Revisit Michael Ford’s #BlackLivesMatter Appeal to Planners

The Saturday morning session of the 2022 National Planning Conference (NPC) was the first chance for the national planning community to come together in person, to look back on the past two years of the pandemic and piece together the many tough lessons learned along the way.

Michael Ford, Saturday morning’s keynote speaker, who founded the Hip Hop Architecture Camp and has garnered media attention from such mainstream media stalwarts as ESPN, Oprah Winfrey, and the Today Show, opened the proceedings by tying together the art of hip hop and the “frozen music” of architecture. The keynote featured the architecture-inspired raps of incredibly creative, engaged young people, multiple modified Eames chairs, and a convention hall full of planners singing along to Biz Markie’s classic “Just a Friend.”

Most of all, Ford kicked off the first NPC since Covid-19 rewired the entire profession and world with a much needed public acknowledgment of the role of the planning field in a history of exclusionary and discriminatory practices. Two years after the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor and the social upheaval that followed, the messages that the Black Lives Matter and the BIPOC communities shared with the planning community might already seem distant.

But planners can’t forget the immediacy of the message in the spring and summer of 2020. In that spirit, and with Ford’s inspirational presentation still ringing in attendees' ears, now is a good time to revisit the article Ford wrote for Azure Magazine in June 2020, calling on planners, architects, and designers to address their role in planning and building unsafe spaces for the BIPOC community.

Do you need more Black people to die in front of the buildings, plazas and streets you design before you are prompted to speak up? – Michael Ford

See the link below for the entire article, still available to read in full and for free online.