A Place for Planning in Abolition and Transformative Justice?

How can planners support and reinforce abolitionist freedom movements? And how is abolitionist planning in conversation with – and yet distinct from – transformative planning, as characterized by Marie Kennedy in her seminal essay on the topic? To answer these questions, we discuss several themes taken up by both abolitionist movements, including decarceration and the transformation of social relationships. Planners can confront, inside and outside of existing policy, the everyday dynamics of oppression and refuse to accept harmful ideologies rooted in racism, consciousness raising, and further, work towards ceding power and control in planning communities from the top down. We explore how abolitionist approaches can help to unleash what Kennedy describes as all of our creative energies, which enable everyone to be actors and subjects of planning, and how transformative planning can inspire practical alternatives to jails, prisons, and the carceral state. An abolitionist understanding of city planning’s complicity in the carceral state reproduces violence for the diversity of communities we profess to “plan for” but that planning itself must take on an abolitionist, anti-police, and sometimes anti-state perspective, in order to truly plan with the communities that experience the most violence within cities, counties, nations, and carceral governance systems overall. As part of this summation of work, we present some of the strategies and tactics used by community-based planners and organizations to challenge existing structures and policies as well as the barriers and institutional obstacles they face as they strive to implement abolitionist approaches.