Camden, New Jersey, is one of five Delaware River Valley cities that City and Regional Planning students looked at in a spring workshop on equity and sustainability.
Camden, New Jersey, is one of five Delaware River Valley cities that City and Regional Planning students looked at in a spring workshop on equity and sustainability.
Allentown, Reading, and Scranton, Pennsylvania; Camden, New Jersey; and Wilmington, Delaware: All five cities share high rates of poverty, a high concentration of shuttered factories, and a diminished resource base. With the Trump Administration expected to reduce federal support for areas like these, placing a greater burden on local initiatives, the Department of City and Regional Planning at PennDesign took up the challenge of envisioning what those initiatives might be in a workshop for first-year students coordinated by Professor and Chair John Landis; students presented their proposals to their instructors on campus last week.
The workshop’s goal is to assess the usefulness of city planning and plans as a vehicle for promoting greater equity and sustainability in small and shrinking (or slow-growing) cities. The class was organized into ten independent groups, five equity planning groups, and five sustainability planning groups; one of each was focused on one of five cities in the greater Delaware River Valley.
Instructor Christina Arlt’s students produced an ambitious sustainability plan for Camden focused on the city’s Waterfront South neighborhood. Among their proposals: energy efficient housing retrofits, vacant housing reclamation, building parks and community gardens with opportunities for urban agriculture, revitalizing commercial corridors, coordination with the state of New Jersey about tax policy, transit-oriented development near the proposed Glassboro Camden Line, green infrastructure to deal with flooding, a STEM curriculum at local schools, a vocational training center offering certificate courses, and an Eco-Industrial District to attract green manufacturing companies.
As Arlt (MCP‘09), Senior Planner in the Office of Smart Growth at the Delaware River Valley Planning Commission, describes the workshop: “It’s designed to mimic the work that planners do on a daily basis. In addition to learning how to analyze demographic, land-use, and transportation data about a community, students also learn how to communicate that information, both visually and in narrative form, for their three presentations and final report. Students also learn collaboration and project management skills, like how to create agendas, determine workflows, distribute tasks, make group decisions, and meet deadlines in order to create a successful product.”
Mike Larson, one of Alrt’s students who co-presented his team’s proposal, also credits the workshop for opening doors. “We had access to a wealth of professional advice through our instructor and were able to talk to professionals across Camden about their personal experiences in the community,” he says.
Before coming to Penn, Arlt worked for a regional planning commission in New Hampshire where he collaborated on some environmental and resource-protection projects, but this was the first time he had the chance to look at sustainability in a dense urban area and apply what he learned to larger social and equity issues.
This spring’s workshop is just one of several projects under way in the Department to bring equity and sustainability to cities near and far. The Department is developing a far-reaching Equity Project that could include an Annual Equity Report Card for every U.S. county; a bi-annual digest identifying urban equity and social justice best practices; and a yearlong community engagement project sited in Philadelphia.
“Once upon a time, America—and especially its cities—were revered around the world as a land of unparalleled opportunity,” says Landis. “Sadly, this is no longer the case.”
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