Equity and the City

This is a sponsored event by Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs.

Myra Kraft Open Classroom, Spring 2021: Inspiring Design

Featuring Dr. Karilyn Crockett, Chief of Equity for the City of Boston

How do we create beautiful, just, and resilient places? We’ll kick off the Spring 2021 series with a conversation with Dr. Karilyn Crockett, the City of Boston’s first Chief of Equity. We’ll discuss strategies for embedding equity into urban planning and development in Boston and other cities. We’ll consider observations and lessons learned from her research and book People Before Highways: Boston Activists, Urban Planners, and a New Movement for City Making, which chronicles the 1960s era grassroots movement that halted the construction of I-95 through the City of Boston and had a lasting impact on geographic and political change in the city. The initiative led to the creation of Southwest Corridor Project (1989 RBA Silver Medalist), the expansion of public transit and creation of a new greenway connecting neighborhoods with downtown.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and describe approaches to addressing equity in cities.
• Understand and describe how inclusive planning processes and development projects can address community welfare and affect economic, environmental, and social change.
• Discuss the value of engaging in collaborative partnerships in the planning, design, and development of inclusive, community-based projects.
• Identify and describe the lasting impacts of the citizen-led effort to halt the highway and expansion of public transit along a new greenway in Boston.

Dr. Karilyn Crockett is the City of Boston’s first Chief of Equity, a Cabinet-level position Mayor Walsh established to embed equity and racial justice into all City planning, operations, and work. Dr. Crockett most recently worked as a Lecturer of Public Policy & Urban Planning at MIT, and is the author of People before Highways: Boston Activists, Urban Planners, and a New Movement for City Making. Prior, she worked in the City of Boston’s Office of Economic Development, where she was tasked with creating an equity-driven policy framework for guiding job creation, small business development, neighborhood revitalization and public procurement strategies. Dr. Crockett is also the co-founder of Multicultural Youth Tour of What’s Now (MYTOWN), an award-winning, Boston-based, education nonprofit organization, and holds a PhD from the American Studies program at Yale University, a Master of Science in Geography from the London School of Economics, and a Master of Arts and Religion from Yale Divinity School.