenic support through organizations such as a local NAACP chapter, Urban League, Black churches, and Black newspapers (Price-Spratlen, 1999). These organizations in turn provided valuable connections to housing and employment, which fostered economic advancement and empowerment (Harmon, 2006).

Mainstream U.S. planning history literature has inadequately addressed the Great Migration. For example, the racial shifts go unacknowledged in both Hall (2014) and Scott (1971). When the migration was acknowledged, the data were sometimes enumerated with no mention of race, vaguely stating that “the West gained 2,000,000 new residents, while the South lost 1,500,000” (Scott, 1971, p. 452; Ward, 2002). Other authors discussed the increasing Black population in the North but used language that perpetuated racist stereotypes or victimization. For example, in his survey of the historical events that shaped modern U.S cities, Warner stated that Black migration took place “under severe handicaps, because for many years it proved difficult for blacks to escape from their home territory” (Warner, 1995, p. 172). Though it is true that Black migrants faced disadvantages, they also demonstrated great resourcefulness and resiliency that must be recognized.

Strangely, Warner gave the impression that racism in the North began with the increase of Black population in the North, stating, “The timing of the start of black migration, however, proved to be disastrous. Negroes began arriving in large numbers in Northern cities exactly at the time when great swells of fear and prejudice had begun to break over America…” (Warner, 1995, p. 173). This perspective reflects a naive belief in a false dichotomy of how racism operated in the North versus the South. In fact, in his manifesto to call Black people to return to the South to increase political power, Blow (2021) highlighted that racism is not geographically dependent but has permeated all regions of the United States.

Perhaps more egregious than the omission of race from the Great Migration narrative was Spain’s failure to halt the perpetuation of a discourse of Blackness as an impurity that spread to the North during the Great Migration:

Cities were symbolically dirty because of the influx of newcomers. Strangers were quite literally “out of place”; they polluted the city by challenging what it meant to be an American.… More than distinct cultures and darker skin contributed to the dirty image of poor immigrants and African Americans.… [Spain, 2001, p. 15]

The implication that distinct cultures and darker skin tones were inherently dirty is problematic and highlights deficits in Spain’s White feminist approach without an understanding of intersectionality. Overall, planning history literature has emphasized the planning field’s response to the demographic shifts resulting from the Great Migration while framing Black communities as deficient or something to be controlled.

Zoning as City Planning’s Response to the Great Migration

In response to the arrival of Black migrants, the planning field perverted zoning and land use controls to relegate Black people to undesirable areas and maintain racial segregation (Larsen, 2002; Thomas, 1998). In 1926, the case Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Corporation affirmed the constitutional right of communities to zone as part of the police powers reserved for the states by the Constitution (Taft & Supreme Court of the United States, 1926). Segregation was furthered by realtors as the National Association of Real Estate Boards codified the infiltration theory by making it a breach of the realtors’ code of ethics to sell a house to a Black person within a White-designated neighborhood (Mohl, 1997). Residential covenants that upheld these restrictions were systematically used to exclude people of color from White neighborhoods (Vose, 1967). The policies and practices of National Association of Real Estate Boards acted in tandem with local and federal entities, including appraisal firms, local banks, and mortgage firms, through redlining (Michney, 2022; Mohl, 1997). Retrospectively, in an analysis of racial inequity in the urban context, Sharkey (2013) countered the infiltration theory and demonstrated economic benefits when communities diversify.

Leading U.S. planning history texts have often neglected race and racism when discussing zoning. For example, zoning has been framed as an economically sound mechanism to protect suburbs from invasion by factories, stores, and apartment-dwellers while upholding middle-class values (Hall, 2014; Hayden, 2003; Scott, 1971; Ward, 2002). Though Hall briefly noted the racist undertones of zoning, the author omitted information about resistance to racist policies. In addition, instead of recognizing racial segregation as an outcome of zoning, Scott’s (1971) chief complaint was that zoning created monotonous and less convenient residential areas. This perspective clearly centered the White experience with a disregard for populations excluded from those woefully monotonous, privileged communities. Importantly, recent research has provided additional evidence that zoning was racially, not economically, motivated (Whittemore, 2017, 2018).

Although U.S. planning literature regarding the Great Migration has focused largely on the governmental response and hardships faced by Black southerners moving to the North, it is also important to recognize the resiliency and community building that took place within Black communities amid the hostile North. The migration was a collective act of agency and resistance across Black communities (Hunter & Robinson, 2018; Wilkerson, 2010). An increase in the northern Black population bolstered patronage to existing Black businesses and churches, enhanced ethnogenic support systems, and contributed to an increase in political clout (Lemke-Santangelo, 1996; Tolnay, 2003). This period also featured Black Renaissance writers, whose works emphasized the needs to the low-down in Black communities and contributed to the Black elite’s engagement in the civil rights movement (Warner & Whittemore, 2012).

