HISTORY
The impetus for the official formation of POCIG gained momentum from planning faculty listserv discussions about diversity in planning accreditation requirements; from the social and physical aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and from the immigrant rights movement. Such situations helped to reveal the continuing lines of racial and ethnic division in metropolitan areas, the need to help insure that issues related to race, ethnicity, and class remain visible within the work agenda of ACSP, and the implications of diminishing or stagnant numbers of junior and senior planning faculty of color with the academy.
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In 2006, during the ACSP 47th Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, the Planning and the Black Community Division (PBCD) of the American Planning Association sponsored a dinner meeting of PBCD-member academicians, invited faculty, and students; at this meeting discussion focused on diversifying the planning academy and profession by race, ethnicity, and immigrant status, and in addressing the particular needs of urban, suburban, and rural communities of color—particularly those which are economically disadvantaged—in North America.
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A task force presented a request for institutional recognition as an ACSP interest group, and in April 2007 the ACSP Governing Board issued such recognition. The task force convened a meeting of interested persons at the 2007 ACSP conference. This same task force drafted POCIG by-laws, which were adopted by email balloting in December 2007. POCIG elected Officers in September 2008, and held its first official business meeting in Chicago at the 2008 ACSP-AESOP Joint Congress; it has held an annual meeting, at ACSP, every year since that time. From the beginning, the group determined that it would not be exclusionary, and it has benefited from the active support of several majority-race scholars, as well as the continued support of ACSP.
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