Rashad Williams (2020) argues that American planning theorists have had it wrong. It is not rational planning or the capitalist city that has harmed our cities, but white supremacis
Please I want to write for me two pages for 3 different questions, and for Q1 & Q2 I want to use two types of sources, class material and sources down here. Please (Q1, Q2, Q3 in attachment) and whatever two or three sources you think will work from here.
Also, I want you to consider this:
– USE THE TEMPLATE IN THE ATTACHMENT AND WRITE ON IT.
– Planning theory: literature influence Correct and clear explanation
of chosen planning theory
– Planning theory: real-world influence Clear and well-thought-out
explanation of both how the informational interview and at least two
– Use of quotes Only key quotes are used; otherwise, excellent incorporation and citation of text.
– In-text citations: Cite your sources using complete and appropriate in-text citations (e.g., Williams, 2020, p. x).
– double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins.
Use whatever source will help in each question:
Aron, H. (2023, January 31). LA wins in California’s $2.5 billion award for local transit. Courthouse
News Service. https://www.courthousenews.com/la-wins-in-californias-2-5-billion-award-for-local-
transit/
Chang, A., Mehta, J., & Intagliata, C. (2021, May 4). Beneath the Santa Monica Freeway lies the erasure
of Sugar Hill. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/04/993605428/beneath-the-santa-monica-freeway-
lies-the-erasure-of-sugar-hill
Dillon, L. (2021, May 22). 710 Freeway is a key link in the U.S. economy, but pollution and evictions
doom its expansion. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-22/710-
freeway-expansion-stalls
Dillon, L. & Poston, B. (2021a, November 11). Freeways force out residents in communities of color –
again. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/projects/us-freeway-highway-expansion-black-
latino-communities/
Dillon, L. & Poston, B. (2021b, November 11). The racist history of America’s interstate highway boom.
Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-11-11/the-racist-history-
of-americas-interstate-highway-boom
Dillon, L., Poston, B., & Uranga, R. (2022, May 6). A bid to stop freeway expansions in California hits a
roadblock: Organized labor. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/homeless-
housing/story/2022-05-06/freeway-expansions-california-organized-labor
Jaffe, E. (2015, November 11). California’s DOT admits that more roads mean more traffic. Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-11/california-s-dot-makes-a-rare-admission-
more-roads-mean-more-traffic
Kamal, S. (2023, April 6). California public transit is at a pivotal moment – Here’s why. KCET.
https://www.kcet.org/news-community/california-public-transit-is-at-a-pivotal-moment-heres-why
Linton, J. (2022, May 10). Overview of Metro’s proposed fiscal year 22-23 budget. StreetsblogLA.
https://la.streetsblog.org/2022/05/10/overview-of-metros-proposed-fiscal-year-22-23-budget/
Linton, J. (2023, March 15). Preliminary FY23-24 Metro budget would (again) increase freeway funding,
while cutting transit. StreetsblogLA. https://la.streetsblog.org/2023/03/15/preliminary-fy23-24-metro-
budget-would-again-increase-freeway-funding-while-cutting-transit/
Poston, B. & Dillon, L. (2021, November 11). How we reported the story on highway displacements. Los
Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-11/how-we-reported-the-story-on-
freeway-displacements
Scauzillo, S. (2022a, January 25). LA Metro seeks $16.5 billion from state for projects, including L Line
to Montclair. Daily Bulletin. https://www.dailybulletin.com/2022/01/25/la-metro-seeks-16-5-billion-
from-state-for-projects-including-l-line-to-montclair/
Scauzillo, S. (2022b, September 20). Long delays, dirty stops and lack of shade greet many Los Angeles
bus riders, survey finds. Los Angeles Daily News. https://www.dailynews.com/2022/09/20/long-
delays-dirty-stops-and-lack-of-shade-greet-many-los-angeles-bus-riders-survey-finds/
Scauzillo, S. (2023, January 7). Metro to the public: How to spend almost $9 billion in transit funds? Los
Angeles Daily News. https://www.dailynews.com/2023/01/07/metro-to-the-public-how-to-spend-
almost-9-billion-in-transit-funds/
Schwartz, L. (2023, April 14). Concerns over transit safety: Recent town hall covers LA Metro’s budget
priorities. Los Angeles Downtown News. http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/concerns-over-
transit-safety-recent-town-hall-covers-la-metro-s-budget-priorities/article_b68227ac-d7ea-11ed-8efa-
cf202ac6ea71.html
Staff. (2022, December 7). L.A. Metro board approves Locally Preferred Alternative for Eastside Transit
Corridor Phase 2 Project. Mass Transit Magazine.
