Planners for Equal Opportunity
Conference poster, 1968
This is my favorite quote and I think it's perfect for 2009. I'm pretty sure that city planners didn't come up with it. I believe (but I could be wrong) that it comes from psychology and counseling. Picture a counselor pointing out to their client that a moment of crisis provides one with that flash of insight that things aren't perfect. That knowledge is the key to meaningful change.
The crisis that planners were referring to in this 1968 poster was the urban renewal and suburbanization of America that left the least fortunate - mostly African Americans - isolated in the inner cities where their neighborhoods were being razed in favor of the national highway system and other massive architectural wonders, while white people, factories and businesses skipped town for greener suburban pastures. Planners had really screwed up.
The new wave of people-centric, bottom up, participatory, equity planners, Planners for Equal Opportunity, sought to right previous wrongs. And they did. My advisor at Cornell, Pierre Clavel, is in the process of chronicling this information and making it publicly available at the Progressive City and Neighborhood Planning Archive and the group Planners Network carries the POE vision forward.
In this upcoming year, we are facing global meltdown of the economy, a national housing crisis, continued global warming, and the fallout from one major investment scandal. Crisis! And this crisis presents us with crystal clear 20/20 hindsight on what wasn't and isn't working. We have Opportunity.
My wish for the New Year is that we take advantage of this opportunity and make extrordinarily good things happen in 2009.
Happy New Year!
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