The Inaugural Black Planning Symposium brought together planners, scholars, and community leaders in a generative space of dialogue, knowledge exchange, and collective imagination. As a Research Associate at the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph, I left the symposium with deepened appreciation for the multiplicity of ways Black planning is reshaping the profession, and its resonance with my own research on housing equity for marginalized communities.
The keynote session offered a provocative and timely reframing: Blackness in planning is no longer defined solely by racial identity but is evolving into a broader philosophical and structural commitment to preserving culture, tradition, and community fabric against forces of erasure. This was illustrated powerfully through the lens of the Palestinian experience (https://handmadepalestine.com/en-ca/blogs/news/the-historic-textile-industry-of-palestine-weaving-culture-resistance-and-identity?srsltid=AfmBOopcE2wlM-kALTQOoQeefVjVUxZRc5hUU3zGsDuRKpfHoUlcQhfr) — where artisans and organizers preserve identity through traditional textile work even amid displacement — drawing a parallel to how Black planning communities sustain cultural sovereignty through creativity, resistance, and spatial practice. This framing invites us to see Black planning as part of a global movement of peoples asserting the right to define and inhabit their own spaces on their own terms.
In our small group session, the conversation moved fluidly between activism and education — two streams I find personally compelling. I am drawn to the interventionist ethos of Black planning: its willingness to challenge systems and advocate loudly. Yet I am equally moved by its educational dimension. For many planning professionals, the full scope of Black planning practice in Canada — including its theoretical frameworks, community achievements, and ongoing evolution — is still an emerging area of awareness. Amplifying these stories is itself a form of planning practice.
This connects directly to my research evaluating housing provisions for International Agricultural Workers under Ontario’s Provincial Policy Statement. This is a policy context where lived realities of workers — their cultural practices, social needs, and spatial expectations — are rarely legible within the technical language of provincial planning documents. The symposium offered a useful analytical lens: that policy evaluation must account not only for what a policy prescribes, but for the knowledge systems and community contexts it implicitly includes or excludes.
Where these dimensions are absent from planning analysis, policy outcomes may diverge significantly from the needs of the communities they are designed to serve. The symposium gave an opportunity to reflect on how such considerations can be more systematically incorporated into research design and professional practice.
Learn more about the symposium here: https://blackplanningproject.com/building-beautiful-black-worlds/
Written by Damilola Paul Oyewale, Research Associate, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph.