The Urban Legend

My trajectory leading up to my master’s in urban governance is a common story among self-described uptight eldest daughters: I grew up as a voracious reader and a precocious child, the type that every adult says should be a lawyer, but really means that they ask too many questions and are maybe a bit too argumentative for their own good. I came of age in an intense microcosm of most of the urban problems that face poorer cities in wealthier countries, staring out a trolley window on my way to school and watching the brownstones with manicured window boxes give way to run-down rowhomes on blocks scarred by demolished buildings and empty lots like lost teeth, on my way to the métro that reeked of smoke and whose relative peace was frequently broken by fights and robberies, but where I also laughed raucously with friends and meandered my way around the city independently and with gusto. I was a big fish in a big pond, with big ideas and big narratives to match. 

I branded myself proudly as a Philadelphian, especially in contrast to suburbanites who liked to claim the city to appear more interesting and worldly but hadn’t faced the struggles that marked the lives of those of us who actually grew up in cramped rowhomes learning from 30 year old textbooks. But beyond the very real problems and tragedies that marred my upbringing and that of generations of Philadelphians, the city always represented a place of joy, freedom, independence, and self-creation – it formed the core of my identity, and still does, and spurred me towards urban planning so that every resident and visitor to a city could feel the same self-actualization and liberation that I did. However, my city’s reputation followed me to Montréal, where I completed my bachelor’s degree, and to Paris, where I pursued my master’s degree. Philadelphians take pride in the “grit” and a certain degree of shittiness of our city (our hockey team’s mascot is named Gritty, after all), but this pride can often come at the expense of genuine improvement in favor of an outdated and persistently negative cultural identity – “nobody likes us, we don’t care”. Upon hearing my American accent, folks often asked where I was from – my proud answer of Philadelphia usually prompted raised eyebrows and, from the less scrupulous folks, exclamations of “Isn’t it dangerous there?”. I never knew how to respond. Yes, bullets flying all day long? No, utopian dreamland? I never arrived at an answer. Usually, an exaggerated look of naive shock (“Why would you say that?”) and a “Sure, just like anywhere” did the trick. But I never forgot the deep contradictions of my hometown, and I was perpetually reminded of it everywhere I went. 

As a planner, the challenge is not imagining better cities, it’s translating intention into infrastructure. It’s very easy to design bad cities, and to critique existing designs, but much harder to design for a good city – it’s almost impossible to really know what will happen when a project is implemented, even if it’s done so with the best intentions and the best materials and the best models. Any city varies from block to block, in social ties, political interest, and built environment, and no intervention is truly transferable. I am, however, a believer in doingsomething – critiquing ad nauseam only helps the critic, who gets to pat themselves on the back for being such a good advocate for marginalized communities, and then return to their overpriced apartment in the 11ème and stare lovingly at their diplomas from expensive universities while nothing concretely changes for the people they claim to advocate for. There’s an expression I heard a lot during my bachelor’s degree, minoring in political science: that the only thing worse than democracy is lack of democracy. I’ve come to believe that the only thing worse than intervention is the lack of intervention. Interventions can be harmful: not intervening, and leaving residents to languish in unequal cities that don’t serve their needs and desires, is worse. 

With a background in urban sociology and a love for reading and conceptual analysis, I am deeply familiar with theorizing about politics of infrastructure, intersectionality, and exclusion. However, there arrives a moment that makes me want to cut through all the theory – especially within the context of a professional master’s degree, I find an element of redundancy in bringing forth the same theory in every case without providing a concrete intervention. While it can’t be taken for granted that every planner understands or prioritizes intersectionality or equity, we in academia possess theoretical capacity in spades, and it strikes me as virtue signaling to repeat to the point of redundancy basic principles of equity to show one’s own theoretical brilliance at the expense of actual actionable policies that recognize the agency and heterogeneity of the marginalized groups that are claimed to be the focus of the “intervention”. Most of the folks using bus stops, for example, are more focused on there being a clean and safe bench with accurate wayfinding and real-time wait times than with the feminist geographies at play with the height of the benches – not because they aren’t intellectually capable, and there’s certainly a place for academia hand in hand with planning, but because at the end of the day, one can theorize all they want about the sociopolitical implications of a bus stop, but the bus stop needs to be placed so people can get to work. Infrastructure is political and can be immensely harmful, but it’s also necessary for the basic functioning of a city. It can be critiqued and analyzed and reimagined and academized, but it needs to exist for all that to happen.  

I want to be a planner who lives in the real world and is animated by joy, togetherness, self-actualization, and the creation of spaces that allow for communal connection. Obviously, my theoretical training has been key in creating a foundation for my own pursuit of equitable planning, and I’m painfully aware of the often cruel history of my chosen profession. However, at a certain point, I do and I must believe that I am serving a purpose of service and improvement, and that doing something is better than doing nothing. Even if just one person is able to enjoy an easier commute, a moment of serenity in a public space, a closer relationship with a neighbor, a welcoming local business, I need to believe that it’s worth it. Progress is messy and critique is easy: but with every snide remark from a self-important academic, comes a resident who uses the new métro route to see loved ones more easily; who befriends a neighbor while sitting in a new park; who takes their children to see a new exhibit at a local cultural center; and who is able to live their life with more joy, dignity, ease, and prosperity than before. This is the central force that animates my path as a planner, and I could explain it easily to a child. If I am able to do something that makes a place better than it was before, I will have succeeded.