“Why are we asking for a seat at the table that our ancestors created for us?” The importance of cultural landscapes and power in urban planning

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2017, despite ongoing efforts from the descendent community, the EnRichmond Foundation a white-led organization, purchased Evergreen and East End cemeteries, two Black cemeteries in Richmond, Virginia. Citing the decline of the cemeteries and its importance to national history, the Foundation focused on bringing resources to the space. However, the foundation’s before-after narrative of an elite home to luminaries and a lack of perpetual care leading to its deterioration put the fault on Black Richmonders themselves, instead of the decades of exclusion and violation of public and private actors. This paper centers “place” as a way to examine the role of the context and meaning—specifically that of Black joy and celebration and racialized violations that must be interrogated and addressed for meaningful state and private planning to occur. We assert that Evergreen and East End merely make clear the ways that planners move forward, regardless of intention, in ways that ignore the meanings of space, the ways that conditions are produced and the importance of community-based power in determining the future of these spaces. We argue that planning practice needs to engage with the meaning of space and understand it as deeply woven into planning practice.