The Equity Planner: Five Tools to Facilitate Economic Development with Just Outcomes

Economic development is intended to benefit everyone in a community, however, in many cases, increased public and private investment can result in the pricing out and displacement of existing residents and businesses. How do we achieve more equitable outcomes?

The Equity Planner provides a toolkit of practical solutions for planners and all those involved in placemaking to promote thoughtful, inclusive planning. Each chapter of The Equity Planner examines one particular aspect of inequity in the urban planning sphere, covering issues such as identity retention, affordability, and the protection and enhancement of local assets. While each chapter offers practicable solutions to these issues, the ’Notes from the Field’ sections describe how these same tools have been used (either successfully or unsuccessfully) in projects the author has been involved in, with a particular focus on the local resistance each project encountered. These real-world case studies are used to suggest methods to overcome such resistance, which the reader can then apply to their present initiatives.

This book is written for urban planners, local activists, social scientists, policy makers, and anyone with an interest in equity planning. This book will be of use to both practicing and training urban planners and architects who seek to add equity planning to their professional repertoire.

Jason King, AICP, is a city planner who has directed multi- disciplinary teams around the U.S. and the world and served as the prime author on over 200 plans for regions, cities, towns, neighborhoods, corridors, streets, and parks. He is the author of The Climate Planner: Overcoming Pushback Against Local Mitigation and Adaptation Plans (Routledge, 2021).