The discipline of urban planning has vast social, economic, environmental, and health-related impact on the lives of people across the city. All too often, though, this impact has been delivered unequally, along the familiar lines of race, class, and gender. This course sets out to establish tenets of urban planning that focus squarely on justice and that create equity in the built environment. In it, we will examine urban public spaces in Southern California through the lenses of homelessness, gender equity, and racial justice. We will use a participatory planning approach to reimagine these spaces with designs that incorporate the voices of diverse communities historically ignored during park creation.
