City and Regional Planning

  • Camden: An Equity Agenda

    Alexandra San Roman, Claudia Elzey, Eric Vincent Riley, Gabriella Nelson, Michael Schaier, Sean Scott; proposed intervention in Bergen Square

  • Wilmington Equity Plan: One City

    Libby Bland, Sarah Halle, Eleanor Fisher, Dan Reyes, Bowie Xia, Yuting Sun; proposed community space to activate dead space under I-95

Camden and Wilmington Equity

Spring 2017

Planning Workshop

Course/Studio: CPLN-600
Instructors: John D. Landis, City and Regional Planning, PennDesign; Danae Mobley, City of Philadelphia Water Department; Adam Tecza, Group Melvin Design

Course Description

“In today's political climate, the inevitable reductions to federal funding in already struggling cities will require innovative approaches to creating plans that actively seek to promote equity and justice for the minorities who are typically overlooked in city plans. This installment of the annual workshop departs from the usual practice of creating general-purpose community plans, to instead asses the usefulness of city planning and plans as vehicles for promoting greater equity in small and shrinking cities. Through a series of site visits and consultation with local officials and community organizations, students produced city-wide and neighborhood specific actions plans.”

Community Partners

Cooper's Ferry Partnership
Wilmington City Planning Commission
Bright Spot Ventures

Student Statements

"Just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia lies a city of some 76,000 people, yet few Penn students have ever set foot there—let alone heard the rich stories of its residents. Camden, New Jersey is a city working hard to revive its industrial heritage while undergoing major demographic shifts and struggling against regional and racial inequity. Over the course of a semester, our team of six graduate students walked Camden’s streets, paid visits to its planning consultants, community housing developers, urban gardeners, school administrators, and academics, and sifted through stacks of reports, budgets, and studies. We found that while Camden’s problems as an impoverished and high-crime city are well-documented, the barriers to addressing these problems are shrouded in mystery and political contention. Meanwhile great resources Camden has in human and social capital are often ignored. Our Equity Agenda hopes to nurture the former and build on the latter to remake Camden as a place where all individuals are given the opportunity to fulfill their individual and collective potential."  
—Camden Equity Agenda by Alexandra San Roman, Claudia Elzey, Eric Vincent Riley, Gabriella Nelson, Michael Schaier, Sean Scott

 
"The One City plan is an economic and racial equity plan for the city of Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington is Delaware's largest city with a long history of inequity. As the economic hub of Delaware - and with the support of the state's tax incentives - many Fortune 500 companies headquarter in Wilmington. However, outside of the central business district lie many majority-minority communities unable to access the capital and investment of Wilmington's downtown. Race and poverty track together in Wilmington, with the city's poorest neighborhoods being majority Black and Hispanic while the city's wealthiest neighborhoods being majority White. One City seeks to dismantle the current structure of inequality in Wilmington through the lens of flows of capital: financial, political, human, and physical. By focusing on the flows of capital, and identifying where these flows break down, One City identifies six goals that ensure capital flows equitably to all Wilmingtonians. The Plan identifies a key neighborhood as a case study: the West Side. The case study tracks One City's goals through 2040, showing how implementation of both small and large changes can bring capital back into underserved neighborhoods. One City's goals and objectives, albeit lofty, represent the change that is needed in the City of Wilmington." —Wilmington: One City by Sarah Halle, Eleanor Fisher, Dan Reyes, Bowie Xia, Yuting Sun, Libby Bland

 

Team

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