Planning as if People Matter: Governing for Social Equity

By Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez

American communities are changing fast: ethnic minority populations are growing, home ownership is falling, the number of people per household is going up, and salaries are going down. According to Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez, the planning field is largely unprepared for these fundamental shifts. If planners are going to adequately serve residents of diverse ages, races, and income levels, they need to address basic issues of equity. Planning as if People Matter offers practical solutions to make our communities more livable and more equitable for all residents.

While there are many books on environmental justice, relatively few go beyond theory to give real-world examples of how better planning can level inequities. In contrast, Planning as if People Matter is written expressly for planning practitioners, public administrators, policy-makers, activists, and students who must directly confront these challenges. It provides new insights about familiar topics such as stakeholder participation and civil rights. And it addresses emerging issues, including disaster response, new technologies, and equity metrics. Far from an academic treatment, Planning as if People Matter is rooted in hard data, on-the-ground experience, and current policy analysis.

In this tumultuous period of economic change, there has never been a better time to reform the planning process. Brenman and Sanchez point the way toward a more just social landscape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Aug 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781610912334

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About Island Press

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PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

MARC BRENMAN and THOMAS W. SANCHEZ

Metropolitan Planning + Design

Series editors: Arthur C. Nelson and Reid Ewing

A collaboration between Island Press and the University of Utah’s Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, this series provides a set of tools for students and professionals working to make our cities and metropolitan areas more sustainable, livable, prosperous, resilient, and equitable. As the world’s population grows to nine billion by mid-century, the population of the US will rise to one-half billion. Along the way, the physical landscape will be transformed. Indeed, two-thirds of the built environment in the US at mid-century will be constructed between now and then, presenting a monumental opportunity to reshape the places we live. The Metropolitan Planning + Design series presents an integrated approach to addressing this challenge, involving the fields of planning, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, public policy, environmental studies, geography, and civil and environmental engineering. The series draws from the expertise of some of the world’s leading scholars in the field of metropolitan planning and design. Please see Islandpress.org/Utah/ for more information.

Other books in the series:

The TDR Handbook, Arthur C. Nelson, Rick Pruetz, and Doug Woodruff (2011)

Stewardship of the Built Environment, Robert Young (2012)

Forthcoming:

Reshaping Metropolitan America, Arthur C. Nelson

Good Urbanism, Nan Ellin

MARC BRENMAN and THOMAS W. SANCHEZ

PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

Governing for Social Equity

© 2012 Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brenman, Marc.

Planning as if people matter : governing for social equity / Marc Brenman and Thomas W. Sanchez.

      p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61091-233-4 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-61091-011-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-61091-011-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61091-012-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-61091-012-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Political planning—United States. 2. Social planning—United States. 3. Equality—Government policy—United States. 4. Social justice—Government policy—United States. I. Sanchez, Thomas W. II. Title.

JK468.P64B736 2012

320.60973—dc23

2011051594

Printed using Berkeley Oldstyle

Typesetting by Blue Heron Typesetting

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Keywords: American Community Survey, citizen participation, civil justice, code of ethics, corporate diversity, diversity, e-democracy, e-government, environmental justice, housing, human rights, information and Communication Technology (ICT), land use planning, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), participatory planning, poverty, public health, public interest design and planning, resilience, segregation, social alliances, social capital, social equity, social responsibility, unemployment, U.S. Census

Marc Brenman dedicates this book to his wife of twenty-eight years, Barbara Bither.

Tom Sanchez dedicates this book to his parents, Ralph and Patricia Sanchez, who have been a constant source of love and support, and also to Nora and Erin, his pride and joy.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

1    GOVERNANCE AND EQUITY: PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

2    CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

3    ETHICS IN THE PUBLIC REALM: THE ROLE OF THE PLANNER

4    DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

5    PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT AND PARTICIPATION

6    TECHNOLOGY FOR SOCIAL EQUITY

7    SOCIAL EQUITY INTERVENTIONS

8    CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Notes

References

Index

PREFACE

As this book goes to print, the public participation and policy world continues to change around us. Few were prepared for the obstructionism of the Tea Party and others who want to destroy the social safety net; the Arab Spring, which has toppled some established dictatorships in the Middle East and is struggling to create local forms of governance; or the Occupy Wall Street movement, which may be a flash in the pan or a precursor to broader change like the early anti–Vietnam War demonstrations.

