ANTI-RACIST DESIGN JUSTICE INDEX

*For optimal user interface experience, view the Anti-Racist Design Justice Index on a desktop with wide viewport*

The Index is a tool for architects, designers, planners, policymakers, and community activists committed to taking action towards identifying and dismantling systemic racism within our practices, organizations, academic institutions, and local governments. The goal of the Index is to achieve justice and liberation within design institutions by holding them accountable to their anti-racist commitments. It provides a visual way to track accountability and resources for guiding concrete actions.

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Practices

Finance & Value

Equality

Acknowledge that economic disparities exist across race & gender within your practice and that racism and are embedded in existing firm financial policies.

Equity

Evaluate and make existing financial policies that determine pay and benefits.

Justice

Remove and financial policies that determine pay and benefits.

Liberation

Publish a historical report of precise cumulative impacts that have furthered economic loss to BIPOC communities due to the design work of your office.
Call upon the public to hold your office accountable.

Equality

Make your per hour salary vs. billable fees, benefits, and profit margins within your firm.

Equity

Allocate paid time to research and identify anti-racist clients, consultants, collaborators and fabricators.
Share these resources with fellow practices

Justice

For future projects, inform clients and collaborators of your commitment to anti-racism and how this is reflected in your fee.

Liberation

Publicly declare firm-wide and project-specific budget line items dedicated to and organizing.

Equality

Allocate paid time for employees to improve their personal wellbeing within the practice, including but not limited to, self-care, mentorship, and processes for expressing concerns and providing feedback.
Provide funding and paid time for employees to engage in professional development, including but not limited to, performance evaluations, design research, volunteer work, and licensure and certification processes.

Equity

Allocate paid time to connect with and collaborate with anti-racist, BIPOC-led consultancies, designers, fabricators, and organizers.
Share these contacts with fellow practices.

Justice

Provide education and mentorship to BIPOC staff in firm financial practices.
Develop an adaptive and collaborative process for determining firm values and investments beyond monetary ones, including but not limited to social, environmental, and educational contributions to the design profession and BIPOC communities.

Liberation

Empower a BIPOC-led finance team to collaboratively research, implement, and direct a new financial model.

Equality

Pay back unpaid overtime/unpaid labor in either money, time off, and/or other benefits for all current and past employees.

Equity

Redistribute a percentage of all senior staff bonuses as to staff, especially junior staff. This includes funds for professional development, mentorship, recognition of labor in diversity initiatives, cultural labor, isolation labor, and emotional labor.

Justice

Give a percentage of annual profit from white-led firms, consultants, and contractors to a fund that supports BIPOC-led/owned firms in the industry via specific awards. This can include, but is not limited to, start-up funds, licensing fees, design awards, and insurance.

Liberation

Implement participatory budgeting practices within firms to decide on what to do with profits.
Include community members on the finance board of the practice.

Equality

Set aside no less than 5% of billable time to reach out to and provide services for organizations that historically disconnected from and don't have access to the design process.

Equity

Develop a for design projects that center and work with marginalized communities.

Justice

Allocate a percentage of firm revenue to fund BIPOC-led reinvestment in marginalized communities.

Liberation

Form and share power and project profits with BIPOC-led firms that have an expressed design justice ethos.

Equality

Publish firm budget, fee rates, and salaries as a professional resource and update it on a regular basis.
Require collaborators and consultants to add to this resource.

Equity

Establish budgets with line-items and staff time dedicated to projects that would serve historically underrepresented communities.
Share budget as a reference tool for other practices to develop their own.

Justice

In collaboration with other design practices, create an incubator for emerging design practices, that provides funding and mentorship for legal, financial, and employment support.

Liberation

Donate 100% of firm profits and proceeds to local BIPOC-led organizations whose missions are connected to anti-oppression, abolition, and/or liberation.
Cut ties to racial capitalist economic structures and work in tandem with other cooperatives to establish local, self sufficient networks of business and exchange.

Process & Engagement

Equality

Publicly acknowledge the lack of representation in past project teams and evaluate the firm's practices based on the DAP demands.

Equity

Research, evaluate, and document the past, present, and future environmental, social, political, and economic impacts of your work on/from the perspective of communities of culture.

Justice

Incorporate the research of environmental, social, political, and economic impacts from the perspective of and community expertise into the design process for every project.

Liberation

Invite BIPOC designers into your design process for each project
Uplift and support invited BIPOC designers in the form of compensation, mentorship, and coordination.

Equality

Hold time and space to share anti-racist design resources and educate staff and the public on how design has enforced systemic racism.
Use anti-racist, anti-ableist, and accessible language in project documentation and presentation.
Review and revise past project documentation for appropriate language.

Equity

Publicly refuse to participate in projects and competitions rooted in racist, exploitative practices
Commit to the Design Justice Demands

Justice

Develop, institutionalize, and implement a radical project selection process with criteria. These criteria include, but are not limited to, acknowledging context-specific, complex histories of oppression, and grounding the work in healthy relationships with clients and affected communities.

Liberation

Develop and institutionalize a design process that breaks down the power dynamic between designers and community members throughout each project phase.

Equality

Place designers on teams that match the demographics of the project's surrounding population in communities of color. This needs to reflect not only racial identity, but also cultural representation.

Equity

Integrate and support staff and collaborators as project leads

Justice

Hire community members and organizers as part of their respective project team; pay them at least a living wage for their expertise.
Restructure existing community engagement practices to accommodate

Liberation

Work with, not for. Co-organize projects and funding to support and initiate community-led projects.

Equality

Increase and implement the minimum hours for pro-bono services from 1% to 5% of total working hours.

Equity

Expand the design process to account for pre-existing traumas and past harms in the local community. This includes ensuring the design's programmatic and spatial implications are aligned with the community's goals and values, helping to heal relationships, and listening to all community members.

Justice

Provide free resources such as skill sharing, access to health services, career mentorship and professional development for designers and the community to account for previous practices.

