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cholars and practitioners of urban planning need to rethink the field’s futures at this important historical juncture: some might call it a moment of truth when there is little left to hide. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many cracks, contradictions, and inequalities that have always existed but are now more visible. This also includes the global vaccine apartheid that is ongoing as I write these words. Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
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Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
- Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed.
- Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real.
- They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining.
- I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
- Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed.
- Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real.
- They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
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he essays and narratives below were written between January 2021 and August 2021. The first set of texts (Part One) by Carby, Georgis, Cowen, Haley, Browne, Gardner, and Gilmore were first shared on May 11, 2021, at the Dear Science and Other Stories/A Reading and Conversation. Natalie Oswin commissioned the second set of texts, which are presented as a separate-collective narrative (Part Two). Written by Subramaniam, Asante, Samudzi, James, and Moriah, these texts follow Oswin’s only directive: not to replicate the typical “author meets critics” model but instead offer openings and reflections. Together, these different and divergent texts, Parts One and Two, engage and walk through and extend Dear Science and Other Stories.
While I was researching and writing Dear Science and Other Stories I experienced several moments of loss—ideas crossed through me that I could not bear to narrate or revisit. There are stories and attachments that remain wordless. Underwriting the loss was, of course, a recognition that the unsaid and the unwritten—holding back, telling half of the story, keeping a secret, twisting the plot—is black methodology (Young, 2012; Alexander, 2004). “How do we spatialize the secret,” I wondered. And then, rushing: “No. Please don’t colonize my hearts.” (I remember Natalie Diaz [2020: 5] writing, “in my chest I am two hearted always” and something shifted). Underwriting the loss is, as well, a deep desire for embrace: the longing to entangle Dear Science with texts, sounds, and ideas that I could not know or say without friendships and books and essays and poems music, while also centering the knotted relations that made the stories possible (see also Gilroy, 2004).
The texts, stories, and songs below are cherished. These narratives build worlds that I did not anticipate. This is what possibility feels like.
Thank you, Kendall Witaszek, Deb Cowen, Charmaine Chua and Natalie Oswin, for imagining this symposium and threading these texts together.
Katherine McKittrick is Professor of Black Studies and Gender Studies at Queen’s University. She authored Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle and Dear Science and Other Stories.
