Practical Implications for Embedding Equity in Municipal Planning

At Rivera Consulting, we partner with clients to transform communities, systems, and institutions through relational and multi-disciplinary trust building and data-driven problem solving and urban planning. Combining best practices from the private and nonprofit sector like change management, culture shift, social science research, and design thinking is essential for governments and the public sector to rethink and operationalize innovative and human centered  engagement tactics, policy analysis, and internal process improvements. 

We're currently working with the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) on its PLAN: Newmarket neighborhood planning engagement to create principles and processes that bring equity to the center of how the BPDA works with residents and how it works within itself. These guiding principles, spaces, and evaluation frameworks bring together planners, agencies, and everyday residents to collaborate on key policy realms that incorporate equity into any long-term municipal vision.

As a firm, we bring an ethos, mindset, and approach to our consulting work with local governments, municipal planning spaces, and related stakeholders that explores and embeds an equity paradigm within municipal planning. That approach can lead to solutions that account for the assets and needs of developers, planners, and community residents or abutters. 

In our municipal planning work, we partner with urban designers and urban planners as well as  cities and towns to make practical implications for how equity can become embedded in city wide planning and/or development. Across the Commonwealth, municipal governments are finally recognizing that the goals of social justice and equity must be embedded and prioritized throughout community-informed planning processes. For the last 16 months we have served as social justice and equity consultants for the BPDA, focused on the current PLAN: Newmarket planning effort. As the first consultants to hold such a role at the BPDA, we’ve sought to implement innovative tactics for planners within the city of Boston to engage communities differently, rethink policy approaches, and engage in forms of self-reflection for its own role within this ecosystem.

To us, the Newmarket district is a litmus test for how we will address the two stories of Boston moving forward. It sits at the intersection of Back Bay and Roxbury, two neighborhoods with almost incomprehensible disparities in average life expectancy or median household income. 

It wasn’t enough to just engage property or business owners within Newmarket itself. The BPDA had to think bigger and our intention early on was to make that case. It meant prioritizing communities that are often harmed by new development in Boston and deprived of its benefits. Newmarket features a key commuter rail stop along the Fairmount Line —a line that runs through the heart of Boston’s black and brown neighborhoods—and the BPDA had to account for communities that will look to Newmarket as a future employment hub for local residents. 

That’s why we encouraged the BPDA to expand its community engagement and policy approach beyond the Newmarket district itself to include neighborhoods connected to Newmarket by the commuter rail. That key equity recommendation shaped much of the work moving forward and encouraged city planners to engage communities throughout the city with a stake in Newmarket. Whether it was visualizing disparities in median household income along the Fairmount line or displaying the demographic realities of transit connectivity to the Newmarket district, our firm knew it was critical to reframe who this plan should serve and why. Only then can any true form of equity have the opportunity to take hold. 

Reframing planning goals and engagement priorities through an equity lens was only half the battle. Shifting culture throughout our institutions is not possible without continuous process improvement and change management tools and practices that strengthen these approaches across city planning, development, and engagement. That’s why we implemented internal survey tools that encouraged project team members to reflect on both equity improvements made in real time as well as needed growth areas to shape PLAN: Newmarket and PLAN processes in the future.

This process of self-reflection based upon our equity framework allowed planners to not only pause and assess their prior work, but provided meaningful oversight for how a final plan will be shaped and implemented moving forward. Too often, the daily demands and grind of city government prevent planners from looking inward and considering the ways long-accepted behavior and processes impact their relationships with the communities they serve. To consider those daily actions within a lens of social justice and equity has been a critical step to reimagining and reshaping the ways in which our institutions can co-create a new path forward with diverse stakeholders in mind.

We know change won’t come overnight. Disrupting the practices of the institutional planning status quo requires willing partners across communities and governments that want to chart a new path. It is through the inclusion of innovative engagement tools, embedded forms of equitable policy analysis, and practicing forms of self-reflection that we can shape a future for Massachusettts rooted in both justice and prosperity. That future is within our sights, and transforming municipal planning is a key piece of the puzzle.