Liberation

Co-organize with the community to create design processes and tools that incorporate and support existing histories and intergenerational knowledge.

Equality

Require community engagement in all project development processes regardless of funding sources.
Collaborate with local organizations to facilitate community engagement

Equity

Establish a firm-wide policy that enforces mandatory training in for all employees, particularly for senior-level leadership

Justice

Create a public physical and/or virtual studio space where community members can safely share ideas in-person and/or remotely.

Liberation

Develop a public critical engagement and ownership process for communities to directly decide on any projects in their neighborhood based on their needs and priorities.

Equality

Require all collaborators, consultants, contractors, developers, and designers to be practices and work in solidarity to develop anti-racist projects.

Equity

Do not work with compromised clients. Require all clients to be and work in solidarity to develop anti-racist projects.

Justice

Challenge and dismantle the self-selecting and exclusive nature of existing RFQ and RFP structures and processes.
Promote the creation of a new, anti-racist system for project team selection.

Liberation

Create space for and maintain a routine practice of discussing and revising design processes within and beyond the design profession.

Leadership & Labor

Equality

Publicly acknowledge the lack of representation and the firm's practices based on feedback provided directly by existing BIPOC staff

Equity

Publicly publish anonymous information about past harms done to staff and outline plans to change firm structure and culture.

Justice

Incorporate staff in the rewriting of existing firm internal policies to better represent themselves.

Liberation

Publicly commit to providing or funding annual, mandatory training for all staff and leadership in critical race theory, design justice and community engagement.

Equality

Provide public salary ranges in job descriptions and public evaluation criteria for hiring and promotion processes. Share this information within your network.
Commit to no unpaid internships.
Create an affiliation with an anti-racist organization.
Establish and share transparently an internal, professional development progress tracker for current staff.

Equity

Publish salaries of all current firm employees.
Ensure BIPOC staff are paid equally to white counterparts and publicly state commitment to pay equity. Include this language in employee offer letters and contracts.
Provide time and space for employees to get involved with DAP or other anti-racist organizations. Empower them to facilitate anti-racism in the workplace.

Justice

Establish clear, publicly accessible standards on anti-racist practices and a timeline for achieving anti-racist milestones. Create a process for removal of any staff for violations of these standards.
Provide quarterly updates to DAP/other anti-racist orgs regarding anti-racist practices and initiatives (directly report to DAP Field Organizing)

Liberation

Open up the firm to a community audit of projects, staffing and

Equality

Actively recruit and hire BIPOC designers and provide ongoing support and BIPOC mentorship to help retain BIPOC designers.
Halt the hiring process of any staff or leadership until anti-racism practices are implemented following the anti-racism milestones that the firm has set forth
Develop and publish a timeline for future recruiting and hiring of BIPOC staff.

Equity

Promote and maintain leadership and provide ongoing support and to help retain BIPOC leaders.

Justice

Establish a worker cooperative or worker-empowered practice model.

Liberation

Establish a funded fellowship program that supports design research & professional development for BIPOC employees.
Share, advocate for and integrate the knowledge of intergenerational designers, regardless of their level of experience, into the day-to-day running of the firm and its practices.

Equality

Provide immediate to staff to match white staff salaries.

Equity

Redistribute a percentage of firm revenue to provide additional salary compensation for employees in the form of bonuses, benefits, etc.

Justice

Pay for continuing education and provide additional monetary incentives for BIPOC staff to enhance their experience and elevate their position within the firm.
Provide paid time off to volunteer and engage in local initiatives.

Liberation

Create a BIPOC-led team that leads the firm in establishing where firm revenue is focused and spent internally and externally on underserved and BIPOC-focused initiatives.

Equality

Provide paid time and safe space for BIPOC staff to express thoughts and concerns on firm management and leadership.
Develop open source contract templates that embed design justice principles into agreements.

Equity

Develop programs and policies to retain BIPOC employees within the firm. Retention efforts should include developing a BIPOC mentorship program and support for professional licensure.
Develop clear leadership pathways that recognize the inherent barriers for BIPOC employees.

Justice

Address and incorporate feedback from BIPOC staff and make changes to the management and leadership approach and structure.
Institutionalize routine office-wide and transparent reviews of leadership.

Liberation

Restructure firm leadership to become a decentralized, employee-owned entity with equal input on decision-making and investment.
Develop pathways for the local community to participate in project and firm leadership.
Develop a cohort of design advocate roles integral to the firm and its growth.

Equality

Incorporate an anti-racist evaluation as part of the firm's hiring process.
Publish a firm manual that outlines anti-racist financial, employment, and contractual practices, and share this as a professional resource and framework.

Equity

Create an resource library and institutionalize weekly mandatory readings for all staff. This includes allocating paid time to read and discuss the knowledge gained from these resources.

Justice

Establish contractually bound rules barring the firm from blocking any potential union development within the firm. Firms should remove all anti-unionization language from firm guidelines allowing staff to join externally established unions.

Liberation

Develop principal and partner level leadership roles within an employee owned practice that are directly bound to the Design Justice Demands.
Commit to only working with firms that implement anti-racist practices.
Share the experiences of the firm's journey towards anti-racism, and publicly present or workshop a guide with lessons learned to the broader industry.

Organizations

Collaboration & Engagement

Equality

Dismantle the notion of hierarchy and "experts" in the and collaboration process through collective research and honest, inclusive conversations.

Equity

Collectively develop Community Agreements to instill a communication and leadership culture centered on empathy and to deter forceful ownership of ideas and the notion of the “right way”.

Justice

Acknowledge past injustices related to a specific project and community as part of the initial process of collaboration and engagement (i.e. land acknowledgments, moments of silence).

Liberation

Recognize, promote, and elevate BIPOC-led organizations as leaders for new projects and opportunities over your own organization.

Equality

Organize intersectional collectives and committees across urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, and construction to work in solidarity towards an professional field.

Equity

Outline and recognize the current racist practices and behaviors of members of all collectives and committees.

Organize focus groups to both heal from and eliminate racist practices from your organization.

Justice

Develop and provide free resources on transformative policy and practices for firms and institutions to support anti-racist actions.

Review policies from governing boards, and remove any racist gate-keeping values, codes, or standards in place.

Liberation

Create an Code of Operations and standards for collaboration and engagement with other organizations and the community.

Equality

Integrate and intergenerational collaboration into internal and external practices and programs.

Equity

Provide time and resources for BIPOC to establish a safe space etiquette within the organization.
Use safe space etiquette to create an environment for previously excluded collaborators to voice their experiences.

Justice

Support collaborators as leaders in .

Liberation

Develop and maintain a cyclical participatory process for community members to rethink and redevelop the process based on shifting needs.

Equality

Collaborate with BIPOC organizations to create community workshops and forums both internally and externally.

Research and reach out to local BIPOC-led anti-racist organizations to provide them with support for their efforts and initiatives.

Equity

Provide free support services such as resources and skill sharing for beneficiaries of organization (ie. students, community members).

Justice

Compensate community members for their time and participation in stakeholder and engagement processes of the organization.

Liberation

Allocate a percentage of organization's revenue to directly fund reinvestment in communities.

Equality

Provide internal training and education in to all staff and/or hire community organizations to assist with this process.

Equity

Restructure the organization to create a platform for the wider community's experiences and voices to be heard.

Justice

Co-host free workshops and open forums with the local community and BIPOC-led organizations that you have built relationships with continued collaboration on projects within their respective neighborhoods.

Liberation

Create an accessible physical presence in the community during the life of the project/initiative by investing time and monies (i.e. rent and occupy a field office).

Equality

Logistically and financially support the establishment of locally based, , community-led organizations.

Equity

Restructure your organization to become a 100% community-led.

Justice

Develop an adaptable, community-led organizational framework that dismantles the structure of RFPs. Replace it with a process in which the community makes the final decisions about their design futures and who designs them.

Form a team with rotating leadership to overhaul the existing professional licensure processes, continuing education requirements, and code of ethics to re-align with decolonial, anti-racist, anti-ableist, and anti-capitalist values.

Liberation

Co-create, disseminate, and maintain a network of community-led organizations to address various needs, projects, and initiatives of the greater community through programming, youth engagement, and continued advocacy.

Leadership & Labor

Equality

Publicly acknowledge the organization's lack of representation and practices based on feedback provided directly by existing BIPOC staff or members.

Equity

Publicly publish the harm done to staff and outline methods for change.

Justice

Incorporate staff and members in the rewriting of existing internal policies to better represent BIPOC voices

Liberation

Hold routine workshops and other outreach programs to educate staff and members on practices.

Equality

Acknowledge institutional biases in order to force structural transformation of existing policies and procedures and to promote outcomes of equity as opposed to assimilation.

Equity

Create a space for members to share experiences. Establish a platform for these experiences to be heard and addressed by people in positions of power.

Justice

Establish clear, publicly accessible, leadership-level standards for anti-racist practices and processes. Remove any leaders for violating these standards.

Liberation

Hire an external compliance team to create new organizational structures and monitoring methods to ensure injustices are not repeated.

Equality

Hire and maintain staff within the organization in proportion to the population of the surrounding region.

Equity

Place designers on teams that match the demographics of the neighboring community and populations affected by organization's projects or research, especially in areas with predominantly residents.

Justice

Encourage non-BIPOC leaders to step down to allow space for leadership.

Liberation

Nominate members to leadership positions and provide pathways to leadership to ensure underrepresented voices continue to be heard.

Equality

Publish salaries for the organization to ensure staff are paid equally to white counterparts. Provide to BIPOC staff who have been unfairly compensated.

Equity

Provide free organization membership to individuals.

Justice

Provide additional compensation to BIPOC staff in the form of continuing education and monetary incentives to elevate experience and position within the organization.

Provide paid time off for staff to volunteer and engage in local initiatives.

Liberation

Sustain a BIPOC majority membership

Support BIPOC leadership in the organization to prioritize funds for underserved communities and BIPOC-focused initiatives.

Equality

Invest in retaining membership within the organization. Retention efforts should include developing a mentorship program, providing free memberships, and creating free workshops and panel access.

Equity

Incorporate the ideas and opinions shared by staff and members into future programming and initiatives.

Justice

Make room for in leadership by reducing the salaries of current non-BIPOC in leadership to expand the budget, creating new positions, and hiring BIPOC leader.

Liberation

Collaboratively develop and establish a non-hierarchical organization through the creation of a horizontal internal structure.

Equality

Incorporate an evaluation as part of the staff hiring and membership application process to ensure people are rejected.

Equity

Create a free anti-racist resource library for staff and members and conduct free public forums that facilitate education and open dialogue.

Justice

Provide regularly scheduled public programming focused on practices and methodologies for use within the organization and in the wider community through the organization's projects and programs.

Liberation

Maintain an anti-racism working group within the organization that educates members and extended networks on past injustices, sustains initiatives, and keeps leadership, staff, members, and partner organizations accountable.

Operational Goals & Achievements

Equality

Recognize and admit how the presence of the organization has harmed existing communities.

Research information about how systemic racism has impacted the establishment of RFPs, RFQs, competitions, award programs and the evaluation of submissions.

Identify the inequalities within the organization's physical make up, practices, and mission that harm BIPOC members.

Equity

Evaluate past injustices in new plans and frameworks moving forward.

Condemn racially inappropriate statements and develop guidelines to identify and prohibit these statements in every design setting.

Justice

Publish information about how systemic racism has impacted the establishment of RFPs, RFQs, competitions, award programs and the evaluation of submissions

Liberation

Research and evaluate current educational and licensure requirements. Publish findings outlining hardships and inequities present in the existing systems and processes that limit ability to pursue a career in architecture, landscape architecture, and planning.

Equality

Build structural transparency within the organization. Develop an open, co-development process and share rationale behind policy and decision making. Create this process with opportunities for developmental feedback and implementation.

Equity

Boycott sponsors and refuse their future monetary donations. Challenge such sponsors to critically analyze behavior and end contracts with entities.

Justice

Hire anti-racist training personnel and require all members attend sessions.

Liberation

Set accountability standards for leadership, staff and clients who have violated anti-racist and sexual harassment policies.

Develop a Racial Justice Code of Ethics alongside an Anti-Racist Action plan with measurable goals, checkpoints, and an implementation timeline.

Equality

Create a plan and organize focus groups with members to collaboratively develop an framework for the organization moving forward.

Equity

Publish the organization's new anti-racist framework.

Address and document past harm by regularly reaching out past and present BIPOC membership.

Ensure the organization's new mission equitably reflects, engages, and benefits the BIPOC community.

Justice

Conduct regular public forums with community members to provide input on and ensure the organization's mission and goals are continually evolving.

Liberation

Invest in the creation of sibling organizations led by community members and focused on BIPOC-centered justice missions.

Equality

Establish financial transparency when fundraising. Establish wage transparency for all employees and leadership.

Equity

Commit to providing a portion of profits or funding towards supporting BIPOC-led justice work within the organization.

Justice

Eliminate unpaid student internships and volunteer positions and recompense for past unpaid labor.

Liberation

End culture of long hours and low pay across all levels of employment.

Equality

Establish a fund specifically for supporting BIPOC-led justice work within and outside the organization. Conduct substantial and ongoing fundraising efforts to support and grow the fund.

Equity

Provide specific outreach to BIPOC designers and community members for submissions to the organization's RFPs, RFQs, competitions, award programs, etc.

Create an open forum of diverse community members to provide input on how current educational and licensure requirements should be redesigned.

Justice

Restructure the evaluation process of RFPs, RFQs, competitions, award programs, etc. to use a sliding scale with open-ended submission requirements.

Develop new criteria and requirements for becoming a licensed professional that promote a creative learning process versus a "one size fits all" approach.

Liberation

Include members of the community on the jury panels who decide, select and award entries for RFPs, RFQs, competitions, awards, etc.

Require an interview as part of the licensure process to ensure all future architects, landscape architects, planners, etc. are anti-racist.

Equality

Publicly honor the achievements of designers and staff at all experience levels. Elevate and highlight BIPOC individuals both inside and outside of your organization, across all platforms and modes of communication.

Equity

Include intergenerational community members in the operational side of the organization to promote transparency and foster trust.

Justice

Create free tools, resources and offer support to other organizations working on to redefining and rebuilding their structure.

Liberation

Foster a growth mindset through financial literacy workshops in communities that encourage the creation of new organizations and programs which support financial and radical independence

Academic Institutions

Curriculum & Methodology

Equality

Teach the history of design education in the US, including architecture, landscape architecture, and planning, and its relationship to white supremacy.

Equity

Understand how design manifests inequities. Teach the history of systemic racism in the built environment and the complicity of design practice within these systems.
Include comprehensive coursework that focuses on historic and contemporary Black designers and prioritizes designing with Black communities. This coursework should encourage students to think of ways to mitigate and ultimately eliminate the spatial, political and environmental issues that plague Black communities.
Coursework should link the overarching theme of global white supremacy with how European colonialization has altered the natural growth and development of cities throughout the African continent.

Justice

Teach the history of systemic racism in the local spatial and cultural context of the institution and the role the institution has played in this history.

Liberation

Restructure all history course curriculums to dispel the myth of the autonomous design genius.
Research case studies that acknowledge the collective efforts and interdependency of the design profession to include throughout course content.

Equality

Require a historical review, cultural study, and indigenous land recognition for all design studio project locations.

Equity

Revise all core design studio curriculums to teach and include ethical research studies. Design studios should not be focused on solving problems of a community if the solution doesn't include the input of those in the community.
Require that each department and studio professors build relationships with communities prior to assigning studio/learning locations. The community must consent to the extensive research and documentation common to studio work. All work related to the studio must be made easily accessible to their respective communities.

Justice

Require community or user group engagement as a part of the learning goals in all design studios. This includes workshop facilitation, public feedback gathering and other methods of engagement.
Offer classes that are focused on developing economies of care and the design of community-led support and service systems such as mutual aid and skill sharing.

Liberation

Teach the role of design in liberation and take action to address racism in the built environment. Institutions must work alongside local communities in equitable partnership to develop a process of co-learning & empowerment to ensure that design activism is central to design education.

Equality

Decenter western knowledge and perspectives. Create classes centered on history and design practices as part of core curriculum and all design related accreditation such as NAAB, LAAB, CLARB, etc.

Equity

Embed BIPOC designers and history as a core part of the curriculum and not just a token. Require all courses to have BIPOC representation of history, practices, and theory in their syllabi, including lecture topics, readings, and project precedents.
Establish a design pedagogy no longer focused on western precedents and the elevation of individual designers.

Justice

Partner with community leaders as co-instructors for design studios to honor and uplift local knowledge and innovation of BIPOC communities.

Liberation

Champion a co-creation process and integrate community leaders to co-create design studio focus, syllabi and content that aligns with community values, priorities, and needs.

Equality

Create coursework that is rooted in the needs and conditions of our current world, not an idealized conception of the world. Partner with other Institutional programs to provide cross-disciplinary classes that empower students to advocate for change in the built environment.

Equity

Integrate professional experience opportunities as part of the core curriculum, and give first priority to students. Misrepresented BIPOC communities are historically limited in opportunities for advancing their professional practice while in school if they cannot afford to take unpaid internships, pay for conferences or workshops, and have to work other jobs while in school.

Justice

Recognize the emotional labor placed on students when racism is the class topic by providing a stipend for BIPOC students enrolled in all classes on the topic of racism and white supremacy. Acknowledge that it is a privilege to learn about systems through a classroom, rather than through lived experiences.

Liberation

Provide free continuing education access for the local BIPOC community to enroll in classes with current students.
Provide free education for descendants of indigenous communities on whose traditional land the university was built on.

Equality

Identify and eliminate harmful rhetoric used in design academia that tokenize BIPOC communities as a problem that needs to be solved by a designer.
Reframe language in every class, lecture, and public event to be more accessible to those not familiar with design fields.

Equity

Provide classes and lectures in multiple languages to reflect the population of the student body. Ensure that language is not a barrier for students' education.
Enable students to attend all courses and studios in person or remotely based on their needs and preferences.

Justice

Create a shared space for students in every class to safely and respectfully share ideas and feedback remotely and in-person.

Liberation

Provide fluid and adaptable curriculum pathways for students in design degree programs that can be personalized by each individual. This includes the specific courses, options for part-time enrollment, and expedited degree pathways.

Equality

Offer free education programs for college pathways that center anti-racist design methodologies for primary and secondary education.
Foster relationships with local public schools that have large BIPOC student populations and work to sustain an accessible pipeline for BIPOC youth in local community to attend the institution.
Create and continually expand a library of accessible teaching and learning resources about histories of white supremacy and and anti-racist design. Make it available within and outside the institution for faculty to create anti-racist courses and for students to reference.

Equity

Advocate on behalf of BIPOC students and staff for changing the requirements for accreditation that restrict a fluid, creative learning process, and may inhibit students' ability to bring new methods, processes and outcomes to the discipline.
Collaboratively review and restructure school curriculums to ensure all courses foster an anti-racist design pedagogy and environment within the institution. Include students, alumni, administrators, and instructors in the process.

Justice

Support a student-led effort to co-create a fluid curriculum that responds to the interests and priorities of the student body, instead of the niche interests of faculty and instructors.

Liberation

Develop and share evolving methodologies for collaborative, non-hierarchical learning. Sustain these methodologies by providing mentorship and support for all members of the educational community.

Studio & Learning Culture

Equality

Challenge current harmful studio culture power dynamics between students to faculty, and BIPOC student to non-BIPOC student. Develop community agreements for project critiques, pin-ups, reviews, studio spaces, and other areas of collaborative communication to allow for all voices to be heard and supported.

Equity

Unlearn the elitist and white supremacy culture embedded in studio culture through open and frequent dialogue between students and faculty. Acknowledge how these experiences are different for students.

Justice

Center health, self-value and wellness in studio spaces through leadership advocating for and supporting students as whole people. Co-create across leadership and students, a wellness program founded in student assessment of the current harmful studio culture.
Provide bias and anti-racist training for students as a requirement for every year a student is at the school.

Liberation

Create a learning community that is collaborative between students and teachers, where teachers are not gatekeepers of knowledge, but guides that are learning throughout the process alongside students.
Instill a new academic culture of openness and engagement throughout the entire institution
Center and prioritize BIPOC student experiences during the academic process and after graduation.

Equality

Make the selection criteria for all awards and honors given to students.

Equity

Dismantle the grade system as the only measure of success and instead use alternative growth assessments for students.

Justice

Push for accountability between students, faculty and leadership to cultivate a just learning environment for . Co-create guidelines for studio syllabus to allow for flexibility, expression and wellness in all courses.

Liberation

Support a student-led committee of DEI learning culture and give students the agency to keep leadership accountable when they compromise any committee developed agreements.

Equality

No public or private event should occur without representation. Require a minimum of 50% BIPOC guest lecturers and panelists in courses, reviews, symposiums, lecture series, or any other programming to support diverse insight and knowledge.

Equity

Provide dedicated space and programming for a alumni network connected to BIPOC students.

Justice

Recruit, admit, and provide funding for students.

Liberation

Set up and maintain reoccurring funding and support structures for student-led initiatives focused on design justice, including lectures, panels, workshops, events, publications, etc.

Equality

Commit to paying all student workers and Teaching Assistantships at least a living wage.
Pay people for giving talks, running workshops, sharing knowledge and participating in reviews.

Equity

Repair racial disparities embedded in the design education admissions process. Develop a Reparative Admission Plan or Early Decision Acceptance plan for students to be considered first during admission review. Consider it a reverse legacy process - academia valuing the first generation college student.

Justice

Modify the registration process for classes with a lottery system to allow for "first pick" selection for students.

Liberation

Provide barrier-free professional development and support for all students and alumni, which is typically more accessible to white, privileged students.

Equality

Provide required resources & supplies for design education to BIPOC students who are not able to afford them.
Uplift inclusive design processes over superficial representations. Encourage students to explore alternative design projects and representation that center equity, communication and intended impact instead of an idealized aesthetic.
Support students during their studio presentations by having other students, professors, and reviewers take notes on the presentation and give written critiques. Provide these notes in a centrally accessed location for all students.

Equity

Make the admissions processes transparent. Provide support for BIPOC prospective students applying to the institution.
Provide flexible tuition and sponsorship for BIPOC students.

Justice

Reconstruct the admission standards of the institution to address the biases built into the admissions process that present barriers for BIPOC applicants.
Eliminate tuition and provide funding for books, resources and materials for all BIPOC students.
Provide ongoing financial, career, and health support for BIPOC students throughout their education.

Liberation

Free education for all. Support educational opportunities for all to understand how design becomes a manifestation of equity and inequities for those who may one day want to be designers.

Equality

Aid cross-school collaborations for students. Eliminate educational silos and establish a true collaborative network that is accessible to all students.

Equity

Expand studio project timelines and relationships beyond single semesters. Any work done with local communities requires a longer term investment.

Justice

Restructure educational spaces to reflect the anti-racist, community-focused design curriculum. Engage the community as classroom space for collaborative learning.
Ensure all graduates are committed to and working towards achieving all DAP demands.

Liberation

De-colonize design culture. Commit all courses, studios, events, programming, initiatives, mission statements to dismantling white supremacy and advancing anti-racism.

Leadership & Staff

Equality

Denounce previous racist remarks and actions made by school leadership.
Listen to feedback provided by BIPOC staff and student workers and publicly acknowledge the institution's lack of representation and complicity with systemic racism. This includes the evaluation of the institution's pedagogy, hiring practices, and student recruitment.

