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.

This article examines connections between rhetoric, race, and place. Using archival research to examine Westlake Terrace, the author asks how the rhetorics of places like Westlake racialize the place and its people. The article shows that these rhetorics perpetuate the agenda of structural racism, and the material consequences of these rhetorics. It is argued that looking at the history of Westlake reveals a process of rhetorical invention that imbues the place with rhetorical and racial tensions. Attending to these moments of invention can both reveal ways that inequalities are built into places and help us work toward more equitable places.