How do you plan for the future during a time of collective trauma?

“Collective trauma” may be a strong phrase, but it is one that came to my mind to make sense of the time period we are living through currently. This is a time of the coronavirus pandemic that over the last several months has infected, sickened or killed millions of Americans. This is a time of protests, introspection and dismantling in response to a collective reckoning of our country’s long history of racism and systemic institutional practices that have enshrined inequities throughout our society. This is a time of economic disruption, high levels of unemployment, and dramatic shifts in many aspects of everyone’s daily lives.

How, as a leader, do you keep your eyes on the long-term view and possibilities to create better futures for the communities that we serve, when there are so many widespread immediate challenges happening right now?

As Deputy Planning Director at the Montgomery County Planning Department, I consider every day how to support my organization in being resilient and productive during this time of daily disruption. Since mid-March, Montgomery Planning has been successful in continuing our work to benefit Montgomery County’s long-term future. We have continued to review development applications, hold virtual Planning Board meetings and conduct virtual community engagement for our planning initiatives. As part of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC), my department also has been flexible and creative in providing organizational resources including “social distancing leave” to support the well-being of our employees, many of whom have been primarily teleworking for months.

At the same time, we at Montgomery Planning continue to keep our eyes on the future. Montgomery Planning acknowledges land use planning’s role in creating racial inequities in communities. We seek to dismantle existing inequities and avoid creating new ones by integrating equity as a foundation of our planning work through our Equity in Master Planning Action Plan, employee equity trainings and other efforts.

We also are updating Montgomery County’s General Plan, our long-range policy framework for guiding future land use and growth. Called Thrive Montgomery 2050, this update focuses on equity, environmental resilience and economic health as key outcomes for the county over the coming decades. We began this process of envisioning a new future for Montgomery County over a year ago while operating under a certain understanding of existing conditions and future trends. Now, we are living with very different existing conditions, which could change what happens in the future. Some have asked that Thrive Montgomery 2050 be paused for several months or until a time when we have a better understanding of whether the “new normal” will be the standard in the future. This is not an option. Why? Challenges such as access to jobs, affordable housing, health care, and parks and open space were present before and have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. We now have an even greater need to meaningfully address these problems, sooner rather than later. We need to put in place planning policies that will support economic recovery, safer transportation, more affordable and attainable housing and equitably distributed community amenities so that, during and after the pandemic, our communities can have a future where everyone thrives and not just survives.

This conviction, on my part, is undergirded by two lessons in leadership that have been reinforced for me during this time. One is that leaders must often make decisions without having all the information we may need or want. The other comes from something my late grandfather said to me when I was a child. He saw me walking down the sidewalk constantly looking down, trying to be careful where I stepped. My grandfather said “Tanya – you need to look up to see where you are going.”

As individuals dealing with the impacts of the pandemic, it can be difficult to maintain our focus on using our work to create a thriving future. But as leaders, we have no choice. We must make sure we don’t fall and, at the same time, be mindful and intentional about where we are going.

Tanya Stern, Deputy Planning Director, Montgomery County Planning Department
Former Co-Chair, ULI Washington Placemaking Initiative Council
Member, ULI Washington Prince George’s County Initiative Council

In ULI Washington’s new Leadership Insights column, ULI Washington will regularly feature member leader’s thoughts and insights as we adjust personally and professional to a “new normal.