Renewing Happy City’s commitments to anti-racism

The continued violence against Black and Indigenous people in North America has caused us to stop and think about the responsibility that we and our profession hold in fighting racism, urban inequality and injustice.

We are grateful for the call by many thinkers who have pushed us to reflect on the legacy of racism in urban planning and design, including Tamika Butler, Kristen Jeffers, Jay Pitter, Dr. Destiny Thomas, and others. Much of the violence we see being exacted on Black people occurs in cities and in public spaces that were built on a foundation of racial exclusion and fuelled by Black expropriation. As a firm based in Canada, we work in cities shaped by colonialism, where systemic violence and exclusion continues to be exacted on Indigenous people. We recognize that racism also emerges in local contexts in ways that harm other people of colour in unique ways.

We have taken time to reflect as a team about how we, in urban planning and design, can help dismantle systemic racism against Black and Indigenous people and other people of colour (BIPOC). We must act with urgency to make systemic change happen — within our industry and within our team.

Although a commitment to furthering equity and inclusion has always been a core part of our mission, we recognize that we at Happy City can and must do more. Here we commit to embedding an ongoing practice of anti-racism into all our areas of work and influence.

Below we outline actions and commitments that have been co-created by our team. Some of these are new, and some are improvements on existing policies. This plan is not perfect. We commit to building on these foundations and learning from our mistakes.

We are outlining our commitments here in order to be accountable to you, our community, but also to encourage our colleagues in planning, design and urban governance to join us in action.

Re-evaluating our urban wellbeing framework

• Equity. Equity has always been a part of Happy City’s wellbeing framework. However, the structure of our framework does not clearly show that equity must be prioritized and infused into all the elements of wellbeing. We will redesign the framework to correct this. We will also reexamine how we weigh and present each principle to better address the issues of the populations we collaborate with and serve.

Practicing anti-racism in project work

• Anti-racist lens: With each project we work on, we will commit a portion of our project budget to understand how racism and colonization influence the context in which our project takes place. We will incorporate this knowledge in our project process and deliverables.

• Work with BIPOC leaders. We will build meaningful partnerships with BIPOC-led organizations and leaders in our field to deliver projects, events and publications.

• Consult and compensate. We will continue our commitment to meaningfully consult BIPOC individuals in project work. We pay for the labour involved in sharing expertise and valuable lived experience, and will continue to revise our rates to make sure they match the value and expertise provided.

• Intersectional analysis. When we survey, we will analyze and collect complex, disaggregated data that allows us to learn about intersectional experiences.

• Impact assessment. We will do a better job to accurately evaluate the impact of our work in promoting social justice and undoing the harm being done to BIPOC communities.

• Visibility. We reflect the diversity of our communities in our graphics and renderings.

Practicing anti-racism in research

• Methodologies and approaches. When we design research studies, we commit to reviewing and using methodologies that build and promote equity throughout the process.

• Learning from BIPOC scholars. When we conduct research, we commit to learning from BIPOC scholars in our field, acknowledging their emotional labour, and giving them credit for their work.

• Partnering with BIPOC. We commit to facilitating research partnerships with BIPOC-led organizations and scholars.

• Diverse student researchers. When we provide student research opportunities, we will ensure they bring a diversity of experiences to the work.

• Diverse professional networks. We will work to broaden our professional networks, ensuring BIPOC city builders from a diversity of perspectives and disciplines are included.

• Open access to knowledge. We will ensure our research findings are disseminated widely, prioritizing open access to all.

Practicing anti-racism in communications

• Diverse panels. We will not participate in panels, conferences or events that feature only white people or only men. We will also decline to participate in conferences or events that do not have meaningful representation.

• Anti-racist platform. We will ensure each article we publish on our own platform has been evaluated through an equity lens. This means we will:

• Question orthodoxies, asking why are things the way they are?

• Place urban planning and design issues within their historical context. This means we will explicitly name colonialism, racism and lack of representation among decision-makers.

• Appropriately position ourselves in our work and revoke racism, sexism, homophobia and other oppressive behaviour in our work.

• Not shy away from complexity. We will take the time to unpack nuanced and intersectional identities and experiences.

• Diverse sources. When we write stories, we commit to collecting evidence from diverse sources. We will interview and feature research and expertise by diverse people with diverse experiences.

• Diverse writers. We commit to working with BIPOC writers. To ensure our narrative voice is not singular, we will feature stories and perspectives by a range of staff members and where possible, outside (paid) contributors.

• Transparency. We will be accountable when we get things wrong. We will use our editorial platform to be transparent about our mistakes and share our learnings with industry colleagues.

• Online conversations. When we host conversations on social media (including Twitter chats or webinars) we will ensure we amplify diverse voices, especially those with lived experience of racism and marginalization. For example, we will amplify voices of anti-racist planners, designers and thinkers, especially those with lived experience of racism and marginalization.

Practicing anti-racism in company operations

• Hiring. We apply a rising weighted criteria for diversity in each hiring process. This means we heighten the priority of hiring or promoting individuals that are not already represented in our firm. We apply this lens at all levels in our company: junior, intermediate, and senior levels, as well as within our board.

• Focusing on youth. Recognizing that the movement for equitable cities requires those who have been marginalized to be leading the conversation, we will prioritize BIPOC youth who have traditionally been excluded from participating in city-building in available mentorship roles, support resources and other programs, including paid internships.

• Onboarding. Our onboarding process will include mandatory readings on urban inequality and anti-racism, as they pertain to each area of our work.

• Equity policy. In January 2020, we committed to drafting and sharing an ongoing equity policy that guides our internal and external actions. We will ensure this policy includes an anti-racist lens and anti-racism goals for our organization. We will continue to revise the policy as we learn. This policy will address team communication, conflict resolution, complaint process, anti-oppression strategies, compensation, and more.

• Supporting BIPOC businesses. We will prioritize businesses owned by BIPOC people and women when choosing our regular suppliers.

Practicing anti-racism within the team

• Learn. As team members, we commit to continuing to read and learn about practicing anti-racism.

• Play an active role. We acknowledge there are many different roles to play in making change. We commit to continually examining what this means within our families, our friendships, our neighbourhoods and our professional communities.

• Share. We will host team learning events. Many members of our team self-identify as members of racialized groups. We commit to continually learning from one another’s experiences of inclusion and exclusion in city space, as well as to considering the BIPOC perspectives that are missing from our team.

• Compassionate change. We commit to leading with our hearts and to seeing the best in people so that we can support one another to take action for social justice in our communities.

Growing together

We’re learning from available resources, the communities we serve, and from our own team, drawn from different races, countries, religions, genders and sexual orientations. We are grateful to hear your feedback on how we might deepen anti-racism work. And we are happy to carry on the conversation with colleagues in our field.

For now, here are a few anti-racism resources we have found helpful for urban planners and designers:

• Mobility justice and COVID-19 (Untokening)

• Placemaking when Black lives matter (Annette Koh, Progressive City)

• Racism and inequity are products of design. They can be redesigned. (EquityxDesign)

• Why We Must Talk About Race When We Talk About Bikes (Tamika Butler, Bicycling)

• Whose Streets? Black Streets (Amina Yasin, Tyee)

• A Call to Courage: An Open Letter to Canadian Urbanists (Jay Pitter, Canadian Urban Institute)

We invite you — our colleagues, collaborators, clients and friends — to join us in this ongoing journey and the learning, discomfort and hard work that will come with it.