What is it about?
Urban planning in the U. S. has struggled with how to carry out practice and still remain socially responsible, especially concerning racial justice. This article relates the history of equity planners in the 1960s, led by several including Paul Davidoff, to force the professional organization of urban planners to become more responsive to social injustice, especially as this affected race relations in cities. It also covers a history of the U. S. ethical code and how these efforts affected this code.
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Why is it important?
This work draws a direct link between specific passages of the U. S. code of ethics for professional planners and the social unrest, particularly concerning racial injustice, of the mid-20th century.
Perspectives
Writing this article helped me to understand finally why the American Institute of Certified Planners has strong language supporting social justice in its Code of Ethics and why the planning profession has had difficulty living up to that language. It's a companion to a book chapter that I wrote years ago that explored this issue but without such strong evidence as the archival research carried out for this article revealed.
June Thomas
University of Michigan
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Socially Responsible Practice: The Battle to Reshape the American Institute of Planners, Journal of Planning History, September 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1538513218786007.
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