A Framework for Using Regional Scenarios in Racial Equity Planning

Planning under uncertainty and planning for racial equity both require imagination. In confronting the uncertain future, regional planners often opt for exploratory scenario planning: telling multiple future stories to prepare for any outcome. For equity planning, imagination supports vision beyond the deeply unequal present condition, wherein policy tinkering is insufficient for necessary change. And yet, scenario planning and equity planning are estranged. Although regional planners wish to engage both, they lack guidance on how. I look to close this gap by providing a framework (<i>the Framework</i>) for using scenarios in equity planning. The Framework builds on the five types of racial equity, a six-stage hybrid scenario process, and the three outcomes of public-sector scenarios. Using the Framework, I assessed the inclusion of equity in the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s Dispatches From Alternative Futures scenario plan. This plan successfully raises racial equity as a concern for the future of the Philadelphia (PA) region. However, the stakeholder group was not sufficiently diverse for deliberative equity and the scenario planners did not use tools that could assess the distributional outcomes. Neither epistemic nor restorative equity were a significant part of the scenario plan, leaving open the possibility for co-designed scenarios for a racial equity future. Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) can use the Framework to ensure that exploratory scenarios advance equity goals. Although the Framework can supply a starting point for MPOs, the most important voices are those from Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and other marginalized communities. Scenario planners should consider how they can reach out to community members not just as stakeholders but as co-creators of a more epistemically equitable scenario planning process, one that addresses the uncertainties and aspirations that already percolate within these communities.