March 23, 2023
Transportation planning — and planning more broadly — has made progress over the past decade in bringing equity to the forefront of conversations about public engagement.
We are talking more openly and earnestly about leveling the playing field for communities that have traditionally been sidelined in decision-making about projects and infrastructure that directly impact their mobility options.
How do we know what's working and what's right for a given project? We must constantly reflect, report, and rework our methods to transform equity from an honorable-yet-nebulous goal into measurable, shareable tactics.
From left, Kristof Devastey, PE, PTOE, PTP; Jennifer Fierman, AICP; and Lindsay Welsch Sveen, PhD. Photos courtesy of the authors.
Equity, like health, is never fully achieved. It's not a destination but a process that requires continuous effort. The work will never be done, but here are some thoughts — from both the planning and the engineering perspective — on what's working and how we can keep moving closer to a planning process that's truly more inclusive.
Fortunately, there is a growing library of guidance and policies that give practitioners steps to follow to achieve more equitable planning outcomes.
The most recent AICP Code of Ethics update reinforces that imperative by clarifying our aspirational principles to "more fully account for the planner's role in social justice and racial equity, while accepting our responsibility to eliminate historic patterns of inequity tied to planning decisions."
This is true (if less overt) for engineers as well. The number one rule in the National Society of Professional Engineers Code of Ethics states, "Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public."
Another professional resource about equity is the U.S. Department of Transportation's guide Promising Practices for Meaningful Public Involvement in Transportation Decision-Making. It presents commonly known techniques and strategies, such as bringing traditionally underserved populations into the public outreach process and including community representatives directly in the project team so that they can play a role in decision-making.
Another tactic from the USDOT guide is to ensure that practitioners gain an understanding of the impacts that come as a result of inequitable transportation decision-making processes. Additionally, the guide recommends that accountability tactics may be used to gauge the effectiveness of engagement activities, which can help planners and others bring equity to the forefront of conversations about public engagement.
Who is helped? Who is harmed? Who is missing?
A common thread across these and other resources is the call to interrogate who we mean when we refer to the public. APA's 2022 PAS Memo, "Three Essential Questions for Better Planning" by Kyle Ezell, FAICP, CUD, poses these questions to help identify which public we are serving: Who is helped? Who is harmed? Who is missing?
Seemingly simple questions like these are among the tools many planners and transportation practitioners are using to actively create more equitable cities and public spaces.
Still, in the expanding toolkit for equitable planning, some practices may be very effective at reaching and including diverse voices, some may look good on paper but ultimately fall flat, and still others may succeed in one neighborhood and fail miserably in another.
So, how can planners, engineers, and other allied professionals harness the energy around equity right now to move toward a long-term, iterative approach to equitable planning that values learning, self-reflection, and transparency? Here are five suggestions, based on our experiences.
Know thyself — and thy biases
First, the three essential questions that Ezell poses in his PAS Memo need to be on a sticky note on the laptop of every planner, engineer, and public servant. Thinking about who will be helped or harmed and who should be at the table — and about why we do this work in the first place — should be a daily habit.
While we're at it, let's add one more essential question: Who am I?
We all bring our histories, our backgrounds, and our biases to work. We need to acknowledge our biases and strive to gain a broader perspective so that we can make community engagement as inclusive as possible.
Thinking about who will be helped or harmed and who should be at the table — and about why we do this work in the first place — should be a daily habit.
As an industry, we are starting to ask ourselves the essential questions on a more regular basis. When we take the answers seriously, we do better work that benefits more people.
Because of the growing commitment to a more inclusive and reparative planning process, we are witnessing things that seemed impossible a generation ago — like the removal of highways that sliced through Black and brown communities and, often even more difficult, the cancellation of planned highway expansions.
This shift is encouraging. And we need to do more.
Narrow the "us vs. them" gap
In addition to asking, "Who am I?" now is also the time to ask as a team, "Who are we?" When the members of a project team bring a variety of perspectives (race, ethnicity, gender identity, ability, or discipline), the gap between "us" and "them" can be narrowed.
Hiring managers often instinctively gravitate towards other people like themselves or like those already on the team. More organizations should follow the advice we recently heard from Toole Design planner Sara Schooley: "Don't hire a bunch of 'mini mes.' Do a gap analysis to identify what perspectives you are missing on the team, instead of duplicating who's already there."
