January 27, 2021
The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence Launches a Speaker Series Dedicated to Planning Equity
A partnership with Northeastern University, “Inspiring Design: Creating Beautiful, Just, and Resilient Places in America” draws on the award organization’s national network.
On Inauguration Day, President Biden reflected on the nation’s future: “We look ahead in our uniquely American way…and set our sights on the nation we know we can be and we must be.”
A new Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) partnership with Northeastern University’s Myra Kraft Open Classroom, “Inspiring Design: Creating Beautiful, Just, and Resilient Places in America,” explores how people and places across the country are responding to this charge and creating equitable and inclusive places for all.
Free and open to the public, the 14-week virtual classroom will tackle critical issues such as the arts and education, food and housing, infrastructure and innovation, parks and public spaces, and ways in which we can engage and empower our communities. The sessions will tap into RBA’s national network of 88 medalists, bringing in leading voices in architecture and urban design, planning and development, education and community engagement, and public policy and civic leadership to share stories about innovative initiatives. Session recordings will be posted on the RBA website along with case studies and other compelling resources.
The speaker series launched on January 20 with Equity and the City, featuring a conversation with Dr. Karilyn Crockett. As the City of Boston’s first Chief of Equity, a new cabinet-level position created by Mayor Martin Walsh (President Biden’s nominee for Labor Secretary), she is charged with embedding equity and racial justice into all city planning and operations.
Dr. Crockett reflected on the role of design and planning in creating equitable places, drawing on her experience researching and writing People Before Highways: Boston Activists, Urban Planners, and a New Movement for City Making, which chronicles the story of a grassroots movement that prevented the construction of highways through the heart of Boston. The movement gave birth to “citizen planners” who created a community-driven vision for a linear greenway with public transit linking neighborhoods with downtown and successfully lobbied for the reprogramming of federal highway funding to realize it as the Southwest Corridor Project (1989 RBA Silver Medalist).
Dr. Crockett believes that creating equity is about realizing the city’s beauty, economic opportunity, public health and inclusivity for all. She emphasizes the importance of asking “for whom?” when considering new development and engaging people and communities in planning processes. And, based on her experience in city government and teaching policy and history, she believes that we can learn much from past experience, using design as a way of thinking and developing a collaborative and collective vision for the cities and country we want to be.
Upcoming sessions:
- January 27 – Building Community with Food with Inspiration Kitchens—Garfield Park in Chicago (2013 RBA Silver Medalist)
- February 3 – Reimagining School with Crosstown Concourse in Memphis (2019 RBA Gold Medalist)
- February 10 – Engaging and Empowering the Next Generation with Parisite Skatepark in New Orleans (2019 RBA Silver Medalist)
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