Planning and storytelling are intertwined. Both work to translate collective values, perspectives and positions into imagined and real spaces. Planning accomplishes this through physical and material outcomes, such as the location of your favorite restaurant, or the bike lane that parallels the boulevard. Think also of the mural that is selected for the freeway underpass, or the height of the new apartment building on your block. The form and function of place is determined by how much importance is given to our neighborhoods, business districts, parks, and other special places.

Storytelling allows for an imagined realm in which we can play with new configurations, try on alternative places, and exercise possible futures. Personal and community-derived stories are one way to illuminate these imagined possibilities. When taken into consideration, local storytelling can confront the master narratives embedded in the political and bureaucratic decision making that binds our planning systems. Counter stories produce a pathway to more equitable thinking about place by offering a response to the lived experience of places seemingly invisible the stranger’s gaze. To translate stories into actual, real interventions, these counter stories need to be told and retold; put on blast until those who don’t want to hear must hear, until those who don’t want to look must see. These stories must be written into our planning decisions and translated into the material manifestations that form the built environment.

If we are seeking equitable places, we must critique the processes and positionalities that transform space into place. We must become curious about whose narratives are signified in the urban landscape and how those narratives are interpreted.

How do we develop places that tell the full story?