Sixty Years of Racial Equity Planning: Evolution of an Ethic

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Debates about race in the United States are front and center in the 21st century. From the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement to the caging of indigenous migrant children from Mexico and Central America to rising Asian American and Pacific Islander discrimination during COVID-19, the urgency for an explicit definition of racial equity planning and examples of how the ethic evolved could not be more pressing. Historically, social justice–oriented planners focused efforts on racial equity despite a lack of a collective understanding of the topic. By demonstrating diverse, applied approaches through an analysis of 17 municipal and community-led plans at various scales, we traced the primacy of race in equity planning through four key eras: civil rights, Model Cities and successive programs, HOPE VI and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Sustainable Cities Regional Planning Grants, and contemporary. How and why has racial equity planning evolved in the academic planning literature and representative racial equity plans in the last 60 years? Racial equity planning has always been a cornerstone of the field, and lessons from the literature and relevant plans merit deeper attention, especially as White supremacy gains stronger ground. Takeaway for practice: Planners should affirm a unified definition of racial equity planning informed by relevant scholarship and operationalize its tenets in their work. Recognizing key milestones where racial equity has successfully informed contemporary urban policies offers progressive planners a rich set of alternative policies, strategies, and programs to use across diverse communities.