Last Monday I wrote a piece that lamented the state of policy movement on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in America. Here’s my followup to that.

First, here’s a quick summary of that article. Over the last ten years or so, DEI saw a rise in national coverage and discourse nationally that peaked in 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests during the Covid pandemic. DEI gradually received more negative connotations starting around 2022, as it came to be associated with what’s now termed “woke” ideology. I saw that as backtracking on progress being made to improve cities since the start of the 21 century, because urbanism became associated with DEI/wokism. I also noted how the “woke” backlash was reflected in the Google Trends mentions of Harvard economics professor Raj Chetty, whose research on economic mobility in America peaked and declined similarly, and even my own Corner Side Yard readership.

I concluded the article with this:

“(The) BLM and woke/DEI (movements) became an albatross around the neck of urbanism. The rising YIMBY movement, with its focus on housing affordability, took hold of urbanism, and allowed urbanists to toss aside the other, more intractable and deeply imbedded aspects of our society, like segregation, economic inequality and economic immobility.


How these became linked is understandable; how these became separated deserves exploration.”

How did urbanism become connected with DEI and the “woke” phenomenon? Is it realistic to address matters of segregation, economic inequality and economic mobility get addressed in an economic fashion, and not a moral fashion?

The Urbanism/DEI framing

Here’s the “how” part.

Starting as early as the 1960s in some cities, more Americans began showing deeper interest in cities. Early advocates like Jane Jacobs touted the virtues of cities and increasingly saw them as places of value. By the 1990s–early 2000s, many urbanists, planners and scholars saw a shift in the American economy – more knowledge and technology-driven, less manufacturing-driven – that fit well with what was happening in cities. They recognized that the rising knowledge and technology-driven economy and their own interests were connected and increasing numbers of people were looking to remake places that fit the new mold. That meant urbanists were targeting the policies that created America’s contemporary suburban development landscape and handicapped the dominant urban model that preceded it.

We can all agree what urbanists at the time were responding to: postwar suburban sprawl; increasing auto dependency; urban renewal and highway construction that destroyed many urban neighborhoods; environmental degradation.

Racial segregation and concentrated poverty were considered as part of the same mix of challenges. However, they were mostly viewed in an even deeper social context than the other challenges, framing them as societal issues, not necessarily economic ones.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard.

Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine's online platform. Pete's writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years' experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.

Photo: graph by Rhonda Howard, under CC 4.0 License.