Marccus Hendricks on Infrastructural Justice and Staying True to Your Values

[00:04] - Marccus Hendricks

I think myself, my lab, and many of my colleagues, unfortunately, have been forced into this choice of either capitulation and shifting our research programs to topics that effectively are politically sanitized or to remain steadfast in truth and exploration. I think of topics that we know to be grounded in facts and decades of corroborated evidence from foundational social science, including planning.

 

[00:36] - Meghan Stromberg

Marcus Hendricks wasn't even aware of planning as a profession when he started college in 2006, the first of his family to do so. But today, he's an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where he directs the Stormwater Infrastructure Resilience and Justice Lab. He specializes in stormwater management and flood hazard planning with a social justice focus. In this very moment, he's trying to make sense of what's going on at the federal level and how it impacts science, planning, social justice, and local communities. At one time, he was part of the federal government, serving as the Senior Advisor for Climate and Environmental Justice in the Biden administration. Since January, he has seen grants eliminated and students unsure of their path forward. The web page that hosted information about his work at the federal government, it now gives a 404 error message. My name is Megan Stromberg, the Editor in Chief of the American Planning Association and host of People Behind the Plans. Marcus, welcome to the show. We're really thrilled to have you.

 

[01:42] - Marccus Hendricks

Thanks so much, Meghan.

 

[01:44] - Meghan Stromberg

Pro-planning programs and funding have been cut, they've been eliminated or changed, and it's affecting planners and communities and academic spaces that you move in. What are you making right now of this moment? What does it mean for planners?

 

[01:59] - Marccus Hendricks

I think in In real-time, many of us are trying to make sense of it all. There's been so much that has happened in the last 10 or 11 months that is hard to keep up with. I think myself, my lab, and many of my colleagues, unfortunately, have been forced into this choice of either capitulation and shifting our research programs to topics that effectively are politically sanitized or to remain steadfast in truth and exploration. I think of topics that we know to be grounded in facts and decades of corroborated evidence from foundational social science, including planning. I've even had to suppress the dissemination of some of my work that's been related to climate change and environmental justice just to avoid the further cancelation of existing research funding. I think, again, for myself and my students and colleagues, this time is daunting and is emotionally exhausting. The worry of job security, what our profession looks like moving forward, what does science, social science, specifically, look like in the grand scheme of this moment, from funding to publicizing of our work, it's a lot to deal with. It may be weird to say this, but I feel prepared for this moment quite frankly, just as a black American.

It's W. E. B. Du Bois who called it this double consciousness, right? That Black Americans often deal with in terms of this feeling of living between two identities, right? One identity being the very real lived experiences of things that we know to be true, but then also living through this moment where we're having to mask that truth in in order to exist and survive. I think that innate experience as a Black American has translated to my identity as a scientist, a scholar, and an academic.

 

[04:11] - Meghan Stromberg

That's not a perspective that I've heard before. I really appreciate it. I know most of your work has focused on the flood resilience work that you've done, and I know it's extensive, but part of it has really impacted vulnerable communities, including Black communities and other communities of color. How did you get into this work? What have you learned from working with the people who live in these communities that you're serving?

 

[04:39] - Marccus Hendricks

I was trained at the graduate level by what I like to call traditional disaster scholars who were leaders, and in my eyes, legends in the field of environmental hazards and disasters, particularly through a sociological and planning perspective. I think folks who have dedicated their careers to writing and researching about scholarship and practice that have defined what we like to call social vulnerability to disaster. And this idea that individuals and groups who live at the social and economic margins of our society are the least likely to be able to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from environmental hazards and are disproportionately impacted during the disasters due to systematic inequality. But even well before I met some of my mentors and heroes and before my graduate training, I was born and raised between two different communities in inner city Dallas that was plagued by a variety of environmental issues, from poor air quality and pollution to flooding. It was the everyday lived experience of those environmental circumstances that planted the question early on to me that what was it about me, my family, my community that led to these outcomes and experiences, especially relative to other parts and sides of town that were well healthier and frankly, wider, where there was a stark difference in the experience and just the makeup of their communities from a built environment perspective.