"Don't hire a bunch of 'mini mes.' Do a gap analysis to identify what perspectives you are missing on the team, instead of duplicating who's already there."— Sara Schooley, planner, Toole Design
Diversity does not happen by accident. Until we invest the time and money to build teams that represent the populations we serve, the "us vs. them" gap will continue to limit our community engagement efforts.
Build relationships, not just projects
Regardless of what your team looks like and what backgrounds they bring, community engagement can feel like an uphill battle if one key ingredient is missing: trust.
How do you build trust? Show up early. Show up again. Keep showing up.
"Public involvement doesn't start with the project. It starts way before. It starts with building a relationship with the community," says Winter Haven, Florida, Public Works Director Michael "MJ" Carnevale.
Too often, we wait to consider equity until it's too late, when the only option is to mitigate. In other words, we try to make something less bad, which is not to say good, for a historically harmed group of people. Mitigation is better than nothing — we are often able to redirect ill-conceived projects by assessing the potential equity impacts of proposed alternatives. But what if we considered the historically harmed population first?
"Public involvement doesn't start with the project. It starts way before. It starts with building a relationship with the community."— Michael "MJ" Carnevale, director, Winter Haven, Florida, public works
Sometimes we do show up at the beginning of a project or study, setting up a table at an event where we hope to get input from diverse constituencies. But then a small handful of people provide some feedback, we pack up and leave, and months later we return with big promises and a plan conceived seemingly in a black box. That just isn't enough.
Melissa Cerezo, AICP, a planner at Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, says that planners and government agencies "need to be in a relationship with communities. It's not a one-off thing, not a project-based thing," she says. "When we develop a project and try to manufacture a connection afterwards, it always comes out inauthentically."
Building trust takes time, which takes staff capacity, which takes money. But the alternative is investing in projects that don't truly reflect the community they purport to serve. It's our job not just to educate community members but also to really listen to them. Trust their experience. They are experiential experts.
One way to show these experts how much we value their time is to pay them. That's not always a straightforward process, depending on the organizations involved and the amount of red tape, but it's worth the effort to figure out how to compensate people for their time and knowledge.
Step up and step aside
We're seeing an influx of more robust and varied public engagement practices, including family-friendly schedules for public meetings, increased use of interpreters and multilingual materials, and a host of efforts to meet people where they are: in the streets, at community events, and online.
But we also need to recognize that, because of how we might be perceived by a given community, sometimes the best thing we can do is step aside.
But we also need to recognize that, because of how we might be perceived by a given community, sometimes the best thing we can do is step aside.
One of our white, English-speaking colleagues recently acknowledged that she may not be the best messenger for a project within a Latino neighborhood of a small Midwest community. To help residents understand and respond to a proposed project in the area, her team is partnering with a local organization with roots and trust in that community. Together, they are developing messaging and methods that are attuned to the residents' daily lives and values.
That is not to suggest that we can simply rely on consultants or subconsultants to "do equity" for us. By all means, hire experts that have greater knowledge than you do. But you cannot outsource your ethics.
Define, measure, and celebrate
Engineers like to joke that if they can't measure something, it doesn't exist. While some engineers could stand to learn from the less tangible aspects of planning — like vision, compromise, and communication — many planners could also learn something from engineering's devotion to the measuring stick. When it comes to equitable planning, we cannot learn what's working — and what's not — if we're not measuring.
"We don't often monitor the outcomes in planning," says Cerezo. "That is a fundamental flaw. If we are going to talk about equity, one of the things we're going to have to get proficient in is monitoring outcomes."
When planners get community input, it is often documented in a list or spreadsheet. The highlights are pulled into the plan to support the project recommendations, and perhaps the full list appears in an appendix. We could all do better to connect the dots for the public, to show which feedback impacted the plan and why, and which feedback was not honored and why not. This can bring decision-making out of the black box and into the light.
When we're closing out a project, as tempting as it is to dive right into the next one, we need to take a further step to document how we will continue to sustain a relationship with the community.
Toole Design's Schooley recommends actions such as following up with stakeholders to celebrate and check in, inviting them to serve on longer-term advisory boards, and considering them when filling staff positions. She suggests creating a sustainability step as part of every project closeout process, so the team is held accountable for documenting the future steps they will take to sustain and nurture their stakeholder relationships. "Write. It. Down. Make it someone's job," says Schooley. Consistent touchpoints are key.
By measuring results and iterating toward more and more equitable practices, we can ensure not only that we are moving in the right direction, but also that we are celebrating the wins. When we celebrate what worked and reflect upon what didn't, we shed light on how equity happens. That's the kind of transparency that the profession — and the public — needs.
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