https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/press-release/21289247/los-angeles-county-
metropolitan-transportation-authority-metro-la-metro-board-approves-locally-preferred-alternative-
for-eastside-transit-corridor-phase-2-project
Uranga, R. (2022a, January 28). Rail line in southeast L.A. County approved as leaders seek to speed up
construction. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-28/southeast-los-
angeles-metro-rail-project-approved
Uranga, R. (2022b, May 26). 710 Freeway expansion dropped after decades of planning, marking a
milestone for L.A. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-26/710-
freeway-expansion-los-angeles-plan-killed
QUESTION #1 – TWO PAGES: USE Q1 MATERIAL IN THE ATTACHMENT + TWO OR THREE SOURCES FROM ABOVE THAT WORK TO ANSWER.
# 1 Reparative Planning (90 points)
Rashad Williams (2020) argues that American planning theorists have had it wrong. It is not
rational planning or the capitalist city that has harmed our cities, but white supremacist planning,
“racial planning [which] is found hiding in plain sight” (p. 4) throughout America’s urban (and
rural) development. Williams substantiates his theory of racial planning by presenting three
modes by which American planning upholds a white supremacist condition and its system of
racial capitalism. Finally, as a counterbalance to the generations of racial planning, Williams
offers reparative planning.
Name and define each of the three racial planning modes. Next, review the news articles to
consider transportation planning in the LA region. In the provided articles, at least one example
illustrates Williams’ modes of racial planning and its harms. You can also find, if not quite
reparative planning, at least one example of attempts to mitigate previous racial planning harms.
Finally, justify your answer using Williams’ text and the articles (not your opinions)
QUESTION #2 – TWO PAGES: USE Q2 MATERIAL IN THE ATTACHMENT + TWO OR THREE SOURCES FROM ABOVE THAT WORK TO ANSWER.
# 2 Green, Growing & Just Cities (90 points)
In 1996, Scott Campbell challenged planners to think more deeply about “sustainable
development.” In his influential article, he presents the triangle of conflicting goals for planning
and the three associated conflicts.
Name and define each of Campbell’s associated conflicts. Next, review the news articles to
consider transportation planning in the LA region. You can find at least one example in the
provided articles that illustrates Campbell’s conflicts. You can also find an illustration showing
the conflict in action or, perhaps, a resolution. Finally, justify your answer using Campbell’s test
and the articles (not your opinions).
QUESTION #3 – TWO PAGES: USE Q3 MATERIAL IN ATTACHMENT + ANY SOURCES
# 3 Personal Planning Theory (70 pts)
One of my mentors tells her planning theory students to figure out their worldview before they
enter planning because “the other side definitely knows theirs.”
This semester, we examined only a selection of planning theories. What planning theory did you
most connect with? Clearly define that planning theory and explain why it resonates with you
and do so by comparing it with other similar planning theories we have discussed, also
describing them in the process. (Do not pick one and give its opposite as an alternative. I want
you to get specific about why you like that one most.) This WORK conveys your preferred
planning theory. As with Questions 1 and 2, there is no correct answer. However, a successful
WORK is well organized, logically argued, and shows a solid grasp of our semester’s planning
theories and how they relate.