And I think that early experience really planted the seed again for me to question, what was it about the planning, the policy, the practice, the implementation of local laws that led to these outcomes? And so through my work and research program today, I ask those questions, and I frame it not only through social vulnerability, but slow violence in terms of how do over time we perpetuate violence through planning, practice, policy and implementation through urban form that create these social vulnerabilities that ultimately lead to disasters. And my mentors were studying the aftermath of disasters and the impacts as a of, and I wanted to get after the root causes of how we got here. And I think that planning sets the stage from a structure and function of community perspective in terms of what not the only people experience every day, but what they also experience in moments, in terms of crises and disasters. And so whether it's the lived experience or the school of thought that I was trained in, both of those experiences have shaped my research program and led to what I do and study today.

 

[07:49] - Meghan Stromberg

You mentioned mentors in the field. Would you mention a couple of them?

 

[07:54] - Marccus Hendricks

Sure. Shannon Van Zandt, Walt Peacock, Laurie Peek, Dennis Mileti, Norma and Bill Anderson are all people that have personally played a huge role in the development of me as a scholar and as a human.

 

[08:12] - Meghan Stromberg

In the time that you've spent doing this work and thinking about the work that your mentors have done, how have you seen it change? What aspects are improving? What things haven't changed?

 

[08:24] - Marccus Hendricks

I've seen it ebb and flow. I've seen moments where a lot of the things that we've been talking about for years finally start to gain traction. And moments where, although historically we've been notoriously reactive to disasters, I've seen glimpses where we started to become proactive and recognizing that climate change isn't a hoax or it isn't something that's far away but happening in this moment right now. And also recognizing that community Communities are key and at the center of everything that we do and have to be, whether as a disaster planner or planner in general. And one of my other heroes and mentors, Dr. John Cooper, always says that you got to have a covenant with communities, a shared agreement and understanding about how you go about doing the work of planning. I've seen a huge growth in the area of participatory planning, community-engaged scholarship, not only in the explicit discipline of planning, but other fields of social and physical science, recognizing the need to meaningfully engage with communities. But that work is also hard It takes a lot of time and resources. I think the idea of engaging with communities has grown over time in conjunction with recognizing inequality and injustice that under hands, the need for engagement has grown.

Putting the actual resources towards doing their work, staying true to their work, even their moments of difficulties and challenges, is where we still have a lot of work to do. The idea is there. The recognition in many ways is there. Long term commitment, both in terms of actions and resources, we still have some work to do.

 

[10:30] - Meghan Stromberg

You mentioned some challenges in terms of engaging with vulnerable groups in particular. Is one of those challenges mistrust or distrust?

 

[10:39] - Marccus Hendricks

There's a variety of challenges that we have in engaging with communities. Planning, for example, is a professional degree, and I think that we gather some sense of expertise through our training as planners, and we like to showcase and exhibit that expertise at every chance that we get. And I think sometimes us leaning too heavily on that sense of expertise doesn't bode well with engaging with communities because they, too, also have a level of both lived and sometimes trained expertise. And I think that that creates challenges in terms of realizing meaningful changes and transformation in the ways that the community sees fit who we are supposed to be brokers toward transformation through the vision of community. And so I think sometimes when we lean too much on that expertise, sometimes when we, again, don't take the time and resources to invest, I think Also, to your point, not recognizing that oftentimes, especially if you're a planner at the city or county, local level, that sometimes that comes with an identity of of local government or elected politics and officials. Sometimes, yeah, there is a reluctance to trust and engage with folks who represent those types of institutions, because oftentimes, especially with marginalized communities, they speak out so much, they demonstrate, they attend meetings.