In their remapping of the United States to more accurately reflect Black experiences, Hunter and Robinson (2018) have provided an insightful alternative perspective to the Great Migration and suggested that Black migration patterns would better be characterized as a long migration, recognizing the constant movement of Black people in their quest for freedom. In addition, the authors challenged the narrative of the North–South dichotomy that places the North as the “Promised Land” and the South as a purely racist place. Instead, the authors redefined the regions of the United States to all be versions of the South, noting:

The South is not merely the common geographic location below the Mason-Dixon Line. It is, rather, America—the broader cultural, economic, and political soil on which Black communities and neighborhoods have been planted and supplanted, the soil on which they have grown, persisted, and evolved. [Hunter & Robinson, 2018, p. 43]

Hunter and Robinson challenged the space and time bounds typically ascribed to the Great Migration, recognizing that movement and connection among regions has remained strong in Black communities (A. Roberts & Matos, 2022). This broader perspective of Black movement connects the overarching culture, experience, power, and resistance within Black communities. Centering Black experiences throughout the Great Migration provides a counternarrative to the mainstream narrative of planning history and recognizes the resiliency and community-building strategies leveraged by Black communities (Table 2). There is opportunity for future research to further uplift and apply the community-building strategies, the contestation for space, and the psychological impacts experienced through migration to today’s ever-churning communities.

Table 2 The Great Migration: Historical policies, legal decisions, practice, and Black agency and resistance.

Policies, legal decisions, and practices affecting racial justice	Significance
Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323 (1926)	The U.S. Supreme Court found racially restrictive covenants constitutional.
Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926)	Despite the U.S. district court’s finding that Euclidian zoning could be discriminatory, the U.S. Supreme Court validated the constitutionality of Euclidian zoning.
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)	The U.S. Supreme Court reversed its position in Corrigan v. Buckley and found racially restrictive covenants unenforceable.
Forms of Black agency and resistance	Significance
Migration	Migration was a collective act of resistance in Black communities.
Litigation for civil rights and middle-class suburbanization	From 1914 to 1948 the NAACP won 23 of 25 restrictive covenant cases (Vose, 1954).
Suburbanization	Some middle-class Black households creatively and dynamically engaged with space at the urban periphery (Michney, 2017; Wiese, 2009).

Federal Policy Takes Segregation to Scale: Segregation Maintenance Through Public Housing and Urban Renewal

Thomas identified the period encompassing public housing and urban renewal as the second era in her framework. This period was characterized by the reinforcement of residential segregation through public housing siting and the consolidation of ghetto boundaries as local politicians worked to keep Black housing projects out of White neighborhoods (Larsen, 2002; Thomas, 1998). In conjunction with the racial composition rule of the Housing Act of 1937, White communities often refused to accept federal funding to build public housing (Howe, 2017; Larsen, 2002). Public housing was therefore almost exclusively sited within designated Black areas, further concentrating poverty.

Less commonly addressed in U.S. planning history, public housing residents, housing reformers, civil rights activists, and church representatives were advocates for integrated neighborhoods (Mohl, 1997). These activists were often members of marginalized racial and gender groups that were systematically excluded from the planning profession (Connerly & Wilson, 1997). Although mainstream U.S. planning history largely has ignored Black experiences in the previous historical periods, this era demonstrated a shift from ignoring to victimizing. This is reflected in discourses about urban renewal, public housing, and suburbia.

Urban Renewal: Battling the Bulldozer

Urban renewal was established by the Housing Act of 1949, which sought to improve the general welfare, security, health, and living standards through “the clearance of slums and blighted areas, and the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family…” (U.S.C. Title 42, The Public Health & Welfare, 1949). This seemingly innocent aim had disastrous outcomes for Black communities.

As in other historical periods, U.S. planning historians have centered the experiences of planners related to urban renewal. For example, great emphasis has been placed on the rivalry between Jacobs and Moses. In addition, the urban renewal program has been framed as an opportunity for planners to develop a moral compass and to develop a more socially aware vision of planning (Hall, 2014). Similarly, Scott (1971) framed the accompanying highway development as a crisis for planners (rather than a crisis for the annihilated Black communities) because it highlighted planners’ inadequacy in the skills and knowledge required to execute large-scale redevelopment. Planning historians have also framed urban renewal as a rational, economic decision (Scott, 1971; Ward, 2002). This is what history looks like when planners are centered instead of communities.

