Decolonizing Planning Studio Pedagogy: Grappling with Tensions and Dissonances

This presentation reflects on two community planning studios in Lakeland, an African American community in Maryland, the U.S. The tensions faced in planning pedagogy highlight the controversies and resistances that arise as dominant paradigms oppose efforts to decolonize planning, including: Top-down versus bottom-up planning, or the struggle between authoritative models and community-driven approaches; planning to fix versus planning to heal, and the need for trauma-informed practices; temporal mismatches, where long-term community processes conflict with the shorter timelines of studios; process versus project emphasis, reflecting differing planning priorities; mismatched agendas and goals among stakeholders, including community members, instructors, and students; competing planning ideologies or lenses, where priorities such as planning for profit versus people come into conflict; the tension between maintaining the status quo and advancing revolutionary planning; and the discomfort experienced by students, which impacts teaching evaluations. These tensions highlight the complexities of fostering a decolonial planning environment.