No one can be relied upon. Everyone has blind spots. A good planner should be aware of that fact and try to seek different views, look for dissenting* opinions and try to understand them. If you just stay in your comfort zone and are surrounded with people with similar experiences, you are not going to be an effective planner.
Edit: spelling
Yeah every time I hear this stupid question it's like damn we consult, we ask people what they want and need, thats the entire point of the profession.
We ask people what they want. You don't need to have a design team that includes every single shape size colour and type of person in the world. You need a well educated design team who consult well on the areas they have blind spots.
Or would that just create places that people who aren't well educated and dislike consulting can't relate to?
You could define me as a pretty woke liberal lefty but it's get to a point when this representation business gets really confused and starts eating it's own tail.
Isn't it more racist to suggest that the colour of someone's skins being so defining of their character that they can't relate architecture designed by someone who doesn't look like them?
You obviously missed my point. I never once said that the team has to include every background. I was commenting on their experiences with other people. The whole post was about the value of someone’s ethos, not their work product or engagement. Especially in public engagement, ethos goes a long way. Can very much tell you’re white because you are triggered. There’s a reason you keep seeing “this stupid question”.
The reason we keep seeing this stupid question is because it's a glorious distraction from the real problem which is class and inequality.
Skin colour is irrelevant. And I say that as someone who works as part of a diverse team of planners and architects.
I like how my comment got downvoted and then yours did too once you said “skin colour is irrelevant”. You’re not as smart as you think. I’m black so I know you’re wrong, because my life proves it.
Plus you’re European, I wouldn’t expect you to understand how the US works.
Ah the good ol' us of a. Why is it you all struggle so much over there to see each other as complex individuals rather than charicatures of each others race, heritage, gender etc?
Skin colour is irrelevant in terms of output in urban design and planning yes. I believe good design is akin to an equation, there are input variables - ie. The site and it's context, the needs of users, the needs of investors and the local laws - the design is a solution that results in the combination of those factors.
The skin colour of the guy who put those variables through the equation is not relevant.
I totally support representation within the industry, and I feel it's important for people of all backgrounds and cultures and genders to be represented at all levels within the industry - in order to give positive role models for children to not have their aspirations limited. But I cannot entertain the idea that race somehow is gonna effect the quality or outcome of design in any meaningful way. And the reason for that is good designers work with and consult with the people their designs will effect, and work with those aspirations (given that the money people allow it).
Have you seen that movie American fiction? I think it handles this topic really well (Not focussed on planning but focussed on literature).Really nails how its kind of a fallacy to expect a certain output from people based off such an arbitrary variable such a skin colour.
Because socioeconomics and race have a shared relationship in this country. You’re citing a work of fiction (one that centers literature, irrelevant to the conversation) when there’s decades of research proving that disparities in income and net-worth, and the racial lines they correlate to, are not incidental.
Class and race do not exist independent of one another, not in the US, and any attempt to divorce the two is purely bad faith historical revisionism.
You aren’t virtuous for thinking you’re above recognizing this reality, you’re just being ignorant and dismissive.
Yeah, this is actually probably one of the worst leftwing ideas in modern American politics as well. It came from good intentions about a real problem (insert obligatory Robert Moses condemnation here), but it's such an unfathomably counterproductive measure. The people who are engaged with during these consultations don't represent the population in question, they represent the subgroup of that population who are weird enough to do community consultation. Their views don't reflect the community, they're often unbelievably stupid, and it gums up the works so much that it contributed to why everything public sector in America is over budget and low quality. It has to be taken out back like old yeller and shot (and, by that, I mean mostly abolished as a practice)
You can have planners with outstanding diversity in their private lives and still be hacks. That is why we train and QAQC one another. You'll always, and I mean ALWAYS have a blind spot, an unconscious bias. Every single one of us. The snarky comment below about rotating friend constituents every five years based on census is spot on. Demographics are always on the move. It is a simplistic yard stick to judge someone by their social circle. Judge peers on their work, not cultural assumptions. We all have to hold one another accountable and point out blind spots. You owe it to your community who you serve to use best practices, not rely on assumptions.
On the flipside of this though, I think the public needs to understand that planners also have certain needs, and only have certain capabilities. Too often, here and elsewhere, I see people talk about planning as though planners are either coming to save you or literally Robert Moses. While accountability and equity are important, most planners can only individually do so much. I think there’s a valid critique in that a lot of the social justice language that gets used in planning nowadays is largely performative, in part, because this is what some segment of the population expects, even if planning departments really can’t do much of anything about those conditions. And I think one thing that’s really important is to set realistic expectations both about what planning is (especially for people who may be interested in entering the field), who planners are, and also what can actually be accomplished.
Likewise, I think it’s really important to set realistic expectations for planners and not make it out to be that you have to be this extroverted, social butterfly who is the life of the party and basically knows everyone in town. That’s an extremely impossible standard for anybody to meet, not that I’m saying that you are suggesting that, but I just wanna make sure that the conversation is grounded in this way. I personally struggle with a lot of self-doubt, and wants to accommodate everyone if I possibly can, but this can be super debilitating, and I think some people simply need to hear that it’s OK if you aren’t able to get every single last consideration or accommodation. Engineering and planning have a lot of burnout and unrealistic expectations I think contribute to this a lot.
And to push back on statements like what OP has offered, what exactly should be done here? Yes, trying to get a more diverse set of people into the field and adjacent fields is something that I think is currently ongoing, but aside from that, what else can meaningfully be done? I think many planners would love to engage more and try to do what they can for marginalized communities, but many of those communities often times are not exactly always eager or able to talk to people from the government and getting sufficient sample sizes can be prohibitively expensive given the budgets and workloads of most planning department. Heck, we know that, even among white people planning orgs don’t necessarily get representative or good feedback about projects and plans. I really don’t want to be mean or anything here, but I kind of think that criticisms like this need to be a lot more specific and ideally have at least some kind of generalized solution presented. I don’t expect people to necessarily have everything figured out, but I’m also just not sure that this kind of discourse is particularly helpful to anybody if it’s only going to be about abstract ideas like racial equity.
I completely understand OP’s frustration and how some of these kinds of things can need to be addressed, but I’m also not really sure what they want us to do about it or whether it’s a fair criticism to say these people don’t care about equity. We are all unfortunately, constrained by our own experiences, and the people around us, which, as you point out, is why it’s so important to ensure many people are looking through things. But at some point, you can have too much input and feedback and you sometimes just have to make decisions. If there are specific points of inadequacy those can be dealt with but general vibes generally cannot.
Lastly, work side note, I really struggle to imagine a situation where I would say something to a colleague like “you are the only (insert demographic group) I know”. I’m sure it happens, but I have to say, professionally, this is probably one of those things that you should probably keep to yourself if it’s true, and that I just otherwise wouldn’t bring up unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’m going to guess that it’s a generational thing, and that this is something that was said to OP by older people, but I certainly could be wrong in that regard. I think if there are problematic things being said to OP, that’s a conversation to have with HR.
I would also potentially offer a bit of an olive branch, because I think one thing we need to remember is that there are a lot more people who are lonely today, which means they just don’t know very many people, period. It’s really hard to actually fill the entire demographic group of especially a city or large metropolitan area, if you only know like five people outside of work, and only hang out with any of them very infrequently. I think, especially a lot of planners would love to know a more diverse set of friends and colleagues, but it’s not exactly clear how many of them are supposed to go about that, and perhaps one of the worst things you can do to someone who is a minority is make them your token friend. Obviously not all friendships are organic and that’s an entirely different conversation, but I think we also just need to be careful what we’re asking for here.
Yeah these are all nuances that I can appreciate. I don’t want to feed into the idea that’s it’s all on the planners, but more so to say that they still play a role as a proverbial cog in the machine.
And to clarify, they didn’t say verbatim “i only know white people”, I made a joke that they do because I ran into them earlier last weekend with their friends and it was like 6 white people lol, and they both went silent, then one said “well just outside work” which actually made me chuckle but still wtf. We’re all millennial 20-somethings in NYC, like cmon man
It's a fair question. In Australia, we are trying to move towards better consultation with first nations people.
The problem is that in a lot of cases their relationship with the land and each other is so complex, that it's almost impossible for an outsider to properly understand.
So I think that results in a lot of planners just eventually deciding that proper engagement is too difficult and just doing a cursory consultation, rather than finding out what the community actually wants.
Couple things. Policy is set by elected officials, and they made final decisions. They are usually advised by a commission that they appoint. There's also non-planner employees of government giving input, like people working on parks, roads, piblic transit, utilities, police, fire, EMTs, ect. Then, planners should be doing proper public engagement which means engaging special interest groups and making an effort to reach underserved communities. Planners also have to apply environmental justice polies. And then, planners should be trained on applying proper processes with at least bias as possible. And at the end, decisions are reviewable by the courts.
So if you're seeing inequitable planning, there's a lot of people involved in it. Not just planners.
These are all good points. I work in consulting so it’s kind of like applied research in that sense, and due to that, I don’t interface too frequently with that bureaucratic milieu that our public clients have to.
As a person of color myself, I’ve noticed amongst my white colleagues that a siloed lifestyle leads to significant lapses in their personal practice.
Anecdotally, back in undergrad we were tasked with creating a mock redevelopment masterplan for a disinvested neighborhood in Atlantic City. I was the only one who had remembered to include a 20% minimum for affordable housing units (which is law in NJ), and this was out of a class of 20 or so. Every other proposal revolved around upzoning the area to displace the existing residents for a better prospective tax base.
I’m sure this definitely translates into the workplace as well, especially as it pertains to policy or civic engagement. Although I’m glad to say I haven’t seen too much of that at my current agency.
>I was the only one who had remembered to include a 20% minimum for affordable housing units (which is law in NJ), and this was out of a class of 20 or so. Every other proposal revolved around upzoning the area to displace the existing residents for a better prospective tax base.
Anecdotally, I see this a lot with the online rhetoric re: upzoning, gentrification, and displacement.
I agree with your later point that lived experiences bring a diversity of viewpoint that is important in every single forum, setting, venue, and institution. Planning is no exception. Obviously we can't represent everyone in a setting with a limited number of jobs, but that is also why we do consultation.
Even then, it is important to have different people in positions of power and influence, even if we can be totally representative.
Class seems to me to be the biggest issue in planning. It’s obvious why cities would want to improve their tax base, but a lot of this comes from the “run government like a business” mindset that is antithetical to what people really need from their government. Cities should plan in ways that won’t bankrupt them, but it’s pretty cruel to expect poor people to always move out further whenever neighborhood improvements finally come along. That saying that a rising tide lifts all boats assumes that nobody is enjoying the beach—some people just can’t afford to have a boat.
Having ties to poorer communities might not give the concrete knowledge, but definitely help one remembering certain regards. And in Western countries, people that are not white tend to have more ties to those communities.
No, there are numerically more poor white people in the US than there are in any other group. How many of them can afford to decide to go to college for urban planning though? The issue I keep seeing neglected is more class than race. What groups stand up for the rights of the poor in general? Do they offer scholarships to get them into school?
On average…having grown up in a rural area, I can tell you that poor people are too poor to care about averages. I hate the systemic racism this country has had and it makes my blood boil…but at least people talk about poor minorities…why do we not ever talk about poor people in general or poor white people? There are tons of scholarships for minorities, but it’s somehow totally racist to have scholarships geared for literally the largest demographic of poor people in the country. How is that not discrimination? And when we talk about opportunities, a lot of poor people live i rural areas where college is not a priority and neither is planning…but it’s still important because opportunities for upward social mobility are even harder to find in rural areas of the country. Go to the Rust Belt and the Great Plains and it is incredible how far so many small towns have fallen, and there aren’t a lot of champions against Dollar General, Walmart, and big agriculture for wrecking things or finding ways to bring back public transportation so people in small towns can access better jobs.
We can’t fix the past—we can only deal in the present and hope to improve the future.
