Planners who Champion Equity

In this first article in the Planning for Equity series, we will look at how representative the planning profession is and why that matters. This article will be followed by articles about how the professional context impacts the diversity of the planning profession, and finally what the real life impacts of planning work are and whether those impacts are felt equitably across communities.

Social Equity is the principle that each member of society is given fair and equitable treatment, access to resources and opportunities, and full participation in the social and cultural life of a community. This may include equal treatment, treatment that is different or removing barriers, but which is considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations, and opportunities (definition from work done by the CIP Social Equity Committee).

Why Representation Matters

Representation is the idea that people who have been systematically excluded from a profession can see people like themselves in positions of power and success. In practice it means that emerging planners have access to educators, mentors, bosses, examiners, and colleagues whose lived experience is similar to their own. Representation is a virtuous cycle, because more representative professions are more likely to attract and retain people who are systematically excluded. For young queer, Indigenous, Black, disabled, poor, or otherwise marginalized folks, seeing someone like themselves as a Planner can inspire them to pursue the career, plus give them confidence that the career path is open with available supports for them, and provide ongoing supports during a career when a professional is faced with unprofessional workplaces and behaviours. When equity-seeking planners have visibly successful roles, it communicates that our profession is welcoming — both to people who want to be planners, but also to people within the communities where we work.

Another reason why representation matters is because different life experiences lead to different ways of knowing and interpreting the world. A planner who has experience in sex work, homelessness, living with a disability or chronic illness, moving through the world while racialized, or otherwise having to navigate a community to “find the others” will have a fundamentally different skillset and worldview compared to a planner who has not experienced the world that way. As a profession we need this, because the communities we work in and with are complex. And, the wicked problems we face are just adding to that complexity while exacerbating the underlying issues. We can’t hope to solve climate change, income inequality, housing crises, and other tough issues with the same, predictable perspectives and people that haven’t done much to solve them so far.

What do We Mean by Representation?

There are a few approaches on what representation looks like:

1. CONTROL FOR INPUTS: Match the composition of the sub-population with the broader population. This is the straight-forward statistical approach. So, if half the broader population is female, then if half of the planning profession is also be female we have an indicator of representation. By contrast, if 6% of the broader population is Indigenous, then there would be an underrepresentation of Indigenous professional planners if fewer than 6% identify as such. (Learn more about current Canadian urban planner composition and pay stats here).
   
   Typically this gets applied as “affirmative action” type policies, which very crudely involve hiring or appointment quotas, training programs, scholarships, etc. These policies can help give people who are typically underrepresented more access to opportunity (and access to “social mixing” for people from dominant backgrounds, which has its own issues). But controlling for inputs alone does not address systemic and historic forms of discrimination. You could say that controlling for inputs is a necessary, but not sufficient step to achieving professional equity.
2. CONTROL FOR OUTCOMES: Set the vision for what a representative organization achieves and then measure progress against that. The first option, controlling for inputs, focuses on who is in the room, and perhaps, who is at the decision-making table. By contrast, controlling for outcomes looks at what that group of people achieves. To explain, an organization might set goals, like: 1) attract professionals representative of the broader population, and 2) retain them throughout their careers. To measure those goals we might look at: 1a) who is underrepresented and why?; 1b) who is overrepresented and why?; 1c) what are the barriers to change?; 2a) who is leaving the career path early and why?; 2b) what pay and seniority gaps exist and why?; 2c) what kind of difference is there in who gets awards versus who does the volunteering?; 2d) what kinds of training, mentorship, professional requirements, and discipline are needed to support a more equitable profession?; and 2e) how does the profession show up in practice (i.e. in communities) that fundamentally challenge the basis of an equitable or representative planning profession?
   
   Those research questions would lead to measurable targets (desired outcomes) that the organization would head towards and measure its success against. This is a (multi) generational project that works towards breaking down systemic forms of discrimination. But it does not right historical wrongs. Like controlling for inputs, you could say that controlling for outcomes is necessary but not sufficient for achieving professional equity.
3. RIGHT HISTORICAL WRONGS: Look at what kinds of reparations are needed to correct historical advantages that have been passed down along generations. This model of representation doesn’t just look at the current levels of representation, but also historical levels. The following quote from US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sums the idea up: that nine female Supreme Court justices will be enough representation, because there have been nine men without question since its inception. One could take this idea further to say that nine women on the Court for 191 years would be enough, because that’s how long nine have men served for.

