Black Lives Matter.

From the Blog

Black Lives Matter
June 1, 2020

A Placemaker's Perspective from Wuhan
May 29, 2020 • an interview with Zheng Yue (郑玥) 

The Recovery Will Happen in Public Space
May 16, 2020 • by Phil Myrick

Communities in Nairobi Compete to Contribute to Public Space
May 1, 2020 • by Miki Takeshita
 

More Events & Opportunities

Webisode Series: Fresh Brew: Fundación Placemaking México, San Francisco Center for Architecture + Design, June 9

Missed our most recent webinar about equitable development in the recovery from COVID-19? Watch the video.
 

Our Thunderous Silence: "For nearly every injustice in the world, there is an architecture that has been planned and designed to perpetuate it," writes architect and design justice advocate Bryan Lee Jr. (CityLab). The design justice movement aims to reveal and reform the ways that architecture and urban design contribute to systemic racism, from designing buildings for the prison system to the creation and implementation of ideas like "defensible space" that channel suspicion toward Black bodies. In this article, Lee offers a list of how designers can work toward justice in alignment with the Movement for Black Lives.

Thankfully, white designers and placemakers who want to be allies in this fight do not need to reinvent the wheel. "Black communities are brilliant and powerful in the sense that another world is possible and despite everything the rest of us throw at them, they continue trying to build that world," writes Oscar Perry Abello. "It’s up to the rest of us to join them. It would be a better world for all of us, including them" (Next City). Abello offers countless examples of how Black-led organizations are already reinventing cities, from finance to real estate development to land ownership to managing vacant land. These are the inequitable systems that often underpin placemaking, so in order for placemaking to become truly equitable, we should join those who seek to remake them.

A People's Budget: While US state and local governments face major budget cuts—including public space investments—due to a pandemic-induced recession (CityLab), some protestors are demanding that cities "defund the police" (Fast Company). The idea is simple: To fight crime, municipalities should not only pursue reforms to the police department; they should also invest far less in law enforcement, and far more in programs and policies that help marginalized communities flourish.

Consider the municipal budget of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where George Floyd was killed. Out of a total of $1.6 billion, $193 million goes to the police department (about 14%), and this year the the City plans to hire and train 38 new cadets (Star Tribune). By contrast, the Park and Recreation Board, one of the most equitable in the country by one measure (ParkScore), receives less than half of that at $76 million. Meanwhile, affordable housing received only $31 million, violence prevention only $2.7 million, and curbing opioid abuse $400,000. 

A handful of cities, like Los Angeles, Nashville, and Grand Rapids are considering a more participatory budgeting process to help rebalance these priorities, but not nearly on the scale that advocates of a "people's budget" are calling for (CityLab).

The Geography of White Supremacy: This week, many research and media organizations dug into the ongoing geographically-concentrated inequalities that underpin the current round of Black Lives Matter protests. They reinforce that police violence is part of an extensive, entrenched system of racism in the United States, which has only been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As researchers from the Brookings Institution eloquently summed it up in a recent article, "The coronavirus does not discriminate, but our housing, economic, and health care policies do" (Brookings). This discrimination has a long history, rooted in government-sanctioned segregation and redlining (The Conversation), and as the COVID-19 lockdown transitions into recession and recovery, community land trusts are already preparing to combat a land grab in marginalized neighborhoods in the near future (Next City).

Placemaking Playbook: Finally, here's a roundup of 11 recent innovative placemaking projects making headlines:

1. A street near the White House renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza, along with an enormous street mural to match (NBC News)
2. A manifesto on how to create and protect places that recognize, affirm, and amplify Black agency, discourse, and thought (BlackSpace)
3. A guide to protesting safely during COVID-19 (Vice)
4. A roundup of cities enabling physically distant protests (Bloomberg)
5. Artist Jammie Holmes's airplane banners share George Floyd's final words (DesignBoom)
6. George Floyd murals across the world (Colossal)
7. The names of people killed by police written on Chicago Ave in Minneapolis, MN (National Georgaphic)
8. A lost pavilion designed for protests in New York's Union Square (Untapped Cities)
9. An open call for virtual floats for Pride Week in Toronto, ON (Canadian Architect)
10. A museum shut down by COVID-19 that became a temporary food pantry in Brooklyn, NY (TimeOut) 
11. Illustrations of COVID-19 public space redesigns (Leewardists)