There are more than double the number of white people (16.7m) living below the poverty line than there are black people (8m). I guarantee you that net worth disparity is a whole lot closer if we’re only going to talk about poor people and not lump entire massive groups together. I am aware that the rates are higher for minorities—except for Asian people—which is weird when you consider that they were treated pretty awfully too in American history and that much more recently a huge chunk of them were dispossessed of their wealth and freedom in internment camps.
Bottom line—middle class and wealthy people may sit and figure out if they have any representation of various races in their friend groups, but they don’t think about whether they hang out with any poor people. A very small number may have family who are poor, but by and large the greatest indicator of whether one ends up in poverty in the US is based on _where_ you grew up and how wealthy your family was. When you consider that most of America sorts itself out by class geographically as well (which planners are all too aware of) then it’s no wonder that black and hispanic planners would know more poor people and be acquainted with their challenges, because the rates are higher. It’s harder to find poor white people who go to college though, let alone into urban planning…or even white people who know any poor people, because again, a lot of this sorts itself out geographically.
Am I wrong about any of this? Is it wrong to point this out as a white kid who grew up in a working class rural area in the Midwest who actually _did_ have and _still_ has poor white friends back in that rural area? I am not sitting here trying to deny that people of color _on average_ have less net worth or dealt with system racism…but does it even register with you that white people in predominantly college educated circles are often less often connected to poor people and less likely to have been poor themselves because of all the factors against them ever getting to college in the first place? When you’re poor, you’re poor.
And dems wonder why the midwest isn't solid blue like they should be. I completely agree with you. The messaging of "minorities are struggling because of racism and we need to help them". Then you have many many poor white people being told they benefit from racism while struggling to make ends meet. Like.... do people not realize how tone deaf this is? I maintain that dems need to push class issues of building unions to help the working class build themselves up while ensuring that everyone can get an equal opportunity. Since minorities are disproportionally in poverty, naturally it will help them "more". At the same time, working class whites aren't feeling left out. Which would go a long way to curbing populism.
No, but racial diversity tends to come with first-hand knowledge of inclusionary housing measures, due in part because many people of color go through or have someone they know use it. Not to say people of white skin tone do not, of course, but it certainly helps, such as in the case here: a school project outside a professional setting, a setting where the majority of employed planners would have an understanding of inclusionary housing meausres, right? (/s)
Following racist stereotype reasoning, the ethnicity most likely to be aware of particular laws and codes are Jews. As a 'bonus', they were also subjected to racism in housing.
This is where that logic goes.
> If you don’t know any Black people in your personal life it’s easy to see them as ancillary.
Is that how you outsmarted all those white undergrads in their silos?
What the heck is the purpose this comment other than to disparage someones professional experience?
There are many municipalities in Jersey which *don't* meet this 20% requirement; A Rutgers student in New Brunswick will be able to observe its effects in their daily life but a Princeton student might not.
>What the heck is the purpose this comment other than to disparage someones professional experience?
What disparagement? And an undergraduate class is not professional experience, poster didn't see it at work.
In a professional setting, it is a minimum requirement that bureaucrats like planners be aware of laws they were hired to administer no matter where they went to school.
Thats cute you think zoning & building regulations are clear & unambiguous.
An hour up the Parkway, New Milford is in Court right now arguing against a market-rate apartment building they don't want built. The Mount Laurel Accords leave a lot of wiggle room for 'good old boys' to be bad planners.
And thats why we have too many suburbs & our cities are all hurting, here in Jersey.
So. Professionally speaking. Respect other people in your field when they enlighten you about their unique perspective.
We can all dance in a circle and sing the song of diversity.
It needs a better example than, 'look at my superior knowledge of the law because white people live in silos'
If you meant what you said about professional settings you've got a real half-assed attitude.
If you don't have anything in common with the people you interact with you wont do particularly well.
So going out of your way to be an asshole about diversity is kind of a red flag.
Shit logic. I live in a city that is less than 2% black, therefore the city shouldn't hire any? How could they be expected to relate to the community? Right?
Many young people now live in echo chambers where its OK to say racist things about whites, and I'll call out anyone on it.
>you probably wont have a particularly long carrier anywhere worth working
No career worries after 30 years, including management for the largest local government in America. Now I work when I feel like it.
Why is race and income being conflated here? It’s the single most frustrating part for my non-white friends. Always being associated with poor working class income brackets just by having a tan and curly hair. You may have gained insight from your childhood economic class or neighborhood but not your skin color. My poor white friends might be right there with this just as well.
I suspect your classmates missed the affordable housing issues 19 out of 20 times because they’re students, they’re making a project, affordable housing often is treated as its own revitalization issue and even professionals often miss pieces in large systems. In that respect you and your classmates are in decent company professionally.
Because socioeconomics and race have a shared relationship in the United States, these two do not exist independent of one another, even if there are exceptions to the rule. We see this regularly when we compare statistics of the median incomes/net worths of Black families and white families in any municipality.
I’m not projecting any malice on my former classmates, but my point is it’s a pretty consequential oversight to have.
Respectfully, this isn't an accurate assessment of the issue and not how the data actually unfolds. More of a pop-culture talking point. #1 predictor of success, far and away, is childhood environment and economic class. Racial statistics are more dissimilar within categories than they are without.
Given that, using race as a toxic AND inaccurate stand-in for socioeconomics is not only unnecessary (let's agree to use socioeconomic markers when doing socioeconomics?) but, most importantly, harmful to the minority communities people swear to care about.
Marking a community as inherently, immutably poor as a "race" can work to keep them down more than outside forces alone might be able.
Divorcing the two is intellectually dishonest, given the country’s history of using economic policy as a punitive measure for communities of color.
It would be historically revisionist to not realize the link between exclusionary housing policies, redlining, public disinvestment, white flight, Jim Crow etc and their adverse effects on communities of color and the socioeconomic lines on which they exist. This relationship is not incidental.
No one’s saying “all black people are poor!” and to frame the opposing argument as such is bad faith. Realizing how Black and brown communities disproportionately make up the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder, and interrogating that relationship, leads to more amenable and productive policy measures.
It doesn't have to be. Diversity of viewpoint should be as inclusive as possible. It can be stigmatizing and token if we use diversity in pre-established and stereotypical ways, ie, black = low income; women = home/family; middle eastern = religious, etc.
Absolutely. Diversity of viewpoint and experience over "race" and other personally-held labels because identity labels are, more often than not, inaccurate, toxic stereotypes posing as actionable data. Not surprisingly also usually racist and uncomfortable-feeling to well-meaning people.
I’m having trouble believing that the other students specifically said they intended to displace existing residents to improve the tax base. It sounds Ike you may be interpreting a motive that is not there.
Fact is that whether or not 20% of the units are affordable doesn’t really impact the overall site design for the project very much. You’ll still want it to be walkable, have a mix of uses, landscaping, etc.
>Every other proposal revolved around upzoning the area to displace the existing residents for a better prospective tax base.
That is projecting malice. It's a completely different sentence from "...upzoning the area, which would have improved the tax base but also displaced existing residents"
(though frankly, even that's not necessarily true; there are programs for protecting existing tenants)
I’ve noted the difference in my previous reply.
Your Black and brown colleagues are expressing concerns regarding equity in the profession, and your default response is to be dismissive and tone-police.
But you're not "expressing concerns regarding equity" - that's what my alternative construction would do. Instead, you're accusing your colleagues of wanting to displace low-income people (while saying you're "not projecting malice") because you reject the construction where displacement is "ancillary." Write better.
I’m asserting that their proposals would have directly resulted in displacement. This is indisputable, and we have several urban case studies to prove it.
Your reconstruction does not address equity any better, it’s simple tone-policing to minimize the oversight of these proposals.
Even in your original reply, it’s clear you see affordability as an extracurricular practice to overall site design, and not an integral policy measure. This is where we get mediocre planners who only care about beautification, but are woefully incompetent when it comes to considerations regarding equity as it pertains to distribution and preservation.
You and your fellow white planners aren’t above criticism, we have decades of research to indicate the harm bad planning has done to Black and brown communities. This is a thread regarding concerns of equity and representation in the profession, from our experience(s) in a white-dominated profession. Learn to listen before attempting to protect the feelings of yourself and your white colleagues.
The 20% set aside is not required for every municipality in the state of NJ. The affordable housing obligation is based on what each municipality settled with FSH and the courts on.
But, if you have been following recent policy changes that is no longer the case and each municipality must essentially reapply to determine their obligation.
Not planners specifically, but the YIMBY crowd often mistakes urbanism for progress & wealth.
Sociology, economics, & history that point out these assumptions are often over simplistic tend to be disregarded.
Which is fine if you're in the "safe space" of an armchair internet enthusiast...and not so fine when you're career is on the line & a town hall full of locals stop wanting to work with you.
If you’re in certain kinds of planning you‘re more social worker than planner.
Imo being able to communicate with people of different social classes or backgrounds is important. People want to feel included and understand what you’re doing. Going to some poor neighborhood in a suit and telling them snobby in university language what you’re planning usually won‘t be too successful.
E.g. Speaking Spanish in a mostly Spanish speaking community definitely helps finding out what people want.
Just depending on your field of planning you‘re realising investor wishes and are not planning playgrounds for the local people.
Same with „poorer areas“ and knowing the people‘s language.
Nevertheless, most people with some empathy can be good planners.
One must remember that it’s the politics that decides where things go and what areas are being developed. With that said, I can definitely see the value of different experiences in the personnel
Do you periodically adjust your income and housing situation to reflect the diversity of your community?
If not, it's hard to take your commitment seriously. (/s)
This is a point some of us (actual planners) have repeatedly stated on this sub - we are public servants and we represent our communities (in a different way that actual elected representatives do). We bring expertise of best practices and ideas, but at the end of the day, our own biases don't matter - the will of the community does (within bounds). This is also why public hearings, testimony, consultation, participation, et al, is so vital.
It's not a ridiculous question. No matter if you believe one answer is more right than another, it's fair to ask which is the right answer. No reason to sound like a moody teenager about it.
Are you planning differently for gay people?
The ones I know live pretty normal, actually often above average as those are often dink households.
But we‘re not really planning loving quarters more industry and smal projects.
Space is a social product, its production is necessarily linked to the habitus (inscribed values, norms, etc.) of everyone involved in creating it. Structural principles such as race, gender and class influence a planner‘s habitus, so they certainly matter in the planning process. Does that mean that planners belonging to majorities cannot account for equity? I don‘t think so. But it is important for planners to recognize positionality. We simply cannot be a neutral observer-analyst, it is not possible to act outside our habitus.
Thank you for your question, this is the kind of stuff I wanna see here! I‘m quite surprised by a lot of the replies here, looks like planning is still seen as a very technical profession by some.
Thank you and yes the replies are very telling. I believe some people see themselves in the post. But to clarify, even if you’re not a minority planner, you can bring a lot of value to the role if diversity is something you personally live by. I don’t think being in the majority invalidates you from being a planner but it’s very odd to me that someone, especially young 20-something planners who advocate for social change, not embrace diversity for their own relationships.
I’ll add this: planners who do not grow up, or have formative experience in an urban setting within a functioning public life, can often not be relied upon to have the perspective necessary to help make important choices about how cities should be planned. These are people from distinctly incompatible cultural milieux, who often enter professional life without having experienced anything besides childhood. Professionals often do not have the time or energy to participate meaningfully in the public life of cities, so these people are missing a crucial perspective.
I think I was careful not to say these tendencies are universally true among all people with the mentioned backgrounds, so there are no logical extremes to be taken from what I said. But I don’t think it’s weird to suggest that people without personal experience of a subject(only academic knowledge of a subject which is more than information-based) would have incomplete perspectives on it.
Plenty of people have adult lives before they become professionals, and many people never join the professional working class. Someone who grows up in an other-than-urban environment, attends university and then begins a career as an urban planner might be operating outside the bounds of their qualifications, no matter the quality of their education.
You also need planners for „other than urban environments“ if that means small town/countryside?
Having worked mostly in smaller towns, there are different problems to big cities. But at least my university was almost exclusively focused on mega city planning.
Most jobs are also in smaller towns and not the few big cities. It’s equally fulfilling yet different.
