Yes, let's get back on topic aka urbanism and development, not irrelevant racial slurs
@Kenojuak The mods have been seriously MIA on this one.
The privileged position of white and wealthy property owners in urban planning is a longstanding, documented and structural barrier to equality. This topic is highly relevant to any planning discussion, including this proposal in part because the letter in question appears to have contributed to the deferral of a Staff-supported Final Report for this project, which means a large amount of new housing, along with significant one-time and ongoing revenues to the City, along with a multi-million dollar cash contribution to affordable housing, all have been delayed and their fate remains unknown.
This kind of NIMBY-driven grinding delay happens over and over again in Toronto and many cities in North America (and maybe elsewhere but I can only speak to Canada and the US) and it is a significant contributor to affordability and housing supply issues. Overcoming NIMBY outrage is a recurring barrier to delivering new housing supply. And hopefully we can all agree that new housing supply of every type is desperately needed in Toronto, the
fastest-growing city in North America.
Finally, it is deeply disturbing if someone holding such views is employed in our city's planning/administrative structure. I sure hope you are not involved with planning in any way as I doubt local residents would get a fair hearing for their concerns (frivolous or otherwise) if their public servant holds these extremely problematic views toward their damn race, of all things. Are you not bound by provincial and/or federal legislation to provide non-discriminatory service?
I am not a public servant. However I believe it is the responsibility of every public servant who works in the planning process to be aware of structures of privilege and inequity in the planning system and to work to correct them.
If you are genuinely interested in engaging in this complex and challenging topic , I would suggest the following recent (scholarly, double blind peer-reviewed) article from the journal of record for the planning profession in the United States:
Edward G. Goetz, Rashad A. Williams & Anthony Damiano (2020) Whiteness and Urban Planning, Journal of the American Planning Association, 86:2, 142-156.
Abstract:
Problem, research strategy, and findings: The ability of planning to address America’s urban problems of inequality, crime, housing, education, and segregation is hampered by a relative neglect of Whiteness and its role in shaping urban outcomes. We offer a justification for centering Whiteness within urban planning scholarship and practice that would examine its role shaping and perpetuating regional and racial injustices in the American city. The focus of planners, scholars, and public discourse on the “dysfunctions” of communities of color, notably poverty, high levels of segregation, and isolation, diverts attention from the structural systems that produce and reproduce the advantages of affluent and White neighborhoods. Planners and planning scholars frequently invoke a “legacy of injustice” with regard to concentrated poverty and disadvantage but not in regard to neighborhoods of White affluence. One is segregated and problematized and the other is idealized.
Takeaway for practice: Planners and planning scholars need to understand the role of Whiteness, in particular White affluence, to assess the potential impacts of planning interventions. Doing so will inform a wider range of planning approaches to problems of racial and spatial equity.
It has a good literature review and a rich references section with further reading.
Oh and by the way...
Yes, let's get back on topic aka urbanism and development, not irrelevant racial slurs @Kenojuak The mods have been seriously MIA on this one.
...calling someone a rich white boomer when they are in fact a rich white boomer is not a racial slur. Your privilege is showing.