From the first Black planner to a celebrated photographer, we recognize the people who have helped us understand how cities work — and how we can help make them better.

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Countless Black urbanists have invested their lives in understanding how cities work — and how they can help the people who live in them. At the same time, traditional planning education has largely failed to celebrate their achievements in the ways Jane Jacobs, Daniel Burnham, and other well-known — and white — planners, urban designers, and activists are recognized.

“A planning education that focuses solely on a few predominantly white heroic figures is incomplete and unethical,” Daphne Lundie says in “Rewriting the Urban Planning Canon.” “It doesn’t tell the whole story; it prevents us from sharing fuller and richer stories. We must learn to think beyond our traditional planning narratives.”