Core Values of Planning Flashcards
Equity
Equity is about “being fair or impartial”, which might mean improving the equitable distribution of funding, or ensuring equal access to public resources like parks, or making invesetments so that needs are met in an equitable way. Addressing equity also requires that planners understand how discurimination has created inequities historically.
Diversity
is about “valuing and including different perspectives”. Factoring in varying values and preferences in addition to considering race, income, culture, and ability, is difficult, but the goal should be to reflect multiple values and preferences where possible.
Inclusion
about “allowing people to participate in the process…. truly listening, understanding that every choice counts and incorporating a robust, open and diverse community process”
Planning for Diversity Suggests the Following:
1) Expand economic opportunities by supporting critical micro-entrepreneurship business models such as street vending, food trucks, home-based businesses and day labor opportunities.
2)Activate mobility by addressing significant issues such as transportation costs and affordability, the frequency and coverage of public transportation systems, and the impact of these transportation systems on public health
3) offer housing options through policies like allowing accessory dwelling units, promoting incremental housing, requiring inclusionary housing, and establishing housing trust funds, community land trusts, and cohousing opportunities.
4) Enhance placemaking through informal fixed or place-based practices (e.g. walls, interstitial spaces, vacant lots, parks), temporary or mobile practices (e.g. street or public performers, arts and crafts vendors), and formal placemaking practices (e.g. built community spaces, public events, and ongoing public projects and activities.
Cultural Competency
Planners should continually work to increase their cultural competency. Cultural competency is the ability to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. It means inserting policies and procedures that integrate cultural competency into each core function of an organization, such as hiring a diverse workforce, providing fiscal support and incentives for cultural competency, and practicing community engagement that results in the reciprocal transfer of knowledge among participants.
Social Justice
Housing is a key area where planners can advance social justice. Policies include providing affordable, multifamily housing options in high-opportunity areas, and protecting existing affordable housing.
Sustainability
Another “core value” of planning, along with associated concepts of resiliency and health and prosperous communities. APA has been especially interested in defining what sustainability means in the context of comprehensive planning.
Environmental Justice
About many different things, but most importantly it is about redressing environmental racism, which is the sad fact that race influences the location of hazardous waste, highways and other noxious land uses. The goal of environmental justice is to redress this inequity and work to improve the environmental conditions of poor communities and communities of color. One example of how this is implemented through policy is California’s SB 1000, which requires that cities consider environmental justice in their planning process.
An “Environmental Justice” plan might call for:
- an overhaul of zoning, not allow auto services, manufacturing centers and warehouses to be mixed with residential neighborhoods.
- prioritize more compact, mixed-use development to foster affordable housing and connect with public transit;
- cleanup contaminated brownfield sites;
- direct the city to distribute parks more evenly though neighborhoods;
- direct officials to avoid siting new “sensistive land uses”, like schools and parks, within 500 feet of the centerline of a freeway - unless such a development “contributes to smart growth, open space, or transit oriented goals
