Race, transformative planning, and the just city

Among the thorniest dilemmas stemming transformative planning practice in the context of American cities is the problem of race. While "just city" and neo-pragmatist perspectives have recently theorized progressive policy and planning efforts to create viable alternatives to the dominant neoliberal urban and local economic development model, they have paid less attention to the relationship between race, urban political economy, and transformative planning. This article seeks to bridge this gap by elaborating a conception of race that incorporates W.E.B. DuBois' notion of "double consciousness" with neo-pragmatist planning perspectives to illuminate potential synergies between the situated perspectives of socially marginalized groups and differentially situated, resourced, and abled allies in illuminating systemic problems and directing deeper modes of urban policy and planning recourse. Drawing from two empirical cases, it examines how progressive urban coalitions might use race as a diagnostic and dialogic tool in undertaking provisional and contextual inquiry and praxis in the urban economic sphere toward realization of the "just city."