Leading U.S. planning history literature has demonstrated a lack of regard for how urban renewal was disproportionately detrimental to Black communities. For example, whereas Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities has been championed as an anti–urban renewal manifesto, Jacobs did not address the racially inequitable impact of urban renewal on Black communities (Fullilove, 2001; Jacobs, 1972). Similarly, in Beauregard’s (2006) account of highway development, displaced residents were called urban instead of Black. This conflation of race and geographic setting with socioeconomic status has contributed to an erasure of racism in the discourse (M. C. Boyer, 1983; Jacobs, 1972; Scott, 1971). This disregard also manifested in the negative and sometimes stereotypical descriptions of areas deemed blighted. For example, areas were described as “the repositories of all the dangerous and neglected issues a materialistic society dreaded” (Scott, 1971, p. 471). Similarly, in his analysis of American suburbanization, Beauregard (2006) failed to dispel the stereotypes of Black people as looters, criminals, and welfare mothers. These hyperbolic views were used to justify the urban removal’s destruction.

Literature that centers Black experiences in urban renewal has demonstrated that Black communities vehemently protested urban renewal, and rightfully so. An ethical study of urban renewal highlighted outcomes of the program, including increased segregation, loss of money including generational wealth, loss of social organization, psychological trauma, and the collapse of political action (Fullilove, 2001). In a study of the neoliberal market logic inherent in the dominant narratives of urban renewal, Triece (2016) demonstrated how Black residents used strategies of counter-memory, demystification, mapping, and street science as forms of protest. For example, writer James Baldwin popularized the term Negro Removal to describe urban renewal’s racist motives (WGBH Educational Foundation, 1963). This was an important perspective to protest urban renewal among Baldwin’s generation. However, an important nuance missing from much of U.S. planning history literature is that middle-class Black representatives from the NAACP and National Urban League often supported urban renewal to improve living conditions in Black communities (Shipp, 1997). This requires recognition that Black communities are not homogenous and have diverse backgrounds, experiences, and motives. Although the term Negro Removal was originally a form of protest, planning literature has leveraged the term out of context to situate displaced Black people as passive victims of urban renewal (Hayden, 2003; Rast, 2019).

Public Housing and Suburbia: Not So Black and White

Leading U.S. planning history narratives have used negative language to describe Black ghettos. For example, Warner described Black ghettos as “huge basins of poverty and low-income housing” (Warner, 1995, p. 181). Black ghettos have also been described as perilous, abhorrent, and scary reservations saturated with welfare, unwed mothers, and violent gangs (Schaffer, 1988; Teaford, 2006). These negative depictions have blamed and shamed public housing residents for their living conditions instead of the systems that created these environments.

Planning history literature about ghettos in this period framed White people as active and Black people as passive. This was especially prevalent in discussing violence wielded to maintain segregation throughout the era (Warner, 1995). For example, in his study of racism and housing in Chicago, Hirsch justified centering White people when discussing the violence used to maintain ghetto boundaries, saying:

…primary attention is devoted to whites. That is where the power was.… But what we are looking at here is the construction of the ball park within which the urban game is played. And there is no question that the architects, in this instance, were whites. [Hirsch, 1983, p. xii]

Although the so-called architects were White, it is crucial to center the perspectives of the oppressed. Instead, Hirsch focused on the supposed powerlessness of Black people. Although Hirsch acknowledged Black opposition to violence and discriminatory siting of housing projects, Hirsch dismissed the outcries as “little more than verbal protestation” (Hirsch, 1983, p. 215), mirroring the general disregard for Black action.

An alternative perspective of the ghetto has centered Black perspectives and provided a more nuanced understanding of segregated residences. For some, the ghetto has provided steps toward a better life and inclusion in American society, with a concentration of Black businesses promoting a Black economic base (B. M. Wilson, 2000). Ghettos also served as a refuge where Black people could live outside of the White gaze and develop a thriving culture (Freeman, 2019).

White movement to the suburbs during this period has also received attention in planning history literature and is framed as a wise and calculated decision (Beauregard, 2006). However, a hyperfocus on ghettos as the singular Black experience has led to a lack of acknowledgement of Black suburbanization. Though emphasis has been placed on the violent and political tactics that White people wielded to exclude Black people from suburbs, not every instance of Black communities breaking spatial boundaries was met with violence. Some instances, especially with southern and eastern Europeans, were met with indifference. Also, when violence did arise, Black communities were not passive but organized to resist violence and demand their rights (Michney, 2017).

Although most U.S. planning history literature discourse in this era presupposed a dichotomy of Black ghettos and White suburbs, Michney (2017) provided nuance by highlighting the ways in which Black people creatively and dynamically engaged with space at the urban periphery to develop a space for the Black middle class. Early Black suburbanites demonstrated the same values as their White counterparts, including homeownership, family-based communities, and bucolic landscapes. However, these communities often relied on self-sufficiency rather than government services to operate with less dependence on the urban economy (Connerly & Wilson, 1997; Wiese, 2008). A notable strategy was that Black suburbs were often self-built, leveraging carpentry skills gained in the South or hiring Black tradesmen or contractors. Additional strategies used by Black middle-class suburbanites included purchasing land before race-based restrictions, borrowing from Black-owned institutions, and partnerships with Black and White real estate brokers (Hayden, 2003; Michney, 2017). Notably, the resistance efforts in Black suburban communities served as a training ground for the civil rights movement (Connerly & Wilson, 1997; Kruse, 2008).

