Thread by @CityLab

A group of several hundred urban planners is calling for the largest U.S. planning organization to support defunding the police.
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Over 650 city planning professionals have called to reallocate some of the funds from “hyper-militarized police departments" to anti-racist planning efforts.
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The planners lay out in a letter to the American Planning Association how neighborhoods that were racially segregated by a range of planning policies have become further denigrated by police violence and harassment of Black people.
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“We perceived this moment as an opportunity to pursue a conversation we’ve been needing to have for a long time,” said Sara Draper-Zivetz, a housing and food planner, and one of the eight authors of the letter to the APA. trib.al/VyauPRg

The recent police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, illustrates the potential nexus between policing, housing and gentrification.
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A lawsuit filed on behalf of Taylor’s family accuses the city of engaging in aggressive police tactics in pursuit of a gentrification project in her neighborhood.
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The complaint alleges that the origin of a police raid in Taylor’s home was a political need to clear out a street for a new development project. The city rejects the theory that its community improvement plans were abetted by violent policing.
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While calls for defunding the police don’t enjoy great support nationwide, there is growing evidence that people are warming to it in certain cities.
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In a recent poll in Minneapolis, where the city council said it would disband the police department after the death of George Floyd, 79% of survey respondents agreed that funding should be diverted from police to social and health services.
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