Architecture and Planning ETDs

Publication Date

Fall 8-16-2017

Abstract

Although public safety has long been an integral aspect of planning, issues such as police violence and reform have been left to other professions and fields of study. Despite the fact that planning policy is executed and enforced by police power, and despite the fact that planning has a lengthy history of perpetuating structural inequality that condemns marginalized communities to higher rates of police violence and premature death, planners are rarely encouraged to consider the intersections of planning and police violence. By reviewing the history of planning and policing as interconnected mechanisms of social engineering and control, this research attempts to broaden the scope of responsibility for planners to include police violence and reform. This research will examine police-community relations meetings as a reform approach and demonstrate that while police-community meetings have been praised as progressive and innovative reform, city officials and police administrators have actually been using processes like the collaborative as far back as the 1960s. This research specifically examines policing in Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Collaborative on Police-Community Relations launched by the City of Albuquerque as a planning process ostensibly to address police violence. However, by analyzing power dynamics embedded within the design, process and participation of the ACPCR, this research will argue the Albuquerque collaborative served to shore up police legitimacy rather than transform policing as it was practiced in Albuquerque.

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Community and Regional Planning

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

School of Architecture and Planning

First Committee Member (Chair)

Dr Claudia Isaac

Second Committee Member

Dr David Correia

Third Committee Member

Dr Laura Harjo

Download

Share

COinS