THANKS, AND BY THE WAY THERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF ALL THE WORK FROM DIFFERENT CLASSES IN THE ATTACHMENT, IT'S NOT THAT GOOD BUT IT SHOULD GIVE YOU AN IDEA HOW WHAT IT WILL LOOKS LIKE,
PLANNING THEORY
Final Exam | Template | URBS 300 | Spring 2023
# 1 Reparative Planning (90 pts)
…
# 2 Green, Growing & Just Cities (90 pts)
…
# 3 Personal Planning Theory (70 pts)
…
Page 1 of 1
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PLANNING THE MULTIETHNIC CITY URBS 250 | FALL 2021 | FINAL EXAM
EXAM TEMPLATE
# 1 GOETZ, WILLIAMS & DAMIANO (2020) + YOUR PICK + NEWS PIECE (80 pts)
One of the biggest issues facing the United States of America since the colonialists set foot in it is racism. Racism is linked to the DNA of America, and there are always efforts by many people to stop this injustice. Indeed, we are in a century that is easier than the previous centuries, but it is still left. Race, apartheid, and inequality planning are rife with the country. There are affluent white neighborhoods and there is discrimination in education as well as housing according to Goetz, et al (2020), "race, segregation, and racial inequality are widely acknowledged by urban planners and by plan" (p. 142). Planners have a legacy of injustice: it is always the ethnic neighborhoods that are affected, not the white ones.
White supremacy is seen as a permanent regime in the United States and for political purposes that has produced urban inequality. Previously, in the sixties and seventies, neighborhoods and streets were divided on a racial and unequal basis according to Goetz, et al (2020), "Planners and others have analyzed the legacy of racial zoning and restrictive sins in shaping metropolitan settlement patterns and the operation of dual housing markets perpetuating discrimination and segregation" (p. 143).
Again, the construction of highways caused the segregation system as well and in this decision, many poor and ethnic neighborhoods were damaged. For example, in BALTIMORE, the construction of highways and bridges is at the expense of colorful and slum neighborhoods. Glenn Smith is one of those affected. In the 1970s, a 1.5-mile highway was built connecting Interstate 70 with Interstate 95, and more than 570 homes were removed. He says "his historically black community has felt the effect, while other communities have not" (George, 2021, p.1). However, the project was canceled and did not link the two roads together. This project is an example of the decades-old racism in the United States in infrastructure and racial planning.
The theme of racial planning and inequality recurs in Hurricane Katrina in the US Gulf Coast. The supremacy of the whites and their transgression made the poor and colored neighborhoods be the most affected in natural disasters. Houses built with cheap and weak materials, and areas in the valleys. All these events make officials break their silence and the issue becomes an important human issue according to Jacobs (2019), “the nation began to pay attention to the inequitable impacts of disasters on poor communities and communities of color” (p. 24).
In America, whiteness is the only way to reach social and economic dominance in the country. Because social weakness breeds inequality and produces control and monopoly in society by whites, according to Goetz, et al (2020), “Roithmayr who likens Whiteness to an efficient racial cartel that monopolizes social and economic advantages and through political power” (p 145). Social vulnerabilities reveal variables that show how vulnerabilities in the country vary and have caused disruption in many states and regions Jacobs (2019) found "variables that try to capture individuals' access to resources such as their political power, their physical disabilities and the quality of housing they live in" (p. 31).
Racial planning and inequality in housing and education have a great impact. There are memories of people who lost their homes and the pain of being different among all people is not easy. Power in the wrong hands is a dangerous matter and campaigns must be carried out to stand up to truth and justice.
Reference
George, Joe St. “Communities Hope Infrastructure Law Fixes History of Racial Inequity.” KMGH, 9 Dec. 2021, thedenverchannel.com/news/national-politics/communities-hope-infrastructure-law-fixes-history-of-racial-inequity.
