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That is a good question. In Civil Engineering, all projects that involve federal funds are subject to the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). This requires all projects to go through a process that includes certain considerations for social sustainability. (1 of many) https://twitter.com/1stluvd/status/1360471156738957313
The NEPA process includes a lot of study on various options to achieve the project goals with the goal of achieving a "Finding Of No Significant Impact" (FONSI). This *should* include impacts to surrounding communities.
The social sustainability goals of this process was created specifically to prevent the kinds of racist driven infrastructure projects of the past. For example, the alignments chosen for many highways in the US were specifically selected to cut through minority communities...
intentionally to remove wealth from those communities and move it to new White communities. If you look at historical documents describing the initial planning of our urban highways, the alignments really were that intentionally racist.
This is something the NEPA process *SHOULD* prevent today.
However, nothing is perfect. Often the people producing the studies and those reviewing them don't have a good understanding of the impacts they are producing with their projects and understate the impacts.
However, nothing is perfect. Often the people producing the studies and those reviewing them don't have a good understanding of the impacts they are producing with their projects and understate the impacts.
These engineers, live in middle/upper middle class White Suburbs with very little economic or ethnic diversity, and they have not been taught the totality of how their projects affect communities.
And often they don't really care. They see their job as getting the Project completed within their budget, and if they can minimize a few impacts along the way, that's okay too.
There are lingering institutional processes that still impair improvement. For example DFW's @NCTCOG_Official was institutionally created from it's inception literally to promote and ensure White Supremacy in North Texas. Their institutional racism still bleeds into their work.
So, the NEPA process, if followed faithfully, in my personal opinion, is actually very well set up to promote the kind of framing necessary to help designers and public officials to help minimize the continuation of the use of infrastructure to promote the oppression of the past.
However, the people performing the NEPA process don't always do so faithfully. And in their social circles, they are only really rewarded for finishing the Project on Budget. No one get's extra points on the next project for decreasing institutional oppression on this project.
**This is where voters can really make a difference. **
We need to push politicians to create new rules for awarding design contracts to firms with a history of mitigating systemic abuses. If this became a regular part of the selection process, then EVERY company would do it.
We need to push politicians to create new rules for awarding design contracts to firms with a history of mitigating systemic abuses. If this became a regular part of the selection process, then EVERY company would do it.
