Engineering More Equitable Communities
New technologies can help dismantle systemic racism in infrastructure design
When New York “master planner” Robert Moses designed the Southern State Parkway in Long Island in the 1920s, he purposely made the overpasses too low for travel by commercial vehicles like public buses. This meant that people who relied on public transport—the city’s poor and lower-middle class residents—had difficulty reaching the beaches of Long Island. Danielle Civitillo of VHB explains that this is just one example of how infrastructure design can perpetuate systemic racism in our society. She also cites how government redlining of neighborhoods based on race in the 1930s led to fewer public amenities like parks and trees being built in these areas. For this reason, those neighborhoods today can be 5 to 12 degrees hotter in the summer, exacerbating underlying health challenges for current residents. But while a legacy of racism may exist in our built world, Civitillo points out, civil engineers have the power and responsibility to design and create more equitable structures moving forward. Technology can help. VR can help us bring more people into the conversation about infrastructure planning and design, for example. By making designs easy to understand, even at the earliest stages, immersive experiences can help to rebuild trust with underserved communities and create a more just society.
About the speaker
Danielle Civitillo is a design technology specialist at VHB and co-founder of VHB’s IDEAL (Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance) employee resource group. She is a civil engineer with experience on transportation, transit, rail, and site design projects for municipal and private clients.
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Learn more about the importance and value of equity in industry with these related resources.
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