This speaker and workshop series is part of a student-led effort to challenge the status quo of planning education and practice. Radical Planning invites practitioners, organizers, and community leaders to share lessons from work rooted in lived experience, accountability, and collective action. Rather than positioning speakers as experts removed from context, the course centers people actively engaged in communities and movements, offering students concrete strategies for justice-centered planning.

Special attention is given to how historical and contemporary planning decisions have produced lasting spatial inequities. Through weekly speakers, workshops, and guided reflection, students explore how power, identity, and positionality shape planning practice. The course encourages students to move beyond critique by collectively imagining and articulating new approaches to planning that are relational, ethical, and grounded in real-world conditions.

Topics explored reflect representative areas such as Indigenous land and sovereignty, racial and spatial justice, community organizing, environmental justice, participatory and insurgent planning, coalition building, and global approaches to community-led development. Speaker confirmations are released on a rolling basis to allow the course to remain responsive and relational.

Goals of the Radical Planning Speaker and Workshop Series

• Elevate diverse voices and perspectives through an intersectional lens

• Prioritize skill-building and practice-based approaches to planning

• Expand existing curriculum with underrepresented tools, topics, and ways of knowing

• Cultivate a culture of inclusivity, accountability, and care within Taubman

• Foster a harm-aware learning environment that acknowledges planning-generated and systemic trauma