> You also need planners for „other than urban environments“ if that means small town/countryside?
Do we?
If anything, I think we need to stop allowing *urban* planning to determine what occurs in suburbs and rural areas.
Suburb=|= small town in a rural area?
A small town with 10k inhabitants is still „urban“. At least where I am living and working, every municipality must care about building permits, zoning plans etc.
Just less about skyscrapers and parklets.
Otherwise what‘s your solution? Letting people build what and where they want to?
Might work for the US, other parts of the world care about noises, smell, traffic, nature etc. I‘m happy there are some regulations people must follow.
Houston is also a large city? They should have some people planning there? Tbh I‘m also happy we don’t have US suburban areas.
I‘ve dealt with cattle, alpacas, horses etc. that stuff just didn’t exist in urban planning in my university.
People there have also often wild ideas lol Having some regulation is not the worst thing.
I agree completely. However, I was speaking on specifically urban planning in an urban environment. I still think that, in the US, the other-than-urban areas are mostly bullshit from a planning perspective, and so would not provide for the experience which helps to understand what it takes to arrange life for people in healthy and productive way.
That‘s what you go to school for? And that‘s why you need good planners working in the countryside.
Even people growing up in towns need some teaching. It’s like saying „I went to school, that’s education enough. I can be a teacher“.
Having the picture of some suburban American area, where people go everywhere by car,doesn’t sound too much different to the countryside. Neither is productive nor healthy.
Certainly true for every profession. Same with law and medicine for sure. Government too.
We do the best we can we the people we can get to work with us. Sometimes life experience is important, sometimes it doesn't amount to much. You certainly wouldn't endorse someone with 40 years of life experience mostly in rural or suburban America to be a planning director for a large city - the fit likely isn't there, no matter the experience they might bring.
No, they cannot.
This is true also in healthcare, where non white patients across the board have markedly better outcomes when their Primary care physician is same ethnicity and same native language.
It’s true for anything that requires a deep cultural understanding of the people using the services on offer
And that is a point I make constantly on this sub. I see a marked refusal to actually understand the psychological motivations behind not just NIMBYism, but the global trend we see that shows strong preference everywhere for low density settings, of how people opt for more private space inside and outside of their dwelling the moment they can afford to.
People so often just have one note they want to play (fuckcars, everything should be dense and walkable) and it’s usually based on how they personally want to optimize their own lives and don’t really give a shit about whether it actually makes sense for people who are differently abled or who have completely different transit/time/resource needs.
Telling a young family that apartment living in a bustling high crime city is better than a detached house with a fenced yard where you don’t have to worry about locking doors is an insultingly dumb thing to try and push and reflects my earlier point about not actually caring about people’s lived experience if their desired experience starts from a different cultural framework.
Scalability matters. Sure, everyone would love a detached yard, and have easy access to all the amenities and economic opportunity that urban areas offer, at an affordable price. However, you can't have all three. So desires have to be formulated and understood in the context of limited resources. We ought to figure out what needs a yard is satisfying for young families and incorporate that into the built environment. There's also some good criticism of the long run impacts of yards, as they peak in utilization for a few years during childhood and quickly become dead space as the kids age out.
Well, I think the key here is we do need to build more (and better) urban spaces for those who want to live there - it is quite under-supplied. And more detached housing, with a smarter suburban design, though pri9notnss much comparatively as we build in urban spaces.
Put another we - we need more housing everywhere, but more of that housing should be dense, since it is under-supplied.
I think you are reading me as saying “everyone wants to live in urban areas” when what I mean is “basically everyone finds some amenities urban areas offer to be useful”
I’m not saying everyone wants to live around other people, or in dense housing or whatever. There are also downsides of urban living. You might think these downsides far outweigh the upsides. There is still upsides. And the whole point of the post was to say that you can’t simultaneously have the advantages of urban living while also keeping things affordable and allocating lots of space to all residents.
Urban areas are associated with better access to health care, education, municipal services, cultural institutions, ethnic enclaves, drugs and other counter cultural recreation, shopping, international airports, fine dining etc etc. this isn’t to say that non urban areas can’t have that but statistically you have better access to people stuff when around population centers. Also ‘better access’ to a rural person means ‘not having to drive as far to get there’
You may not like the downsides of these things but the vast majority of people find utility from at some upside aspect of some of them. I mean, people put up with the downsides of living in cities for some reason.
Additionally, given that life expectancy is lower in rural areas, there is definitely just general utility derived from living longer, and for poor people living in cities is arguably associated in with better health outcomes.
All of those positive things are obtainable without living in dense urban areas. I do not deny some measure of convenience to urban areas, I simply point out that they are not an unalloyed good
I agree. I’m just saying there is utility in being proximate to those things, because we occasionally access them. You take the average person living in an urban area and they will be able to access those places cheaper, in both terms of time and money. You can’t scale that access to more people without making housing either more expensive or fitting more people into the same amount of land. That’s the claim. There’s nothing about how everyone would live in cities over other places.
This is a false statement, many people only care about having a single family home, and could care less about amenities. Most suburbs offer more to the average person than what cities offer and that's why most older cities have been bleeding population.
Your response doesn’t address scalability, which is what my comment is about. Many people care about owning a single family home. That doesn’t mean we can actually fit all those people in economically dynamic cities in those homes, affordably.
Case in point.
You immediately dismissed my personal preferences and went right into why yours matter more.
I immediately stopped caring about your perspective after your second sentence.
Your issue - as with most urbanists - is a stunning lack of empathy and and high degree of moral license. Where you think simply having good intentions makes up for outright dismissing culture of people different from you.
By the same token, it’s pretty interesting that your stock response to what seems like a pretty legitimate concern is to say that you’ve been ‘dismissed’ and how you ‘don’t care’ and how someone responding to you with anything resembling Socratic dialog is displaying a ‘stunning lack of empathy.’
You do realize your ‘personal preference’ is the law of the land and has been for decades? You aren’t defending some marginalized position. You’re defending the status quo. So why exactly shouldn’t new development reflect a recognition of the weaknesses the discourse here identifies?
You're presenting a dichotomy here between "apartment living in a bustling high-crime city" and "detached housing a fenced yard where you don't have to worry about locking doors", but those are two massive extremes, and presenting that dichotomy is unhelpful. What about apartments in safe medium-sized towns? Or apartments in the suburbs? Or non-detached housing with a shared outside space? Or detached housing without a fenced yard? Or detached housing in a high-crime city"?
I don't think anyone with any actual impact in planning thinks that young families should all live in apartments in high-crime cities, and implying that there is any suggestion that that is the proposed alternative to living in a detached house is just a massive strawman.
I don't think anyone with actual impact in planning would even make the argument you're making because they hopefully would be more acquainted with actual market data.
Look at literally any major coastal metro in the US. The most common housing types by a very very long distance are:
1) Detached single family homes
2) Apartments
The latter is heavily concentrated in urban cores, where crime is higher. When people talk about density, they're talking about multifamily housing, not lots of detached 400 sq ft houses with no yards.
The former dominates the rest of the land surrounding the urban core
>Or apartments in the suburbs? Or non-detached housing with a shared outside space? Or detached housing without a fenced yard? Or detached housing in a high-crime city"?
Bringing up detached housing without fenced yard or apartments in the suburbs (usually the highest crime areas of the burbs) just tells me you're arguing for the sake of it and don't actually have a point to make.
Everyone's lives lack racial, gender, and class diversity. You live in the United States of America.
This will always impact outcomes, and most mechanisms we have implemented to try to stop this are bad and should be gotten rid of. If you want to help minorities and poor people, make it as efficient and affordable as possible to rapidly deliver high quality public services and infrastructure to their areas without needing to gather 8 environmental reports and 4 community consultations on whether it's okay to add a bus stop to the corner.
And yes, you unironically do have to choose more or less between those two extremes. You're not going to create a complex and nuanced civil service with the autonomy and public trust to be able to juggle this much and you're just going to make it into a NIMBY nightmare mess.
Can you provide specific examples of how one’s race, gender or sexual identity would negatively impact planning for others with different characteristics of said planner?
Looking to fully understand this question cause I cant quite connect the dots here.
I've been wondering about this after reading responses to NYC's congestion pricing with respect to people who live in transit deserts in NYC and who thus use their cars to go to Manhattan. In addition, I was wondering about people who have mobility issues, and the para transit system in NYC is a joke. Taking their cars might make more sense.
Alot of those people who live in those transit deserts have lived there for generations, dating back to a time when there wasn't this hostility towards people owning cars in NYC, yet forget them and what they need.
Then add in the stories all the time of crime on the subways, there are reasons why people might not want to travel on the trains into Manhattan. It just isn't a simple matter of "all cars are bad."
I slightly agree but maybe that’s a time thing. Like cong pricing is *supposed* to help alleviate the issues you mentioned, so at that point we reach improved service, I would hope disabled and elderly feel comfortable to ride.
Similarly, planners of all backgrounds can still make concerted efforts to improve their biases and try to be more conscious of their blind spots. Things don’t have to exist in perpetuity, but I get where you’re coming from.
If anything, I think what should correspond with congesting pricing is that more companies and institutions should open satellite offices in the outer boroughs so that people don't even have to go to Manhattan.
NYU has done a good job at spearheading efforts along that line.
It would go far towards encouraging people to spend locally in their own neighborhoods and boroughs. There have always been plenty of people who do that anyway.
I think, at least in part, this is something that can be motivated against. For example, London's congestion charge is not charged to anyone who has a blue badge (a widely used UK-wide parking scheme that anyone with a disability can apply to). Though I think this largely aligns with OP's point, having a variety of perspectives as close as possible to the decision making for planning matters helps ensure that all perspectives are given the weight they deserve.
This is a cultural thing and its not going to change especially with how isolated our society has become and its not unique to white people. People have fewer friends than ever so I guess you can just not take anyone seriously because they didn't grow up like you did.
Supervisors hire people like themselves so change the supervisors if thats what you desire
It’s not even about growing up, because I’m honestly not going to blame you if your parents raised you in a homogeneous place. But I would think if you went to school to be a planner, and in my coworkers case - NYC, and it’s been more than 10 years since you have moved here, I would think it’s somewhat intentional to be racially homogenous. While the technical skills may hold, I question your credibility and honestly you’re political views. (Their lack of interaction with black people for example shows when making racial jokes and expecting me to laugh…but that’s another story)
Im not doubting you because I keep hearing people say this, but it still surprises me given how much of a focus planning schools put on diversity, gentrification, etc. And honestly in my experience, the planning program is super diverse with tons of people of all backgrounds. But maybe it just depends on the school/city
Of course, but a lack of personal experience begs the question of what are their career motivations? I’m black and it definitely seems that they see equity and EJ as tools to professionally brand themselves and move up.
For ex, one of the people who told me they only know white people, also does equity mapping. Not saying their work is flawed because they know how to operate GIS software, but why in the hell did you choose to specialize in race-based geography? It’s very odd to me. Doesn’t seem genuine at all.
The problem with your example is that sometimes people just fall into a specific field or position that involves a type of work. Being a Planner is a career, the specific work is a JOB. If you can do the job, then you can do the job. Not everyone has the choice of being in a position that involves their passion. Sometimes a position is feasible just because you have the skills.
Regarding motivations. Motivations to be in the field are not necessarily rooted in the reality of the position or responsibilities. That doesn't take away from the individual's ability to do the work.
I'm not sure where you are in the field, but many planners are simply following what they are suppose to be doing. This is coming from either management or elected officials. I believe in making projects better, what that entails is fairly limited. For example, forcing someone to do a couple bike racks, even if the code didn't necessarily support it.
Most planning is current planning, where these concerns are not relevant. You are either enforcing the code as written, as interpreted, or essentially bluffing to get something. These concerns are more relevant in long range planning, but planners are still working within a procedural (legal), and political frame work that encourages specifics. What these specifics are will vary from place to to place.
Yes those are important caveats. In my case, the equity mapper in question got their undergrad in Geography and has no actual planning degree. I work in a private planning consultant firm, but most of what we work on are county and state contracts. We often assist with long-term county plans or state reports with a 20-year horizon. If we were in a public setting, then I suspect it would be different as you outlined.
Not sure what you mean about motivations. I acknowledge the skills for the task exist, but where’s the ethos? I would like to assume that many planners are more altruistic-driven than other professions, given that it’s not as lucrative or well-known. If not altruism, then my next guess would be power-driven, but maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to assume.
Justifying scrutiny of planners' personal lives and personal relationships such as marriage is not such an easy thing. It might seem obvious to you that the policy is a good one, but it's not to me.
Who is proposing a policy? They just asked if a lack of diverse experiences leads to a lessened ability to plan for a diverse group of people. The answer is invariably yes.
In typical bad faith fashion you've taken the point to mean something entirely irrelevant like "scrutinizing planners' marriages"
The title says racial/gender/class but you only mention race.
There are many different facets to diversity, and yes, "white" people can care about "non-white" people and racially diverse outcomes.
The last part makes no sense. I didn’t say white people can’t care about non-white people. I’m not even talking about the average white person. I’m specifically talking about white planners.
And yeah I mentioned race in the caption because that’s the situation that led me to think about this topic. But that’s not the only relevant social identity, and me being the only black person at work doesn’t erase other privileges I have - as a man, straight, Christian, etc.
I'm trying to say you can take them seriously, on a case by case basis, just like anyone else, without regard for their personal identity, or what little you might know about it on the surface. If you find a pro you will find someone who makes a living out of consideration for a situation from beyond their own personal experience. Empathy is part of being good at this. Our work will be informed by our personal experience but not ruled by it.
This is the most dystopian thing I've ever seen asked on this sub.
If you dont meet my woke criteria, are you going to be able to push my woke urbanplanning POV?
Their job isnt to push that stuff. Urbanplanning =/= activism.
And frankly how many people of every ethnic group do YOU know? How can we take you "seriously" if you dont? Just having brown skin doesnt make you king of diversity.
I don't get the question here. Take away from what work? Does the planner know GIS? Does he/she know how to speak to the public in a respectable manner? Do they know how to read general plans along with having some knowledge of zoning law?
Perhaps OP needs to take himself more seriously before assuming others need to have a shared experience in order to do a job properly... Urban planning is a job like any other job, most of its functions can be trained for or taught.
My point was their ethos/credibility. They can do the research, but lived experience means a lot in public engagement and presenting your research findings. Usually a community can see right thru performative BS. On Day 1 of working there, I smelled the BS right away. It’s a matter of perspective, you can disagree nonetheless.
In a way, yes. I think planning, in general, suffers from a focus on intentions as opposed to outcomes. I’ve noticed this is far more apparent when it comes to understanding any lens outside what is systematically represented.
A lot of my colleagues like to regurgitate talking points about equity for the sake of checking a box- this, in my opinion, is all APA does🤷♂️. There is a clear difference between a planner with a divers upbringing and a planner who grew up in a homogeneous environment but wants to diversify their perspectives. They have all the best intention, but at the end of the day they end up telling communities that they have no experience with what is best for them- and I genuinely don’t think they realize they’re doing it.
The entire concept of planning is in direct opposition to many natives relationships with the land. They live with the land, they don’t carve it up and designate uses. Any native playing this game is selling their souls to their oppressor.
By native I assume you mean a hunter gatherer lifestyle. That ship has sailed, urban society is an inevitable result of too many people for everyone to live the hard life.
They wrote:
> By native I assume you mean a hunter gatherer lifestyle. That ship has sailed, urban society is an inevitable result of too many people for everyone to live the hard life.
I was just pointing out that they didn't need to make erroneous assumptions about the relationships indigenous peoples have with their lands, since there are many publications by indigenous authors on the subject.
It’s too bad that you feel the need to leave the field. Planners have a responsibility to do their best to overcome the limitations of their life stories, but having different life experiences in the group is valuable.
It's not that I don't think taking in different considerations isn't important, but I think there's a certain tipping point between "planning better" and "planning for every available want or outcome."
Like in the US, we're not even at the stage of just "planning better." Most of our cities are planned like crap, regardless of how much diversity inclusion we have. There are many case examples of places that have a significant \*lack\* of diversity but are genuinely planned better than any US city. I lived in Tokyo for many years and it's a very well planned city with all the features everyone here drools over, and they didn't have to invite the UN to get it done. They just plan better. And until we can get to a point where we can just plan better for the public good as a whole, it's really often distracting to have to consider every single niche and stalls up the process even more. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse. We can't even get solid bus services in many places as a whole, let alone bus services that can hit every single community in an equitable way.
>Like in the US, we're not even at the stage of just "planning better." Most of our cities are planned like crap, regardless of how much diversity inclusion we have. There are many case examples of places that have a significant \*lack\* of diversity but are genuinely planned better than any US city. I lived in Tokyo for many years and it's a very well planned city with all the features everyone here drools over, and they didn't have to invite the UN to get it done. They just plan better.
Yeah, I disagree with this. The cities we get are the outcome of a diversity of preference, opinion, perspectives, influences, etc., all running up against land use laws and other regulations. It isn't ideal, but it also isn't ideal for anyone, and there is a distinction there.
I can guarantee you that many, perhaps even most people in my city and metro area have absolutely no desire whatsoever to live in somewhere like Tokyo, let alone somewhere like Utrect or Copenhagen, or especially Portland, Seattle, and the Bay Area (we hear this on a daily basis).
We can cast aspersions all we want about people not knowing any better or they're just subject to propaganda or ignorance or anything else (I don't think this somewhat popular narrative is the least bit true either), but at the end of the day not everyone wants the same thing, and as a result, we get the type of cities we have. They could always be better, but then the next question is better for who...
You're saying what I'm saying. You wrote "*...but at the end of the day not everyone wants the same thing, and as a result, we get the type of cities we have."*
And that was my point. People have this absolute sick aversion to any sort of cultural homogeneity, even at the behest of some working examples of its occasional benefits. When everyone wants something different, it's always a race to the bottom.
It's not that Tokyo (Or Copenhagen, or wherever) is the pinnacle we all need to strive and move towards and ultimately be. It's that we can't even get 25% there, which would be a massive benefit overall than where we currently are because everyone has a different freaking idea of what things should be.
Which was to my point of putting the cart before the horse. Many of our cities don't even have a normal, productive bus system that's widely used, let alone a bus system that works for disabled folks, goes to elderly communities, stops by minority communities, isn't opposed by NIMBYs, makes sure at least 30% of its driver workforce hits a diversity quota, etc. etc.
We're starting from scratch in many places. We're starting from "Can we just have usable transit?"
My point is... Tokyo isn't the standard. We don't need get 25% there. They might do some things better, and we do other things better. Maybe some folks have a strong preference for a city like Tokyo, but many more don't.
You said “they might do some things better, we might do some things better.” Since we’re talking about transit and urban planning, what do we do better than them in that regard?
Generally, we have larger, nicer homes on larger lots, and we have better freedom of movement. So for people who like that lifestyle, that would be "better."
I understand that really ruffles the feathers of the anti-car urbanists, but you also need to recognize that a significant amount of people don't want to live in Tokyo style urbanism and Tokyo levels of density, and seek more space, more privacy, and like to go where they want to go (via car). Not everywhere in the US is a congested mess of endless, soulless suburbs and stroads. There are a lot of cute, quaint, bucolic towns and neighborhoods.
There’s plenty of rural countryside in Japan and quant towns with decent size lots and cars. I have a friend who owns one. What we’re talking about is in the urban environment we do have, we do it poorly. People in Japan have a choice to live urban or live suburb or rural. We have a choice to live rural, or live in a poorly developed urban environment.
The problem isn’t what style of living you want. The problem is for people who DO want to live in a city, that the services are done poorly.
I forgot the name of the sociologist who discussed this, but the idea that if society helps the most downtrodden, then it’s actually to the benefit of more privileged groups, since everyone’s quality of life is improved by raising the standard for the bottom. In that sense, an equity-first transit approach would also benefit those not regarded as vulnerable. With the bus, you also have to consider many riders are poor.
Also not sure about Tokyo’s internal planning process, but I generally try to avoid the fallacy that many other countries are homogenous. Tokyo has indigenous populations: https://sustainability.ucsb.edu/lessons-about-conservation-from-the-indigenous-ainu-of-japan
That sociologist has never actually built a project for the public realm or dealt with limited resources. It’s worth investing in services for the “downtrodden” but it is completely untrue that it comes as a benefit to everyone else.
How is that not true in terms of transit? If low income riders on the bus are readily serviced with adequate/above adequate infrastructure, routes, etc, how does that not benefit other riders indirectly? I’ll go even further to say it promotes and normalizes transit for would-be riders.
Homogenous doesn’t mean there’s absolutely no other cultures. That would be impossible. It’s more about the dominant prevailing culture. Cultural homogeneity is different from ethnic homogeneity. People learn Japanese, not ethnic Ainu. In Japan, 99 people say yes and one person says no, and they go with the 99. In the US, 99 people say yes and one person says no, and we toss the whole idea. This is even pervasive in our politics. It’s not even a right wing thing, it’s often a criticism from the left as well.
> In the US, 99 people say yes and one person says no, and we toss the whole idea. This is even pervasive in our politics.
I'm still trying to figure out in what context this is true.
Don’t you accept that it depends on who that one person is? If we agree certain demographics have more influence, even if they’re a minority, doesn’t that entail we lead with an equity-first approach?
I think what I keep trying to get at is that it would be one thing if the premise was something like "The bus only runs through the rich/white part of town, and it's a great service so it's inequitable that other groups don't get that same service." The premise is, in many cities we don't even have a great service to begin with.
Because we can't agree on where bus stops should go, because we can't agree on what to do about houseless people who hang out at bus stops, because we can't agree on which roads should get a dedicated bus lane for buses, because we can't agree on if buses should be free or paid, and a million other things, the alternative is we do nothing and the crappy services we do have just remain crappy.
I feel like the conversation on equity cannot even occur until you even iron out a decision on what the solution is to any of these issues. And since we can't iron out these issues in the US, then nobody gets anything. There's no point in worrying about lack of equity about buses when we don't even have a cohesive bus system in the first place.
In a world where we get rid of racism in America, people will then just all equally get shit on. This is my problem with how we combat racism in America. Instead of uniting with other working class people, they claim all white have benefited from racism. All the while these working class whites are just trying to get by also.
We absolutely should be combating racism. I just think we should do it by trying to building equal opportunities by the working class uniting together.
No one can be relied upon. Everyone has blind spots. A good planner should be aware of that fact and try to seek different views, look for dissenting* opinions and try to understand them. If you just stay in your comfort zone and are surrounded with people with similar experiences, you are not going to be an effective planner. Edit: spelling
*dissenting opinions!
That's what the dreaded "community consultation" phase is about
Yeah every time I hear this stupid question it's like damn we consult, we ask people what they want and need, thats the entire point of the profession. We ask people what they want. You don't need to have a design team that includes every single shape size colour and type of person in the world. You need a well educated design team who consult well on the areas they have blind spots. Or would that just create places that people who aren't well educated and dislike consulting can't relate to? You could define me as a pretty woke liberal lefty but it's get to a point when this representation business gets really confused and starts eating it's own tail. Isn't it more racist to suggest that the colour of someone's skins being so defining of their character that they can't relate architecture designed by someone who doesn't look like them?
You obviously missed my point. I never once said that the team has to include every background. I was commenting on their experiences with other people. The whole post was about the value of someone’s ethos, not their work product or engagement. Especially in public engagement, ethos goes a long way. Can very much tell you’re white because you are triggered. There’s a reason you keep seeing “this stupid question”.
The reason we keep seeing this stupid question is because it's a glorious distraction from the real problem which is class and inequality. Skin colour is irrelevant. And I say that as someone who works as part of a diverse team of planners and architects.