Goetz, E. G., Williams, R. A., & Damiano, A. (2020). Whiteness and urban planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(2), 142-156.
Jacobs, F. (2019). Black feminism and radical planning: New directions for disaster planning research. Planning Theory, 18(1), 24-39.
# 2 SCHWEITZER (2016) + YOUR PICK + NEWS PIECE (80 pts)
When personal interest is more important than the public interest, there is a defect in the foundation of the system and causes far-reaching consequences. In the United States, all the development has succeeded and the inventions they have reached, but there are individual things that made the goals focus on some individuals only and not all people. When infrastructure is planned based on interests and inequality in the administrative apparatus as well as zoning. According to Schweitzer (2016), “through political conflicts in planning that result from public institutions using the coercive power of the state to make and act on plans” (p. 131). There are political conflicts within government institutions and there are many plans to treat them and to search for the disease that causes injustice within society.
In public institutions, the justification of their scheme that does not support the public interest is by way of benefit and indirect ways. Schweitzer (2016) found "Planners in public institutions engage in political deliberation about the desirability of future acts" (p. 132). After that, individual non-main groups are established that are based on their own interests and do not perform their work for the benefit of the people, and from these groups, a discriminatory behavior begins from within the public institutions. For example, in the California Police Department after the Los Angeles Times published allegations that there was racial discrimination between a number of police officers and through them, they exchange racist texts and images, according to Silva (2021), "Attorney General Rob Bonta's office said the review into the Torrance Police Department would be conducted by the California Department of Justice" (p. 1). The police are the front lines to protect the people, and there should be no manipulation of the law and racial discrimination by them.
Urban planning plays a major role in building a society free of injustice. Small groups that are within politics cause harm and mistakes within society. The treatment in this case may be through stopping personal relations in political groups, because through this the imbalance in society is formed and appears in some societies. For example, there is an environmental racial gap between white and nonwhite communities, according to Pulido (2017), “the environmental racism gap highlights the persistent inequality between white and nonwhite communities” (p. 525). There is an absurdity of capitalism on the scale of politics where public institutions have been used to coercive and racist force is structuring the logic of capitalism.
According to Schweitzer (2016), "Individuals might heal; they might forgive and be forgiven in the reciprocal union that governs social life" (p. 139). Where when the fault is found, whether it is an individual, it is forgiven and the individual's matter ends temporarily, or the fault he caused within the institution remains and takes years to remedy the matter. The problem is that the institutions implement the system of atonement, but without reform plans that protect the system from tampering with it in the future.
In the end, reform planning starts from within and begins when plans are imposed that protect institutions and the system. When the state system and its institutions focus on citizens and punish those who abuse their position and those who exploit the creation of a group with personal goals, society will benefit more, prosper more, and there will be equality. Therefore, the government must increase oversight to avoid the exploitation of some individuals for their personal interests.
Reference
Schweitzer, L. (2016). Restorative planning ethics: The therapeutic imagination and planning in public institutions. Planning Theory, 15(2), 130-144.
Silva, C. D. (2021, December 9). California AG launches probe into police department over allegations of racist texts. NBC News. Retrieved from nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-ag-launches-probe-police-department-allegations-racist-text-rcna8155.
Pulido, L. (2017). Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence. Progress in Human Geography, 41(4), 524-533.
#3 FOR-NEXT-TIME ESSAY (90 pts)
Poverty is one of the ugliest tragedies that humans have been exposed to since we started adopting paper currencies. During this semester, we studied many lessons that talk about racism, inequality, injustice, and others, but there is a common factor in most of the topics we studied, which is poverty. Poverty is the common factor in all victims of racism and inequality. We live in an era where your position in society and your winning card is your money. Certainly, it is impossible for everyone to become rich, but at least it is not a reason for you to emigrate and leave your country and go to another country for a living.
In East Los Angeles, the Proyecto MercadoFRESCO project is set up, which aims to change the diet of slums and middle-income neighborhoods because most of their stores are small and do not have any healthy and organic foodstuffs. According to Ortega, et al (2015), "Changing the food landscape in low income and underserved communities is one strategy to combat the negative health consequences associated with the lack of access to healthy food resources and an abundance of unhealthy food venues” (p. 1) Yes, this project aims at reform, but why not go back to the basics, because the problem is only in middle-income and poor neighborhoods, most of whose residents suffer from a lack of the most basic human needs such as food and housing. In rich neighborhoods, there is no such type of retail store Their areas are usually in the city center surrounded by basic services and large stores. For example, in Porter Ranch in Los Angeles, there is more than one project to build houses and plans, including building large and healthy stores such as “Whole Foods Market” and others, and within a short time, the area changes from a place that does not contain anything to from the best areas of the city.
We also talked about disability and health justice in cities, and they have been affected a lot during the Covid period because they are among the groups that have suffered the most. Well, the majority of people with disabilities are simple people and no light is shed on them, and we hear little of their whips. The fact that I lived oppressed and struggled with life, caused the lack of their capabilities and the lack of job opportunities. According to Pineda, et al (2020), "The WHO states that disability is an intersecting issue of public health, human rights, and development, noting that poverty, combined with the high prevalence of PWDs in low-income countries, makes this a global health and urban development issue” (p. 1). When the interest in them is great and the exploitation of their energies, they will be able to live even better than us. There are many inventions that provide them with the capabilities of the natural body and the best, and there are vehicles adapted for a disability that they can enter and exit easily.
We always talk about racism, but it is about people who have money. There are many celebrities with colored skin, but they are among the most beloved personalities in society, here people overlook their appearance and the color of their skin because they know their intention and the love they offer to society.
Reference
Ortega, A. N., Albert, S. L., Sharif, M. Z., Langellier, B. A., Garcia, R. E., Glik, D. C., … & Prelip, M. L. (2015). Proyecto MercadoFRESCO: a multi-level, community-engaged corner store intervention in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. Journal of community health, 40(2), 347-356.
Pineda, V. S., & Corburn, J. (2020). Disability, urban health equity, and the coronavirus pandemic: promoting cities for all. Journal of Urban Health, 97(3), 336-341.
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X20946416
Journal of Planning Education and Research 1 –11 © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0739456X20946416 journals.sagepub.com/home/jpe
Planning Research
Introduction
To define both the activity and normative object of planning, scholars and practitioners rely on well-defined typological traditions that conceptually organize the major historical themes of planning praxis. These include, for example, the rational comprehensive planning characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century, the advocacy, equity, and com- municative planning associated with progressivism and mainstream critical theory, and the Rawlsian/neo-contracta- rian-inspired Just City planning of the twenty-first century. Each of these “paradigms” engages in descriptive and
normative theorizing by challenging the predominance of an existing planning tradition and proposing its replacement by a new one. As Fainstein (2010) notes, this evolution within
946416 JPEXXX10.1177/0739456X20946416Journal of Planning Education and ResearchWilliams research-article2020
Initial submission, July 2019; revised submissions, April 2020; final acceptance, June 2020
1University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Corresponding Author: Rashad Akeem Williams, University of Minnesota, 301 19th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Email: [email protected]
From Racial to Reparative Planning: Confronting the White Side of Planning
Rashad Akeem Williams1
Abstract This paper advances a conceptual apparatus capable of accounting for planning’s entanglement with white supremacy and racial capitalism by developing a theory of racial planning. Racial planning, as the public production of racialized space, has been at the heart of the American planning tradition. It argues that racial planning occurs via three modes (public and private action and public inaction) and that it serves both the expropriative character of racial capitalism and the status hierarchy of white supremacy. The paper concludes with a normative call for the field to embrace reparations via a reparative planning.
