Libby Tyler, director of Community Development in the East Bay city of San Pablo, has been involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives since long before they were popular. A professional planner since the 1980s, Tyler was on the forefront of the equity movement by the very fact that she was a woman in a male-dominated field, and, later, she became a charter member of the American Planning Association’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee, on which she still serves.
At next week’s conference of the California Chapter of the American Planning Association, held Sept. 28 - Oct. 1 at the Riverside Convention Center, Tyler will give the annual Betty Croly Memorial Lecture on planning history. She will present a 50-year retrospective and “living history” of women planners in California. Her goal is to “remind people there are remarkable women around us, that we can look as role models and mentors.” Tyler gave a preview of her talk to CP&DR, which is a media sponsor of the conference.
Are there any specific women in California whom you admire and feel were individually influential in California planning?
There's actually cohorts of women--and I'm not talking about 100 years ago; I'm talking about more recent history--that I have been really fortunate to have had interactions and sometimes work with, including some we have lost recently.
Marge Macris was planning director in Marin County and also in Berkeley. She was a pathbreaker in terms of specific planning, consensus planning, and working through thorny issues. There was really nobody else at the time who was a planning director of note. She hired me for a special job in Berkeley--city-university planner--and it was an honor to be on the fringes of her staff. I admired her fortitude and her ability to make progress given difficult circumstances.
At the same time, I came into contact with Dorothy Walker, who also passed last year. She was a charter member of APA. When I worked with Dorothy, she was the campus representative, the campus planner if you will. I got to work with her on city-university negotiations. Her presence, her command, her intelligence--I can't emphasize how much these women were influential just by being themselves. She was a pioneer in terms of zoning interventions in Berkeley, standing up for equity planning and fighting the good fight.
How would you describe the status of women in planning? Was the profession welcoming to women? Were women's concerns or sensibilities respected in the profession or was it an uphill battle against entrenched men?
California was better than other parts of the country. I discovered that pretty forcefully when I moved to Illinois in 1990.
In the 1980s, it wasn't that it was closed to women or hostile to women per se. There were women in the field. But, women leaders were scarce--and very few people of color. I guess you couldn't point to being held back necessarily, but the results were there to see.
By contrast, in 1990, I moved to Illinois and the status I had built in California was nothing. In downstate Illinois, the planners were pretty much all men, and most of them, again, all white. Many of them were not trained as planners. They were building inspectors. Folks who had gotten into municipal or contract work through that old-boy network, if you will. There was one woman, April Getches, who was a director. She was savvy and had a great sense of humor and wonderful ability to adapt to a man's world.
Are there sensibilities or convictions that you feel like women planners have men planners might not?
Yes, absolutely. Probably to this day, although much less so, I think women get community issues a lot more quickly. They're probably dealing more with older parents, for example, or children. There's a prism I think where women recognize community-based issues, perhaps, a little more readily than men.
Then there's all ways people are regarded in offices--I guess what we would call micro-aggressions. Women know what happens. You take a conference room, and there's maybe one woman planner, and then there's the 10 guys. All women know that you might say something, and there's no reaction; then a guy says the exact same thing, and there's recognition. Therefore, there is an underlying sisterhood that develops because we work to make our point and work through those obstacles.
Of course, it has reduced over time. People are much more collegial, especially younger generations.
In your career, planning trends generally have shifted, especially in California. We've gone from slow growth to pro-housing yimbyism in many places, and greenfield development in all sorts of places to infill or focus on infill. What role have women planners played in that evolution?
I don't think it's particularly gendered, although I would say that women have had a handle on some of the community engagement that is needed to do successful infill and housing. Working in a community, listening to a community and creating solutions--not because it's what the planner wants, but because the community has spoken. If you can set ego aside, listen well, and facilitate, then you can derive planning and design solutions that will be embraced and successful.
In California, there's a regulatory frenzy that makes it very hard to do planning work. I think most planners are well-intended and they do their best. We want to create more housing, we want to create more opportunity and housing for everybody, and especially for people who've been under-recognized and underserved.
But in the regulatory environment that's developed kind of with a vengeance over the last 10 years or so, it's hard to create solutions that are bespoke for the community because you have to have a housing element that is hundreds of pages of regulatory verbiage and not a solution that works.
There's a lot of energy spent trying to comply with the regulations and not creating solutions that work for the community, and the resources to resolve these issues have shrunk. There's very little carrot, a lot of sticks, and that's demoralizing for men and women alike.
How successful has the APA's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee been?
This particular effort has been going on, I believe, 25 years. It grew out of what was called the Diversity Task Force.
It started out that every year there would be what was called the Diversity Summit. It was the one session in the National Planning Conference where we would focus on those issues. We would have marquee, inspirational speakers, and breakouts, and we spent a lot of time talking about how to improve diversity efforts within APA.
It continues to be a very white organization. It's way whiter than the practice of planning. I think there's been some progress, but it's not impressive.
And then, when we used to have tracks, we had a diversity and equity track. So the conference began to have a certain number of sessions devoted to diversity-related topics. That was a big change. And there was a lot of excellent policy work done, policy guides and many planning leaders have been involved over the years in these efforts.
I have been encouraged to see how it has entered the mainstream. The EDI committee’s work is not as hard because it's already being done by the organization. We can take on special research projects and celebratory projects and share ideas from our different backgrounds. We're in a good place now, but the journey continues.
How do you describe the status of women and nonbinary people in California planning today?
It's very gratifying in my career now, which is coming onto 45 years, to see that California is always leading.
I feel it's a very diverse, even playingfield, with more and more women planners entering the field. In planning schools, there are actually more women than men. That's nationwide, not just California, but California does lead. There are more women planning directors, chapter presidents, section directors, women leaders, and speakers at conferences. We can thank our progressive, younger planners, emerging planners, who we all have learned from.
I think if you look at salaries, when I first started studying this, it was like 60-some percent of earnings of women versus men in planning and fields. Now it's up in the 70s, but there's still that 30 percent gap. And I think you need to look at that in terms of race as well, because we have extreme wealth and salary gaps and we have extreme disparities at the very highest levels.
Do you have advice or marching orders to make California even more equitable for planners of all genders to contribute?
I think there are reforms that need to happen if we're really going to serve the communities we need to serve. We should work to have our voices heard to the extent our employment allows us.
We know these have been difficult times with COVID and political divisions and environmental concerns pretty much in our face. These are unsettling times.
But, I feel that planners really as a whole are good-hearted people. I think we're in a position to help each other and help people in our communities despite these obstacles and, maybe, especially because of these obstacles. I think we owe a special obligation to planners who come from different backgrounds and might be the first to have gone to college, or maybe from different countries, planners of color, planners of the whole array of differences that we're finally beginning to recognize and embrace.
I think we can be role models within our organizations by showing compassion and creating space for emerging planners and for differences.
I feel like we can take a stronger role in speaking up for what we know is right. I know that there are parts of California that are very conservative. For planners there, it's going to be a big challenge, but there's still a need for great grassroots planning. I hope we can get back to the grassroots, listen to people, and try not to let the fear and the obstacles stymie us.
Maybe when I'm a truly old lady, I'll look back and those statistics will be a little more heartening. We'll have a truly an equitable field and be recognized as leaders in creating a better society and not so much for, "oh, you were the folks who did zoning and zoning was what created all these problems."
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
