2015 Urban Affairs Association Conference

As urbanization patterns are rapidly transforming the world, the planning field is struggling to develop new intellectual and technical tools to both interpret and act in effective and equitable ways. This colloquy will explore the linkages between public health, migration, social justice, and labor in cities through the lens of ethno-racial dynamics. Urban epidemics of obesity and diabetes have prompted a renewed interest in the linkages of planning and public health in underrepresented communities. Spatial and residential segregation and class inequity places increasing burdens on native born minority and immigrant groups. As our cities become more diverse, even scholars of race and ethnicity grapple with the challenges of becoming more mindful of how national origin and other identity traits complicate societal systems of opportunity and discrimination. While some important ground has been advanced in each of these areas, much work remains to be done in order to excavate their intersections with race and ethnicity. This colloquy brings together reflective planning, public health, and migration scholars and practitioners to speak candidly about their own attempts to grapple with the need to bring race and/or ethnicity into their emerging planning work and scholarship.