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Some people might not realize that the field of planning and landscape architecture encompasses much more than designing public spaces.  In fact, it frequently interfaces with big-picture issues of access, equity and justice. In the 1990s, an urban planner named Susan Fainstein coined the idea of the “just city,” the notion that democracy and diversity need to drive the planning process to ensure fairness and access for all.

Edna Ledesma and Revel Sims, two assistant professors in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, conduct research around this concept. Ledesma has worked on social justice issues in cities along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Sims has studied the ways in which property owners use evictions to gentrify neighborhoods. They recently sat down to share their thoughts.

As planners and designers, what does the concept of the “just city” mean to you?

Edna Ledesma: I fundamentally believe that you can address justice through the process of designing cities, neighborhoods and public spaces. We should question the goals and implications of policies we set. We have to think about who has a voice in the decision-making process. It's about democracy, and who has access to amenities like public spaces, resources and fair housing.  

Revel Sims: My understanding of the “just city” comes out of scholarship and community-based work in the 1970s, when people were looking at the causes of the urban crisis. It’s what [new urbanist Richard] Foglesong called the “property contradiction,” the idea that land is owned mostly by individuals or entities that behave individualistically.  When there's a conflict between the interests of individual land use versus the larger community needs, sometimes it unfolds in crisis.

Edna Ledesma

What does that look like?

EL: I worked on a community engaged project with Brownsville, Texas, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border. I was at the University of Texas, and we came in with a group of planning and design students to serve as consultants and mediators between the county, who centrally controlled an easement they wanted to convert into a toll road. But the community wanted it to be a hike-and-bike pathway. After a series of charettes, the community was able to come to an agreement and secure federal funding for a bi-national bikeway.

RS: I'm from Los Angeles, and seeing the neighborhood where I grew up in change was the reason I got into planning. However, one thing that I’ve learned since then is that we tend to focus on neighborhood change because we live in and identify with neighborhoods. But when these places change, they aren't islands. They're nested within larger urban scale changes and it’s helpful to see changes at the local level along with their relationships to larger scale dynamics.

What does that look like in practice?

EL: I think one of the things that isn’t expressed enough is the length and the process it takes to enact change. In Brownsville, the community fought for 10 years. You need a lot of political will. You need resources. People can get tired. They can get disinvested and they'll stop fighting.

It seems like there’s a natural tie here to the work you’re doing with the impact of evictions on neighborhoods, Revel.

RS: When I first started looking at evictions, only activist lawyers were really studying it. It's so interesting to me, because the fact that evictions were essentially “hidden” brings up all these problems with expertise in academia. We're focused on our own areas of interest. And oftentimes, we miss important things that were going on for a long time.

When I came to Madison, I connected with a local organization that had been tracking eviction records as part of their work. I organized a class where students got in and really made data about the number of evictions that were occurring usable for the first time. The report that we ended up publishing documented that non-white people were being displaced through the eviction process—something the organization understood but was not able to empirically represent.

Revel Sims

Does addressing these issues ever feel overwhelming?

EL: I think it's incredibly difficult because planning is supposed to be holistic. So even though Revel might be looking at a community that’s focusing on an aspect of housing security, I can guarantee that community is also facing environmental issues, just as they might be facing an issue related to food access.

RS: But people typically aren't aware of the planning processes that create and enforce these situations until they're adults.  For example, I often come across undergrad students in my classes that have never heard of planning.  Unless you grew up in an environment where you had the privilege and opportunity to interact around planning issues, you are often unaware of them.

EL: If we’re going to be equitable with whom we engage, we must remove the veil of technicality. For example, Los Angeles County developed a Spanish language glossary for planning terms, and they're the first ones in the nation to do this. It's incredible—many times families are approached by city officials who knock on their doors, saying here's your notice of code violations. And the families have no idea how to interpret the technicalities.

RS: There’s a long tradition in planning that argues that justice can be achieved by really humanizing the urban process.  We have to make sure that our cities function well. But we also have to ask, who are they functioning for?

EL: I think the biggest message to the non-planner is to get involved in the planning process. Everybody should be invested in their community. Everybody should be aware of the inequities that are happening within their city and recognize that if you have a voice, you have power.