1. One of the reasons that i love talking about planning an…

2. Planned around the automobile, because that made it easier to keep certain demographics (i.e. Black, Brown and Native) from moving there. There were and still are zoning laws that would only allow only one house per developer lot to be built, which means a limited stock of

3. Housing, which makes affordable housing hard to find. Additionally, things like height requirements (not being allowed to build above a certain number of feet) was another method of limiting housing. These were some of the reasons that a lot of suburbs remained very white up

4. Until the 1980's/1990's. Once homes in suburbs became accessible due to policies becoming lax in regards to affordable housing, one would think that the problem of exclusion via planning has been solved, but you start to run up against a whole slate of new problems. As Black

5. And brown folks moved into innner-ring suburbs, white folks would tend to move even FARTHER out into the exurbs, which meant the tax base which supported these first ring suburbs would close to. This meant that businesses would leave too because of course they're going to

6. Follow the money, which means less jobs, which also leads to more social issues ie petty crimes, more predatory housing situations like shady apartment complexes springing up, more predatory businesses like pawn shops, check cashing places, etc. And also, going back to how

7. Suburbs were initially planned around the automobile, this means a good bit of people end up being literally trapped in the suburbs with no way to get around due to how poor public transit often is. So while they may have moved there and got a job at the local restraunt, that

8. Restraunt may have packed up and moved 30 minutes away to follow the folks who fled from the inner-ring suburb, but you can't get there, because you don't have a car. If we are going to a effectively address institutional racism, it has to start on the local level, as opposed

9. To the federal. This start by making many of these cities which were planned to exclude, find a way to be inclusive for folks of all economic backgrounds and demographics. This means we need to not only promote things like expanding public transportation, but we also have to

10. Promote concepts such as multimodal transportation. This means more sidewalks, bike lanes, trails, and finding ways to connect subdivisions so that people can move from place to place easily. This also means getting rid of single lot zoning so that developers aren't

11. Prohibited from building multihousing units. It's going to take a long time to get things right to address these issues, But we have to start soon.