Where desparation planning meets reparations planning : transit as an agent of equity in the shaping of Detroit's future

Abstract

Black America has been made subject to hatred-fueled mistreatment of near incomparable magnitude and duration for over four centuries of this nation's history. From the shackles of slavery to the systematic disenfranchisement that came with ghettoization and redlining practices by all levels of government, to hair politics, and beyond, Black America is characterized by a people systemically stunted by the country's power majority. These centuries of disenfranchisement are very much felt in the present in Detroit-the country's blackest city by population proportion-as disparities in suffering between blacks and non-blacks in the categories of mortality and unemployment, educational attainment, instances of crime, and property foreclosures are shockingly large. But what role does the planner have in mitigating these injustices and advancing the societal standing of a people structurally wronged? Here it is argued that what is required is a redefining of equity, and the adoption of the professional ideology of Reparations Planning-a set of principles defined in Chapter 1. These ideals are then operationalized an applied to the practice of transit network design. The result of this application is two distinct models, both envisioned for the city of Detroit, whose specific objectives are the provision of increased access to economic opportunity for Black America. These models are then analyzed against the existing condition of mobility in the city as well as against one another. Finally, both networks are visualized in consumer-friendly transit maps and discussed alongside several other fantasy rapid transit proposals for Motor City. This work seeks to recruit planners as soldiers for a battle that must not be waged passively; in Detroit or elsewhere. One that must not be diluted or conflated with the plight of the poor or that of other marginalized groups. Whatever the future of the Black Lives Matter movement may be, it has brought back into mainstream media and dinner table conversation the disparate reality lived by members of the black race in a nation that never welcomed them, has struggled to accept them, and has done all in its power to limit their capacity for greatness. What lies in the following pages is a call to planners to not let the wave that this movement has swelled pass by without mechanizing its potential for forward change.