From Infrastructural Repair to Reparative Planning

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

Planners face great urgency to account for the field’s entanglement with White supremacy and rebuild from harm. Yet the actual practice of reparative planning in political communities still mired in racial inequalities and public institutions entangled in the production of racialized space is hardly straightforward. Anti-racist reckonings and reparations measures occurring within institutionalized venues are necessary starting points for reparative planning that can be further supplemented and amplified by anti-racist struggles and social practices in different arenas. Using a multimethod research design combining direct participation and nonparticipant observation with document-based research using primary and secondary sources and interviews, this case study of Alliance for Community Transit–Los Angeles (ACT-LA) explores infrastructural systems as key areas of racial harm, focal points of anti-racist resistance, and keystones for reparative planning. The substantive analysis focuses on ACT-LA’s Reimagining Safety initiative, which seeks to replace Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Agency’s racialized policing practices with public investments in community-based systems of safety. Case findings help expand points of entry and paths for reparative planning, inform strategies by planners embracing the reparative turn, and strengthen connections between community-based mobilizations and reparative planning.

Takeaway for practice

Planners can advocate for institutionalized and social practices of reparative planning in the issue areas, sectors, and organizations in which we work, in solidarity with the reparations movement and other anti-racist struggles.

Keywords:

• anti-racism
• reimagining safety
• reparative planning
• transit justice
• urban infrastructure

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Laura Raymond and Scarlett De Leon from ACT-LA for their research collaboration and crucial input on the case study, along with Anne Lin and Fiona Riley for their research assistance. Northeastern’s ADVANCE Office of Faculty Development and Women of Color in Academia offered peer writing support.

RESEARCH SUPPORT

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and Northeastern University’s faculty startup grant partially funded the research.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2023.2181851.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research, supporting data are not available.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lily Song

LILY SONG ([email protected]) is an assistant professor jointly appointed between the School of Architecture and School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University.

Elifmina Mizrahi

ELIFMINA MIZRAHI ([email protected]) is a recent graduate from the urban planning master’s program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.