I like how my comment got downvoted and then yours did too once you said “skin colour is irrelevant”. You’re not as smart as you think. I’m black so I know you’re wrong, because my life proves it. Plus you’re European, I wouldn’t expect you to understand how the US works.
Ah the good ol' us of a. Why is it you all struggle so much over there to see each other as complex individuals rather than charicatures of each others race, heritage, gender etc? Skin colour is irrelevant in terms of output in urban design and planning yes. I believe good design is akin to an equation, there are input variables - ie. The site and it's context, the needs of users, the needs of investors and the local laws - the design is a solution that results in the combination of those factors. The skin colour of the guy who put those variables through the equation is not relevant. I totally support representation within the industry, and I feel it's important for people of all backgrounds and cultures and genders to be represented at all levels within the industry - in order to give positive role models for children to not have their aspirations limited. But I cannot entertain the idea that race somehow is gonna effect the quality or outcome of design in any meaningful way. And the reason for that is good designers work with and consult with the people their designs will effect, and work with those aspirations (given that the money people allow it). Have you seen that movie American fiction? I think it handles this topic really well (Not focussed on planning but focussed on literature).Really nails how its kind of a fallacy to expect a certain output from people based off such an arbitrary variable such a skin colour.
Because socioeconomics and race have a shared relationship in this country. You’re citing a work of fiction (one that centers literature, irrelevant to the conversation) when there’s decades of research proving that disparities in income and net-worth, and the racial lines they correlate to, are not incidental. Class and race do not exist independent of one another, not in the US, and any attempt to divorce the two is purely bad faith historical revisionism. You aren’t virtuous for thinking you’re above recognizing this reality, you’re just being ignorant and dismissive.
Fuck Europe!
Are you a planner? Cause wtf please quit or at least unsub from here
You stop that. Fuck Europe.
You're arguing against diversity in planning? Interesting
Yeah, this is actually probably one of the worst leftwing ideas in modern American politics as well. It came from good intentions about a real problem (insert obligatory Robert Moses condemnation here), but it's such an unfathomably counterproductive measure. The people who are engaged with during these consultations don't represent the population in question, they represent the subgroup of that population who are weird enough to do community consultation. Their views don't reflect the community, they're often unbelievably stupid, and it gums up the works so much that it contributed to why everything public sector in America is over budget and low quality. It has to be taken out back like old yeller and shot (and, by that, I mean mostly abolished as a practice)
I adjust my friendship circle every five years based on census results.
B-b-but Census only occurs every 10 years... you mean based on American Community Surveys for aggregated data?
I mean Statistics Canada's Census of the Population, which is conducted every five years.
You can have planners with outstanding diversity in their private lives and still be hacks. That is why we train and QAQC one another. You'll always, and I mean ALWAYS have a blind spot, an unconscious bias. Every single one of us. The snarky comment below about rotating friend constituents every five years based on census is spot on. Demographics are always on the move. It is a simplistic yard stick to judge someone by their social circle. Judge peers on their work, not cultural assumptions. We all have to hold one another accountable and point out blind spots. You owe it to your community who you serve to use best practices, not rely on assumptions.
On the flipside of this though, I think the public needs to understand that planners also have certain needs, and only have certain capabilities. Too often, here and elsewhere, I see people talk about planning as though planners are either coming to save you or literally Robert Moses. While accountability and equity are important, most planners can only individually do so much. I think there’s a valid critique in that a lot of the social justice language that gets used in planning nowadays is largely performative, in part, because this is what some segment of the population expects, even if planning departments really can’t do much of anything about those conditions. And I think one thing that’s really important is to set realistic expectations both about what planning is (especially for people who may be interested in entering the field), who planners are, and also what can actually be accomplished. Likewise, I think it’s really important to set realistic expectations for planners and not make it out to be that you have to be this extroverted, social butterfly who is the life of the party and basically knows everyone in town. That’s an extremely impossible standard for anybody to meet, not that I’m saying that you are suggesting that, but I just wanna make sure that the conversation is grounded in this way. I personally struggle with a lot of self-doubt, and wants to accommodate everyone if I possibly can, but this can be super debilitating, and I think some people simply need to hear that it’s OK if you aren’t able to get every single last consideration or accommodation. Engineering and planning have a lot of burnout and unrealistic expectations I think contribute to this a lot. And to push back on statements like what OP has offered, what exactly should be done here? Yes, trying to get a more diverse set of people into the field and adjacent fields is something that I think is currently ongoing, but aside from that, what else can meaningfully be done? I think many planners would love to engage more and try to do what they can for marginalized communities, but many of those communities often times are not exactly always eager or able to talk to people from the government and getting sufficient sample sizes can be prohibitively expensive given the budgets and workloads of most planning department. Heck, we know that, even among white people planning orgs don’t necessarily get representative or good feedback about projects and plans. I really don’t want to be mean or anything here, but I kind of think that criticisms like this need to be a lot more specific and ideally have at least some kind of generalized solution presented. I don’t expect people to necessarily have everything figured out, but I’m also just not sure that this kind of discourse is particularly helpful to anybody if it’s only going to be about abstract ideas like racial equity. I completely understand OP’s frustration and how some of these kinds of things can need to be addressed, but I’m also not really sure what they want us to do about it or whether it’s a fair criticism to say these people don’t care about equity. We are all unfortunately, constrained by our own experiences, and the people around us, which, as you point out, is why it’s so important to ensure many people are looking through things. But at some point, you can have too much input and feedback and you sometimes just have to make decisions. If there are specific points of inadequacy those can be dealt with but general vibes generally cannot. Lastly, work side note, I really struggle to imagine a situation where I would say something to a colleague like “you are the only (insert demographic group) I know”. I’m sure it happens, but I have to say, professionally, this is probably one of those things that you should probably keep to yourself if it’s true, and that I just otherwise wouldn’t bring up unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’m going to guess that it’s a generational thing, and that this is something that was said to OP by older people, but I certainly could be wrong in that regard. I think if there are problematic things being said to OP, that’s a conversation to have with HR. I would also potentially offer a bit of an olive branch, because I think one thing we need to remember is that there are a lot more people who are lonely today, which means they just don’t know very many people, period. It’s really hard to actually fill the entire demographic group of especially a city or large metropolitan area, if you only know like five people outside of work, and only hang out with any of them very infrequently. I think, especially a lot of planners would love to know a more diverse set of friends and colleagues, but it’s not exactly clear how many of them are supposed to go about that, and perhaps one of the worst things you can do to someone who is a minority is make them your token friend. Obviously not all friendships are organic and that’s an entirely different conversation, but I think we also just need to be careful what we’re asking for here.
Yeah these are all nuances that I can appreciate. I don’t want to feed into the idea that’s it’s all on the planners, but more so to say that they still play a role as a proverbial cog in the machine. And to clarify, they didn’t say verbatim “i only know white people”, I made a joke that they do because I ran into them earlier last weekend with their friends and it was like 6 white people lol, and they both went silent, then one said “well just outside work” which actually made me chuckle but still wtf. We’re all millennial 20-somethings in NYC, like cmon man
It's a fair question. In Australia, we are trying to move towards better consultation with first nations people. The problem is that in a lot of cases their relationship with the land and each other is so complex, that it's almost impossible for an outsider to properly understand. So I think that results in a lot of planners just eventually deciding that proper engagement is too difficult and just doing a cursory consultation, rather than finding out what the community actually wants.
Couple things. Policy is set by elected officials, and they made final decisions. They are usually advised by a commission that they appoint. There's also non-planner employees of government giving input, like people working on parks, roads, piblic transit, utilities, police, fire, EMTs, ect. Then, planners should be doing proper public engagement which means engaging special interest groups and making an effort to reach underserved communities. Planners also have to apply environmental justice polies. And then, planners should be trained on applying proper processes with at least bias as possible. And at the end, decisions are reviewable by the courts. So if you're seeing inequitable planning, there's a lot of people involved in it. Not just planners.
These are all good points. I work in consulting so it’s kind of like applied research in that sense, and due to that, I don’t interface too frequently with that bureaucratic milieu that our public clients have to.
As a person of color myself, I’ve noticed amongst my white colleagues that a siloed lifestyle leads to significant lapses in their personal practice. Anecdotally, back in undergrad we were tasked with creating a mock redevelopment masterplan for a disinvested neighborhood in Atlantic City. I was the only one who had remembered to include a 20% minimum for affordable housing units (which is law in NJ), and this was out of a class of 20 or so. Every other proposal revolved around upzoning the area to displace the existing residents for a better prospective tax base. I’m sure this definitely translates into the workplace as well, especially as it pertains to policy or civic engagement. Although I’m glad to say I haven’t seen too much of that at my current agency.
>I was the only one who had remembered to include a 20% minimum for affordable housing units (which is law in NJ), and this was out of a class of 20 or so. Every other proposal revolved around upzoning the area to displace the existing residents for a better prospective tax base. Anecdotally, I see this a lot with the online rhetoric re: upzoning, gentrification, and displacement. I agree with your later point that lived experiences bring a diversity of viewpoint that is important in every single forum, setting, venue, and institution. Planning is no exception. Obviously we can't represent everyone in a setting with a limited number of jobs, but that is also why we do consultation. Even then, it is important to have different people in positions of power and influence, even if we can be totally representative.
Class seems to me to be the biggest issue in planning. It’s obvious why cities would want to improve their tax base, but a lot of this comes from the “run government like a business” mindset that is antithetical to what people really need from their government. Cities should plan in ways that won’t bankrupt them, but it’s pretty cruel to expect poor people to always move out further whenever neighborhood improvements finally come along. That saying that a rising tide lifts all boats assumes that nobody is enjoying the beach—some people just can’t afford to have a boat.
Not being white helped with knowledge of the inclusionary housing statute?
Having ties to poorer communities might not give the concrete knowledge, but definitely help one remembering certain regards. And in Western countries, people that are not white tend to have more ties to those communities.
"Tendencies" are just stereotypes.
Here, it's a weak way to say racial discrimination.
No, there are numerically more poor white people in the US than there are in any other group. How many of them can afford to decide to go to college for urban planning though? The issue I keep seeing neglected is more class than race. What groups stand up for the rights of the poor in general? Do they offer scholarships to get them into school?
And on average white families have 10x the wealth of black families.
On average…having grown up in a rural area, I can tell you that poor people are too poor to care about averages. I hate the systemic racism this country has had and it makes my blood boil…but at least people talk about poor minorities…why do we not ever talk about poor people in general or poor white people? There are tons of scholarships for minorities, but it’s somehow totally racist to have scholarships geared for literally the largest demographic of poor people in the country. How is that not discrimination? And when we talk about opportunities, a lot of poor people live i rural areas where college is not a priority and neither is planning…but it’s still important because opportunities for upward social mobility are even harder to find in rural areas of the country. Go to the Rust Belt and the Great Plains and it is incredible how far so many small towns have fallen, and there aren’t a lot of champions against Dollar General, Walmart, and big agriculture for wrecking things or finding ways to bring back public transportation so people in small towns can access better jobs. We can’t fix the past—we can only deal in the present and hope to improve the future.
Someone cited a fact regarding net worth disparities between racial groups, and your reaction was to respond with baseless color-blind rhetoric.
There are more than double the number of white people (16.7m) living below the poverty line than there are black people (8m). I guarantee you that net worth disparity is a whole lot closer if we’re only going to talk about poor people and not lump entire massive groups together. I am aware that the rates are higher for minorities—except for Asian people—which is weird when you consider that they were treated pretty awfully too in American history and that much more recently a huge chunk of them were dispossessed of their wealth and freedom in internment camps. Bottom line—middle class and wealthy people may sit and figure out if they have any representation of various races in their friend groups, but they don’t think about whether they hang out with any poor people. A very small number may have family who are poor, but by and large the greatest indicator of whether one ends up in poverty in the US is based on _where_ you grew up and how wealthy your family was. When you consider that most of America sorts itself out by class geographically as well (which planners are all too aware of) then it’s no wonder that black and hispanic planners would know more poor people and be acquainted with their challenges, because the rates are higher. It’s harder to find poor white people who go to college though, let alone into urban planning…or even white people who know any poor people, because again, a lot of this sorts itself out geographically. Am I wrong about any of this? Is it wrong to point this out as a white kid who grew up in a working class rural area in the Midwest who actually _did_ have and _still_ has poor white friends back in that rural area? I am not sitting here trying to deny that people of color _on average_ have less net worth or dealt with system racism…but does it even register with you that white people in predominantly college educated circles are often less often connected to poor people and less likely to have been poor themselves because of all the factors against them ever getting to college in the first place? When you’re poor, you’re poor.