In planning praxis, this looks like reparations for slavery, redlining, internment, and colonial practices, because the forcible taking of land and human labour (and prohibition of certain folks from owning land or being paid for their labour) has resulted in generations of accumulated wealth at the expense of others. In the planning profession, it could mean looking at why the CIP Centenary 100 Planning Books list was comprised of 90 white male authors and only 4 racialized female authors. Or, it could mean looking at why CIP has had 55 male Presidents compared to 8 female Presidents, 101 male Fellows compared to 20 female Fellows. Or, why there is no data on racialized planners. Looking at history is an inoculation against complaints that we have gone “too far” in our representation and equity work (spoiler: we haven’t).

Common Pitfalls in Representation

The following are some representation pitfalls in addition to (and related to) the “necessary but not sufficient” ones identified above:

• Tokenism: Tokenism is the idea that representation alone is enough. The idea is based on a couple of false beliefs, such as: a) the token minority can speak on behalf of all other minorities; and b) having a token minority shows that your organization is diverse. Point a) is flawed for many reasons, including that people are so much more diverse than what a flattening label, like “Asian”, can depict. Another reason is that this person should have been hired for their skillset not identity. Any additional identity-based insights they bring are bonus, and they probably aren’t being paid for this (they are probably being paid less). Point b) is flawed, for two reasons — model minorities/white supremacy which we will get to below. In addition, your organization could be super toxic, but people put up with it because they need a job or are early in their career.
• White supremacy (and patriarchy): Representation and equity, at their core, are about power — who has power, who has access to powerful people, who abjectly does not have power, and what that power represents. The modern world has been shaped by colonial rulers to expressly give power to white men. This is clearly evident in who has been allowed to vote, own land/property, partake in certain professions, lead countries, etc. Civil rights movements have expanded voting rights, property rights, and human rights, but the fact remains that proximity to “whiteness” and “maleness” brings power. I say “whiteness” and “maleness”, because we are talking about people’s beliefs, words, and actions. Women can be willing footsoldiers of the patriarchy in the same way that racialized people can uphold white supremacy.
  
  In addition, there is a socially observable (but not actually biologically real) hierarchy away from “whiteness” and “maleness” to “Blackness” or “Indigenous-ness”, “femaleness” and “disability”. This is observable in terms of who is subject to the most state-sanctioned and socially acceptable violence. It is observable in that the the violence shows who has power and who doesn’t. It is not an observation about people’s inherent skills, abilities, or worth.
• The model minority dynamic: Representation and equity work needs to be aware of model minority dynamics. Going back to the white supremacist hierarchy of “whiteness”, someone participating in the model minority dynamic is not likely to be identified as white by white people, and is also not likely to self-identify Black or Indigenous. There might be positive stereotypes about the model minority, such as that they are good at math and work hard. The result of the positive stereotypes are better job opportunities, better pay, and generally more wealth and social standing. Functionally, the model minority dynamic turns into some racialized people aligning with whiteness to get access to power, wealth and social standing, in exchange for gatekeeping against Black and Indigenous people. This way the model minority does the dirty work for “whiteness”, and white-allied folks are given permission to not address the inequity (because it’s being perpetuated by racialized people).
• The “isn’t it racist/sexist to collect data?” question: Some folks who have done enough equity reading to use the words, but not enough to understand them, will say that it’s racist or sexist to reduce people down to an essential identity and just count numbers. In a lot of ways, as covered above under “Control for Inputs”, they are right. But, what this argument misses is power/agency and change. If people are self-identifying (agency) to the purpose of having a more equitable future and addressing an inequitable past (change), then (temporarily and voluntarily) collecting data to measure the current situation and progress is justifiable. Usually folks who use this argument don’t want to see change, because they benefit from the inequitable status quo.

Suggested Actions

So what does all of this mean for planners? I hope this article lays out ways that as planners we can foster a more representative and equitable planning profession while avoiding some common and serious pitfalls. Here are some concrete ideas:

• Advocate to Provincial and Territorial Institutes and Associations to measure and report out on the composition of their memberships. As planners we know that you need to measure where you are today so you know how far you need to go. So, having a better understanding of the composition of the entire planning profession is a crucial first step.
• Advocate to the Professional Standards Board to work with the educational institutions to measure the composition of graduates. Part of understanding the planning pipeline problem is understanding why planning schools have been graduating mostly women for the past decade, but senior and management jobs remain mostly white and male, in particular for more development-focused planning. We need to measure the funnel composition of who: enters a planning degree program, completes it, becomes a candidate member of CIP, becomes a full member of CIP, volunteers with/receives awards from CIP, and then becomes a Fellow and or retires. This will show who leaves the profession (and when, plus we should also have a current/former member survey on this issue). This will give us clues on which interventions could have the most beneficial impact. It could be as simple as CIP advocating nationally for free childcare / better parental leave system, making tweaks to planning curricula, and/or having more targeted student recruitment efforts.
• Want to learn more? Check out this reading list!