06 Create, Protect & Reclaim Public Space Through Liberatory Planning & Policy

Design Justice demands a genuinely accessible public realm, free from embedded oppression co-created by Black, Brown, Indigenous & Asian communities through democratic and transparent planning processes and policies.

Current policy-making and planning processes that influence the development of the built environment carry the legacy of violently-enforced apartheid and disenfranchisement of Black, Brown, Indigenous & Asian communities. These processes have resulted in a regulatory landscape that favors and incentivizes the privatization of public space and the commercialization of civic infrastructure as a means of policing the commons. 

As a result, places of congregation and communal life, so vital to Black, Brown, Indigenous & Asian cultural resilience, are often destroyed or under-resourced. Ultimately, these communities are systematically denied access to a public realm that could promote collective well-being and facilitate participatory self-governance and civic dialogue. The mechanisms for influencing this system are opaque and burdensome to navigate without expertise. Even if community engagement strategies are required in the development process, they are often employed as a means of manipulating Black, Brown, Indigenous & Asian stakeholders into acquiescing to extractive projects that disproportionately harm communities of color and culture. 

This must change, and members of the design and planning professions are uniquely positioned to act as community interpreters who can help make current processes more transparent. But we must move beyond that.