What constitutes a just city? How can a metropolitan area, with its intricate layers, provide holistic and equitable services, opportunities, and dreams for all residents regardless of the color of their skin, their cultural background, or the languages they speak? How does the historic and present-day legacy of racist urban planning policy affect access to opportunities within cities and their neighborhoods today? We created ULI Washington’s Summer Equity Challenge with these questions in mind. The challenge’s dialogue allows us to reflect on development policies and practices together with peers and colleagues working in the built environment. As developers, architects, planners, policymakers, community members, and researchers, we have a responsibility to address these questions and foster more just communities for everyone.

Our aim is to raise awareness of the past and current context of racist and problematic urban planning and development practices. By elevating these issues, we promote an understanding of historical disenfranchisement of communities of color that can help us approach our lives and our work with inclusivity and equity as a top priority. See here for the July chapter of the challenge: Local Context: Learning the Racial History of the DMV. This compilation of resources highlights racial history, the urban development agenda, and stories of gentrification and segregation in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

I have called the Washington, DC area home since I moved here 11 years ago from Turkey. I always had an awareness of DC, seeing headlines in the news or depictions in pop culture as the capital of the United States. The more I learned about the rich history and culture of the city during my time here, the more I fell in love with the region. That said, I also learned of the city’s painful challenges and its displaced communities—or more frankly, the endurance of segregation, the limited access to opportunity experienced by many community members of color, and the policies and development practices that created and maintained these conditions.

The July edition of the Summer Equity Challenge shines a spotlight on this history. To understand how race and policy have shaped our region, listen to this recorded conversation with Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove, the authors of Chocolate City. The authors bring our attention to the many ways in which public policy has affected affordability, access to opportunity, and equity as well as how these policies disproportionately impacted communities of color. Film-makers Sam Wild and Ellie Walton explore the impacts of gentrification on a public housing community in Southeast DC in their documentary Chocolate City. Similarly, the research article, “Mapping Segregation in D.C.” showcases a data-driven story of discriminatory housing practices, and the article, “How Segregation Shaped DC’s Northernmost Ward,” builds on the conversation of housing affordability and gentrification in Washington, DC.

It was a privilege to work with the ULI Washington’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee’s Education and Awareness Sub-Committee to curate the Summer Equity Challenge. As an immigrant and built environment practitioner, these issues are close to my heart. These resources once again demonstrate how real estate development, design, and planning are powerful tools that can dramatically impact the lives of people and communities — for better or worse. A deeper understanding of the history of our region can help us be conscious and proactive on diversity, equity, and inclusion best practices to avoid long-lasting and harmful impacts on communities of color and foster a more just Washington, DC metro area for all.

Koray Aysin
Senior Firmwide Sustainability Specialist, Perkins Eastman

ULI Washington DEI Education & Awareness Subcommittee Member
NEXT Flight Member
Sustainability & Resilience Council Member
Program Committee Member
and FY21 Pathways to Inclusion Alumnus