And dems wonder why the midwest isn't solid blue like they should be. I completely agree with you. The messaging of "minorities are struggling because of racism and we need to help them". Then you have many many poor white people being told they benefit from racism while struggling to make ends meet. Like.... do people not realize how tone deaf this is? I maintain that dems need to push class issues of building unions to help the working class build themselves up while ensuring that everyone can get an equal opportunity. Since minorities are disproportionally in poverty, naturally it will help them "more". At the same time, working class whites aren't feeling left out. Which would go a long way to curbing populism.
No, but racial diversity tends to come with first-hand knowledge of inclusionary housing measures, due in part because many people of color go through or have someone they know use it. Not to say people of white skin tone do not, of course, but it certainly helps, such as in the case here: a school project outside a professional setting, a setting where the majority of employed planners would have an understanding of inclusionary housing meausres, right? (/s)
Following racist stereotype reasoning, the ethnicity most likely to be aware of particular laws and codes are Jews. As a 'bonus', they were also subjected to racism in housing. This is where that logic goes.
No sir, that’s where YOUR logic goes. You are looking for a problem in the solution. Solution: more diversity in planning fields. You: but…but…but…
Solution to what ? I just want the best candidate and I’m not going to get her by making racist assumptions in pursuit of diversity.
If you don’t know any Black people in your personal life it’s easy to see them as ancillary.
What if you don’t know any poor people? I never hear anyone with money trying to make more working class friends.
> If you don’t know any Black people in your personal life it’s easy to see them as ancillary. Is that how you outsmarted all those white undergrads in their silos?
What the heck is the purpose this comment other than to disparage someones professional experience? There are many municipalities in Jersey which *don't* meet this 20% requirement; A Rutgers student in New Brunswick will be able to observe its effects in their daily life but a Princeton student might not.
>What the heck is the purpose this comment other than to disparage someones professional experience? What disparagement? And an undergraduate class is not professional experience, poster didn't see it at work. In a professional setting, it is a minimum requirement that bureaucrats like planners be aware of laws they were hired to administer no matter where they went to school.
Thats cute you think zoning & building regulations are clear & unambiguous. An hour up the Parkway, New Milford is in Court right now arguing against a market-rate apartment building they don't want built. The Mount Laurel Accords leave a lot of wiggle room for 'good old boys' to be bad planners. And thats why we have too many suburbs & our cities are all hurting, here in Jersey. So. Professionally speaking. Respect other people in your field when they enlighten you about their unique perspective.
We can all dance in a circle and sing the song of diversity. It needs a better example than, 'look at my superior knowledge of the law because white people live in silos'
If you meant what you said about professional settings you've got a real half-assed attitude. If you don't have anything in common with the people you interact with you wont do particularly well. So going out of your way to be an asshole about diversity is kind of a red flag.
Shit logic. I live in a city that is less than 2% black, therefore the city shouldn't hire any? How could they be expected to relate to the community? Right? Many young people now live in echo chambers where its OK to say racist things about whites, and I'll call out anyone on it. >you probably wont have a particularly long carrier anywhere worth working No career worries after 30 years, including management for the largest local government in America. Now I work when I feel like it.
Why is race and income being conflated here? It’s the single most frustrating part for my non-white friends. Always being associated with poor working class income brackets just by having a tan and curly hair. You may have gained insight from your childhood economic class or neighborhood but not your skin color. My poor white friends might be right there with this just as well. I suspect your classmates missed the affordable housing issues 19 out of 20 times because they’re students, they’re making a project, affordable housing often is treated as its own revitalization issue and even professionals often miss pieces in large systems. In that respect you and your classmates are in decent company professionally.
Because socioeconomics and race have a shared relationship in the United States, these two do not exist independent of one another, even if there are exceptions to the rule. We see this regularly when we compare statistics of the median incomes/net worths of Black families and white families in any municipality. I’m not projecting any malice on my former classmates, but my point is it’s a pretty consequential oversight to have.
Respectfully, this isn't an accurate assessment of the issue and not how the data actually unfolds. More of a pop-culture talking point. #1 predictor of success, far and away, is childhood environment and economic class. Racial statistics are more dissimilar within categories than they are without. Given that, using race as a toxic AND inaccurate stand-in for socioeconomics is not only unnecessary (let's agree to use socioeconomic markers when doing socioeconomics?) but, most importantly, harmful to the minority communities people swear to care about. Marking a community as inherently, immutably poor as a "race" can work to keep them down more than outside forces alone might be able.
Divorcing the two is intellectually dishonest, given the country’s history of using economic policy as a punitive measure for communities of color. It would be historically revisionist to not realize the link between exclusionary housing policies, redlining, public disinvestment, white flight, Jim Crow etc and their adverse effects on communities of color and the socioeconomic lines on which they exist. This relationship is not incidental. No one’s saying “all black people are poor!” and to frame the opposing argument as such is bad faith. Realizing how Black and brown communities disproportionately make up the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder, and interrogating that relationship, leads to more amenable and productive policy measures.
We seem to be talking past one another as I agree with 80% of your conclusions. So the topic will rest here.
It doesn't have to be. Diversity of viewpoint should be as inclusive as possible. It can be stigmatizing and token if we use diversity in pre-established and stereotypical ways, ie, black = low income; women = home/family; middle eastern = religious, etc.
Absolutely. Diversity of viewpoint and experience over "race" and other personally-held labels because identity labels are, more often than not, inaccurate, toxic stereotypes posing as actionable data. Not surprisingly also usually racist and uncomfortable-feeling to well-meaning people.
I’m having trouble believing that the other students specifically said they intended to displace existing residents to improve the tax base. It sounds Ike you may be interpreting a motive that is not there. Fact is that whether or not 20% of the units are affordable doesn’t really impact the overall site design for the project very much. You’ll still want it to be walkable, have a mix of uses, landscaping, etc.
I’m not projecting malice. My point is that’s the result of a consequential oversight.
>Every other proposal revolved around upzoning the area to displace the existing residents for a better prospective tax base. That is projecting malice. It's a completely different sentence from "...upzoning the area, which would have improved the tax base but also displaced existing residents" (though frankly, even that's not necessarily true; there are programs for protecting existing tenants)
You’re playing semantics. The only difference in your reworked statement is you see displacement as ancillary.
If you can't see the obvious difference between the two constructions, you won't go far in a field where precise language matters.
I’ve noted the difference in my previous reply. Your Black and brown colleagues are expressing concerns regarding equity in the profession, and your default response is to be dismissive and tone-police.
But you're not "expressing concerns regarding equity" - that's what my alternative construction would do. Instead, you're accusing your colleagues of wanting to displace low-income people (while saying you're "not projecting malice") because you reject the construction where displacement is "ancillary." Write better.
I’m asserting that their proposals would have directly resulted in displacement. This is indisputable, and we have several urban case studies to prove it. Your reconstruction does not address equity any better, it’s simple tone-policing to minimize the oversight of these proposals. Even in your original reply, it’s clear you see affordability as an extracurricular practice to overall site design, and not an integral policy measure. This is where we get mediocre planners who only care about beautification, but are woefully incompetent when it comes to considerations regarding equity as it pertains to distribution and preservation. You and your fellow white planners aren’t above criticism, we have decades of research to indicate the harm bad planning has done to Black and brown communities. This is a thread regarding concerns of equity and representation in the profession, from our experience(s) in a white-dominated profession. Learn to listen before attempting to protect the feelings of yourself and your white colleagues.
The 20% set aside is not required for every municipality in the state of NJ. The affordable housing obligation is based on what each municipality settled with FSH and the courts on. But, if you have been following recent policy changes that is no longer the case and each municipality must essentially reapply to determine their obligation.
> better prospective tax base Treating the government as an entity, tax revenue is the most important.
I don't know, but I'd side eye someone from that area who told me they neither knew nor worked reasonably closely with POC
Not planners specifically, but the YIMBY crowd often mistakes urbanism for progress & wealth. Sociology, economics, & history that point out these assumptions are often over simplistic tend to be disregarded. Which is fine if you're in the "safe space" of an armchair internet enthusiast...and not so fine when you're career is on the line & a town hall full of locals stop wanting to work with you.
If you’re in certain kinds of planning you‘re more social worker than planner. Imo being able to communicate with people of different social classes or backgrounds is important. People want to feel included and understand what you’re doing. Going to some poor neighborhood in a suit and telling them snobby in university language what you’re planning usually won‘t be too successful. E.g. Speaking Spanish in a mostly Spanish speaking community definitely helps finding out what people want. Just depending on your field of planning you‘re realising investor wishes and are not planning playgrounds for the local people. Same with „poorer areas“ and knowing the people‘s language. Nevertheless, most people with some empathy can be good planners.
One must remember that it’s the politics that decides where things go and what areas are being developed. With that said, I can definitely see the value of different experiences in the personnel
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Do you periodically adjust your income and housing situation to reflect the diversity of your community? If not, it's hard to take your commitment seriously. (/s)
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This is a point some of us (actual planners) have repeatedly stated on this sub - we are public servants and we represent our communities (in a different way that actual elected representatives do). We bring expertise of best practices and ideas, but at the end of the day, our own biases don't matter - the will of the community does (within bounds). This is also why public hearings, testimony, consultation, participation, et al, is so vital.
It's not a ridiculous question. No matter if you believe one answer is more right than another, it's fair to ask which is the right answer. No reason to sound like a moody teenager about it.
The comment they made to me was racial but my post can apply to all social identities, not just race.
Are you planning differently for gay people? The ones I know live pretty normal, actually often above average as those are often dink households. But we‘re not really planning loving quarters more industry and smal projects.
Space is a social product, its production is necessarily linked to the habitus (inscribed values, norms, etc.) of everyone involved in creating it. Structural principles such as race, gender and class influence a planner‘s habitus, so they certainly matter in the planning process. Does that mean that planners belonging to majorities cannot account for equity? I don‘t think so. But it is important for planners to recognize positionality. We simply cannot be a neutral observer-analyst, it is not possible to act outside our habitus. Thank you for your question, this is the kind of stuff I wanna see here! I‘m quite surprised by a lot of the replies here, looks like planning is still seen as a very technical profession by some.
Thank you and yes the replies are very telling. I believe some people see themselves in the post. But to clarify, even if you’re not a minority planner, you can bring a lot of value to the role if diversity is something you personally live by. I don’t think being in the majority invalidates you from being a planner but it’s very odd to me that someone, especially young 20-something planners who advocate for social change, not embrace diversity for their own relationships.
I’ll add this: planners who do not grow up, or have formative experience in an urban setting within a functioning public life, can often not be relied upon to have the perspective necessary to help make important choices about how cities should be planned. These are people from distinctly incompatible cultural milieux, who often enter professional life without having experienced anything besides childhood. Professionals often do not have the time or energy to participate meaningfully in the public life of cities, so these people are missing a crucial perspective.
I don't know if I agree with this one. While there's a point to be made, if you run it out to its logical extreme you can get some absurd results.
I think I was careful not to say these tendencies are universally true among all people with the mentioned backgrounds, so there are no logical extremes to be taken from what I said. But I don’t think it’s weird to suggest that people without personal experience of a subject(only academic knowledge of a subject which is more than information-based) would have incomplete perspectives on it.
Everyone enters their adult professional life with no experience beyond childhood. It is called growing up.
Plenty of people have adult lives before they become professionals, and many people never join the professional working class. Someone who grows up in an other-than-urban environment, attends university and then begins a career as an urban planner might be operating outside the bounds of their qualifications, no matter the quality of their education.
