In the first of a series of dialogues on equity presented this semester by the Department of City and Regional Planning, Professor Lisa Servon recently sat down with Portland State University’s Lisa Bates, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, for a public conversation about equity planning under the Trump administration. Bates’s work has consistently bridged scholarship with direct activism: she has served as co-chair of the technical advisory group on equity for the Portland Plan and is a member of the Planners of Color Interest Group Policy Committee for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). So, one of the evening’s themes was the responsibility of all participants in planning—including faculty, students, accreditation boards, public agencies, and professional organizations—to confront inequity in all areas and phases of planning.
As Bates and Servon see it, the term “equity planning” is elastic, and risks losing both its meaning and its impact if it is not operationalized with actual systemic influence. In other words, it cannot be achieved simply through public meetings.
“Equity is not something that happens exclusively, or even primarily, through community engagement,” Bates said. “It’s not just about diverse inclusion. Instead, it needs to be a way to look at all the areas and aspects of planning, and employing real tools to address them.”
In Bates’s experience with the Portland Plan and other initiatives, equity planning hinges on advancing several principles, including: creating opportunity for disadvantaged people to reach their potential; sharing the distribution of benefits and burdens as a city grows and changes; recognizing a shared fate for the community; and acknowledging a community’s self-determination over its development.
The advancement of these principles of equity planning—or in stronger terms, racial or social justice—will depend on university programs to prepare their students to work around issues of inclusion in the planning process. To that end, Bates’ work as a co-chair of the ASCP’s Planners of Color Interest Group Policy Committee has focused on challenging accreditation boards to strengthen their guidelines for curriculum development and faculty and student diversity. Rather than siloing concerns of equity or students of color within the community development concentration, the Planners of Color group has pushed for all planning syllabi to reflect inclusive voices, and for the profession to demand that its newest graduates be competent to work around issues of equity in the planning process.
In Bates’ own professional experience in Portland, New Orleans, and elsewhere, success has been measured by challenging the expectations of inclusion. “Equity planners have to be advocates,” she says. In her work with ACORN in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, for example, “it was really important to put forward a very alternative vision. Did the community win everything that was in that plan? Not at all. But it moved the benchmarks so far simply by presenting a very different view of the community.”
In an era of rising income inequality and tension in the current political climate, such advocacy planning is crucial. As Bates challenged the audience, “How do we make a more robust platform in our local policy and planning work to make sure that we’re not just saying we’re a blue wall of resistance, but we’re actually stopping injustices from happening in our city?” Equity planning at the local and regional level, then, can be its own form of resistance.
The series continues on with a conversation between Texas A&M’s Phil Berke and PennDesign’s Allison Lassiter on February 27, 6:00pm in Meyerson Hall, Room B3.
