Reimagining Urban Planning: Arts and Cultural Strategies (May 2, 2024)

Reimagining Planning is a monthly series of public webinars that focuses on the edge of innovation in urban planning and policy. Traditionally Urban Planning has had a long legacy of harming communities of color, developing and implementing racist policies, and destruction of the built environment. This series openly critiques this current iteration of urban planning in the hopes of proposing new theories, strategies, and concepts that help us arrive at an iteration of the field where we all belong. We are interested in helping foster meaningful conversations among urban planners hungry for more and to engage with new audiences that have always been curious about urban planning but may not know what exactly do urban planners do.
Even though Urban Planning has been a field of study predominantly informed by public policy, economics, design, and public administration - just to name a few - our relationship to the built environment exceeds to the fields mentioned above. This webinar seeks to highlight the ways in which Arts and Cultural Strategy can help reimagine the ways in which we relate to the built environment and carry out projects intended to benefit communities that have been historically harmed by the built environment?
This installment of the webinar series brought together:
Marian Liou is a founder, community advocate, and attorney who specializes in affirming diverse communities through arts and culture and community engagement. She works with community members and community-based organizations, artists, arts & culture organizations, advocacy groups, planners, and other partners to nurture and sustain communities that are inclusive, just, and whole. As the founder and executive director of We Love BuHi, Marian established efforts to preserve and strengthen the multicultural Buford Highway community in metro Atlanta through storytelling, creative place-keeping, and design. She also she led the arts and culture and creative placemaking program at the Atlanta Regional Commission, metro Atlanta’s regional planning agency and MPO.
Evan Bissell (he/him, white) facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. With groups around the country, he has supported the development of curriculum, public art, laws, books, and convenings that build imagination, power and capacity around the just transition, anti-prison and police efforts, housing justice, and health equity, among others. Most recently Evan created the Arts & Cultural Strategy program at the Othering & Belonging Institute and helped found Richmond LAND, the first community land trust in Contra Costa county. He holds a master’s in Public Health and City Planning from UC Berkeley and a BA in Painting and Ethnic Studies from Wesleyan University.
Rosten Woo is a designer, writer, and educator living in Los Angeles (LA). He produces civic-scale artworks and works as a collaborator and consultant to a variety of grassroots and non-profit organizations, including the Little Tokyo Service Center, the LA Poverty Department, the Black Workers Center, LA Alliance for a New Economy, as well as the city of LA and LA County. His work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Netherlands Architectural Institute, the Exploratorium, and various venues. He is co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), winner of a National Design Award. His book, "Street Value," about race, design, and urban retail development, was published by Princeton Architectural Press.
Jose Richard Aviles (Moderator) is a Transportation Analyst for the Othering and Belonging Institute. As part of the Community Power and Policy Partnerships team, they support government agencies and partners with community organizations by providing trainings, technical assistance, and evaluation support centering lived experience, vision, and self-determination of the communities most impacted by transit inequities. Aviles draws inspiration from their involvement with the Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles and participation in other social justice movements like marriage equality.

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