Planning for Abolition – Project Description
Planning for Abolition is a SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council) funded research project hosted in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University.
We are asking how urban and regional planning practice can support restorative justice, transformative justice and abolition.
By abolitionist we are broadly referring to practices that aim to produce community safety and thriving without increasing the number of people sent to jails and prisons, without adding resources for policing, and without resorting to violence, enclosure and surveillance.
By urban and regional planning we mean the formal practices involved in land use planning, economic development and urban design, for example, but also the informal and community work that goes into making the places where we live, work, play, learn and worship.
The project has three stages:
- Analyzing the content of independent podcasts to build a stronger understanding of the variety of definitions of abolition that are developing in community and through action and organizing. We prioritized podcasts created by people who are, or have been formerly incarcerated, or otherwise systems-involved including folks who have experiences with family and child services, immigration and disability detention and surveillance, and policing violence. [Listen to the podcasts]
- Surveying city and regional planners to build a stronger understanding of their knowledge of the connections between policing, prisons and planning.
- Building a network of city and regional planners to support the incorporation of abolitionists ideas and practices into planning.
SSHRC Grant Project Description [pdf]
Feel welcome to reach out to see the full grant