Highlighting Black suburbs prioritizes personal agency and dignity in Black communities, demonstrating how members “went about living and striving in spite of serious and continuous discriminatory barriers” (Michney, 2017, p. 4; Teaford, 2006). Black people took an active role in shaping their communities despite obstacles created by racist structures (Table 3). As suburbs continue to diversify in response to push and pull factors, researchers may find valuable insights by connecting the historical development of Black suburbs to the current phenomenon.

Table 3 Redlining, public housing, and urban renewal: Historical policies, legal decisions, practice, and Black agency and resistance.

Policies, legal decisions, and practices affecting racial justice	Significance
1933 Formation of Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC); 1934 Housing Act and creation of the FHA	HOLC assessments redlined racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, later informing risk assessment maps produced by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). FHA underwriting criteria initially included criteria requiring new developments to be segregated. Black veterans were less likely to benefit from the GI Bill, limiting a pathway to homeownership (L. L. Woods, 2013).
Public housing and neighborhood demolition: 1937 Housing Act; 1949 Housing Act; 1953 Highway Act	The 1937 Housing Act created the United States’ first public housing. The 1949 Housing Act expanded public housing and funded slum clearance. Urban renewal and the 1953 Federal Highway Act spurred the demolition and dislocation of Black urban neighborhoods.
Forms of Black agency and resistance	Significance
Organized and strategic protest	Black residents used strategies of counter-memory, demystification, mapping, and street science as forms of protest (Triece, 2016).
Development of Black hood culture and protest	Hood culture developed as both a unique culture and a critique of larger systems of oppression (Freeman, 2019).

Civil Rights Era: Building Communal Power

Thomas identified the civil rights movement of the 1960s as the next pivotal era for understanding the intersection of Black experiences and planning. The civil rights era was a time of social and political upheaval that challenged the distribution of social and economic power in the United States. Political gains were made through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though the promise of ending discrimination and integrating schools has not come to fruition. In addition, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made discrimination in public and private housing markets illegal but lacked the necessary strength of enforcement to overcome decades of entrenched strategies to maintain segregation (Sharkey, 2013).

Shifts in Planning Values: Advocacy and Equity Planning

The civil rights era was a time of reckoning for the planning profession, which was rightfully accused of malicious and paternalistic action in its approach to Black communities, most notably in response to public housing projects and urban renewal (Baron, 1968; Benton, 2018). In response to the civil rebellion of the era, the planning profession developed a consciousness about race and racism (Thomas, 1998). This consciousness manifested most concretely in advocacy and equity planning.

In the development of advocacy planning, Davidoff asserted that planners could not solve social issues using a strictly rational model of planning, but must consider the social, economic, psychological, physiological, and aesthetic outcomes of planning by creating a plurality of plans (Davidoff, 1965; Sager, 2012). By shifting the role of the planner and introducing humanism into the technocratic paradigm, advocacy planning profoundly affected the planning field and was an important step toward improving the relationship between the profession and Black communities (Baron, 1968; Reece, 2018). Inspired by Davidoff, Krumholz introduced equity planning during the civil rights era with the goal to conceptualize and implement redistributive policies that reallocate resources, political power, and participation toward marginalized groups through legal, political, economic, and social change (Krumholz, 1997). However, advocacy and equity planning have been critiqued for not shifting power and being insufficiently technical, too confrontational, and too incremental in seeking change (Checkoway, 1994; Reece, 2018).

During the civil rights era, the planning field shifted to a more social rather than physical paradigm. Ironically, advocacy and equity planning were created in response to the civil rights movement in which Black people collectively displayed power. Yet planners still positioned themselves as brokers, insinuating that Black people could not speak for or organize themselves. This desire for planners to maintain power has also been reflected in planning history’s depiction of Black communities during this era. U.S. planning history literature of this era continued to focus on the perspective of planners, placing great emphasis on Davidoff and Krumholz (Krueckeberg, 1983; Scott, 1971; Ward, 2002). Planners have been framed as the subjects of the text, patting themselves on the back for a radical paradigm shift, with the communities served being objects. This has perpetuated an image of Black communities as helpless and ignores the agency of the masses and leaders including Dr. King, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, the Black Panther Party, and Dorothy Mae Richardson, to name a few.

