People, Policy, Planning, Place and Product: Lessons from a City Planner
Presented by Christopher A. Watson, M.Sc., Ph.D.[c] Director of Planning and Development Services, Murphy Schiller & Wilkes LLP
Planning as a tool is ideally to organize the physical environment to effectuate the life course of residents, so that they can be triangled with the resources needed to live successful life courses. Often, whoever gets to make the decision as to how space is organized determines the outcome for those residents enveloped in those planned areas. To better provide the support residents need to advance themselves, personal agency aside, planners must be able to be the best translators of residents’ voices within planning principles that forward an agenda that is inclusive of community voice. Without this key understanding in practice, space is disorganized, and the evolution of society is stymied by confusion.
This conversation explored these themes and enabled the participants to discuss mandates, how planners can practice these mandates, and how planners can come together to organize space around who they are planning for. Planning for people should include their voices, and this lecture sought to provoke a conversation as to how we get to this realization in our practices.
The Annual Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Lecture