Keywords planning theory, racial capitalism, racial planning, reparations, reparative planning, white supremacy
Abstract 摘要 本文通过发展种族规划理论,提出了一种能够解释规划与白人至上主义与种族资本主义纠纷的概念性工具。作为种 族化空间的公共产物,种族规划一直是美国规划传统的核心。 它认为种族规划是经由三种模式产生的(公共行为,个人行为以及公共无作为),并且它既服务于种族资本主义的 剥夺性质,又服务于白人至上主义的地位等级制。本文以规范性呼吁作为结束语,要求该领域通过修复性规划来接 受赔偿。
Keywords 规划理论; 种族资本主义; 种族规划赔偿; 赔偿规划 白人至上主义
Abstract Este estudio avanza un aparato conceptual capaz de explicar el entrelazamiento entre planificación, la supremacía blanca, y el capitalismo racial atreves del desarrollo de la teoría de la planificación racial. La planificación racial, siendo el producto público del espacio racializado, ha estado al centro de la tradición de planificación americana. La teoría argumenta que la planificación racial ocurre de tres modos (acción y inacción publica, y acción privada) y que sirve el carácter expropiatorio del capitalismo racial como el jerarquía de estado de supremacía blanca. El estudio concluye con una llamada normativa hacia la profesión para adoptar reparaciones mediante la planificación reparativa.
Keywords Reparaciones, teoría de planificación, historia de planificación, supremacía blanca, capitalismo racial
2 Journal of Planning Education and Research 00(0)
planning theory is attributable to the major epistemological and ontological shifts within social science and political theory—the move from positivism to post and antipositivism, orthodox Marxism to neo-Marxism and post-structuralism, and from liberal (atomistic) individualism toward a social ontology of causally efficacious social groups. The socio- ontological shift, in particular, has proven most influential, driving scholars of the mainstream critical and postmodern persuasions to consider the roles of class (Foglesong 2014; Harvey 1973), gender (Spain 2001), and race (Thomas and Ritzdorf 1997) in the project of equitable urban governance. But what has been consistently absent, some might say avoided, is a critical, metatheoretical reflection of the state as a site of racial subjection and white supremacy.
This is not surprising given the theorists from which plan- ning scholars typically draw intellectual inspiration. These theorists, in the main, include the likes of Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, and John Rawls, all of whom had very little to say about race and how it fundamentally shaped the life- worlds within which they lived and the very objects of their study—the state, justice, democracy, and power (see Mills 2008; R. J. C. Young 1995). The outcome of this is that plan- ning theory has developed in an insular theoretical universe, wholly detached from epistemic considerations of racial capi- talism (Robinson 1983), the racial state (Fredrickson 1982; Goldberg 2002), the racial polity, and racial liberalism (Mills 1997, 2008). Consequently, racial planning, the most histori- cally dominant planning tradition, has remained unacknowl- edged and untheorized, leaving its effects to be communicated as a series of nearly discrete and anomalous planning events.
Extending Yiftachel’s (1998) definition of planning simpliciter—“the public production of space” or “the for- mulation, content, and implementation of spatial public policies”—I argue that racial planning, a heretofore unac- knowledged planning tradition, involves the public produc- tion of racialized space. I say “unacknowledged” because though several planning scholars, particularly those of color, have long critiqued the “racial politics” of urban planning, as Robert Catlin (1993) once put it, their contri- butions have most commonly appeared within the areas of planning history, geography, housing, and/or urban studies and have, to our misfortune, yet to effect a fundamental reordering of planning theory, especially its normative con- tent (see Lowe and Shaw 2009; Thomas 2013; Woods 1998).1 That said, the theory of racial planning, importantly, does more than to shift our gaze, it does more than reveal that the “dark side of planning” so censured by planning theorists is actually quite white—it begets the construction of an alternative planning tradition rooted in reparation; a rectificatory justice procedure long suffering marginal con- signment not only in urban planning, but in the public pol- icy proper altogether. The elaboration of racial planning thus should be viewed as part of a dialectical process—the beginnings of a normative reorientation of the field toward a reparative planning.