When Black communities were addressed in planning history during the civil rights era, it was typically in a negative light. Black people were described as either militant instigators or as incapable of the basic communication skills needed for political engagement (Beauregard, 2006). Advocacy and equity planners were therefore viewed as a “guardian for the weak and disadvantaged” (Ward, 2002, p. 265). This is further demonstrated in the following discussion of the Model Cities program.

Civil Rights Era Policies and Programs

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (the War on Poverty) established local community action agencies, which later influenced the development of the Model Cities program (Hall, 2014; Sharkey, 2013). The Model Cities initiative was designed to provide block grants to communities and encouraged community members to define and lead multifaceted rejuvenation (Thomas & Ritzdorf, 1997).

Most evaluations have deemed Model Cities a failure, describing the initiative as idealistic and misguided (Sharkey, 2013). Planners and community members were not properly trained to engage with each other, causing some planners to view participants as “inarticulate, timid, suspicious, or indifferent” (Scott, 1971, p. 629). According to Scott, community members were not “prepared to join in making decisions affecting their futures” (Scott, 1971, p. 629). Black participants were critiqued by planners for having little to no experience in social or civic programs (from which they had been excluded) when, in reality, Black people had engaged in one of the largest political movements in history.

By shifting the evaluation standard to center the experience and perspective of Black community residents, the Model Cities initiative offered benefits to Black communities, including increased citizen empowerment, slowed urban renewal, improved access to political power, and the implementation of useful programs (Thomas, 1997). In an analysis of the civil rights and neighborhood movements in Birmingham (AL), B. M. Wilson (2000) demonstrated how the Model Cities program was a respite from top-down decision making for Black communities and contributed to increased Black leadership, community organization, self-definition of Black neighborhoods, and increased Black control and decision-making power. Additional positive outcomes were the founding of Head Start and community development corporations (CDCs) as models for community change (Halpern, 1995; Sharkey, 2013). In this way, counternarratives demonstrate the importance of centering program planning, implementation, and evaluation on Black perspectives for a more complete understanding of impact.

Although the values inherent in advocacy and equity planning such as emphasizing social and political conditions and uplifting the marginalized were new to the planning profession, these values were long-standing pillars within Black community development. Centering Black history in the civil rights era highlights the work that Black institutions such as the Black church and civic leagues were already engaging in, actively fighting to redistribute power. This perspective places Black agency at the forefront. In contrast to descriptions of Black people as inarticulate and incapable, the civil rights era saw a concerted effort to overcome domination and exclusion through fostering consciousness and a new identity that was clearly articulated in resistance to hegemonic powers. Importantly, the civil rights movement was a movement of the masses and demands this perspective instead of a focus on singular leaders, as is the tendency in planning history (B. M. Wilson, 2000). Black churches, colleges, and businesses were valuable assets in the civil rights movement to build social, economic, and political power (Harmon, 2006; B. M. Wilson, 2000). During this period, Black people were not helpless and in need of planners’ representation. Instead, they were active by collective resistance through sit-ins, boycotts, litigation, protests, marches, and freedom rides (Table 4; see Davis & Barat, 2016; Niven, 2006; B. M. Wilson, 2000; C. A. Woods & Gilmore, 2017). The civil rights movement offers opportunities to further engage the strategies leveraged with the continued struggle for place and freedom. Also, planning historians may consider how to reframe historical narratives from the perspective of the masses instead of narrow perspectives of key figures.

Table 4 The civil rights era: Historical policies, legal decisions, practice, and Black agency and resistance.

Policies, legal decisions, and practices affecting racial justice	Significance
Civil Rights Act of 1964	The Civil Rights Act provided federal protection from discrimination by race, nationality, or religion in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities.
War on Poverty: Economic Opportunity Act 1964	The Economic Opportunity Act created community action programs that would later influence the development of the Model Cities initiative.
Model Cities initiative 1966	The Model Cities initiative block grants encouraged community members to lead multifaceted rejuvenation projects.
Fair Housing Act of 1968	The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made discrimination in public and private housing markets illegal but lacked the necessary enforcement power.
Forms of Black agency and resistance	Significance
Collective resistance	Black communities made political strides through boycotts, marches, protests, and community power building. Dr. King’s Chicago Freedom movement challenged residential segregation in Northern cities.
Increased political power	Black people took on positions of power and decision making.
Community development corporations (CDCs)	Black communities embraced the CDC as a neighborhood-level model for change (Halpern, 1995).

1970s and Beyond: The Racially Separate Metropolis

The final period Thomas identified was the ongoing racially separate metropolis. In this period, Black communities increased in political power yet also increased in economic disadvantage (Thomas, 1998). This period has faced national economic challenges including stagflation, recessions, globalization, deindustrialization, and conservative movements to derail social support programs (F. H. Wilson, 2006). Recent studies exploring the intersection of racial and economic segregation and inequities in neighborhood conditions have demonstrated the ongoing challenges related to segregation in the 21st century. The number of people living in high-poverty census tracts doubled between 2000 and 2014, and children of color have faced inequities in environmental conditions (Acevedo-Garcia et al., 2020; Holmes & Kneebone, 2016).