They disrupt and do absolutely everything that they can to bring attention to the issues that they know to be important. And yet still, day after day and over time, rarely do things change for the better and benefit of those people who have fought for so long to seek out that change.

 

[12:41] - Meghan Stromberg

Yeah, but the work continues, right?

 

[12:43] - Marccus Hendricks

The work continues, absolutely. Has to.

 

[12:46] - Meghan Stromberg

Is there a place that you've worked in that comes to mind as really encapsulating some of these ideas that we've talked about?

 

[12:53] - Marccus Hendricks

My early work at the nexus of stormwater infrastructure, resilience, and environmental justice began in Houston, about an hour and a half southeast of College Station, where I was attending graduate school at Texas A&M. The interesting thing about doing that early work in Houston is many people don't know, but Houston is actually the most diverse city per capita in the country and has a long history of, again, challenges that gets after those diverse issues. And so my dissertation was titled the Infrastructures of Equity and Environmental Justice. And through these quantitative models, I was able to show the inventory, condition, and distribution of two different types of infrastructure systems, stormwater and transportation systems. And again, what I was able to show was that communities of color, predominantly Black and Brown communities, didn't have access to the same type of infrastructure that other communities had access to, and particularly systems that were seen as more desirable by other communities in terms of their maintenance, upkeep, and just in operation functionality. When I graduated from A&M, I then took my research program and relocated in the state of Maryland, in College Park, Maryland, and began working both in Washington, DC, as well as Baltimore.

And historically, Washington DC, known as Chocolate City, and Baltimore is the largest city in the state of Maryland and a predominantly black city. And so those two more recent case studies, again, has allowed me to see that we're seeing similar circumstances, especially whether we're talking about individual black communities or entire cities that are predominantly black. These same circumstances of infrastructure in this repair and this continuation of the social makeup and the infrastructural outcomes in these spaces. It's just, again, reinforced the need for more research and the contributions that I'm bringing to bear, both in planning, public health, and engineering related to infrastructure and environmental justice. During my sabbatical, I'm hoping to, at the very least, complete the proposal for my first ever book, focusing on a culmination of my work through this school of thought of what I'm calling infrastructural justice, and ultimately leveraging Baltimore City as a case study in understanding What does infrastructural justice look like? What's the legacy of infrastructural injustice in Baltimore, focusing specifically on the sewer system, and now the contemporary circumstances of basement backups and sanitary sewer overflows that plague the city.

 

[16:03] - Meghan Stromberg

I want to switch gears for a moment and ask you about your path to the planning profession. It was a nontraditional route, right?

 

[16:12] - Marccus Hendricks

To say the least.

 

[16:15] - Meghan Stromberg

How did you get started, and where did you start out, and what got you to where you are now?

 

[16:20] - Marccus Hendricks

As you mentioned at the top of the conversation, first-generation college student had no idea what I was doing in college and what exactly I was going for. And so with that start and foundation, I stumbled my way into planning. I attended a health profession high school, and so I actually chose an emergency medical technician program as my specialty. And as an 18-year-old kid, my childhood dreams were coming true. I was riding in the ambulance with the sirens fully blasted. I had an official Dallas Fire and Rescue shirt on with boots and a big heavy bag, thinking I was going to save lives. But then, as I was sharing my plans with some of my mentors and counselors, They were really encouraging me, Marcus, you have something. We really want you to consider college. So I ultimately he did that advice. But again, because I didn't know much about college, I ended choosing to major in psychology and biology with a minor in health promotion. But effectively, I had chosen to be a pre-med student because in my mind, I was thinking the next step to staying true to what I ultimately wanted to do was going through medicine.