Equity

Provide frequent and recurring anti-racist training and professional development courses for faculty.
Require each faculty member to develop a list of action items for educating both themselves and students on issues of racism.

Justice

Require admin and faculty member to write summary statements of their understanding of racism in the built environment, urban policy, and design culture through their practice, research, continuing education, and curriculum.
Publish these collected statements as a public commitment to forwarding anti-racist ideals in design pedagogy.

Liberation

Provide regular public programming outlining practices and methodologies within the Institution.

Equality

Make actions, decisions, and conversations held at the leadership level accessible to the entire institution. This includes publishing meeting minutes and agendas, recording meeting sessions and providing summary reports of actions to the student body and staff.
Create an affiliation with Design as Protest, an anti-racist organization, and sign onto the DAP Demands.
Take action in response to students calling for anti-racist actions from their leadership
Develop a contract, signed by faculty members and the institution to hold both accountable for furthering progress towards anti-racism.

Equity

Publish a list of who is funding the institution's curricula, facilities, and scholarships, and identify which of those sources support racist agendas. Work to replace those funding sources.
Publish all faculty salaries and ensure all BIPOC affiliates are being rightly paid for their time.
Demilitarize the institution's police.

Justice

Publicly publish hiring practices and criteria for evaluating potential hires.
Include student input in the decision making of new hires, tenures, and leadership promotions.
Provide quarterly updates to anti-racist organizations or committees regarding anti-racist practices & initiatives.
Provide time and space for leadership & staff to get involved with anti-racist organizations enough to where they can facilitate anti-racist practices and dialogues in the classroom.

Liberation

Partner with existing organizations to co-create a new organizational structure that serves as a permanent structure for accountability.

Equality

Evaluate the current racial make-up of the leadership department and make this information easily accessible to the public.

Equity

Elevate faculty and staff who already have expertise in social justice, community development, and other anti-racism work.
Institution leadership who have signed on to the DAP Demands must provide faculty and staff with support, in the form of time and compensation, to join and provide content for Dark Matter University.

Justice

Recruit and hire BIPOC faculty, fellows, and staff, including those from misrepresented communities of color and local leaders in social justice.
Provide fellowship opportunities for designers and planners focused on social justice.

Liberation

Promote to department chair and higher-level positions. The institution's leadership should reflect the diversity of the populations in which the design field works.

Equality

Identify initiatives and research within the institution and local community that lack funding, then fund them.

Equity

Ethically research and evaluate the harm the institution has caused in its surrounding BIPOC communities. Through the process, listen to and build relationships with local community leaders.
Provide recurring funding for local community development projects led by BIPOC faculty and students in collaboration with local non-profits.

Justice

Develop programs and policies with local community leaders to rectify the harm inflicted by the institution on its surrounding BIPOC communities. This initiative should be led by students, staff, and social justice and community development departments within the institution.
Return historical and cultural relics to appropriate communities or community representatives.

Liberation

Pay students for participating in the institution's ant-racism work.
Provide academic and financial awards to graduating alumni to support their pursuit of licensure.

Equality

Create a environment and process for faculty and staff to speak out against racism and experienced at the institution.

Equity

Co-create community agreements and establish disciplinary actions to guide interactions during meetings and events across various communication platforms, and to combat against faculty and staff.

Justice

Thoroughly evaluate and identify existing hiring practices, remove practices, and restructure the hiring criteria and processes for faculty, tenure, and leadership positions. Create pathways for promotion.

Liberation

Provide ongoing resources and funding for faculty to support their research, professional development, and practice.

Equality

Incorporate an evaluation as part of the faculty, leadership and staff hiring application process to identify actions and reject applicants.

Equity

Create a free resource library and facilitate free public forums for self-education and open dialogue among institution leadership, faculty, staff, and students.

Justice

Schedule monthly, faculty, leadership, and staff reviews to provide peer-to-peer feedback on performance, discuss individual experiences, ask onboarding and logistical questions, and share helpful anti-racist resources and educational exercises. Students must have a voice in this process in a manner that is comfortable for them whether individually, collectively or through liaisons.

Liberation

Maintain a department of anti-racism within the institution that educates on past injustices, sustains initiatives, and keeps leadership, staff, and students accountable.

Local Governments

Leadership & Staff

Equality

Publicly acknowledge the lack of diverse representation and racial misrepresentation within local governmental departments and how they have been complicit in systemic racism based on feedback provided directly by staff and the community at-large.

Equity

Train department staff to identify the effects of institutional racism by implementing a racial equity framework developed by (all external resources must be compensated for). Create a shared understanding among employees regarding goals for practices.

Justice

Incorporate staff and local community leaders in the rewriting of the existing department's internal policies and overall structure and culture to better represent BIPOC voices and to create a more inclusive and just environment.

Liberation

Publish a how-to guide with regard to abolishing practices and incorporating liberating policies within a governmental agency. All proceeds from the guide should be invested directly into the community.

Equality

Outline and publish explicit directives to address shortcomings within the department to meet the needs of staff. This includes all budget requests, hiring, and promotion practices.

Equity

Create a space within the department for staff to share experiences. Establish a platform for these experiences to be heard and addressed by people in positions of power.

Justice

Create more opportunities for department directors to build relationships and liaise with grassroots organizations and organizers. Create a publicly accessible platform for organizers to share their views on the department's practices.

Liberation

Partner with existing anti-racist organizations to co-create a new organizational structure that serves as a permanent framework for accountability.
Make inter-agency communication between planners and community projects a priority for each project.

Equality

Evaluate the current racial make-up of the department and make this information easily accessible to the public.

Equity

Recruit and hire departmental staff who represent the traditionally disinvested communities in which they are working.

Justice

Maintain a system that provides stable investment for recruiting, nominating and hiring BIPOC to leadership positions to ensure misrepresented voices are heard.
Commit to creating a local government that reflects the racial make up of its communities.

Liberation

Create a new hiring process where local community members are represented on the agency's committee responsible for hiring and recruitment of new employees.

Equality

Evaluate salary ranges for department staff to ensure they are comparable to those for similar roles in similar sized cities, and ensure staff are fairly compensated compared to their white counterparts.

Equity

Provide additional salaried compensation to staff to ensure retention and affirm their value within the department.

Justice

Pay for continuing education and provide additional financial incentives for BIPOC staff to elevate experience and position within the department including AICP exams and accreditation.
Provide paid time off for staff to volunteer and become engaged in the local community and local initiatives.

Liberation

Create a BIPOC-led internal department that leads the agency in establishing where funds are invested with a focus on misrepresented communities and equitable initiatives. Provide holistic transparency in any future development processes while holding the agency accountable.

Equality

Create a safe space for BIPOC staff to speak out against racism and discrimination experienced at the department and promote the agency to reconstruct procedures to ensure a just work environment.
Provide BIPOC staff with direct access to the leadership who make decisions regarding promotions.

Equity

Create partnerships with local public schools for paid summer internships that empower students to be champions of their communities and builds a pipeline for diversifying the planning profession.
Make room for BIPOC leaders within the department by investing in leadership development and expanding the budget to accommodate more BIPOC leadership positions.

Justice

Establish a public election process for local planner, developer, and commissioner positions within the governmental agency.

Liberation

Establish a non-hierarchical organization chart to abolish "positions of power." Create supportive structures for communal working groups. Incorporate existing grassroots organizations and elected at-large council representation within the working groups.

Equality

Conduct quarterly organizational assessments by a paid, external consultant to evaluate the department's practices. Publish evaluations and findings to the public.

Equity

Provide annual JEDI trainings for all decision making entities and personnel.

Justice

Require and maintain an internal Design Justice group focused on anti-racism within the department that sustains equitable initiatives, reviews internal policy changes, and keeps leadership and staff accountable.

Liberation

Redraw district boundaries to ensure equitable funding across the city. Eliminate district-based council representation to provide incentives for stronger collaboration in pursuit of collective good for the city.
Redistribute key decision making powers to the community representatives and stakeholders.
Create and maintain a publicly accessible, reference library for all community driven planning policies and documentation.

Budget & Investment

Equality

Publicly acknowledge that policies and institutions such as redlining and biased policing contribute to current racial inequities; private investment and banks should be acknowledged as being part of the problem.
Acknowledge the detrimental financial effects of policies that were based in the systems founded on colonialism and enslavement

Equity

Conduct government-funded research into the real consequences of past and existing policies. Publish the research to inform on future policy-making.

Justice

Acknowledge the expertise that exists within the community. Come to the community as an apprentice who is ready to listen to and learn from community members rather than an expert who dictates and directs development.

Liberation

Provide investment, education and mentorship within the community to nurture and uplift local leaders as the decision-makers.

Equality

Create Racial Equity Design Committees (with majority members) in public agencies, municipal departments and private firms to ensure equitable outcomes in project and policy creation.

Equity

Commit to implementing a formal standard that specifies racial equity outcomes in policy making. Require departments to conduct a racial equity analysis of all budget requests and policy creation. Ex: Seattle Racial Equity Toolkit
Create an easily accessible database that tracks the distribution of public money in past, public, and future developments.
Promote and finance local, community non-profits that address violence against BIPOC in the built environment.

Justice

For both public and private projects, require developments to formalize project goals. Implement Developer Applications that make the intent of the development explicit to the community and the broader public.
Create a standard to evaluate projects on equitable development measures and publish the results.

Liberation

Appoint a third-party agency, in addition to the Department of Health and other municipal departments, to monitor and evaluate project process and outcomes. Levy fines for transgressions and failed evaluations. Create a database to access these records.
Commit to equitable capital distribution for physical planning projects in low income minority neighborhoods to match higher-income communities. Streetscape improvements, street design, infrastructural improvements, and resources should be ubiquitous.

Equality

Support the preservation and reacquisition of land for indigenous communities.

Equity

Recognize and acknowledge the indigenous people who traditionally inhabited the area as an act of reconciliation.
Redistribute funding from police departments to BIPOC communities, prioritizing communities impacted hardest by COVID-19.

Justice

Require a land tax from non-indigenous residents living on indigenous land. Yes, this means everyone.
Land Reparations and Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit
Require the donation of a percentage of private land for public projects in disinvested communities that lack public space.
Create local policies and financial incentives that support BIPOC communities in renovating blighted / vacant properties for public use.

Liberation

Establish a land bank or investment fund in which non-Black developers contribute to development in predominately Black neighborhoods. Developers can choose to either build affordable housing units OR contribute to the land bank/investment fund. Policy should be enacted and overseen by a Heritage Commission Board.
Establish land conservancies and stewardship councils to facilitate land returns and repatriation.

Equality

Create a Planning Mentorship Program that matches local mentors with local mentees with the goals of increasing BIPOC representation in planning, supporting upward mobility in the professions, exchange of ideas, and assist in a successful academia to practice pipeline for BIPOC students.

Equity

Ease the application process for small BIPOC planning and architecture firms to obtain MWBE (Minority- and Women- Owned Business Enterprise Program) certification by expediting the application timeline.
Implement requirements for government and large consulting companies to hire MWBE as the primary contract holder for any public projects.
Solicit planners from proposed development neighborhoods to consult on the project.

Justice

Mandate corporate investments in the development of Black communities to approve a minimum amount of business loans to Black investors.

Liberation

Mandate participation in the development of general land use plans to engage the general public in explicitly informing zoning decisions.

Equality

Provide funding and tech support for the production of videos and minutes for all municipal meetings and community design presentations.
Provide additional funding for meetings to happen within communities and after work hours.
Foster inclusive language practices by providing definitions and avoiding jargon. Require world language translations at community presentations and meetings.
Redistribute public money to finance greening and cleaning for inner city lawn maintenance.
Allocate paid time for planners to educate youth on racist policies in grade school, higher education curricula and to ultimately lead planning and design organizations.

Equity

Require the participation of community members, beneficiaries, and victims of underinvestment in the final approval process with city officials for annual budgets.
Establish a community mediation program, giving community members an opportunity for democratic participation and early intervention opposed to the institutional legal process.
Establish programs within local governments to promote the quality, accessibility, and affordability of early childhood education services, especially for traditionally disinvested communities

Justice

Implement a community planning model that centers decision making on the value of lived experience in a community.

Liberation

Fiscally sponsor community organizations in the creation of neighborhood focused public systems management, such as community benefits agreements, community land trusts, co-ops and building sustainable systems.

Equality

Restructure municipal funding processes such as grant applications and review commissions to directly finance and invest in traditionally disinvested communities.

Equity

Increase the implementation of mandatory inclusionary zoning policies and advocate for the development of affordable housing based on a project neighborhood's average median income (AMI) versus the city's AMI.

Justice

Rezone predominantly white and high average median income neighborhoods to allow for truly affordable, multi-family development.

Liberation

Criminalize forced eviction. Eviction dismantles human rights and should be illegal.

Planning & Development

Equality

Acknowledge the existence of racist housing and transportation policies, programs, and practices established and maintained by FHA and FHWA.
Recognize the absence of participation of communities of color in planning and acknowledge their ability to influence development in their own communities.
Acknowledge that participatory planning practices (Community Engagement Strategies) have been used as mechanisms to manipulate BIPOC community stakeholders and constituents
Publicly acknowledge every wrongful forced eviction for both unhoused and housed tenants.

Equity

Acknowledge the inaccessibility of information about city developers. Provide a public directory so the community can easily identify decision-makers and beneficiaries of inequitable development.
Acknowledge that housing is a basic human right.
Acknowledge that many BIPOC communities do not have access to local and free community learning centers, early childhood education services, community mediation programs and other services that promote community well-being and development.

Justice

Advise community leaders and members on the potential effects of proposed development projects in their neighborhood and empower the community with the knowledge and skills to lead advocacy groups.
Require RFP respondents to specify the potential for displacement or other adverse effects of any new development on BIPOC residents and existing communities. Respondents must provide a concrete plan to mitigate these risks.

Liberation

Mandate collaborative teams of planners-designers-contractors for public projects to promote transparency and ensure original project plan integrity.
Acknowledge when the influx of new development doesn't reflect a community's values and needs. Allocate a percentage of revenue from all newly developed, non-community serving projects to the community.

Equality

Conduct assessments to evaluate the social, environmental and economic impact of development plans in BIPOC communities.
Commit to redesigning existing outreach and engagement protocols and strategies that integrate BIPOC community perspectives and voices into the process. Ensure a focus on the quantity and quality of these voices.

Equity

Develop indicators and performance measures for equitable planning (Just City Index)

Justice

Implement a Planning Commission in defense of low income, working class and communities for all development and rezoning reviews that threaten their displacement.

Liberation

Require public approval of financing plan and comprehensive work plan in the allocation of public funds for developments.

Equality

Mandate that all representatives be local tenants in their respective jurisdiction.
Require multi-faceted community engagement (including phone calls, community pools, door-to-door) for approval of new design projects.

Equity

Include community members in the development and revision of planning ordinances.
Support community leaders to serve on Heritage Boards and Land Bank Commissions

Justice

Reconstruct participatory planning models to give power to BIPOC communities that are most affected by planning and policy decisions.
Mandate that new projects must have neighborhood consensus and the neighborhood's signed approval in order for new construction to commence.

Liberation

Integrate community members as co-creators of the policy-creation process, key decision-makers, and leaders not only on individual projects but also on broader strategic planning.

Equality

Implement and finance local commissions that host community workshops to create Community Agreements. Community members must be compensated for their time spent in the workshops.

Equity

Invest in Temporary housing projects, like Bridge Housing, that provide access to supportive services

Justice

Mandate increased development of transitional housing options to support post temporary housing tenants, like Supportive Housing and Affordable Housing.
Eliminate racist political and demographic boundary assignments that have contributed to historical disinvestment in communities of color, to support future social-focus Public Infrastructure investments.

Liberation

Require ongoing analysis of temporary, supportive, and permanent affordable housing programs and developments that can evolve to meet the needs of their tenants.

Equality

Evaluate existing public infrastructure conditions in disinvested neighborhoods of color.
Create an inventory for every piece of infrastructure in urban development that poses as an endangerment to the community and is not universally accessible.

Equity

Ensure the municipal building code dictates that all future public buildings are universally accessible.
Implement local commissions to fully improve infrastructure identified in governmental inventory.

Justice

Cease the construction of quick-build transportation improvements in favor of investment in public transit and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.
Provide improved transit structures like increased seating and climate controlled bus shelters.
Establish funding for necessary improvements to all existing buildings to ensure universal accessibility.
Remove racist provisions from Opportunity Zones.

Liberation

Develop a public works transportation plan that enables increased accessibility to services for BIPOC communities.
Prioritize investment in neighborhood transit networks and systems that promote connectivity within neighborhoods rather than purely moving commuters through them.

Equality

Mandate that all publicly funded affordable housing units (AHU) within existing and new projects must remain designated AHUs for the life of the development.

Equity

Restructure the Area Median Income (AMI) Index to better serve the interests of low-income communities of color
Create a local database of pro-bono designers and contractors to assist BIPOC communities in new development

Justice

Provide free permits, a dedicated point of contact and technical services to small BIPOC business owners, anti-racist BIPOC-led development teams, and development projects (like Destination Crenshaw)
Fight environmental racism. Charge public agencies to mitigate toxic air pollutants, noise nuisances, and urban heat islands in Black communities. Reach air quality levels consistent to those in whiter and wealthier communities.

Liberation

Establish a funding and communications structure to support cooperatives and community leaders in developing their own neighborhoods.
Conduct studies and publicly provide results on existing program and policy effects and outcomes for communities.
Require developers to participate in equitable development training before approving any development projects.

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