The post–civil rights era saw a trifecta of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that provided legal justification for the maintenance of exclusionary zoning policies. In the 1974 case Milliken v. Bradley, the court ruled that unless discriminatory intent could be documented in the development of suburban school district boundaries, suburban schools were not violating the Constitution and not required to desegregate. Furthermore, the 1974 Supreme court ruling of Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas exemplified ongoing exclusionary devices as the court supported a limiting definition of family as a zoning tool, creating additional barriers for nontraditional and kin families, especially lower income households of nonrelated individuals, from accessing neighborhoods with greater opportunity (Ritzdorf, 1997). Finally, the 1997 Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation ruling required plaintiffs to document racially discriminatory intent to challenge land use or income-based exclusionary zoning ordinances. The court’s decisions in Milliken, Belle Terre, and Arlington Heights supported exclusionary zoning and undermined efforts to support fair housing across the United States.

From the 1990s onward, the scholarship on exclusionary zoning shifted mainly from racial and class inequity to a focus on dysfunctional economic markets (Whittemore, 2021). In a study across 95 metropolitan areas, Lens and Monkkonen (2016) showed that exclusionary practices have contributed to metropolitan segregation by income, which has disadvantaged Black communities (Lens & Monkkonen, 2016). Ongoing exclusion of Black communities from areas with greater opportunity has hindered economic advancement through various mechanisms, including limiting opportunities in employment and education and the accrual of wealth through housing devaluation (Perry, 2020). Recently, planning scholars have called for an end to single-family zoning (Manville et al., 2020; Wegmann, 2020). However, without careful consideration and holistic interventions, abolishing single-family zoning may cause more harm than good (Chakraborty, 2020; Etienne, 2020).

Policies and Programs in the Racially Separated Metropolis

The racially separated metropolis has experienced additional piecemeal policies and programs that have attempted to rectify ongoing place-based inequities. For example, the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 consolidated funds for housing and urban communities into Community Development Block Grants (Frej & Specht, 1976). This funding was then bolstered by the Urban Development Action Grant during the Carter administration (Sharkey, 2013). To attract businesses to disenfranchized areas, the Clinton administration expanded the Bush-era policy of Enterprise Communities/Empowerment Zones, which provided financial support to a limited set of locales (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD], 2017). The various sets of policies and programs that were intended to address poverty and racial inequality lacked the political clout to achieve enduring change. These policies have not come close to the scale or impact of the deeply entrenched policies that originally created the inequities and can distract from addressing the root causes of inequity (Halpern, 1995; Sharkey, 2013). Without a consistent urban policy, urban neighborhoods have been vulnerable to fluctuations in the local and national economy and political will (Sharkey, 2013).

Given its recency, the scope of planning history during the era of the racially separated metropolis is still emergent. This lack of coverage may be reflective of the dominance of the private market and recent discourse critiquing the neoliberal policy era. However, when race has been discussed in this era, it is to resign Black people to the permanent pejorative underclass, emphasizing economic struggle, crime, and nonconforming family structures (Hall, 2014; W. J. Wilson, 1984). Scholars are still debating the equity implications of policy shifts to deconcentrate poverty through public housing demolition, various housing mobility programs, and the HOPE VI redevelopment (Goetz, 2018; Rothwell, 2015; Vale, 2018). Because this era lacks extensive historical literature, the field would benefit greatly from a historical analysis of the period and its explicit impact on Black communities. More important, the continued activism and agency of Black communities should not be overshadowed. The era has seen a proliferation of Black-led organizations and Black activism emerging from several local advocacy and organizing organizations across the United States. Black scholars and leaders such as Bob Bullard and Vernice Miller-Travis uplifted injustices at the intersection of racism and place through the environmental justice movement (Bullard, 1990; Miller-Travis, 2000; Milman, 2018; Shrader-Frechette, 2002; United Church of Christ, 2022; Weinberg, 1998). In addition, the CDC movement has continued, although not always as strongly (Halpern, 1995). Further exemplifying agency, the share of Black individuals living in suburbs of larger cities more than doubled during this period. This self-suburbanization has increased within-Black income segregation while improving the average Black household’s neighborhood quality (Table 5; Bartik & Mast, 2022).

Table 5 The racially separated metropolis: Historical policies, legal decisions, practice, and Black agency and resistance.

Policies, legal decisions, and practices affecting racial justice	Significance
1974 Housing and Community Development Act and 1978 Community Reinvestment Act	The 1974 Housing and Community Development Act established the community development block grant program. The 1978 Community Reinvestment Act required affirmative lending by financial institutions in low- and moderate-income areas.
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974); Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1 (1974); Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977)	A trifecta of U.S. Supreme Court decisions provided legal justification for the maintenance of exclusionary zoning/housing policies and limited school desegregation efforts in suburban jurisdictions.
Inclusionary zoning and fair share housing	Montgomery County (MD) instituted the United States’ first inclusionary housing ordinance (1974). The Dayton (OH) region had the first voluntary regional fair share housing program (1974). The NJ Supreme Court decisions in Mt. Laurel I (1975) and Mt. Laurel II (1983) led to the strongest state-level fair share housing program in the United States.
Forms of Black agency and resistance	Significance
Environmental justice movement	Led by Black scholars and leaders, the environmental justice movement challenged the place-based inequities faced by Black communities.
Community development corporations (CDCs)	CDCs continued to be a leading model for community change.
Continued self-suburbanization	The share of Black individuals living in suburbs of larger cities more than doubled during this period (Bartik & Mast, 2022).

Prison Nation: Mass Incarceration and Policing in Black Communities

The intersection of Black experiences and planning continues. Because the original referenced periodization was developed nearly 30 years ago, there is opportunity to extend the framework. Here, we asked, what is the current and historical place-based concern that is most deeply affecting Black communities? Potential concerns include the foreclosure crisis (Rugh & Massey, 2010), gentrification (Freeman, 2006), or increased concentrated poverty (Kneebone et al., 2011). However, we believe that tackling what Richie termed the “prison nation” and its harm to Black communities is the appropriate extension (Richie, 2012). Perhaps more than any other concern facing Black communities, the prison nation, encompassing mass incarceration, policing, and punishment, completes the arc of violence and control. From enslavement to carceral control, from the anti-lynching work of Wells to the Black Lives Matter movement, Black resistance against a violent and racist state has endured across time and space (Hunter & Robinson, 2018; Waxman, 2017). Because the detrimental outcomes of the racially segregated metropolis persist, we suggest that the prison nation is a manifestation of this ongoing divide and occurs simultaneously and in conjunction with the racially separated metropolis.

Spawned by the War on Drugs and a proliferation of policies to dismantle social support services combined with the state’s complicity with the infiltration of drugs into Black communities, incarceration in the United States dramatically increased, with drug convictions increasing by 1000% from 1985 to 2000 (Alexander, 2011; Banks, 2006). Black and indigenous communities have borne the brunt of this increase in incarceration despite similar rates of drug use across races (Alexander, 2011). The incarceration system now serves a function previously served by the institutions of slavery, Jim Crow, and the ghetto as a primary means to control the Black population, to maintain racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the urban context (Simpson et al., 2020; Wacquant, 2002). Mass incarceration has drained Black males from inner cities and inequitably affects Black women. The rights for equality in education, employment, family life, and housing that Black people have fought for over centuries have been quickly and legally stripped away through mass incarceration (Alexander, 2011; Coates, 2015; D. E. Roberts, 2004). As Coates stated in his gut-wrenching letter to his son about police violence, to ignore the carnage of the prison nation is equivalent to “jabbing out one’s eyes and forgetting the work of one’s hands” (Coates, 2015, p. 98).

In the summer of 2020, protests erupted across the United States (and the world) in response to the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis (MN) police department (Buchanan et al., 2020). Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 were preceded by protests throughout the 2010s in response to the murder of unarmed Black people by White vigilantes and police throughout the United States (Table 6). This current era of racial violence perpetuated against Black communities is not new but has been made visible through expanded video of law enforcement encounters and social media (Lee, 2020). Picket et al.’s (2022) recent nationwide study on Black perceptions of law enforcement captured the extent of fears about police violence in Black communities. Nearly 60% of Black survey respondents were afraid or very afraid of being killed by the police, whereas only 34% of Black respondents feared being killed by criminals.

Table 6 Prison nation: Historical policies, legal decisions, practice, and Black agency and resistance.

Policies, legal decisions, and practices affecting racial justice	Significance
President Nixon’s “War on Drugs” (1971)	Nixon’s domestic policy chief later stated that the war on drugs was motivated to attack the primary political enemies of the administration “the antiwar left and black people” (Baum, 2016, para. 2).
President Reagan’s anti-drug legislation and the “Just Say No” campaign (1984)	Congress and state legislatures increased criminal penalties for drug-related offenses. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act established mandatory minimum sentences for specific drug offenses and resulted in sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine (History Channel, 2019).
President Clinton signs the 1994 Crime Bill	The Act incentivized more punitive sentencing by states and provided more than $12 billion in federal grants to expand the prison system (Eisen, 2019).
Forms of Black agency and resistance	Significance
Protest, riots, and organized resistance emerged in the aftermath of ongoing police violence inflicted in Black communities (1992–2022)	After the acquittal of police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King, the Los Angeles (CA) riots erupted in 1992. Protests erupted after the death of Black residents caused by police in Cincinnati (OH) in 2001, Benton Harbor (MI) in 2003, Ferguson (MO) in 2014, and Baltimore (MD) in 2015; nationwide protests erupted in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis (MN) in 2020. Black Lives Matter emerged in 2013 in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin. Anti-racism initiatives and organizing efforts grew throughout the United States as the summer of 2020 was identified as a period of “racial reckoning” (McWhorter, 2022).

