Planning as if People Matter

Planning

as if

People Matter

Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez

Metropolitan Planning + Design Series editors: Arthur C. Nelson and Reid Ewing A collaboration between Island Press and the University of Utah’s Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, this series provides a set of tools for students and professionals working to make our cities and metropolitan areas more sustainable, livable, prosperous, resilient, and equitable. As the world’s population grows to nine billion by mid-century, the population of the US will rise to one-half billion. Along the way, the physical landscape will be transformed. Indeed, two-thirds of the built environment in the US at midcentury will be constructed between now and then, presenting a monumental opportunity to reshape the places we live. The Metropolitan Planning + Design series presents an integrated approach to addressing this challenge, involving the fields of planning, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, public policy, environmental studies, geography, and civil and environmental engineering. The series draws from the expertise of some of the world’s leading scholars in the field of metropolitan planning and design. Please see Islandpress. org/Utah/ for more information.

Other books in the series: The TDR Handbook, Arthur C. Nelson, Rick Pruetz, and Doug Woodruff (2011) Stewardship of the Built Environment, Robert Young (2012)

Forthcoming: Reshaping Metropolitan America, Arthur C. Nelson Good Urbanism, Nan Ellin

Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez

Planning as if People Matter Governing for Social Equity

Washington | Covelo | London

© 2012 Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009 ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brenman, Marc.

Planning as if people matter : governing for social equity / Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61091-011-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-61091-011-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61091-012-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-61091-012-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Political planning—United States. 2. Social planning—United States. 3. Equality—Government policy— United States. 4. Social justice—Government policy—United States. I. Sanchez, Thomas W. II. Title.

JK468.P64B736 2012 320.60973—dc23 2011051594 Printed using Berkeley Oldstyle Typesetting by Blue Heron Typesetting

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: American Community Survey, citizen participation, civil justice, code of ethics, corporate diversity, diversity, e-democracy, e-government, environmental justice, housing, human rights, information and Communication Technology (ICT), land use planning, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), participatory planning, poverty, public health, public interest design and planning, resilience, segregation, social alliances, social capital, social equity, social responsibility, unemployment, U.S. Census

Marc Brenman dedicates this book to his wife of twenty-eight years, Barbara Bither.

Tom Sanchez dedicates this book to his parents, Ralph and Patricia Sanchez, who have been a constant source of love and support, and also to Nora and Erin, his pride and joy.

Contents

Preface | xi

Acknowledgments | xiii

1 G overnance

and

E quity : P lanning

2 C hanging D emographics 3 E thics

in the

4 D iversity

and

as if

P eople M atter | 1

S ocial J ustice | 15

P ublic R ealm : T he R ole

of the

P lanner | 45

and I nclusion | 63

5 P ublic I nvolvement 6 T echnology

for

and

P articipation | 95

S ocial E quity | 115

7 S ocial E quity I nterventions | 135 8 C onclusions

and

Notes | 177 References | 179 Index | 195

R ecommendations | 159

Preface

As this book goes to print, the public participation and policy world continues to change around us. Few were prepared for the obstructionism of the Tea Party and others who want to destroy the social safety net; the Arab Spring, which has toppled some established dictatorships in the Middle East and is struggling to create local forms of governance; or the Occupy Wall Street movement, which may be a flash in the pan or a precursor to broader change like the early anti–Vietnam War demonstrations.

We are pulled in many different directions: global climate change has social equity implications; the rise of the People’s Republic of China is knocking the United States off its pedestal and calling into question the “City on a Hill” paradigm that has dominated the history of the Global North since World War II; economic constraints and decline in the United States cause us to question what we can pay for without asking what needs doing; the first African-American president buoyed our spirits and has dashed our hopes; US politics and infrastructure appear to be in a shambles.

Planners and other public administrators are beset with ethical problems in a declining job market. Will new graduates ever be able to get work? Will established workers be able to keep their jobs? Who dares to tell the truth about what they see? Who dares to probe for the truth without presuppositions?

xi

xii | PREFACE

In a period when information both yearns to be free and is worth what we pay for it, who can be trusted? What is the veracity of anything on an Internet fueled by advertising, pornography, and gambling, and spied on in the name of data mining and national security? Computing technologies make analysis of data quicker, but quality of life declines, unless measured in the availability of large flat-screen televisions and smart telephones. Is that our fate, like in some science fiction movie, where everything is image and there is no privacy?

In this book, we have tried to provide some perspectives that we hope have value beyond passing fancies, and that are rooted in the human experience. The richest among us can fend for themselves. They always have.

Those with the least deserve our attention. We recommend that planners and public administrators critically examine the process of governance, and this book is our effort to highlight some of the pressing issues.

We are not levelers; we enjoy many of the benefits of the good life. But we have an obligation to serve, to go beyond doing no harm to actively doing good. We believe that the planning and governance professions have within them the seeds of such an effort. What will make those seeds grow? We hope that this book will provide some of the right tools.

Acknowledgments

Marc Brenman acknowledges the education and advice provided by a wide range of civil rights advocates and experts. These include Richard Foster, Robert Garcia, Paul Grossman, Elizabeth Keenan, Seth Kirby, Richard Marcantonio, Toby Olson, and Stephanie Ortoleva.

Tom Sanchez acknowledges Daren Brabham, Jacob Parcell, and Aaron Smith Walter for their very helpful comments.

Both Marc and Tom acknowledge the unfailing support and wise advice of Heather Boyer of Island Press.

xiii

1 Governance and Equity: Planning as if People Matter

V

ery little has been written that spans governance, planning, and social equity. As practitioners and teachers in the fields of social justice and public administration, we want to help fill this gap. Great needs continue to exist. Poverty statistics from the 2010 Census show that real median household income declined between 2009 and 2010, and the poverty rate increased between 2009 and 2010. Over 23% of the population experienced a poverty spell lasting two or more months during 2009, and 7.3% of the population were in poverty every month in 2009 (Short 2011). It has been noted that the United States has now created a larger gap in the distribution of wealth than that in the Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s. Today the top 0.001% of the US population owns 976 times more than the entire bottom 90% (Winter 2010). Many people are angry about the increasing disparity, as shown by the Tea Party movement, the “Occupation� of Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and the demonstrations against Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Government regulates infrastructure systems that keep cities economically vibrant, clean, safe, and livable, and it must ensure that systems and services are available to citizens evenly—otherwise social inequality will result. Planners and public administrators fall between elected officials and the people, because they oversee the placement and use of public capital facilities and systems such as streets, sidewalks, and bridges; open space; 1

2 | PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

drinking water and sewage treatment facilities; stormwater systems; and municipal buildings and services such as police and fire. Uneven infrastructure delivery, especially in health and transportation, led to the concept of environmental justice. As defined by the EPA, environmental justice (EJ) is “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” A 1978 study by Dr. Robert Bullard of the history and pattern of waste facility siting in Houston on an African-American community’s class action lawsuit (Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Inc.) to block the siting of a sanitary landfill, marked a growing awareness that health and environmental hazards like toxic dumps were disproportionately sited in communities of color and low-income people (Bullard 1999). In fact, in 1983 the Government Accountability Office reported that three of four hazardous waste facilities in the southeastern United States were in African-American communities. In 1987 the United Church of Christ, under the leadership of Dr. Charles Lee, published the groundbreaking study “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.” The new environmental justice movement joined the rising concern for environmental degradation with civil rights concerns to respond to environmental racism, link grassroots struggles, and make agencies aware of environmental justice concerns. Over five hundred organizations participated when the UCC’s Commission for Racial Justice convened the first People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991, resulting in a set of guiding principles for the EJ movement. By the time President Clinton issued his Executive Order on Environmental Justice in 1994, EJ came to encompass fairness in the distribution of both the benefits and the burdens of public decision making, and provided a new lens for structural inequality.

In the executive order, planners are charged with overseeing the connection of their work to nondiscrimination. Similarly, the National Environmental Policy Act requires a series of analyses before projects can be built with federal funds. These analyses include one on socioeconomic impacts. Socioeconomic status (SES) is the sum of a person’s circumstance

GOVERNANCE AND EQUITY: PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER | 3

or context in society, which may be expressed or measured using criteria such as income, educational level attained, occupation, health, and value of dwelling place. A good definition of planning is hard to find. The American Planning Association definition states that planning is “a dynamic profession that works to improve the welfare of people and their communities by creating more convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient, and attractive places for present and future generations” (American Planning Association 2012). It involves design and physical and social arrangements, the built environment, and uses of a given area and set of relationships. It involves consideration of infrastructure, needs, and resources. Planners work toward the deliberate improvement of the spatial organization and design of human settlement and human movement. It does necessitate working for a future that is better than the present, rather than maintaining the present conditions into the future. Planners engage with the human experience, as well as the material reality, of constructed space.

While aiming for social justice is aspirational, it is not possible to do justice in the abstract—real people are affected. Thus planning has the advantage of being a direct linkage to the public. Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and Code Pink, has said that social justice means moving toward a society where all the hungry are fed, all the sick are cared for, the environment is treasured, and we treat one another with love and compassion. These are not easy goals (quoted in Kikuchi no date).

Social equity is an aspect of environmental justice but it goes well beyond environmental issues. It has been defined as “the fair, just, and equitable management of all institutions serving the public directly or by contract, and the fair and equitable distribution of public services, and implementation of public policy, and the commitment to promote fairness, justice, and equity in the formation of public policy” (National Academy of Public Administration no date).

Today social equity not only is a problem of conscious public policy, but can also be seen as a failure of governance processes administered by the leaders of our implementing institutions. Individuals, institutions, and governments make decisions every day, consciously and unconsciously.

4 | PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

Lack of action often constitutes a decision. The social relationships among groups of people are an important aspect of the infrastructure of cities.

City decline begins with the erosion of social capital, justice, and delivery of basic social and public goods. The Kerner Commission, which was created in response to the race riots of the 1960s, called for, among other things, a national fair housing law, and found that the United States was becoming “two nations—one black, one white—separate and unequal” (US National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968). The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the formal name of the Kerner Commission) issued a report in March 1968 that painted a stark picture of American society dividing into two worlds. The commission placed much of the blame for the riots on conditions in African-American ghettos, neighborhoods separated not by law but by practice (US National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968).

There are numerous governance successes, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Such successes fill needs, usually as identified by those who have suffered inequality. Our focus is more on where there are continuing or neglected needs. One way of identifying these needs is to have metrics to determine what equality and fairness look like, and to provide a comparison. We provide a number of metrics in this book. Several are required due to the complexity of the issues, in the same way that numerous tests are needed in the medical community to determine the health of humans. We look at metrics for issues such as income equality, poverty, literacy, access to health care, education, proportion of citizens incarcerated, quality/availability/affordability of housing, and homelessness. Planning for social equity requires such yardsticks and a firm concept of human rights. To have legitimacy, a government must protect and preserve human rights.

Thus one of our major thrusts in this book is for an effective governing process. Effectiveness is the extent to which the objective of a project, plan, or initiative is achieved, or is expected to be achieved, taking into account their relative importance, the magnitude of the challenge, and the resources and time devoted to it.

GOVERNANCE AND EQUITY: PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER | 5

We recognize that even in a democratic society, the Civil Rights Movement and other movements to increase the rights of constituent and discriminated-against groups have sometimes had to bend or even break restrictive, unethical, and immoral laws. However, in this book one of our basic assumptions is that effective and positive change can be accomplished without breaking laws. Sometimes laws have to be tested and changed, and those who administer them have to be creative. For laws to have force and effect, they must be created with all the people in mind, and enforced by duly constituted official governmental bodies. Otherwise, they are hortatory, or just full of positive feelings. Not all enforcement is of equal value and effectiveness. Sometimes there are laws that do not deserve to be enforced, such as the Jim Crow laws that grossly disadvantaged African-Americans in the southern and border states from the 1880s to the 1960s. The Jim Crow laws, such as segregation in day-to-day activities like education, eating, and riding public transportation, perpetuated the forced inferior status of African-Americans that grew out of slavery.

The planning, legal, and judicial systems should be independent of the government, so that it can serve the interests of its citizens rather than a particular political party. In this way the civil rights of its citizens are protected against a predatory and even a nominally beneficial executive structure (Abdellatif 2003).

We believe in a strong civil society. The concept of civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors, and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy, and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, nongovernmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faithbased organizations, professional associations, trades unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions, and advocacy groups. It includes the arena in any community of voluntary collective action around shared interests, purposes, and values distinct from those of the nation.

We believe in collective as well as individual action. The individual in a civil society has a social responsibility. Social responsibility is the duty of

6 | PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

people and organizations to behave ethically and with sensitivity toward others and toward social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues.

There is much debate about where social responsibility comes from—a social contract, a Darwinian concept of group survival, even theories of an altruistic gene. Social responsibility becomes embodied in planning institutions and planners, on the theory that it is better to plan than to let events happen randomly, anarchically, or with malice.

If governance is representative of the people constituting a society, then it will reflect a range of cultural values. Cultures can come into conflict, and have implications for governance processes. Conflicts, disparities, and suffering in society become events for which being an active, caring person is a primary mode of participating in public life, and in which issues are simultaneously both local and national. If a person has chosen to be a member of the planning profession or a governance structure, she or he has already chosen to be involved. Successful planning emphasizes the importance of effective involvement.1 The planning profession has long had ethical codes, as have other professions. In addition to the examples we give, more resources can be found at http://www.planning.org/ethics. These ethical codes have not necessarily prevented harm, due to disregard for the condition, needs, and perspectives of traditionally discriminated-against people. We therefore offer concrete recommendations in the ethics chapter for what new ethical codes might look like that take into consideration social equity principles.

One of our recommendations is to move ethical rules from aspirational to adopted and followed.

The planner needs to understand the dynamics of the larger society. But lest this sound overwhelming, that larger society is composed of smaller, manageable parts. The smallest unit is the individual, and we encourage those who participate in planning and governance to undertake self-education and commitment to this new ethical approach to social justice. The legal approach to social justice mandates nondiscrimination by all parties. The benefits approach to social justice provides subsistence

GOVERNANCE AND EQUITY: PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER | 7

and incentives to those in need. The ethical approach underpins action by providing a built-in evaluative mechanism, a conscience for infrastructure before it is built and when it is modified or repaired.

In a time when politics is polarized, the individual cannot wait to act until political guidance is received. Martin Wachs (1985, p. 55), one of the deans of transportation planning, quotes Norton Long: “The question is not whether planning will reflect politics, but whose politics will it reflect? Plans are in reality political programs. . . . In the broad sense they represent political philosophies, ways of implementing different conceptions of the good life.”

In this book, we expand on themes of our first book, The Right to Transportation. We are going beyond a particular aspect of planning related to physical infrastructure to the notion of social infrastructure—which like public capital facilities and systems requires design, construction, maintenance, and evaluation. And like physical infrastructure, social infrastructure experiences shocks and disruptions that test its strength, durability, and resiliency. Also like physical infrastructure, social infrastructure helps to keep cities and other public areas economically vibrant, clean, safe, and livable. Social infrastructure is uniquely the responsibility of government.

As discussed above, government’s role in infrastructure is to build and maintain social interconnections and services that no individual or small group could do alone. Government represents the people and must ascertain its will. In a democracy it does not follow all whims of small groups, but must balance benefits and burdens. It is not entirely utilitarian, because minority rights are preserved through due process, basic fairness, and nondiscrimination concepts. These do not happen by themselves, but take real people to implement. These people are often planners and public administrators.

We are concerned about the quality of life of all people in the United States. However, we recognize the limitations of what government can do, what the people will tolerate—even for their own benefit—how much inertia there is in social situations, and how obstacles like racism can pre-

8 | PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

vent doing what’s right. While we generally trust in collective wisdom, we know that crowds have not always made wise choices. Education is a constant requirement. It is possible to succeed, at least at the margins, at least in some places and at some times. As President Calvin Coolidge said, “We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”

Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (1993) point out, “The search for a universally applicable account of the quality of human life has, on its side, the promise of greater power to stand up for the lives of those whom tradition [read economic and political forces] has oppressed or marginalized.

But it faces the epistemological difficulty of grounding such an account in an adequate way, saying where the norms come from and how they can be known to be the best.”

We have a commitment to social improvement, and hope that we show a realistic ability to separate the possible from the utopian. To accomplish the task we have set for ourselves, we are providing elements of the previously missing framework and methodology. We believe that inequality is unsustainable, and that equity has an important role in sustainable development. Our inability to promote the common interest in sustainable development is often a product of the relative neglect of economic and social justice within and among nations (van Wyk 2009).

Sustainability is a method of using resources so that they are not depleted or permanently damaged. It is a set of practices used by people or groups designed to promote the long-term sharing of resources with future generations. This includes reducing demands on the environment, promoting economic opportunity, and increasing social equity. It includes meeting the needs of current generations without compromising the needs of future generations. To determine if something is sustainable, three elements must be considered: economics, environment, and social equity.

These are known as the “three Es”: • Economic—factors or criteria might be, but are not limited to, jobs, cost, business, trade, production, manufacturing, human hours, and so forth.

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• Environment—factors or criteria might be, but are not limited to, air quality, water quality, land use, open space, safety, ecology, and so forth.

• Social equity—factors or criteria might be, but are not limited to, diverse populations, low-income people, traditionally discriminated against people, people with disabilities, indigenous populations, number of people positively affected, weighing benefits and burdens on local populations, increased lifestyle efficiency, and so forth.

In planning, social equity is often neglected. One can speculate that this is because social systems are immensely complex and dynamic. “As agents of the capitalist state, planners are inherently unable to deal successfully with problems that result from capitalistic accumulation. At best, they can throw up a smokescreen of good intentions behind which capital is free to pursue its relentless pursuit for private gain without concern for the intricate web of communities and people’s lives” (Friedmann 1982).

We need to consider the actual level of power (or lack of power) that planners have. Although planners often consider themselves to have relatively little power, they help predict, evaluate, analyze, and make decisions about infrastructure matters that can have major effects. The designed life of a civic project in the United States is about forty years. With the current decline in revenue, many are being forced to last much longer than that.

The physical environment and economic systems are far more easily measured and managed, and therefore are regarded as more easily controlled.

Recently, the concept of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) has become popular in evaluating and awarding building construction, to measure sustainability and resource conservation. We recommend adding “equity” as another “E” to LEED—to bring about greater awareness of the effects of development on equity in our communities, and of the strengths of true diversity.

Not everyone agrees that racial and other social divides should be bridged or eliminated. Walter B. Miller (1973) stated that right-wing ideo-

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logues have this assumption: “A major device for ordering human relations in a large and heterogeneous society is that of maintaining distinctions among major categories of persons on the basis of differences in age, sex, and so on, with differences in religion, national background, race, and social position of particular importance. While individuals in each of the general categories should be granted the rights and privileges appropriate thereto, social order in many circumstances is greatly facilitated by maintaining both conceptual and spatial separation among the categories.”

Traditionally, the way we plan for transportation, housing, and education has worked to maintain that separation. Transportation projects have thrown up physical barriers between schools and school districts, resulting in physically enforced segregation by race. Similarly, transportation projects such as the Interstate Highway System of the 1950s and 1960s made it much easier for whites to flee older central cities, leaving African-Americans behind. Lack of public transportation makes it harder for people from central cities to get to jobs. Housing segregation has resulted in part in lower values and lower property taxes, thus providing fewer funds to public schools attended by people of color. When new housing has been built in the suburbs, schools were often located in the center of the new developments, thus continuing the vestiges of former segregated systems. While we do not dispute the desire of some group members at some times to maintain separateness, we believe that in general, enforced separation leads to one group being advantaged over another, and that this disadvantage grows and manifests in numerous ways. These include lower access to fresh food and the creation of “food deserts,” decreased access to jobs, fewer amenities such as parks and open space, deteriorating water and sewer systems, lower quality and fewer hospitals and medical facilities, and absentee landlords.2 And so we encourage people from diverse groups to work together to face, meet, and overcome social needs and challenges. Diversity theory indicates that there are many benefits to previously separated groups coming together.

In the United States, problems of inequity in planning were evident during the time of “urban renewal.” Between 1948 and 1973, urban re-

GOVERNANCE AND EQUITY: PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER | 11

newal displaced a million people in 2,500 neighborhoods in 993 American cities. Of those neighborhoods affected by the far-reaching federal program, approximately 1,600 were predominately African-American (Fullilove 2004). This, in effect, concentrated and segregated low-income residential areas of the city. Into the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, more exclusionary zoning, highway construction, urban renewal, and public housing developments further segregated neighborhoods within cities and limited opportunities for blacks and other people of color. Interstate highway construction often cut through African-American communities, and the new freeways erected barriers to integration.

Cautions We draw evidence, studies, and lessons from a wide variety of fields, including housing, transportation, education, sociology, law, ethics, and intergroup relations. We have tried to carefully select those that we think have applicability to social justice. For some, arguments could probably be made that their findings are not transferable to the topics covered in this book. Unfortunately, there is relatively little available directly on our subjects that meets accepted social science standards. This may be in part because it is difficult to separate out moral, ethical, and faith-based beliefs from evidence-based ones. Where possible, we’ve tried to rely on evidence. In some areas, the evidence base is thin. We have relied relatively little on law-based arguments, since the law is a social construct that varies from time to time and place to place. While we refer to civil rights and nondiscrimination, we have not dwelled on its misfortunes and lack of enforcement, since that is the province of law enforcers, not planners.

Nevertheless, we do sometimes cite the law, particularly international human rights law. At times, we rely on individual experience.3 One example of a cautionary tale is President Clinton’s Initiative on Race. He had good-hearted, bright people initiate a discussion about race in our nation, but it foundered badly. Perhaps the nation was not ready for

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such a discussion. Perhaps it will never be ready. Perhaps more is required than conversation. Certainly, many civil rights advocates are weary of talk and want to move beyond it to real accomplishment.4

Definitions of Terms We try hard in this book to define the terms we use, especially those particular to the fields of planning, social equity, and justice. Equity is an inherently vague and controversial notion. Especially concerning race, the attempts at definition themselves are fraught with controversy. Language changes over time and place. Some usages are permitted only within a group, and not by outsiders. An example is the so-called N-word. Misuse is often punished in the media, and the Right attacks “political correctness.” Some issues are extremely difficult to talk about in the United States, such as class. Ilana Shapiro (2002), of the Project Change AntiRacism Initiative and the Aspen Institute, stated: Race and racism are notoriously difficult to talk about in the US. Conversations often are politically and emotionally charged, fraught with dissenting opinions and experiences, and mired in complex, interrelated issues.

The many terms used to describe groups (e.g., “race,” “ethnicity,” “cultural,” “minority”), issues (e.g., “prejudice,” “oppression,” “racism,” “intolerance,” “race relations”) and approaches (e.g., “prejudice reduction,” “anti-racism,” “healing and reconciliation,” “diversity management,” “multiculturalism”) are laden with unspoken assumptions. They allow people to talk past each other without really communicating. It is not necessary to reach consensus, but it is essential to understand the nuances of our language if we seek productive conversations and unified action on racial issues.

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A Work in Progress The nature of planning, social justice, and equity is that they are fluid and dynamic processes, heavily dependent on culture, history, demographic and social changes, geography, and power dynamics. Therefore, we cannot hope to provide final answers to the very difficult and long-standing problems that exist. Inevitably, something we say will seem like an anachronism by the time you read this. Like everyone else, we are prisoners of our time and place. To help avoid being left behind by history, we try to provide a variety of examples and possible solutions. Unlike many others, we have not heavily emphasized social media and electronic solutions, although we talk about their potential in the communication process in chapter 6. In and of themselves, we believe them to be tools, which can be used by people for good or ill. They are not a panacea. Their utility is still playing out. Sarah Reginelli, principal planner for the City of Albany, New York, said, “On a recent family vacation, I was struck by my dad’s well-organized and well-stocked tackle box. When I asked him if having 50 different types of lures was really necessary, he replied, ‘If you only use one type of lure, you only catch one type of fish’” (Rodgers 2011). That one sentence sums up the way planners should be thinking about communities. If the goal is to attract as many different members of the public as possible, then a tackle box is a more appropriate metaphor than a toolkit. We should be using diverse methods to attract diverse populations.

We see this book as having both tools and tackle, hopefully leading to increased awareness and encouraging action.

The Structure of This Book This book is intended in part to highlight how planners and public administrators can incorporate social justice principles into their governance activities. We start by providing a summary of demographics trends (chapter

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2) and explain how these changes have important implications for policy and the future of social justice in the United States. The next two chapters on ethics in the public realm (chapter 3) and diversity and inclusion (chapter 4) discuss concepts fundamental to social justice. Public involvement and participation (chapter 5) is integral to social equity and democracy, and we mention several important traditional and emerging aspects.

Next we talk about the evolution of communications technologies (chapter 6) and how they may play a role in governance related to social equity.

Drawing from the foregoing chapters, chapter 7 focuses on interventions, which are integral to effecting change and social action. Finally, in chapter 8 we conclude with a summary and mention some particular challenges that our society will continue to confront.