Design and planning are powerful tools that can dramatically affect people’s and communities’ lives, but how can we use them as catalysts to bring together the spirit and energy within our cities? Notably, partnerships aligning civic, development, community, and design organizations lead to the essential framework that inevitably shapes urban environments. Through this medium, good design can foster healthy, sustainable, and equitable built environments that can benefit everyone. However, catastrophic outcomes such as systemic racism and inequity can also be products of design as we saw in historic U.S. planning practices such as redlining maps.

This session explores how coalescing the energy driving inclusive and equitable design and development can shape our communities. The Dallas Innovation Alliance (DIA) will serve as a central case study, a coalition of stakeholders from the city of Dallas, corporations, civic and NGO organizations, academia, and private individuals who are invested in Dallas’s continued evolution as a forward-thinking, innovative, “smart” global city. Presenters will follow with a showcase of different project-based case studies and design strategies that are channeling conversations akin to DIA as a means to foster social sustainability and explain applicable design processes.