Calls to reform and defund traditional models of policing have manifested across the United States, with many professional organizations identifying police violence as an issue of concern. In 2018, the American Public Health Association identified law enforcement violence as a significant public health issue, and the American Psychological Association released a call to action regarding police violence (American Public Health Association, 2018; Keita, 2014; Williams & Mazzie, 2017). In the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests, planning also joined the chorus of professional fields engaging issues of police violence and reforming public safety. These are notable but low-impact first steps in recognizing the importance of mass incarceration and policing in the harms inflicted upon Black communities. Speaking of the reforms and actions for police accountability in the wake of public demand for change, Blow (2021) stated, “…most of the action amounted to feel-good gestures that cost nothing and shift no power. They create little justice and provide little equity” (p. 3). A question remains whether calls to reform policing will reflect the perspective of and uplift the agency of Black communities or whether the actions will amount to little more than a spectacle of reconciliation (Daigle, 2019).

Though policing and incarceration are largely missing from the planning history narrative, there has been an increase in planners seeking to address the prison nation. For example, Simpson (2020) documented how the planning field has not only been passively complicit but has actively contributed to creating the conditions for mass incarceration and discriminatory policing. In addition, an open letter to the American Planning Association signed by more than 650 planners documented planning’s active role in shaping the conditions for mass incarceration and discriminatory policing through a combination of redlining, urban renewal, highway construction, and discriminatory zoning to create highly segregated areas of disinvestment (Mock, 2020). Laniyonu (2018) demonstrated a strong association between gentrification and post-industrial policing, especially stop-and-frisk tactics, in census tracts neighboring gentrifying areas. Planners have also highlighted the unique skills in coalition building, public participation, and communication strategies that can be leveraged to improve community relationships with police departments (Garcia-Hallett et al., 2020; Sherman, 2019). Future research may consider historical case studies to further uncover the intersection of local planning and police departments. Also, as calls for alternative policing continue, research on historical modes of self-policing in Black communities may be especially generative.

Conclusion: Moving Forward by Centering Black Experiences in Planning

Throughout history, space and race have been used to isolate, exclude, and devalue Black people (Brand & Miller, 2020). The AICP Code of Ethics states that planners should strive to “recognize our unique responsibility to eliminate historic patterns of inequity tied to planning decisions…” (AICP, 2021). However, without an accurate portrayal of history, planners cannot properly dismantle the harm done. In this article, we have demonstrated how planning history literature often ignores Black communities or depicts them as passive victims. These leading historical texts contrast with texts that center Black people and uplift community agency and resiliency.

We highlight several implications for the planning field. For example, how planners write about Black people matters and should be given more attention. This is important for planners and communities of all backgrounds. Acknowledging historical empowerment and agency empowers communities to be agents in building a better future. Framing Black communities as empowered also helps to halt the perpetuation of racist stereotypes and will improve cross-cultural engagement among planners and communities. This work is therefore crucial for improving planning curricula. We have demonstrated here that racism has permeated every historical era in the United States. This must be clearly articulated in planning curriculum whether it is history, site planning, theory, or any other topic. Specifically for history curricula, there needs to be a shift away from memorizing and glorifying White planners and toward understanding how the planning field is situated in a racist milieu that perpetuates harm (Lundi, 2020). Telling the truth in planning history will make programs more hospitable for students of color and may contribute to diversifying the profession to better serve diversifying communities (García et al., 2021; Jackson et al., 2018).

There is also ample opportunity for future research. We were limited to the United States context. Similar reviews of planning history discourse in additional geographical settings could be fruitful in generating transnational themes of oppression and resistance across the African diaspora. Speaking of Black communities, Blow (2021) stated, “Our trauma history is not our total history” (p. 201). Indeed, Black communities are full of joy and love, resiliency, and power. Imagine the breadth of information the planning field could gain if history was viewed through this lens. We as planners can also take this lens into the future as we continue to strive for a better, more just world.

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their encouraging and insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tonni Oberly

TONNI OBERLY ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in city and regional planning at The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture and a research scholar at the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC).

Jason Reece

JASON REECE ([email protected]) is an associate professor of city and regional planning at the Knowlton School and a faculty affiliate at The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity.