Katie Coyne

the end of binary

what queer ecology and queer people can teach us about doing better design and planning work

KATIE

COYNE

In planning and design, we often imperfectly use imperfect tools to further our thinking about the complex systems where we live and work. Dichotomies are useful tools if we’re using them to find space in between, but, all too often, we forget to progress from acknowledging that dichotomies exist to using them to find harmony somewhere in the middle. This is partially due to the inability for many to sit with the discomfort in the middle. While the far ends of a dichotomy are not productive in creating a more just society, they are clear, simple, and comfortable. This acknowledgment of the discomfort associated with challenging dichotomies is why I firmly believe the work of designers and planners must be paired with radically empathetic practice  — practice that encourages the mindful consideration of another person’s point of view as a way of cultivating deeper connection, even when we may firmly disagree. I prefer the use of the term “binary” over “dichotomy,” though I see the two words as essentially interchangeable. The concept of non-binary means finding space in the world, manifesting in many different ways, and becoming more and more accessible to larger groups of people. It can apply to the processes behind our work and the systems in our cities, but also to people and gender. My goal of eliminating binary thinking, and doing so with radical empathy, is directly related to how I work toward creating more sustainable and resilient places. It is also a core value of mine because of my own lived experience as a queer practitioner.

IDENTITY

When I came out, my family worried that my queerness would hamper my ability to live a life full of joy. While I have always known it, I only recently began to articulate clearly how my queerness is my greatest superpower in the work I do. Being queer is the quality about me that has most influenced the way that I think and work.

There has been so little public representation of what it means to be queer thus far, especially when I was growing in the ‘90s Fig 1. If we narrow the idea of representation down to the visibility of queer, butch women, like me, there were, and are, even fewer examples. The act of being in the world exactly how I am is a constant practice of activism, revolution, invention, and reinvention. It has forced me to see the world and the status quo of society differently. So many things exist within a binary: male / female, black / white, Republican / Democrat, gay / straight, city / nature, etc. It’s a gross oversimplification that helps us mentally cope with complicated and nuanced systems. It is simply easier for everything to fit neatly into a box. But, as a queer butch woman, I don’t fit neatly into these traditional binaries, and I more readily see how much of our world doesn’t fit into them either. If the structure does not make room for my own and others’ existence, why can’t we reinvent it? Is it not our moral imperative to do so? There is an essential radicalism in oppressed people that is necessary in order to exist, which makes the process of reinvention that comes with it mandatory, not brave. And if we as a larger society never challenge ourselves to get out of our binary comfort zones, we will constantly be at odds with one another and sometimes with ourselves.

Even in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality, activists generally split into a binary. There are two ends of the spectrum of thought: 1) individualism/ non-conformism: we create our own culture and accept that there is no need to conform our culture to the norm; and 2) assimilation: we assimilate more into established norms and are accepted as part of mainstream society because of that assimilation. We have plenty of examples of this narrative carried out in other marginalized groups, oftentimes with far more violence and force toward assimilation. One of the most traumatic examples can be found here in North America in the nineteenth and

Even in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality, activists generally split into a binary.

twentieth centuries with the forced removal of Native American children from their homes. They were sent to boarding schools, abused, and were stripped of their culture in an attempt to forcefully assimilate them into white Christian society.1

As far as where I fall in the assimilation / non-conformist binary, I’m content somewhere in the middle — acknowledging that so many things about me and my culture are outside of the bounds of straight norms. I believe in my version of a “marriage,” but it certainly doesn’t look like the partnership of some of my straight counterparts. There was no pressure for me to get married, have kids, etc. because my identity does not carry with it those expectations, though more and more of these expectations are being applied. Without those expectations, my decision to get married was far freer than that of my straight friends. In that way, I’m privileged to have a life generally free of societal expectations while also maintaining the privilege that comes with being white, not femme, and of a certain socioeconomic class, which largely allows me to avoid the discrimination so many women and LGBTQ+ folks continue to face on a daily basis. Firmly floating in the middle, I have both the freedom and agency to see and call out what needs to change and actually have people listen.

Being queer also mandates learning how to be more empathetic across the board. I certainly cannot understand the discrimination that other groups face. But, as a queer person who has seen what the empathy of others has accomplished along my path, I understand how important radical empathy is in our work. I refuse to be the “white moderate” that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to most worry about in his work toward a more just society. I will not shy away from hard conversations to save the peace in the room. There are many that may be considered “white moderates” even within the LGBTQ+ community. Case in point: many statewide equality organizations disbanded for lack of funding and/or interest after marriage equality was granted at the federal level. Privileged, cis, white gays, who felt they had assimilated enough, felt safe to disconnect from the larger movement and lacked the will to empathize with parts of our community still facing employment, housing, adoption, and other types of discrimination. This had disparate negative implications across the country for BIPOC LGBTQ+ communities, especially transgender communities.

ROOTED IN THEORY

Two academic theories are foundational in my evolution and commitment to non-binary thinking and radical empathy. Ecofeminism is a way of thinking that posits that the destruction of the environment and the oppression of people based on gender, race, sexuality, etc. are inextricably tied to one another and to the larger patriarchal, destructive society we generally live in.2 Each component of the patriarchal society is situated as an object or resource to be used at the will of white men in power. Queer ecology, which on its face may seem more narrowly contrived, has more recently been introduced to me as a more expansive and potentially more pertinent way of thinking today, especially as it relates to work focused on reimagining and creating more resilient and sustainable cities.3 Queer ecology looks to debunk the dualisms that exist in our society between nature and culture. It is a way of thinking that pulls from the sciences, ecofeminism, environmental justice, and queer geography, and recognizes binaries as destructive frameworks that are both socially and colonially constructed. Queer ecology directly critiques the binaries of culture versus nature, self versus other, human versus non-human, male versus female, heterosexual

FIG 2 Scoring rubric for Austin’s proposed Functional Green Regulatory Framework. Image credit: City of Austin.

versus homosexual, etc. While not specifically calling out queer ecology, Adam Miller —  the 2019–21 Race and Gender in the Built Environment Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture — talked specifically in an interview about how queer thinking informs his work:

To think queerly might be to consider a conceptual space beyond binary thinking. Queer thinking resists duality, allows for a decentering of a single aesthetic paradigm, and makes space for aesthetic difference: this is a queer space within architecture. This recognition of the difference in taste and its potential design implications is what I think of as a solidarity of tastes. Solidarity is a unity that also maintains and recognizes difference —  a discordant whole. This unity in recognizing difference has real implications for us and material consequences in our world.4

FINDING A NON-BINARY PRACTICE

Beyond architectural aesthetics, non-binary thinking is a necessary step in advancing the fields of sustainability and resilience. Binary thinking is the single most common barrier to doing effective and just work in these spaces. The most common binary I interact with is “city versus nature.” There are multiple iterations of this example, but each situates people and or development as opposite to nature, environment, or sustainability. This framing leads us to a desire to control and oppress the world around us because it uses fear-based tactics — affirming a narrative that states that if nature, environment, and sustainability goals are the inherent opposite of quality of life, culture, and economic growth, then humans must give something up or suffer in order to work toward these goals.

For years, we have attempted to control nature to maximize the development potential of even very vulnerable places. In my home state of Florida in the early 1900s, people intent on making undevelopable places developable began distributing Melaleuca (Melaleuca quinquenervia) seeds across the Everglades, thinking that these water hoarding trees would help dry up “useless swamp land.” This campaign resulted in almost 20% of the green space south of Lake Okeechobee becoming overrun by these trees. Onehundred years later, we are still fighting to manage and eradicate this invasive species.5 In New Orleans, we have created a completely fabricated hydrology with drainage-pump stations and levees that attempt to keep water out of neighborhoods. At the same time, these actions have exacerbated the rapid subsidence of land in the city and region, with an estimated loss of six to twenty inches over the last twenty years.6 In the suburban American front yard, we have cultivated an ideal that favors a manicured monoculture lawn — a feature that does very little in terms of ecosystem services and also requires massive amounts of water to maintain. In Austin, like in other American cities, many have cried for the preservation of single-family neighborhoods and have been dismayed by the idea of a sterile, dense urban development, with the resulting urban sprawl destroying green spaces on the fringe.

There is still hope for a new way of doing things. At Asakura Robinson—a nationally recognized design and planning firm where I lead our Urban Ecology Studio—we have been working on many projects that directly challenge the city versus nature binary. And, whether it is conscious or not, many others are beginning to use queer ecological principles to

FIG 3A & 3B Early phase concept design is for Jones Park in Galveston, TX — key proof-of-concept project demonstrating Green Galveston’s guiding principles. Image credit: Vision Galveston, Asakura Robinson.

FIG 3B Early phase concept design is for Shield Park in Galveston, TX — key proof-of-concept project demonstrating Green Galveston’s guiding principles. Image credit: Vision Galveston, Asakura Robinson.

FIG 3C Distanced Green Galveston engagement event at Shield Park — late 2020. Image credit: Vision Galveston.

drive new and innovative work that challenges these persistent binaries with tangible impacts on the ground in our cities and our most vulnerable ecological and human communities.

