Gown Goes to Town: Negotiating Mutually Beneficial Relationships between College Students, City Planners, and a Historically Marginalized African-American Neighborhood

Abstract

University–community partnerships have long sought to develop interventions to empower historically marginalized community members. However, there is limited critical attention to tensions faced when community engaged courses support urban planning initiatives in communities of color. This article explores how three Florida State University planning classes sought to engage the predominantly African-American Griffin Heights community in Tallahassee, Florida. Historically, African-American communities have been marginalized from the planning process, undermining community trust and constraining city planning capacity to effectively engage and plan with African-American community members. In this context, there are opportunities for planning departments with relationships in the African-American community to facilitate more extensive community engagement and urban design processes that interface with broader city planning programs. However, mediating relationships between the community and the city within the context of applied planning classes presents unique challenges. Although city planners have increasingly adopted the language of community engagement, many processes remain inflexible, bureaucratic, and under resourced. Reliance on inexperienced students to step in as community bridges may also limit the effectiveness of community engagement. Thus, while community engaged courses create opportunities to facilitate community empowerment, they also at times risk perpetuating the disenfranchisement of African-American community members in city planning processes.

Identifying Plan Perceptions: Higher Education Institutions as Arts and Cultural Anchors

“…Capitalizing on universities is often an explicit municipal economic development strategy that tries to tap into the creative economic energy and arts and cultural scene that universities generate (Ehlenz and Mawhorter 2022). Given traditionally low participation by community stakeholders in general planning efforts (Innes and Booher 2004), engaging university faculty and students has become more frequent, especially in neighborhoods experiencing decline or for communities that have been historically marginalized (Reardon 2006;Lambert-Pennington, Reardon and Robinson 2011;Neal et al 2014;Wesley and Ainsworth 2018;Jackson, Holmes and McCreary 2020). Similarly, we would expect to see universities featured prominently in cultural plans and university leaders as valued participants in the planning process.…”

“…HEIs, and the liberal arts in particular, are increasingly experimenting with new strategies driven by budgetary pressures (Seltzer 2019; Selingto 2018), political polarization and culture wars (Sprunt 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic (Denon 2021), increased expectations for workforce preparedness (Pimentel 2019; Busteed 2021), and pedagogical demands for interdisciplinary, integrative and experiential learning projects (Eyler 2009; Jaschik 2019; Seymour and Lopes 2015; Mintz 2021). In response, some leaders and institutions in liberal arts education and arts-discipline specific education are testing new structural models, career-focused degree granting programs, integrative collaborations to “animate the creative campus” (Tepper and Arthurs 2013, no page number), evaluative methods for proving career potential (SNAAP 2008), and new coalitions to highlight and market art research (History 2021).…”

Pushing Back on Displacement: Community-Based Redevelopment through Historically Black Churches

“…While there are certainly differences between this approach and university-wide programs, in implementation there are some shared possible challenges. As Jackson notes, relying on such arrangements, especially in the context of historically marginalized neighborhoods, may reflect their continued marginalization [39]. Students are not yet professionals, they may not be as effective in analysis or process, and the city's bureaucratic functions remain out of sight and not directly responsive to neighborhood concerns.…”