We are pulled in many different directions: global climate change has social equity implications; the rise of the People’s Republic of China is knocking the United States off its pedestal and calling into question the City on a Hill paradigm that has dominated the history of the Global North since World War II; economic constraints and decline in the United States cause us to question what we can pay for without asking what needs doing; the first African-American president buoyed our spirits and has dashed our hopes; US politics and infrastructure appear to be in a shambles.

Planners and other public administrators are beset with ethical problems in a declining job market. Will new graduates ever be able to get work? Will established workers be able to keep their jobs? Who dares to tell the truth about what they see? Who dares to probe for the truth without presuppositions?

In a period when information both yearns to be free and is worth what we pay for it, who can be trusted? What is the veracity of anything on an Internet fueled by advertising, pornography, and gambling, and spied on in the name of data mining and national security? Computing technologies make analysis of data quicker, but quality of life declines, unless measured in the availability of large flat-screen televisions and smart telephones. Is that our fate, like in some science fiction movie, where everything is image and there is no privacy?

In this book, we have tried to provide some perspectives that we hope have value beyond passing fancies, and that are rooted in the human experience. The richest among us can fend for themselves. They always have. Those with the least deserve our attention. We recommend that planners and public administrators critically examine the process of governance, and this book is our effort to highlight some of the pressing issues.

We are not levelers; we enjoy many of the benefits of the good life. But we have an obligation to serve, to go beyond doing no harm to actively doing good. We believe that the planning and governance professions have within them the seeds of such an effort. What will make those seeds grow? We hope that this book will provide some of the right tools.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Marc Brenman acknowledges the education and advice provided by a wide range of civil rights advocates and experts. These include Richard Foster, Robert Garcia, Paul Grossman, Elizabeth Keenan, Seth Kirby, Richard Marcantonio, Toby Olson, and Stephanie Ortoleva.

Tom Sanchez acknowledges Daren Brabham, Jacob Parcell, and Aaron Smith Walter for their very helpful comments.

Both Marc and Tom acknowledge the unfailing support and wise advice of Heather Boyer of Island Press.

1

GOVERNANCE AND EQUITY: PLANNING AS IF PEOPLE MATTER

Very little has been written that spans governance, planning, and social equity. As practitioners and teachers in the fields of social justice and public administration, we want to help fill this gap. Great needs continue to exist. Poverty statistics from the 2010 Census show that real median household income declined between 2009 and 2010, and the poverty rate increased between 2009 and 2010. Over 23% of the population experienced a poverty spell lasting two or more months during 2009, and 7.3% of the population were in poverty every month in 2009 (Short 2011). It has been noted that the United States has now created a larger gap in the distribution of wealth than that in the Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s. Today the top 0.001% of the US population owns 976 times more than the entire bottom 90% (Winter 2010). Many people are angry about the increasing disparity, as shown by the Tea Party movement, the Occupation of Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and the demonstrations against Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Government regulates infrastructure systems that keep cities economically vibrant, clean, safe, and livable, and it must ensure that systems and services are available to citizens evenly—otherwise social inequality will result. Planners and public administrators fall between elected officials and the people, because they oversee the placement and use of public capital facilities and systems such as streets, sidewalks, and bridges; open space; drinking water and sewage treatment facilities; stormwater systems; and municipal buildings and services such as police and fire. Uneven infrastructure delivery, especially in health and transportation, led to the concept of environmental justice. As defined by the EPA, environmental justice (EJ) is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. A 1978 study by Dr. Robert Bullard of the history and pattern of waste facility siting in Houston on an African-American community’s class action lawsuit (Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Inc.) to block the siting of a sanitary landfill, marked a growing awareness that health and environmental hazards like toxic dumps were disproportionately sited in communities of color and low-income people (Bullard 1999). In fact, in 1983 the Government Accountability Office reported that three of four hazardous waste facilities in the southeastern United States were in African-American communities. In 1987 the United Church of Christ, under the leadership of Dr. Charles Lee, published the groundbreaking study Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. The new environmental justice movement joined the rising concern for environmental degradation with civil rights concerns to respond to environmental racism, link grassroots struggles, and make agencies aware of environmental justice concerns. Over five hundred organizations participated when the UCC’s Commission for Racial Justice convened the first People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991, resulting in a set of guiding principles for the EJ movement. By the time President Clinton issued his Executive Order on Environmental Justice in 1994, EJ came to encompass fairness in the distribution of both the benefits and the burdens of public decision making, and provided a new lens for structural inequality.

In the executive order, planners are charged with overseeing the connection of their work to nondiscrimination. Similarly, the National Environmental Policy Act requires a series of analyses before projects can be built with federal funds. These analyses include one on socioeconomic impacts. Socioeconomic status (SES) is the sum of a person’s circumstance or context in society, which may be expressed or measured using criteria such as income, educational level attained, occupation, health, and value of dwelling place. A good definition of planning is hard to find. The American Planning Association definition states that planning is a dynamic profession that works to improve the welfare of people and their communities by creating more convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient, and attractive places for present and future generations (American Planning Association 2012). It involves design and physical and social arrangements, the built environment, and uses of a given area and set of relationships. It involves consideration of infrastructure, needs, and resources. Planners work toward the deliberate improvement of the spatial organization and design of human settlement and human movement. It does necessitate working for a future that is better than the present, rather than maintaining the present conditions into the future. Planners engage with the human experience, as well as the material reality, of constructed space.

While aiming for social justice is aspirational, it is not possible to do justice in the abstract—real people are affected. Thus planning has the advantage of being a direct linkage to the public. Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and Code Pink, has said that social justice means moving toward a society where all the hungry are fed, all the sick are cared for, the environment is treasured, and we treat one another with love and compassion. These are not easy goals (quoted in Kikuchi no date).

Social equity is an aspect of environmental justice but it goes well beyond environmental issues. It has been defined as the fair, just, and equitable management of all institutions serving the public directly or by contract, and the fair and equitable distribution of public services, and implementation of public policy, and the commitment to promote fairness, justice, and equity in the formation of public policy (National Academy of Public Administration no date).

Today social equity not only is a problem of conscious public policy, but can also be seen as a failure of governance processes administered by the leaders of our implementing institutions. Individuals, institutions, and governments make decisions every day, consciously and unconsciously. Lack of action often constitutes a decision. The social relationships among groups of people are an important aspect of the infrastructure of cities. City decline begins with the erosion of social capital, justice, and delivery of basic social and public goods. The Kerner Commission, which was created in response to the race riots of the 1960s, called for, among other things, a national fair housing law, and found that the United States was becoming two nations—one black, one white—separate and unequal (US National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968). The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the formal name of the Kerner Commission) issued a report in March 1968 that painted a stark picture of American society dividing into two worlds. The commission placed much of the blame for the riots on conditions in African-American ghettos, neighborhoods separated not by law but by practice (US National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968).

There are numerous governance successes, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Such successes fill needs, usually as identified by those who have suffered inequality. Our focus is more on where there are continuing or neglected needs. One way of identifying these needs is to have metrics to determine what equality and fairness look like, and to provide a comparison. We provide a number of metrics in this book. Several are required due to the complexity of the issues, in the same way that numerous tests are needed in the medical community to determine the health of humans. We look at metrics for issues such as income equality, poverty, literacy, access to health care, education, proportion of citizens incarcerated, quality/availability/affordability of housing, and homelessness. Planning for social equity requires such yardsticks and a firm concept of human rights. To have legitimacy, a government must protect and preserve human rights.

Thus one of our major thrusts in this book is for an effective governing process. Effectiveness is the extent to which the objective of a project, plan, or initiative is achieved, or is expected to be achieved, taking into account their relative importance, the magnitude of the challenge, and the resources and time devoted to it.

We recognize that even in a democratic society, the Civil Rights Movement and other movements to increase the rights of constituent and discriminated-against groups have sometimes had to bend or even break restrictive, unethical, and immoral laws. However, in this book one of our basic assumptions is that effective and positive change can be accomplished without breaking laws. Sometimes laws have to be tested and changed, and those who administer them have to be creative. For laws to have force and effect, they must be created with all the people in mind, and enforced by duly constituted official governmental bodies. Otherwise, they are hortatory, or just full of positive feelings. Not all enforcement is of equal value and effectiveness. Sometimes there are laws that do not deserve to be enforced, such as the Jim Crow laws that grossly disadvantaged African-Americans in the southern and border states from the 1880s to the 1960s. The Jim Crow laws, such as segregation in day-to-day activities like education, eating, and riding public transportation, perpetuated the forced inferior status of African-Americans that grew out of slavery.

The planning, legal, and judicial systems should be independent of the government, so that it can serve the interests of its citizens rather than a particular political party. In this way the civil rights of its citizens are protected against a predatory and even a nominally beneficial executive structure (Abdellatif 2003).

We believe in a strong civil society. The concept of civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors, and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy, and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, nongovernmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based organizations,