FUNCTIONAL GREEN7

While the Austin Land Development Code is facing an unclear path to adoption for political, social, and procedural reasons, one specific component aims to challenge the city versus nature binary in our city’s most urban contexts. Led by the City of Austin with the support of consultants including The Nature Conservancy, “Functional Green” aims to rethink the ways we embed nature within highdensity developments in our urban core Fig 2. Ecosystem services are used as a basis for this regulatory framework. The team did a deep academic dive into the peer-reviewed literature on the types and scales of ecosystem services that can be garnered with certain green design techniques. This included everything from tree preservation, rain gardens, and green roofs to biodiverse plantings, rainwater harvesting systems, and other stacked green features. Each of these features was then assigned a score based on how it contributes to the provision of ecosystem services such as urban heat mitigation, better water quality, habitat, and mental and physical well being, among others. With this knowledge, the team created a flexible menu of greening options for developers who are exercising entitlements that allow for some of the most densely urban and highly impervious development in Austin. The regulation imposes a minimum target score for developers to reach using those greening options that will result in substantive human health and ecological benefits. Additionally, the team ensured the feasibility of reaching the minimum score within the current market without substantial economic impact to developers by reviewing multiple case studies of existing development in the City of Austin. Other cities are looking to these types of metrics as well as other methods to better embed nature and ecosystem functions into urban places. While Houston is still only using incentive programs to drive different types of green development, Dallas is taking an initial look at creating a regulation for some land-use types based on Austin’s stalled Functional Green program and may even beat us to the punch.

GREEN GALVESTON8

Our firm has spent years working with Vision Galveston, a 501(c)3 working to implement a comprehensive, island-wide community resilience strategy that covers everything from entrepreneurship and the local economy to affordable housing, parks, and climate resilience. Galveston is a place where 89% of the island population lives within the urban core, but a majority of residents and visitors perceive “nature” as something “out there” —  as in, out at the state park, etc. Green Galveston aims to embed more nature into the urban fabric of the island with a foundation of seven guiding principles:

1. RIGHT TO GREEN: All Galvestonians have a right to the recreational, restorative, and social opportunities of high-quality parks and natural areas.

2. GREEN THAT PROMOTES HEALTH: Galveston’s parks and open space should support the physical and mental health of the island’s residents.

3. GREEN THAT SUPPORTS THE LOCAL ECOLOGY: Galveston’s parks and open space should respond to and support the local ecological and environmental conditions of the island.

4. GREEN THAT SUPPORTS THE LOCAL ECONOMY: Galveston’s parks and open space should support local economic growth and development across the island.

5. GREEN THAT IS CONNECTED: Galveston’s parks and open space should be accessible for cyclists, pedestrians, residents utilizing public transportation, and through waterways.

6. GREEN THAT IS ACTIVATED & AUTHENTIC: Galveston’s parks and open space should include programming and placemaking that reflect the cultures and histories of the island.

7. GREEN THAT IS EDUCATIONAL & PROMOTES STEWARDSHIP: Galveston’s parks and open space should provide immersive educational opportunities for residents that also support stewardship.

Each of these principles will be applied to proof-of-concept designs for two very different urban parks in Galveston — Jones and Shield Parks — with schematic design currently underway Figs 3A-3C. These guiding principles directly respond to finding space in the middle of the binary. They look at the overlap of nature and people — in ways that have historically been framed as at odds with one another — by utilizing Galveston’s local ecosystems, climate resilience challenges, historic and current disparities, culture, history, and other contextual information to create multifunctional and deeply place-based design in very urban parks. As climate change exacerbates so many of our urban problems such as flooding and heat, parks are some of the lowest-hanging fruit to help mitigate impacts and improve overall community resilience. Beyond Galveston, many cities are working to embed more multifunctional goals in their parks development, which is quickly becoming the new best practice in parks planning and design.

HOUSTON CONSERVATION MOONSHOT 2030

Green Galveston’s framing is similar to much of the work The Nature Conservancy, the Houston Parks Board, and other leaders in Houston are attempting to push forward as a new way of thinking about biodiversity conservation. Their work on the Houston Conservation Moonshot 2030 aims to embed health, environmental justice, climate action, and other concepts into a biodiversity conservation framework and long-term vision for the region. Biodiversity is foundational to functioning ecosystems, including urban ones. We are in a global biodiversity crisis whereby inaction will lead to the collapse of ecosystems and devastating impacts on people, especially our most vulnerable, as well as widespread impacts on global economic systems.9 To turn things around, we can no longer focus only on saving wildlands outside of urban regions. Biodiversity must be embedded into our cities. The benefits of doing so thoughtfully can also have tangible impacts on urban communities. Reaching urban biodiversity goals can help remedy other urban problems like urban heat-island effects; chronic and disparate health outcomes; access to parks and open space; unsightly, unwelcoming, or unsafe public realms; urban flooding; and poor water quality. But in order to do so, the conservation community needs to challenge the city versus nature binary or, perhaps more accurately, the rural versus urban binary.

One of the key tools I have found for unsticking folks from binary thinking is the transect. The transect is foundational to our work as planners and designers with some of my favorite historic examples coming from Patrick Geddes and Ian McHarg. It is also a direct physical representation of non-binary thinking involving both ends of the spectrum and all the spaces in between. As a part of our work on the Houston Conservation Moonshot, we created a rural to urban transect to help explain how we conceptualize greening opportunities in all contexts of the Houston region Fig 4. This graphic helps us break down false binaries between rural conservation and urban green infrastructure systems and creates a more expansive vision for the future.

AUSTIN CLIMATE EQUITY PLAN10

In 2015, the City of Austin completed its first Community Climate Action Plan, the first of its kind in the state, and an effort to truly be proud of. However, what was missing both from this plan and the larger discourse around climate was the actual integration of community into the process and meaningful integration of equity and justice into the proposed actions. We have come a long way since then, including in national and international discourse. For example, the Green New Deal directly links just economic transitions to our nation’s climate goals and continues to gain traction.11 Here in Austin, in 2019, our climate plan was due for an update according to our five-year, Councilimposed cycle. In the four years since the previous plan’s adoption, the City has created an Equity Office and has begun its journey on a long road to reckoning with historic and current policies rooted in systemic racism. Initial meetings between City staff and community leaders reinforced a goal of creating a more community-engaged and equity-driven plan.

To help guide the climate plan update, City staff put together a steering committee made up of diverse and knowledgeable community leaders who value equity and justice as guiding principles in climate-action work. This group was complemented by five topical advisory groups made up of both City staff and community leaders. Many community members committed time, energy, and emotional vulnerability to the process after years of relationships with the City rooted in distrust. During the plan process, the dynamic required both radical empathy and clear accountability to overcome some of the distrust that had built up. Others, perhaps more embedded in traditional climate-action work, could see how important equity was in guiding the plan. Across the board, there was full acknowledgment about the concept of a just transition, meaning that the communities most vulnerable to climate impacts and those most historically harmed by legacies of racism, disenfranchisement, and disinvestment should be those who also benefit most from transition strategies. But, often, those most embedded in traditional climate-action work had the most consistent trouble letting go of binary thinking. A consistent issue that came up from the beginning of the process was a fear of trade-offs, specifically: “What if we have to compromise on our emission-reductions goals in order to integrate equity and justice in the way you’re asking for?” White culture, traditional siloed schooling, and efficiencymindsets have taught many of us that even if we can see the rationale behind changing the way we frame our work toward climate justice, there is so much fear associated with that transition that our minds constantly push us back to the binary. The fear is rooted in two key factors: 1) a scarcity mindset: “There is only so much pie, so if we include another factor, that must mean that I have to give something up;” and 2) discomfort with lack of simplicity or clarity.

While BIPOC leaders in the group were coping with distrust rooted in years of trauma, privileged white leaders passionate about climate action were struggling with reframing their thinking. It took a handful of BIPOC leaders willing to shoulder the burden of additional emotional labor and white allies willing to empathetically approach those who were

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FIG 4 Houston Conservation Moonshot’s regional transect, outlining conservation and urban greening opportunities in various contexts across an urban to rural gradient. Image credit: Asakura Robinson.

CLIMATE CHANGE

ELIMINATE THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS

Renewable energy Less dependable on cars

Electric vehicles

More trees and nature

Healthier consumer choices

FIG 5A Venn diagram used during the Austin Climate Equity Plan process to help express the overlapping nature of climate change and racial equity. Image credit: City of Austin.

HEALTH ACCESSIBILITY JUST TRANSITION CULTURAL PRESERVATION COMMUNITY CAPACITY ACCOUNTABILITY

RACIAL EQUITY

ELIMINATE DISPARITIES THAT CAN BE PREDICTED BY RACE

Safety for all at all times No disproportionate economic outcomes Fair access to services for all Inclusive participation in our city Positive health outcomes for all

struggling in order to bring them along. It took a climate justice workshop at the beginning of the process and the facilitator, Dr. Tane Ward, asking the entire group to imagine a utopia, free of the roadblocks we’ve met in the past that have reinforced a fear of conflict between goals. It took many one-on-one conversations where we talked about accountability in all directions often needing to say, “Let’s not manifest a conflict where one doesn’t exist. Instead, let’s all commit to transparent and vulnerable communication so that we may work together to find the middle.” It took me, as a co-chair of the steering committee, saying that I will be an advocate for justice even if I do not fully understand the positioning of my advocacy, because I fully and radically support my BIPOC neighbors and friends. It took constant checkins to make sure our BIPOC leaders were not taking on too much emotional labor in a process that necessitates more from them than from any of the white participants. It took paying community ambassadors, who already had trusted relationships with their communities, to act as conduits to the City that lacked the trust they had. The result is a plan that does not situate equity and justice as a mutual benefit or subtractive component of climate action but as an integral part and a core driver. The eventual lack of a boundary between climate action and equity strategies is the essential goal of nonbinary thinking in process and end result.

Figs 5A–5C

WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?

We have a lot more work to do and we need more people who are willing to get uncomfortable in challenging the systems that never have and never will work to create more resilient and just communities. For folks whose identity does not rely on constant invention and reinvention in a system not made for them, this requires consistent mindfulness and action — mindfulness that allows for breaking through the binary and accepting inherent discomfort. Our acknowledgment of that discomfort and the trauma of others who have been trying to change oppressive systems mandates that we do this work with radical empathy. As for me, if reincarnation is real, I hope that in every life I live, I come back queer. I am a better person and a better practitioner because of it.

1 Erin Blakemore, “A Century of Trauma at U.S. Boarding Schools for Native American Children.” History. July 9, 2021. https://www. nationalgeographic.com/history/article/a-century-of-trauma-atboarding-schools-for-native-american-children-in-the-unitedstates.

2 Karen J. Warren, “Feminist Environmental Philosophy (Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford.edu. 2014. https://plato. stanford.edu/entries/feminism-environmental/.

3 Catriona Sandilands, “Queer Ecology | Keywords for

Environmental Studies.” Nyupress.org, 2012. https://keywords. nyupress.org/environmental-studies/essay/queer-ecology/.

4 Adam Miller, Q&A with Adam Miller, 2019-2021 Race and Gender in the Built Environment Fellow Interview by University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Accessed July 9, 2021. https:// soa.utexas.edu/headlines/qa-adam-miller-2019-2021-race-andgender-built-environment-fellow. 5 Tame Melaleuca, “The Green Menace from down Under.”

Accessed July 9, 2021. https://pesticide.ifas.ufl.edu/courses/pdfs/ melaleuca/Melaleuca.pdf.

6 City of New Orleans, “Subsidence—NOLA Ready.” Nola.gov. 2016. https://ready.nola.gov/hazard-mitigation/hazards/subsidence/.

7 CodeNEXT, Review of Austin Land Development Code. City of Austin, 2018. http://www.designingthesustainablesite. com/uploads/1/0/3/8/10386536/austinldc_ functionalgreen_2018.02.08_final.pdf.

8 Vision Galveston, “Home.” VISION GALVESTON, Accessed July 9, 2021. https://www.visiongalveston.com/.

9 National Geographic, “Global Biodiversity Is in Crisis, but There

Is Hope for Recovery.” National Geographic Society Newsroom,

September 23, 2019. https://blog.nationalgeographic. org/2019/09/23/global-biodiversity-is-in-crisis-but-there-ishope-for-recovery/. 10 City of Austin, “Austin Community Climate Plan | AustinTexas. gov.” Austintexas.gov. Accessed July 9, 2021. https://austintexas. gov/page/austin-communityclimate-plan.

11 Lisa Friedman, “What Is the Green New Deal? A Climate

Proposal, Explained.” New York Times, February 21, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/climate/green-new-dealquestions-answers.html.

1 2 3 4 5 7

What is the history? Where are the inequalities? Maps, data, stories, etc. Research racial injustice to understand the root causes.

What does the data tell us? Disaggregate data by race, income and location. Research and collect data on racial disparities

What is the proposed goal? Does it include a climate and equity component?

Develop strategies. How can history and disaggregated data help achieve this goal? Identify strategy owners, participants, costs and benefits.

Analyze strategies with the equity tool. Does the strategy meet our values? Answer Equity Tool questions and analyze the results.

Implementation. How do we ensure accountability? How do we communicate results?

6

Review and revise

proposed strategies with an iterative process.

FIG 5B Group photo of the Austin Climate Equity Plan Community Climate Ambassadors. Image Credit: City of Austin.

FIG 5C Process tool used to embed equity within the goals and strategies of the Austin Climate Equity Plan. Image credit: City of Austin.