by Gordon Goodwin, former GARE Senior Director and Ryan Curren, Housing, Land, and Development Director, Race Forward
It’s inspiring to see so many people working on similar issues in different political and economic contexts, and appreciated the affirmation not just of why we're planning for equitable growth but a structure around how to implement real policy solutions that actually work better for everyone.
- Practitioner, GARE Region 8
In January 2026, eight communities embarked on an ambitious journey to transform how they approach community planning and development. The Community Planning Cohort, a partnership between Race Forward and the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), represents a significant investment in equitable community planning and implementation. Teams of 7 members, including government staff and community leaders, committed to addressing systemic racism in planning, land use, housing, and development.
The cohort spent the last year building relationships, sharing knowledge, and strengthening their use of racial equity tools and strategies. Each team is adopting race-informed community plans, housing policies, and land use policies to promote equitable growth, particularly to increase the supply of affordable dignified housing. Participating jurisdictions came from New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, Maryland, Wisconsin and North Carolina.
I’m thankful to have this conversation today after what's happening in the country and being reminded "democracy is strongest when rooted in community/place. [I] appreciated hearing the candid challenges that other communities are facing. Makes us not feel alone. - Practitioner, GARE Region 4
Cohort teams are practicing co-governance, bringing the best of both institutional power and community power. The staff from housing and planning departments are meaningfully collaborating with their community partners by sharing project-related decision making authority and resources. Teams use the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership to identify what relationship exists between communities of color and local government from consultative to more collaborative and empowering. Many teams use methods to proactively engage residents harmed by past planning decisions like urban renewal or experiencing existing displacement pressures like low-income renters and mobile home owners. Some teams are financially compensating culturally-specific nonprofit organizations for their deep community relationships and expertise as they conduct community engagement or participate on planning task forces.
Why This Matters
Systemic racism has shaped planning and development decisions for generations, creating deeply entrenched racial disparities such as segregation, displacement, and chronic disinvestment in communities of color. This means public amenities like parks and sidewalks are abundant in majority white neighborhoods while in some neighborhoods with more Black and Latino households lack basic transit service, tree canopy, or maintenance of roads and utilities. In other predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods private real estate investment is fueling economic displacement of long-time residents, businesses, and community organizations.
This cohort recognizes that meaningful change requires bringing together diverse voices - government staff, community leaders, and local experts - to collaboratively redesign planning processes from the ground up. To plan with the community, not just for development.
I love our cohort’s focus on local root causes and history being important to establish our community's narrative on housing and race and designing legally defensible race-informed policies. - Practitioner, GARE Region 3
A Journey of Learning and Doing
Teams engaged in six online workshops and trainings using the GARE Housing, Land, and Development Toolbox. They received training and coaching from national housing and land use experts such as Leah Rothstein, author of Just Action, and the Urban Institute’s Tina Stacy, author of “How to Embed Racial Equity in Zoning Code Reform.”
Additional GARE members were invited to share their experiences implementing equitable development policies and plans such as the City of Oakland’s Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan and the City of Charlottesville's Sensitive Community Areas policy and the City of Louisville’s Land Development Code Reform.
Workshops were designed to strengthen each teams' knowledge and capacity of racial equity strategies through leadership development, managing organizational change, narrative and communications, inclusive community engagement, using disaggregated data in racial and health equity analysis, designing governance structures for ongoing accountability, and measuring progress. The cohort also dug into specific race-informed policy and investment strategies to incorporate into their community plans such as equitable zoning reform, value capture tools for community benefits, and anti-displacement regulations and funding.
The conversation around different types of power was really important and valuable. Also, made me think about where I and other planners hold our institutional power.
- Practitioner, GARE Region 5
Over the summer teams met in pairs to provide peer feedback on racial equity action plans to guide early implementation of each team’s community plan. The cohort is closing out with a capstone in-person convening at the GARE Membership Meeting at Facing Race Conference in November 2026. The convening is an opportunity to celebrate their wins, prepare for implementation, and collectively envision what the movement for racial and housing justice needs moving forward.
This next generation of equitable community plans lays out paths to improve material conditions in local communities. And GARE’s ongoing Housing, Land, and Development Networking Group, which meets monthly, will continue to accelerate the replication of these local models across the GARE network and in time, transform the whole field of planning.
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