“This Land Was Made for You and Me”: Our Quest for Spatial Justice
“We as humans don't like change...We like everything in its proper place and in its proper order, and so we have sought in our cities to try to lock things, if you will, into place the way we want them.” - Dr. Kurt Culbertson
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We have a real treat for you today in this episode! Joining us is Dr. Kurt Culbertson, a scholar and a practitioner in the field of urban renewal where he uses his expertise as a landscape architect to help cities imagine how to design landscapes that consider environmental, social, and economic factors so that they can best optimize something that he refers to as spatial justice (which we're going to learn more about in this episode) in the urban renewal efforts.
Dr. Culbertson is chair and C.E.O. of Design Workshop, an international design studio out of Aspen, Colorado but with offices all over the world. They are most famous for their twelve projects that were selected as performance based case studies by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. In 2016, Kurt was awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal which is the highest possible honor in his profession, and he is also the pastor of the ASLA Council of Fellows and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
Kurt was awarded a PhD in Landscape Architecture from Edinburgh College of Art for his research that helps us in thinking about how we ought to use - as a society - our vacant lands. Kurt is here on the podcast to help us understand the inequities that we see in the design of our communities today. The Great Recession of 2008 led to Dr. Culbertson moving a bit away from commercial work and balancing a bit with public renewal projects.
The argument that structural and systemic racism is a myth is an argument that is not new; it has been being made for years, but Dr. Culbertson presents us with physical evidence of its reality – how human value has a hierarchy culturally attached to it is literally manifested in physical structures such as buildings and bridges. He touches upon various topics such as redlining and how physical evidence can be presented that proves that systemic racism and spatial injustice are still major problems even today.
We cover so much ground in terms of management decisions and the economic impact on issues of inequity. In our next episode, Dr. Culbertson will return to talk about what he refers to as disturbances and how we have actually taken actions that have made some things worse. He will share with us what approaches that have been taken that appear to be working to help mitigate this problem. Thanks for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to tune in as well!
Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders
- What is ‘vacant land’ and what does Dr. Culbertson denote when he speaks of spatial justice?
- To what extent have non-whites been limited in the choices and range of actions for the choice of habitat?
- Where did most non-whites live in our cities prior to the 1920s, and what habitat choices did they have during and after that period?
- How did government policy in the forms of SCOTUS decisions and legislative actions contributed to our current reality of ‘hollowed out cities’?
- How do we see the residual impact of redlining on our communities today?
- How has the fact that the average net worth for Black is a small fraction of that for Whites historically impacted Blacks’ ability to buy homes in safer neighborhoods, provide education for children, and withstand hardships?
Show Notes
[3:40] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation by talking about structural racism and points to the recent massacre of Asian women in Atlanta.
[5:12] – Dr. Culbertson defines the terms vacant land and spatial justice.
[8:18] – Dr. Culbertson explains why we are concerned about vacant land.
[10:30] – Dr. Culbertson describes what he is able to influence and change in his field.
[12:35] – Dr. Culbertson provides us with a potential reason why non Whites don't have the same choices as to where to live as Whites do.
[15:11] – Cities began to implement racial zoning, which Dr. Culbertson defines and explains.
[17:16] – Dr. Uffman shifts the conversation toward management decisions made by the executive branch and refers specifically to Herbert Hoover as an example.
[19:24] – Dr. Culbertson describes what life might have been like for non Whites in cities and what habitat choices that they had following the Emancipation Proclamation.
[22:27] – Dr. Uffman provides insight about his own observations in his hometown in Baton Rouge.
[24:27] – Dr. Culbertson expounds upon mortgage lending and suburbanization, returning to the subject of Herbert Hoover.
[26:55] – The process of redlining, Dr. Culbertson details, excluded the flow of resources especially for low income neighborhoods where a lot of people of color resided.
[29:08] – Dr. Culbertson asserts that redlining caused impacts that still linger today, almost a century later.
[31:39] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss the inequities around wealth creation.
[34:23] – Dr. Culbertson touches further upon management decisions and executive decisions impacting spatial justice.
[36:25] – Dr. Culbertson reflects upon how he would respond to someone who would argue that structural racism isn't real or is no longer a problem.
Links and Resources
Landscape Architecture Foundation - Website
ASLA Council of Fellows - Website
The Cultural Landscape Foundation - Website
Edward W. Soja - Seeking Spatial Justice (Volume 16) (Globalization and Community)
Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “How and Why We Birthed Jim Crow”
Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Jim Crow: The Yankee Variant”
Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Redline Reasoning: Why We Built Segregated Cities”
Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman: