About the BIPOC Collective Mutual Study

A Message from Sean Robins

The BIPOC Collective Mutual Study is an informal network of planners looking to strengthen the ways we can work together to empower and transform communities of color in the Americas using the tools of planning, community development, design, and geography. We recognize that political organizing and wealth generation must often accompany these four disciplines in practice, and that a host of other disciplines are also closely intertwined, such as health, education, the arts and spiritual/faith based practices.

Because our work and communities are not always properly supported, appreciated, respected or acknowledged by mainstream and other planning institutions, we have convened a Collective that we hope will more authentically support the work that needs to be done with and for our peoples. These include Black (African Diaspora), Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, Working Class & other communities and peoples that have been marginalized and harmed by the dominant culture, powers, and field of planning.

Planning has a mixed history - we seek to decentralize the approaches and values of “traditional” or mainstream planning, and reclaim it as a process that can be part of freedom work and healing, and that can enhance peoples' movements for social justice, decolonization, and de-incarceration.  Planning is also the distinct work each community does that honors their own heritage, traditions, history and peoples as they take responsibility for planning for their own future.  We recognize that all peoples have ancestors that engaged in planning activity, even if little of this history is honored and taught today.  

We recognize not everyone has the opportunity in their day to day work or current positions to safely or actively discuss and grapple with some of the themes we’ve mentioned are important to the Collective.  To that end, we seek to co-create a space that values, respects, and bolsters each other's work.  We hope to use this space to check in and learn from each other, trade and iterate on ideas, discuss challenges and potential solutions, and nurture each others’ work.  We also aim to foster discussion so that we can critique strategies that are problematic, identify strategies to better resist forces that go against our communities, and develop methods that are in line with alternative planning rooted in advancing racial and social justice.

Opposing Anti-AAPI Violence and Racism

As a Planning Collective in support of Communities of Color, we wish to voice our solidarity for Asian American and Pacific Islander Peoples and Communities in the U.S.. We were appalled and dismayed by the European American Man who took the lives of eight in Atlanta, including six Asian Women. Mia White has been actively speaking out with others since this incident, and we expect to spotlight AAPI communities in a future meeting. This essay by Professor Mia White gives more background on anti-Asian racism and violence, and what you can do about it.

The Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) Collective Mutual Study was co-founded by Sean Robins and Katherine Mella, and later joined by Professor Mia White, Cinthia De La Rosa and Byron Nicholas. The Collective is an informal network of planners looking to strengthen the ways we can work together to empower and transform communities of color in the Americas. We are a new configuration of conversations and alliances that go back many years and have had other names. Past participants include alumni of color and allies from MIT Planning, members of Planners Network, the Black Planner Collective, Indigenous Design and Planning Institute, MASS Design Group, and many more. We have been meeting quarterly on zoom since May of 2020.