EQUITY AND INCLUSION -- Part 1

Planning, Zoning and other Land Use Policy Best Practices to Erase Errors of the Past that Perpetuated Bias and Deepened Inequality

In a nation based on a constitution that guarantees equality for all, decades of planning and land-use policy has created inequity.

Everything from single-family zoning with large minimum lot sizes that made home ownership impossible for many people of color, to shameful, insidious practices such as redlining lending in predominantly African American communities, has widened the chasm between haves and have nots.

Even the automobile — that great tool for middle-class community work, expanding suburban homebuilding and vastly growing tourism — was weaponized against minority communities. 

Hundreds of freeways cut through African American neighborhoods, destroying communities while robbing people of equity in homes and businesses undervalued, taken by eminent domain and razed for freeways that almost never tore through places with a white majority.