Technical Communication Quarterly Apr 2025

Social Problems and Racial Agendas: Analyzing the Structural Racism of Historical Urban Planning Documents

Joshua M. Rea Millersville University

Abstract

I argue that historical urban planning documents are important technical communication documents because of the ways they have shaped the lived world in ways harmful to marginalized communities. I illustrate this through analysis of a document from the first federal housing project in the US My analysis shows that, despite the document's attempted neutrality, it uses language to racialize the city's population and move agendas of structural racism into material spaces.

Journal
Technical Communication Quarterly
Published
2025-04-03
DOI
10.1080/10572252.2024.2395510
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Topics
technical communication race and writing
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