The Critical Approach to Planning
Planning is variously understood across a spectrum of theo- retical and political persuasions, but the dominant perspec- tive holds that it is a progressive enterprise. The familiar tale of U.S. planning history features the emergence of a so- called radically egalitarian profession determined to check the unbridled expanses of capitalism and its consequent industrial city (Foglesong 2014; Hall 1988). It is told that the profession’s pioneers—the Fredrick Law Olmsteds, Ebenezer Howards, and Daniel Burhams of the world—utilized ratio- nality and aesthetic sensibility to advance notions of the “good” city (Fainstein 2009). Other accounts of the profes- sion’s origins, pre-histories they may be called, take a more elongated approach, detailing planning’s form and mission in the early decades of the United States. Here, the inchoate planning profession, profoundly shaped by an anti-aristo- cratic revolutionary zeitgeist, is argued to have taken shape as a decentralized and democratic process—a pluralistic “urban conversation” (Fishman 2000). On this account, the “American planning tradition” is understood as the demo- cratic pursuit of the public interest, or, as Fishman would have it, “collective action for the common good.”
Despite temporal and methodological differences of emphasis in the field’s stories of origin—be they the rational- ism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries or the alleged participatory bend of the preceding era—the “com- mon good” narrative remains. As Yiftachel (1998) discov- ered in his pathbreaking article on the Dark Side of Planning, scholars have seen fit to explain the origins of the field through the sanitizing language of equity, efficiency, and rationality. A discourse of equity has focused on the tenacity of civic-minded, anarchistic, or radical social utopians; a dis- course of efficiency has argued that planning emerged to counterbalance capitalism’s tendency toward self-liquida- tion; and a discourse of rationality has maintained that plan- ning emerged as the socially recognized best way to manage “public decision-making about spatial, environmental and urban change” (Yiftachel 1998, 397).
That such rose-colored interpretations were subject to the attack of critical scholars in the 1970s should come as no surprise to anyone aware of the grimly disparate outcomes mining the field’s history. The problem was a narrow (and retroactively historicized) focus on the ideal as opposed to the actual. Hence, Sandercock’s (2004, 134) observation,
When researchers examine [planning] practices (rather than the espoused ideal of objectivity), what they have discovered, decade after decade since at least the 1950s, is that planning practices have always been deeply interested rather than disinterested, deeply implicated in politics and in communicative acts.
Correspondingly, the first wave of critically revisionist plan- ning theory explored planning as an activity dominated by the class interests of the elite (Yiftachel 1998, 4). It is from
Williams 3
this epistemic consideration that Marcuse (1978) challenged planning theory’s underlying “myth of the benevolent state,” that Castells (1978) critiqued the interplay of City, Class, and Power, and that Harvey (1973) sought Social Justice and the City. Following and often directly competing with these analyses were other critically revisionist interpretations—the progeny of the cultural and argumentative “turns” in the Left academe (see Connolly and Steil 2009).
Within the field of planning theory, theoretical treatments approximating what I here term racial planning are much more recent developments. Steil (2018) and Yiftachel (1998) offer two of the closest examinations. Steil persuasively argues that planners must shift from an anticlassification perspec- tive—that is, one that condemns all decisions made with dis- criminatory intent—to an antisubordination perspective that acknowledges the need for conscious policies aimed at pre- venting the exacerbation of, if not eradicating, durable inequal- ities. In doing so, Steil provides a powerful response to what has been dubbed “colorblind racism”—a now mature strategy that is perhaps best characterized by Chief Justice Roberts ill- founded tautological judgment that “The way to stop discrimi- nation on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (551 U.S., at 748, 127 S. Ct. 2738). Hence, Steil’s use of a quote from the dissenting Justice Sotomayor toward the end of his article: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.” While the gener- ality of Steil’s enterpr
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