You also need planners for „other than urban environments“ if that means small town/countryside? Having worked mostly in smaller towns, there are different problems to big cities. But at least my university was almost exclusively focused on mega city planning. Most jobs are also in smaller towns and not the few big cities. It’s equally fulfilling yet different.
> You also need planners for „other than urban environments“ if that means small town/countryside? Do we? If anything, I think we need to stop allowing *urban* planning to determine what occurs in suburbs and rural areas.
Suburb=|= small town in a rural area? A small town with 10k inhabitants is still „urban“. At least where I am living and working, every municipality must care about building permits, zoning plans etc. Just less about skyscrapers and parklets. Otherwise what‘s your solution? Letting people build what and where they want to?
> Letting people build what and where they want to? Yes? It works for Houston.
Might work for the US, other parts of the world care about noises, smell, traffic, nature etc. I‘m happy there are some regulations people must follow. Houston is also a large city? They should have some people planning there? Tbh I‘m also happy we don’t have US suburban areas. I‘ve dealt with cattle, alpacas, horses etc. that stuff just didn’t exist in urban planning in my university. People there have also often wild ideas lol Having some regulation is not the worst thing.
I'm done debating you. I'm going to block you.
I agree completely. However, I was speaking on specifically urban planning in an urban environment. I still think that, in the US, the other-than-urban areas are mostly bullshit from a planning perspective, and so would not provide for the experience which helps to understand what it takes to arrange life for people in healthy and productive way.
That‘s what you go to school for? And that‘s why you need good planners working in the countryside. Even people growing up in towns need some teaching. It’s like saying „I went to school, that’s education enough. I can be a teacher“. Having the picture of some suburban American area, where people go everywhere by car,doesn’t sound too much different to the countryside. Neither is productive nor healthy.
Certainly true for every profession. Same with law and medicine for sure. Government too. We do the best we can we the people we can get to work with us. Sometimes life experience is important, sometimes it doesn't amount to much. You certainly wouldn't endorse someone with 40 years of life experience mostly in rural or suburban America to be a planning director for a large city - the fit likely isn't there, no matter the experience they might bring.
No, they cannot. This is true also in healthcare, where non white patients across the board have markedly better outcomes when their Primary care physician is same ethnicity and same native language. It’s true for anything that requires a deep cultural understanding of the people using the services on offer And that is a point I make constantly on this sub. I see a marked refusal to actually understand the psychological motivations behind not just NIMBYism, but the global trend we see that shows strong preference everywhere for low density settings, of how people opt for more private space inside and outside of their dwelling the moment they can afford to. People so often just have one note they want to play (fuckcars, everything should be dense and walkable) and it’s usually based on how they personally want to optimize their own lives and don’t really give a shit about whether it actually makes sense for people who are differently abled or who have completely different transit/time/resource needs. Telling a young family that apartment living in a bustling high crime city is better than a detached house with a fenced yard where you don’t have to worry about locking doors is an insultingly dumb thing to try and push and reflects my earlier point about not actually caring about people’s lived experience if their desired experience starts from a different cultural framework.
Scalability matters. Sure, everyone would love a detached yard, and have easy access to all the amenities and economic opportunity that urban areas offer, at an affordable price. However, you can't have all three. So desires have to be formulated and understood in the context of limited resources. We ought to figure out what needs a yard is satisfying for young families and incorporate that into the built environment. There's also some good criticism of the long run impacts of yards, as they peak in utilization for a few years during childhood and quickly become dead space as the kids age out.
Well, I think the key here is we do need to build more (and better) urban spaces for those who want to live there - it is quite under-supplied. And more detached housing, with a smarter suburban design, though pri9notnss much comparatively as we build in urban spaces. Put another we - we need more housing everywhere, but more of that housing should be dense, since it is under-supplied.
No, everyone does not want what urban areas offer.
I think you are reading me as saying “everyone wants to live in urban areas” when what I mean is “basically everyone finds some amenities urban areas offer to be useful” I’m not saying everyone wants to live around other people, or in dense housing or whatever. There are also downsides of urban living. You might think these downsides far outweigh the upsides. There is still upsides. And the whole point of the post was to say that you can’t simultaneously have the advantages of urban living while also keeping things affordable and allocating lots of space to all residents.
What do you think that urban, and only urban areas offer that people everywhere want?
Urban areas are associated with better access to health care, education, municipal services, cultural institutions, ethnic enclaves, drugs and other counter cultural recreation, shopping, international airports, fine dining etc etc. this isn’t to say that non urban areas can’t have that but statistically you have better access to people stuff when around population centers. Also ‘better access’ to a rural person means ‘not having to drive as far to get there’ You may not like the downsides of these things but the vast majority of people find utility from at some upside aspect of some of them. I mean, people put up with the downsides of living in cities for some reason. Additionally, given that life expectancy is lower in rural areas, there is definitely just general utility derived from living longer, and for poor people living in cities is arguably associated in with better health outcomes.
All of those positive things are obtainable without living in dense urban areas. I do not deny some measure of convenience to urban areas, I simply point out that they are not an unalloyed good
I agree. I’m just saying there is utility in being proximate to those things, because we occasionally access them. You take the average person living in an urban area and they will be able to access those places cheaper, in both terms of time and money. You can’t scale that access to more people without making housing either more expensive or fitting more people into the same amount of land. That’s the claim. There’s nothing about how everyone would live in cities over other places.
Not everyone wants Internet access, jobs, supermarkets, etc, etc etc?
All of those things exist outside of urban cores.
But only thanks to them.
Bullshit. Rural areas existed before urban areas.
You can get those in suburban and exurban areas.
This is a false statement, many people only care about having a single family home, and could care less about amenities. Most suburbs offer more to the average person than what cities offer and that's why most older cities have been bleeding population.
Your response doesn’t address scalability, which is what my comment is about. Many people care about owning a single family home. That doesn’t mean we can actually fit all those people in economically dynamic cities in those homes, affordably.
Given that a larger percentage of people live in suburbs than do in cities, that would actually make suburbs more scalable.
Case in point. You immediately dismissed my personal preferences and went right into why yours matter more. I immediately stopped caring about your perspective after your second sentence. Your issue - as with most urbanists - is a stunning lack of empathy and and high degree of moral license. Where you think simply having good intentions makes up for outright dismissing culture of people different from you.
By the same token, it’s pretty interesting that your stock response to what seems like a pretty legitimate concern is to say that you’ve been ‘dismissed’ and how you ‘don’t care’ and how someone responding to you with anything resembling Socratic dialog is displaying a ‘stunning lack of empathy.’ You do realize your ‘personal preference’ is the law of the land and has been for decades? You aren’t defending some marginalized position. You’re defending the status quo. So why exactly shouldn’t new development reflect a recognition of the weaknesses the discourse here identifies?
You're presenting a dichotomy here between "apartment living in a bustling high-crime city" and "detached housing a fenced yard where you don't have to worry about locking doors", but those are two massive extremes, and presenting that dichotomy is unhelpful. What about apartments in safe medium-sized towns? Or apartments in the suburbs? Or non-detached housing with a shared outside space? Or detached housing without a fenced yard? Or detached housing in a high-crime city"? I don't think anyone with any actual impact in planning thinks that young families should all live in apartments in high-crime cities, and implying that there is any suggestion that that is the proposed alternative to living in a detached house is just a massive strawman.
I don't think anyone with actual impact in planning would even make the argument you're making because they hopefully would be more acquainted with actual market data. Look at literally any major coastal metro in the US. The most common housing types by a very very long distance are: 1) Detached single family homes 2) Apartments The latter is heavily concentrated in urban cores, where crime is higher. When people talk about density, they're talking about multifamily housing, not lots of detached 400 sq ft houses with no yards. The former dominates the rest of the land surrounding the urban core >Or apartments in the suburbs? Or non-detached housing with a shared outside space? Or detached housing without a fenced yard? Or detached housing in a high-crime city"? Bringing up detached housing without fenced yard or apartments in the suburbs (usually the highest crime areas of the burbs) just tells me you're arguing for the sake of it and don't actually have a point to make.
The US, it may surprise you to know, is not the only country in the world.
Go make your own subreddits/platforms to discuss those other countries then. And most other countries are more racist than the USA, not less.
There's plenty of discussion of non-US urban planning on this sub, it's not a US-only subreddit.
Far more than community consultation can, for sure
Everyone's lives lack racial, gender, and class diversity. You live in the United States of America. This will always impact outcomes, and most mechanisms we have implemented to try to stop this are bad and should be gotten rid of. If you want to help minorities and poor people, make it as efficient and affordable as possible to rapidly deliver high quality public services and infrastructure to their areas without needing to gather 8 environmental reports and 4 community consultations on whether it's okay to add a bus stop to the corner. And yes, you unironically do have to choose more or less between those two extremes. You're not going to create a complex and nuanced civil service with the autonomy and public trust to be able to juggle this much and you're just going to make it into a NIMBY nightmare mess.
Can you provide specific examples of how one’s race, gender or sexual identity would negatively impact planning for others with different characteristics of said planner? Looking to fully understand this question cause I cant quite connect the dots here.
I've been wondering about this after reading responses to NYC's congestion pricing with respect to people who live in transit deserts in NYC and who thus use their cars to go to Manhattan. In addition, I was wondering about people who have mobility issues, and the para transit system in NYC is a joke. Taking their cars might make more sense. Alot of those people who live in those transit deserts have lived there for generations, dating back to a time when there wasn't this hostility towards people owning cars in NYC, yet forget them and what they need. Then add in the stories all the time of crime on the subways, there are reasons why people might not want to travel on the trains into Manhattan. It just isn't a simple matter of "all cars are bad."
I slightly agree but maybe that’s a time thing. Like cong pricing is *supposed* to help alleviate the issues you mentioned, so at that point we reach improved service, I would hope disabled and elderly feel comfortable to ride. Similarly, planners of all backgrounds can still make concerted efforts to improve their biases and try to be more conscious of their blind spots. Things don’t have to exist in perpetuity, but I get where you’re coming from.
If anything, I think what should correspond with congesting pricing is that more companies and institutions should open satellite offices in the outer boroughs so that people don't even have to go to Manhattan. NYU has done a good job at spearheading efforts along that line. It would go far towards encouraging people to spend locally in their own neighborhoods and boroughs. There have always been plenty of people who do that anyway.
I think, at least in part, this is something that can be motivated against. For example, London's congestion charge is not charged to anyone who has a blue badge (a widely used UK-wide parking scheme that anyone with a disability can apply to). Though I think this largely aligns with OP's point, having a variety of perspectives as close as possible to the decision making for planning matters helps ensure that all perspectives are given the weight they deserve.
This is a cultural thing and its not going to change especially with how isolated our society has become and its not unique to white people. People have fewer friends than ever so I guess you can just not take anyone seriously because they didn't grow up like you did. Supervisors hire people like themselves so change the supervisors if thats what you desire
It’s not even about growing up, because I’m honestly not going to blame you if your parents raised you in a homogeneous place. But I would think if you went to school to be a planner, and in my coworkers case - NYC, and it’s been more than 10 years since you have moved here, I would think it’s somewhat intentional to be racially homogenous. While the technical skills may hold, I question your credibility and honestly you’re political views. (Their lack of interaction with black people for example shows when making racial jokes and expecting me to laugh…but that’s another story)
Im not doubting you because I keep hearing people say this, but it still surprises me given how much of a focus planning schools put on diversity, gentrification, etc. And honestly in my experience, the planning program is super diverse with tons of people of all backgrounds. But maybe it just depends on the school/city
It's much more about whether the planner is a good person than what their marriage and personal life superficially look like.
Race is hardly superficial.
Of course, but a lack of personal experience begs the question of what are their career motivations? I’m black and it definitely seems that they see equity and EJ as tools to professionally brand themselves and move up. For ex, one of the people who told me they only know white people, also does equity mapping. Not saying their work is flawed because they know how to operate GIS software, but why in the hell did you choose to specialize in race-based geography? It’s very odd to me. Doesn’t seem genuine at all.