As I approach my senior year, I started to realize that I just wasn't satisfied with the plans that I had made. Something during that time that I noticed back then was that a lot of the calls that we received, particularly from marginalized communities, weren't necessarily true or traditional emergencies. They were calls for needs for primary care and public health. Some of these poor communities didn't have access to routine or regular medical care. And so pretty much the paramedics were their lifeline to Madison. Around that same time, one evening, I I was also leaving a computer lab and I noticed a full-time poster that said, What is public health? I spent all night reading about public health, and by that next morning, I had made a hard and fast decision that I wanted to make a pivot and pursue a career in public health because it would give me the opportunity to incorporate both the elements of medicine with health, but instead of focusing on special specialized treatment for one individual patient after the fact, I could address population level issues prior to the need for medical treatment. Fast forward, I ended up attending graduate school at Texas A&M in the School of Public Health for my MPH in Health Promotion and Community Health Sciences.

But also during this time, I was still researching emergencies and emergency medicine, and my capstone and master's papers was actually focused on pandemic flu preparedness. But through that work, what I again recognize was that even through a public health framework, the opportunity in a moment for intervention was still slightly lagging, right? And because I was still motivated by this idea of root causes, I was like, there has to be a moment where there's an opportunity to address these issues sooner. Lo and behold, towards the end of finishing up my master's, I discovered that there was a renowned Hazard Reduction and Recovery Research Center across campus that was housed in the Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning Department. I sent the email to the director at the time, who was Walt Peacock, to schedule a meeting to share with him my interest in the program and to see what his thoughts were about my pursuits of a PhD potentially in planning as a research assistant in the center. And the rest is history. And I ultimately learned that, again, well before the opportunity to intervene from a public health perspective, well before a visit to a clinic or a hospital, the stage is set for the quality of life and the lived experiences for people who live in communities across the world.

In public health, one of the facts that we've come to find was that Zip code is a much stronger predictor of health outcomes above and beyond any other physiological indicator. Who holds the power to shaping the built environment of Zip codes across the country? It's planners at the local level. Ultimately, that's how I ended up discovering urban planning and ultimately dedicating my career and life to making contributions to the field.

 

[21:31] - Meghan Stromberg

Wow, that's quite a story.

 

[21:34] - Marccus Hendricks

It is. A long, convoluted, and seemingly disjointed story at that.

 

[21:42] - Meghan Stromberg

I don't know. It's not so disjointed. You're an original passion was emergency medicine, and now you're working in flood resilience and other hazard resilience planning. Like you said, it's getting in front of and getting at the root cause of the things that affect our health, the things that put us in harm's way, et cetera.

 

[22:02] - Marccus Hendricks

Yeah. I think when we think about basic infrastructure like grocery stores and healthy food outlets, or even thinking about libraries and educational facilities. The placement, the inventory, the distribution of these different types of facilities and infrastructures are critical to the quality of life of the people that live there. Also are drivers for outcomes over the short and longer term of people's lives. Planners have a critical role in terms of designing and planning for the siting of these different types of facilities and infrastructure. Even though we don't necessarily have health in our title or in our discipline, we hold a responsibility to the health and safety of communities through the planning that we do.

 

[22:57] - Meghan Stromberg

How do you talk to students, the planners of the future, how do you talk to them about pursuing their passion and pursuing their professional path? What is some advice that you give to them?

 

[23:11] - Marccus Hendricks

There's so much advice, mostly things if I could go back, I would tell myself in various moments throughout my trajectory. I think the most salient thing that still even resonates with me as I move forward through my career is to trust the process while also questioning the process. And I don't think that these two things necessarily have to be mutually exclusive, right? I think you can trust and question at the same time. And so trusting in that there are sometimes certain plan steps and requirements that one has to take in order to achieve what they set out to achieve, especially from a professional perspective. At the same time, change doesn't come via going along with what has always been done, right? There's a journey that we all have to take towards our goals and achievements at At the same time, there's always an opportunity for change, growth, disruption, and a renewance of traditional paths that others maybe have taken that could be molded and morphed into something that's different for any one given student or individual or a generation of students and individuals. I would also say stay true to yourself and act with integrity and principle that allows you to sleep at night.

I think that if you choose to give in to things that aren't true to you and that don't share the same principles that you do, you'll ultimately regret it. The other few things I would say, don't be discouraged by a seemingly disjointed path. Life has its way of bringing things together in ways that unforeseen. I think you also have to take full advantage of opportunities. Don't leave anything on the table to question, Could I have done more with that time and opportunity that I was allotted? Because sometimes those opportunities may be few or far in between or may not ever come around again.

 

[25:29] - Meghan Stromberg

Keep an eye on those our bulletin boards. You never know when you're going to find a pull tab that's going to change the direction, right?

 

[25:34] - Marccus Hendricks

Absolutely. And also, too, thinking about specific advice to planning students, encouraging them to be a quintessential planner. And what a quintessential planner is, is being a community liaison, being a broker between local government and elected leadership and communities, allowing your expertise to enhance, not erode, right? And that means that you have to create space for communities, allow them to guide and lead actively. And ultimately, at the end of the day, I think it makes our job as planners that much easier, right? When we just facilitate the process of planning, leveraging the brilliance of community.

 

[26:20] - Meghan Stromberg

That's great. I wanted to wrap up with another request for advice, and I know you're not an advice columnist for the planning profession, but if you'll bear with me, we talked at the start of the conversation a little bit about what's going on in the United States right now and how difficult it can be and uncertain it can be for planners. I wonder if you have any advice or any thoughts for planners working at the local level who are just making sense of change right now and moving forward in a way that, as you said, is true to themselves?

 

[26:53] - Marccus Hendricks

I would lend to them this idea that the real and most transformative work happens at the local level. And despite the politics and what may be happening at the federal level, there's always an opportunity at the local level. And I think that, as you mentioned, I had the opportunity to be a senior adviser to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Office of Environmental Justice. And so my office was responsible for implementing the Justice40 program, the Environmental Justice Scorecard, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening tool, which was the spatial mapping tool used to identify disadvantaged communities that would be eligible for 40% of overall benefits going towards those communities via the funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Two bipartisan laws enacted via the President and Congress to support this environmental justice agenda. Even though in this moment, I'm having an episode of severance in terms of rather not what we actually did happened and if it ever all existed. I think that despite the erosion of everything that we did in that moment, I think we planted the seed for possibility. I always knew even though we were doing these things at the federal level, the traction and the sustainability of those things would have to take place at that local level.

 

And so I would encourage planners at the local level to try and remember that moment. And it didn't start with President Biden and us at the federal level. It started with communities three, four decades prior to, in terms of the birth of the Environmental Justice Movement. And so really, this is an opportunity to really just make it full circle. We saw that movement graduate to the highest office in the country, and now this is an opportunity to put that power back in the hands of where it all began. I would encourage planners to take those programs as examples and implement similar programs at the local level. And so there's always hope and possibility there. And again, at the end of the day, I think communities and people have the power, just really helping to support, organize, and mobilize them and positioning them to be the voice of the change that's needed towards that transformation, and uplifting and supporting their power with programs that ultimately address the issues that need to be changed.

 

[29:51] - Meghan Stromberg

I think that's great advice.

 

[29:53] - Marccus Hendricks

Thank you.

 

[29:54] - Meghan Stromberg

Marcus, this has been such a great conversation. I've really enjoyed it.

 

[29:57] - Marccus Hendricks

Yeah, likewise. Being on sabbatical this semester, I've missed the opportunity to lament and pontificate and profess my thoughts and ideas and have an exchange with those of my students. And so this has been cathartic for me and an opportunity to get off my mind and share some things that I've been ruminating on. So, Megan, thank you so much for having me.

 

[30:24] - Meghan Stromberg

Oh, Marcus, thank you. Thanks for listening to another episode of People Behind the Plans, an APA podcast. If you want to hear more great conversations with experts from across the planning landscape, subscribe to APA podcast so you'll never miss an episode. You can find People Behind the Plans on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You can also find our entire library of episodes at planning.org/podcast.