Finding meaning behind numbers: An interview with Glória Cecília Figueiredo

On September 28, the Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI) and the Black Planning Project (BPP) began a three-month partnership with Professor Glória Cecília Figueiredo from the Faculty of Architecture at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil.
 
Glória is renowned for her activism and research with Black communities in Brazil and is collaborating in Ontario on a variety of initiatives. Glória “will analyze and reflect on perspectives that unfold from its implementation, drawing connections with the 20-year history of affirmative policies in Brazil that have democratized access of Black and Indigenous students in higher education.” She is working on an analysis of academic and pedagogical policies of some planning courses at Ontario universities to recognize which anti-racist measures and policies have been adopted.
 
Other initiatives include a case study assessment to identify gaps and opportunities in the Prior Learning Assessment Recognition process that planners with international experience and training undergo to become Registered Professional Planners. Following a suggestion from Abigail Moriah, RPP, MCIP, of BPP, Glória invited a Brazilian colleague — a Black planner currently doing her PhD at the University of Toronto — to participate. Glória comments, “together, we will navigate this system to evaluate what could be improved. It may be important for OPPI to pay attention to foreign planners who are living in Canada to pursue postgraduate studies and who also wish to pursue professional activities during this period.”
 
In addition to recently attending a Black Experiences with Planning in Canada meeting co-led by BPP, Glória also delivered her first report on the Navigating Anti-Black Racism for Black Planners workshop series. She states, “The Black Planners and Urbanists Association hosts this workshop exploring various topics such as the impact of systemic racism in planning as experienced by Black planners, creating strategies to challenge and disrupt anti-Blackness racism within the profession, justice mechanisms for producing cities and territories.”
 
At the same time, she is gaining a deeper understanding of the centuries-old and ancestral Black presence in Canada. In October, she attended BPP activities and events in Halifax, which included a visit to the Africville Museum and the Black Cultural Centre. Glória notes that “this allows me to draw several connections between colonization in Canada and Brazil in relation to trajectories of urban development and urban and regional planning practices,” and that “the racialized populations of both countries have in common the fact that they are cyclically affected by anti-Blackness dispossessive policies.”
 
Canada interests Glória for several reasons, including that it has specific training and regulations for planning, whereas professional planning regulation in Brazil has been dominated by a corporatist perspective of reserving a market for architects. She is also curious about OPPI’s role in implementing the recommendations made by the Indigenous Planning Perspectives Task Force (IPPTF) and the Anti-Black Racism in Planning Task Force (ABRIPTF). Glória comments that “The construction of anti-racist perspectives in planning is of global urgency, as this field has often operated racial, gender, class, ableist, and others classificatory logics” and that “the impacts of planning actions need to be evaluated in order to repair historical and contemporary asymmetries and injustices in participation in decision-making, in the distribution of infrastructure and services, in access to housing, territory and rights.”
 
In Brazil, 56 per cent of the population self-identifies as Black. In Canada, the Black population accounts for 4.3 per cent of the total but 16.1 per cent of the racialized population. Glória notes that “in both countries, racialized people such as Black and Indigenous People are disproportionately more affected by injustice, violation of rights, land dispossession, and asymmetry of opportunities. So, it’s not just about the numbers but about what those differences mean.”
 
Now, at the midway mark of the partnership, Glória is on track for achieving her goals, including finalizing a case study of Popular Audit in the Historical Center of Salvador as an experience in Black planning.