Commentary: Diversity in urban planning education and practice

Planning needs more diversity if it is to have legitimacy. Diversity can be achieved through more diverse faculty and students who become practitioners, and by increased scholarship that addresses diversity. In this essay, we examine the trends in scholarship about diversity in planning and the barriers to increasing faculty and students of color in planning schools, and we propose ways to move forward. We conclude that planning must increase the number of faculty of color in tenured and tenure-track positions and enhance the ability of planning programs to adequately address issues of race and gender to balance the power relations within the academy.