Reimagining Urban Planning is a monthly series of public webinars that focuses on the edge of innovation in urban planning and policy. Traditionally Urban Planning has had a long legacy of harming communities of color, developing and implementing racist policies, and destruction of the built environment. This series openly critiques this current iteration of urban planning in the hopes of proposing new theories, strategies, and concepts that help us arrive at an iteration of the field where we all belong. We are interested in helping foster meaningful conversations among urban planners hungry for more and to engage with new audiences that have always been curious about urban planning but may not know what exactly do urban planners do.
Watch recordings of the webinar series below! Scroll down to see all the installments of the series and click the headings to reveal more information.
- State of The Practice — April 4, 2024
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To kick off the webinar series, we invited speakers to a symposium to discuss the current iteration of the Urban Planning field. Presenters were asked to name the pitfalls of the current iteration of the field, identify frameworks or practices that have been successful in achieving more equitable community-led planning processes, and share hopes/forecasts for a more equitable iteration of the planning field.
This installment of the webinar series brought together:
- Dr. Kafui Attoh is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and an affiliated faculty member of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California’s East Bay (University of Georgia Press 2019) as well as Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City (co-authored with Katie Wells and Declan Cullen -Princeton University Press 2023). His broad interests are in the political economy of cities, the politics of public space and debates in and around the idea of the “right to the city.”
- Veronica O. Davis is the Director of Cities Program for AtkinsRéalis. She is an Entrepreneur and Civil Engineer, co-founding Nspiregreen, LLC., which manages Community, Multimodal Transportation, and Environmental planning and consulting. While at Nspiregreen, she led the Vision Zero Action Plans for Washington, DC and the City of Alexandria. She co-founded Black Women Bike, an organization and movement which builds a community and interest in biking among black women through education, advocacy and recreation. Veronica was recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2012 for her professional accomplishments and advocacy. Jose
- Richard Aviles (moderator) is a Transportation Analyst for the Othering and Belonging Institute. As part of the Community Power and Policy Partnerships team, they support government agencies and partners with community organizations by providing trainings, technical assistance, and evaluation support centering lived experience, vision, and self-determination of the communities most impacted by transit inequities. Aviles draws inspiration from their involvement with the Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles and participation in other social justice movements like marriage equality.
- Arts and Cultural Strategies — May 2, 2024
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Even though Urban Planning has been a field of study predominantly informed by public policy, economics, design, and public administration – just to name a few – our relationship to the built environment exceeds to the fields mentioned above. This webinar seeks to highlight the ways in which Arts and Cultural Strategy can help reimagine the ways in which we relate to the built environment and carry out projects intended to benefit communities that have been historically harmed by the built environment?
This installment of the webinar series brought together:
- Marian Liou is a founder, community advocate, and attorney who specializes in affirming diverse communities through arts and culture and community engagement. She works with community members and community-based organizations, artists, arts & culture organizations, advocacy groups, planners, and other partners to nurture and sustain communities that are inclusive, just, and whole. As the founder and executive director of We Love BuHi, Marian established efforts to preserve and strengthen the multicultural Buford Highway community in metro Atlanta through storytelling, creative place-keeping, and design. She also she led the arts and culture and creative placemaking program at the Atlanta Regional Commission, metro Atlanta’s regional planning agency and MPO.
- Evan Bissell (he/him, white) facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. With groups around the country, he has supported the development of curriculum, public art, laws, books, and convenings that build imagination, power and capacity around the just transition, anti-prison and police efforts, housing justice, and health equity, among others. Most recently Evan created the Arts & Cultural Strategy program at the Othering & Belonging Institute and helped found Richmond LAND, the first community land trust in Contra Costa county. He holds a master’s in Public Health and City Planning from UC Berkeley and a BA in Painting and Ethnic Studies from Wesleyan University.
- Rosten Woo is a designer, writer, and educator living in Los Angeles (LA). He produces civic-scale artworks and works as a collaborator and consultant to a variety of grassroots and non-profit organizations, including the Little Tokyo Service Center, the LA Poverty Department, the Black Workers Center, LA Alliance for a New Economy, as well as the city of LA and LA County. His work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Netherlands Architectural Institute, the Exploratorium, and various venues. He is co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), winner of a National Design Award. His book, "Street Value," about race, design, and urban retail development, was published by Princeton Architectural Press.
- Jose Richard Aviles (moderator) is a Transportation Analyst for the Othering and Belonging Institute. As part of the Community Power and Policy Partnerships team, they support government agencies and partners with community organizations by providing trainings, technical assistance, and evaluation support centering lived experience, vision, and self-determination of the communities most impacted by transit inequities. Aviles draws inspiration from their involvement with the Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles and participation in other social justice movements like marriage equality.
- Embodiment — June 13, 2024
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Somatics, defined as a movement study that focuses on the experience of being in one’s “body,” has much to offer people as a form of building body intelligence, but what can it offer to Urban Planning? In what ways can embodiment help us better understand our internal experiences as bodies but in turn also build our relationship with the built environment?
This installment of the webinar series brought together:
- Tanniqua-Kay Buchanan, MUPP (She/Her) is a Dancer, Choreographer, and Urban Planner. She received her Bachelor of Science in Theater with a Dance focus and minor in Community Planning from Kansas State University, and her Masters in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago, with a concentration in spatial planning. Currently, She is an independent dance artist, choreographer, and breathwork facilitator, and works for the City and County of Denver’s Community Active Living Coalition in the OCBE Division as the Community Streets Program Administrator. Her professional mission is to continue to serve as a change agent and use an intersectional approach to place-making and placekeeping that strengthens communities and bridges cultural gaps.
- Marina Magalhães is a border-crosser, bridge-builder, and dance-maker from Brazil currently living on unceded Ohlone land (Santa Cruz, CA). Known for her uniquely moving performances and radically inclusive workshops, Magalhães invites movers of all kinds to find the connection between movement-making in the body and movement-building in our communities. As a community-rooted teacher and cultural organizer, she is known for spearheading pedagogic initiatives that uplift racial and healing justice. In 2023, she joined the UC Santa Cruz Department of Performance, Play & Design as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Dance. She identifies as an academic-interventionist and is committed to centering Afro-Latin and non-Western dance forms within the university dance curriculum.
- Jose Richard Aviles (moderator) is a Transportation Analyst for the Othering and Belonging Institute. As part of the Community Power and Policy Partnerships team, they support government agencies and partners with community organizations by providing trainings, technical assistance, and evaluation support centering lived experience, vision, and self-determination of the communities most impacted by transit inequities. Aviles draws inspiration from their involvement with the Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles and participation in other social justice movements like marriage equality.
- Advocacy In Urban Planning — July 11, 2024
- Urban Planning and its Relationship to Land — August 8, 2024
