Q&A with Bjorn Sletto, Professor of Community and Regional Planning

Professor Bjørn Sletto’s research focuses on indigenous land rights, environmental and social justice, and insurgent planning, both in the United States and in Latin America. He is particularly interested in the dichotomies and tensions between local knowledge and traditional environmental management systems, and formal planning and management approaches. As the director of the Institute of Latin American Studies’ (LLILAS) Research Initiative in Participatory Mapping, Bjørn works closely with partner institutions in South America to further international scholarship on representational politics and social justice in vulnerable communities. He is also engaged with research on informality and community development in the Dominican Republic. In addition to his international work, Bjørn examines the relationship between pedagogy, planning practice, and environmental and social justice in low-income communities in Texas.

At the School of Architecture, Bjorn teaches Community & Regional Planning courses on environmental and social justice, international planning, public space planning, and studio courses focusing on international planning and development. Bjørn received his doctorate in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. He has a master’s degree in Geography from the University of Kansas, and a BA in Journalism from the University of Minnesota. Bjørn is also an associate faculty member in the Department of Geography and the Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS).

You’ve been teaching at UTSOA since 2006. How has the school and the field of planning changed in that time?

I have been teaching at UTSOA since August 2006. Since then, one important change has been the advances in diversity, equity, and inclusion at the school led by many committed staff and faculty members, including Charlton Lewis, Sarah Wu, Elizabeth Mueller, and Nicole Wiedemann, who spearheaded the initial efforts to develop a diversity strategy for the school. This led to the establishment of the Committee for Diversity + Equity (CODE) and the Race and Gender in the Built Environment Initiative, which has brought in outstanding scholars to our school and strengthened the diversity of our faculty.

On the program level in Community and Regional Planning, issues of inequity and exclusion have also come to the forefront. As a faculty, we all grapple with the intersectional inequities that shape the impacts of challenges that face our cities today, such as climate change, lack of affordable housing, and inadequate urban infrastructures. I feel our program has become a leader in engaged scholarship and community-based, hands-on learning, giving us a national profile and a reputation as a critical and social justice-oriented program. A majority of our students now come from outside the state of Texas. Another positive development has been the internationalization of our curriculum. During these past 15 years, we have seen more courses that focus on international planning and design, including courses such as my own, Dr. Wilson’s, Dr. Jiao’s, and Dr. Zhang’s, where we provide students with practical learning experiences in other countries.
 

Much of your research and work has focused on international planning, specifically on Latin America. How have you shifted your focus and work during the pandemic? What are you working on now?

The pandemic definitely slowed down much international research, including my own and that of my colleagues. Those of us whose research and collaborators are located abroad have turned to tools such as WhatsApp, Skype, and email to stay connected and abreast with developments in our research sites, as we wait for the pandemic to abate. I have used these tools to stay in touch with my collaborators in Latin America and kept up with developments in the informal settlements in the Dominican Republic, where I have been conducting research on informal infrastructures and community-based adaptations to climate change since 2007. We are now working on new funding proposals in the hope that we can provide a new service-learning opportunity in 2022-23 and restart our collaborative research. In the meantime, I initiated new research on place-making and environmental racism in South Austin’s Dove Springs last year. Neighborhoods in this area struggle with a history of exclusion, neglect and flooding—in many ways, similar to the communities in the Dominican Republic where I work—but residents in Dove Springs have developed local knowledges and practices that provide important lessons for resilience in the face of climate change.
 

You’ve lived and worked around the world over the course of your career. What do you think we can learn in the United States or even more locally here in Austin from other places?

I am glad you asked that question because I believe there are a host of planning methods and principles with great relevance for environmental justice and community-based planning here in Austin! For example, in terms of governance and distribution of resources, the participatory budgeting process that emerged in Latin America provides important lessons for how planning and municipal budgets can be developed together with community members to ensure funds are targeted to areas of greatest need. Also, since the majority of urban residents in the Global South actually live in what is known as the “informal” city, informality is in fact the principal mode of planning and therefore the norm, rather than the exception. The informal city is in many ways self-managed with its own economies, social relations, and design and building practices, which have come about through necessity because of a lack of funding and attention from formal urban authorities. These economies, social relations, and design and building practices are often innovative, low-impact, and flexible in the face of environmental risks and provide important lessons for community-based approaches to resilience and sustainability here in Austin.

What do you see as some of the most important or pressing topics in planning today?

The persistent, inequitable distribution of resources of various sorts remains one of the most pressing issues in planning. This includes not only the geographic distribution of investments in infrastructure, green spaces and public spaces, but also the ways in which urban decision-makers prioritize their time and attention to problems facing communities. Along with this pressing topic, the planning and design fields continue to struggle with a lack of diversity, both among faculty, students, and professionals. As the discipline becomes more diverse, the field will be better positioned to fostering geographically, economically, and socially just cities. Finally, as an interdisciplinary field that focuses on just and equitable praxis, planning will remain a pivotal discipline as we struggle to contend with challenges arising from climate change and social and political polarization.