“It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.”

- Carl T. Rowan 

When we look at professions that reinforce social convention or contribute to social change, planning is particularly powerful field of practice. Recently, I have done some research into planning as a force of oppression/discrimination and I was amazed exactly how much power the profession has to contribute to these forces. Planning is seemingly innocuous in many ways, but a deeper examination reveals that it is in fact a major driving force in the way that we carry out our lives. What lies at the center of this issue is a need to evaluate whether planners are cognizant of the true implications of their work. Equally important is the need to conduct an assessment of the educational and professional tools that enable them to understand how their actions play out across various sectors of society.

Planners can become vehicles for oppressive/discriminatory practices in an almost endless number of ways. Across the spectrum, planners maintain a certain nexus of control in so many aspects of the built environment that it is impossible to avoid acknowledging their influence. Planners help decide what areas receive development incentives, provide insight as to where unwanted infrastructure is sited (think landfills or sewage treatment plants), influence transportation routes, etc. Planners have the ability to provide perks to some groups within society while dumping other more negative elements on other groups. Ultimately planners become responsible for the physical segregations that pervade society.

That’s not to say that planners in and of themselves are responsible for blatant attempts to discriminate against certain populations, but rather the ability to use planners as a force through which certain predispositions or prejudices are perpetuated is high. The most common conception of planners is that of the neutral technician that works to bring to light the facts and to provide decision makers with information necessary to make decisions about how communities develop. In reality however, planners are often given a rather broad license to allow personal stance to influence their decisions and work products. There is a beyond a remote possibility that a particular group may be favored should the planner be left entirely to their own desires and political forces.

Planners are often compelled by larger societal forces to maintain the status quo. There is little room to present ideas that move outside of societal norms. It is through these constraints that discrimination becomes inherent. Examples include sticking to auto-centric visions of cities that provide better living opportunities to suburban residents, while continuing cycles of urban abandonment and decay. Additionally planners are encouraged to devise zoning schemes which can be viewed as exclusionary of lower-income residents or non-landowners. Planners are forced to work within systems of public input which play into standing concepts of power and status, often to the detriment of minority groups. Within the political system in which planners are contained, there is little room for deviations from accepted norms.

While this depiction of the planning profession may seem particularly bleak, it is important to understand the relationship between planners and oppression. There will of course be some resistance to being labeled an agent of discrimination (as a planner myself, I would certainly like to avoid the label), but any honest discussion will acknowledge the potential for bias as a means of furthering the profession. Of particular importance are the education background and the professional associations that mold planners as they rise through the profession. Without a firm setting of guiding principles and without engaging imperative concepts such as critical race theory, planners will not be able to successfully balance the plethora of interests at play in any planning decision.

I bring this discussion up not as a criticism of the profession, but as a point of reference as planning theories continue to develop. It is important that planners transcend their role in the creation of the built environment through remaining ever vigilant of the social forces of their work. I have attempted to explore the concept further in a research article which includes some analysis of planning theory. This article also provides some more vivid examples of the concepts I can only vaguely alluded to here.

Download the research article here.