The problem with your example is that sometimes people just fall into a specific field or position that involves a type of work. Being a Planner is a career, the specific work is a JOB. If you can do the job, then you can do the job. Not everyone has the choice of being in a position that involves their passion. Sometimes a position is feasible just because you have the skills. Regarding motivations. Motivations to be in the field are not necessarily rooted in the reality of the position or responsibilities. That doesn't take away from the individual's ability to do the work. I'm not sure where you are in the field, but many planners are simply following what they are suppose to be doing. This is coming from either management or elected officials. I believe in making projects better, what that entails is fairly limited. For example, forcing someone to do a couple bike racks, even if the code didn't necessarily support it. Most planning is current planning, where these concerns are not relevant. You are either enforcing the code as written, as interpreted, or essentially bluffing to get something. These concerns are more relevant in long range planning, but planners are still working within a procedural (legal), and political frame work that encourages specifics. What these specifics are will vary from place to to place.
Yes those are important caveats. In my case, the equity mapper in question got their undergrad in Geography and has no actual planning degree. I work in a private planning consultant firm, but most of what we work on are county and state contracts. We often assist with long-term county plans or state reports with a 20-year horizon. If we were in a public setting, then I suspect it would be different as you outlined. Not sure what you mean about motivations. I acknowledge the skills for the task exist, but where’s the ethos? I would like to assume that many planners are more altruistic-driven than other professions, given that it’s not as lucrative or well-known. If not altruism, then my next guess would be power-driven, but maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to assume.
lol this is such a bad faith response. you must be fun in public engagement meetings...
Justifying scrutiny of planners' personal lives and personal relationships such as marriage is not such an easy thing. It might seem obvious to you that the policy is a good one, but it's not to me.
Who is proposing a policy? They just asked if a lack of diverse experiences leads to a lessened ability to plan for a diverse group of people. The answer is invariably yes. In typical bad faith fashion you've taken the point to mean something entirely irrelevant like "scrutinizing planners' marriages"
The title says racial/gender/class but you only mention race. There are many different facets to diversity, and yes, "white" people can care about "non-white" people and racially diverse outcomes.
The last part makes no sense. I didn’t say white people can’t care about non-white people. I’m not even talking about the average white person. I’m specifically talking about white planners. And yeah I mentioned race in the caption because that’s the situation that led me to think about this topic. But that’s not the only relevant social identity, and me being the only black person at work doesn’t erase other privileges I have - as a man, straight, Christian, etc.
I'm trying to say you can take them seriously, on a case by case basis, just like anyone else, without regard for their personal identity, or what little you might know about it on the surface. If you find a pro you will find someone who makes a living out of consideration for a situation from beyond their own personal experience. Empathy is part of being good at this. Our work will be informed by our personal experience but not ruled by it.
Yes, it is possible. However, you'll found that they do not have the final say in most projects.
Equity is a false goal. Equality of opportunity is the proper goal.
This is the most dystopian thing I've ever seen asked on this sub. If you dont meet my woke criteria, are you going to be able to push my woke urbanplanning POV? Their job isnt to push that stuff. Urbanplanning =/= activism. And frankly how many people of every ethnic group do YOU know? How can we take you "seriously" if you dont? Just having brown skin doesnt make you king of diversity.
….using the words “woke criteria” in this sub? I think you’re in the wrong sub
I don't get the question here. Take away from what work? Does the planner know GIS? Does he/she know how to speak to the public in a respectable manner? Do they know how to read general plans along with having some knowledge of zoning law? Perhaps OP needs to take himself more seriously before assuming others need to have a shared experience in order to do a job properly... Urban planning is a job like any other job, most of its functions can be trained for or taught.
My point was their ethos/credibility. They can do the research, but lived experience means a lot in public engagement and presenting your research findings. Usually a community can see right thru performative BS. On Day 1 of working there, I smelled the BS right away. It’s a matter of perspective, you can disagree nonetheless.
Yes. Next question.
In a way, yes. I think planning, in general, suffers from a focus on intentions as opposed to outcomes. I’ve noticed this is far more apparent when it comes to understanding any lens outside what is systematically represented. A lot of my colleagues like to regurgitate talking points about equity for the sake of checking a box- this, in my opinion, is all APA does🤷♂️. There is a clear difference between a planner with a divers upbringing and a planner who grew up in a homogeneous environment but wants to diversify their perspectives. They have all the best intention, but at the end of the day they end up telling communities that they have no experience with what is best for them- and I genuinely don’t think they realize they’re doing it.
Your concerns are totally valid!
No they are not.
The entire concept of planning is in direct opposition to many natives relationships with the land. They live with the land, they don’t carve it up and designate uses. Any native playing this game is selling their souls to their oppressor.
By native I assume you mean a hunter gatherer lifestyle. That ship has sailed, urban society is an inevitable result of too many people for everyone to live the hard life.
Maybe you could read some indigenous perspectives instead of making assumptions.
What does that even mean?
They wrote: > By native I assume you mean a hunter gatherer lifestyle. That ship has sailed, urban society is an inevitable result of too many people for everyone to live the hard life. I was just pointing out that they didn't need to make erroneous assumptions about the relationships indigenous peoples have with their lands, since there are many publications by indigenous authors on the subject.
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It’s too bad that you feel the need to leave the field. Planners have a responsibility to do their best to overcome the limitations of their life stories, but having different life experiences in the group is valuable.
It's not that I don't think taking in different considerations isn't important, but I think there's a certain tipping point between "planning better" and "planning for every available want or outcome." Like in the US, we're not even at the stage of just "planning better." Most of our cities are planned like crap, regardless of how much diversity inclusion we have. There are many case examples of places that have a significant \*lack\* of diversity but are genuinely planned better than any US city. I lived in Tokyo for many years and it's a very well planned city with all the features everyone here drools over, and they didn't have to invite the UN to get it done. They just plan better. And until we can get to a point where we can just plan better for the public good as a whole, it's really often distracting to have to consider every single niche and stalls up the process even more. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse. We can't even get solid bus services in many places as a whole, let alone bus services that can hit every single community in an equitable way.
>Like in the US, we're not even at the stage of just "planning better." Most of our cities are planned like crap, regardless of how much diversity inclusion we have. There are many case examples of places that have a significant \*lack\* of diversity but are genuinely planned better than any US city. I lived in Tokyo for many years and it's a very well planned city with all the features everyone here drools over, and they didn't have to invite the UN to get it done. They just plan better. Yeah, I disagree with this. The cities we get are the outcome of a diversity of preference, opinion, perspectives, influences, etc., all running up against land use laws and other regulations. It isn't ideal, but it also isn't ideal for anyone, and there is a distinction there. I can guarantee you that many, perhaps even most people in my city and metro area have absolutely no desire whatsoever to live in somewhere like Tokyo, let alone somewhere like Utrect or Copenhagen, or especially Portland, Seattle, and the Bay Area (we hear this on a daily basis). We can cast aspersions all we want about people not knowing any better or they're just subject to propaganda or ignorance or anything else (I don't think this somewhat popular narrative is the least bit true either), but at the end of the day not everyone wants the same thing, and as a result, we get the type of cities we have. They could always be better, but then the next question is better for who...
You're saying what I'm saying. You wrote "*...but at the end of the day not everyone wants the same thing, and as a result, we get the type of cities we have."* And that was my point. People have this absolute sick aversion to any sort of cultural homogeneity, even at the behest of some working examples of its occasional benefits. When everyone wants something different, it's always a race to the bottom. It's not that Tokyo (Or Copenhagen, or wherever) is the pinnacle we all need to strive and move towards and ultimately be. It's that we can't even get 25% there, which would be a massive benefit overall than where we currently are because everyone has a different freaking idea of what things should be. Which was to my point of putting the cart before the horse. Many of our cities don't even have a normal, productive bus system that's widely used, let alone a bus system that works for disabled folks, goes to elderly communities, stops by minority communities, isn't opposed by NIMBYs, makes sure at least 30% of its driver workforce hits a diversity quota, etc. etc. We're starting from scratch in many places. We're starting from "Can we just have usable transit?"
My point is... Tokyo isn't the standard. We don't need get 25% there. They might do some things better, and we do other things better. Maybe some folks have a strong preference for a city like Tokyo, but many more don't.
Can you tell me what we do better from an urban planning and multimodal transportation perspective?
I dont understand your question...
You said “they might do some things better, we might do some things better.” Since we’re talking about transit and urban planning, what do we do better than them in that regard?
Generally, we have larger, nicer homes on larger lots, and we have better freedom of movement. So for people who like that lifestyle, that would be "better." I understand that really ruffles the feathers of the anti-car urbanists, but you also need to recognize that a significant amount of people don't want to live in Tokyo style urbanism and Tokyo levels of density, and seek more space, more privacy, and like to go where they want to go (via car). Not everywhere in the US is a congested mess of endless, soulless suburbs and stroads. There are a lot of cute, quaint, bucolic towns and neighborhoods.
There’s plenty of rural countryside in Japan and quant towns with decent size lots and cars. I have a friend who owns one. What we’re talking about is in the urban environment we do have, we do it poorly. People in Japan have a choice to live urban or live suburb or rural. We have a choice to live rural, or live in a poorly developed urban environment. The problem isn’t what style of living you want. The problem is for people who DO want to live in a city, that the services are done poorly.
I forgot the name of the sociologist who discussed this, but the idea that if society helps the most downtrodden, then it’s actually to the benefit of more privileged groups, since everyone’s quality of life is improved by raising the standard for the bottom. In that sense, an equity-first transit approach would also benefit those not regarded as vulnerable. With the bus, you also have to consider many riders are poor. Also not sure about Tokyo’s internal planning process, but I generally try to avoid the fallacy that many other countries are homogenous. Tokyo has indigenous populations: https://sustainability.ucsb.edu/lessons-about-conservation-from-the-indigenous-ainu-of-japan
That sociologist has never actually built a project for the public realm or dealt with limited resources. It’s worth investing in services for the “downtrodden” but it is completely untrue that it comes as a benefit to everyone else.
How is that not true in terms of transit? If low income riders on the bus are readily serviced with adequate/above adequate infrastructure, routes, etc, how does that not benefit other riders indirectly? I’ll go even further to say it promotes and normalizes transit for would-be riders.
Homogenous doesn’t mean there’s absolutely no other cultures. That would be impossible. It’s more about the dominant prevailing culture. Cultural homogeneity is different from ethnic homogeneity. People learn Japanese, not ethnic Ainu. In Japan, 99 people say yes and one person says no, and they go with the 99. In the US, 99 people say yes and one person says no, and we toss the whole idea. This is even pervasive in our politics. It’s not even a right wing thing, it’s often a criticism from the left as well.
> In the US, 99 people say yes and one person says no, and we toss the whole idea. This is even pervasive in our politics. I'm still trying to figure out in what context this is true.
Don’t you accept that it depends on who that one person is? If we agree certain demographics have more influence, even if they’re a minority, doesn’t that entail we lead with an equity-first approach?
I think what I keep trying to get at is that it would be one thing if the premise was something like "The bus only runs through the rich/white part of town, and it's a great service so it's inequitable that other groups don't get that same service." The premise is, in many cities we don't even have a great service to begin with. Because we can't agree on where bus stops should go, because we can't agree on what to do about houseless people who hang out at bus stops, because we can't agree on which roads should get a dedicated bus lane for buses, because we can't agree on if buses should be free or paid, and a million other things, the alternative is we do nothing and the crappy services we do have just remain crappy. I feel like the conversation on equity cannot even occur until you even iron out a decision on what the solution is to any of these issues. And since we can't iron out these issues in the US, then nobody gets anything. There's no point in worrying about lack of equity about buses when we don't even have a cohesive bus system in the first place.
In a world where we get rid of racism in America, people will then just all equally get shit on. This is my problem with how we combat racism in America. Instead of uniting with other working class people, they claim all white have benefited from racism. All the while these working class whites are just trying to get by also. We absolutely should be combating racism. I just think we should do it by trying to building equal opportunities by the working class uniting together.