Community organizing in social work and progressive urban planning – interdisciplinary challenges and opportunities

ABSTRACT

This article examines aspects of community organizing within social work and progressive or transformative planning within urban planning, with an implicit question as to whether these two practices within their respective professions can work together to achieve progressive goals. For each profession, I first review the professional histories and the ethical codes of each discipline, next discuss how these more activist trends emerged, and then compare the two practices to suggest possibilities for joint efforts toward the social justice goals embedded in each defining statement. I discuss the context for both types of work, as well as the means by which individuals in each discipline work toward progressive goals. Questions I consider include how similar the social justice orientations within their disciplines are, and how community organizers and progressive planners can work together for social justice goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Community organizing
• progressive planning
• equity planning
• transformative planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Although I differed from Clavel’s inclusion of Hartford as progressive city due to the focus on the late Nicholas Carbone as a progressive leader (see Simmons, 1996), I gained a great deal from Clavel’s book and subsequent work.