This week, I announced that I will be stepping down as the Director of DC's Office of Planning at the end of December to pursue opportunities outside of District government. It has been an honor to serve alongside an amazing group of people and to be able to work with so many of you over the last three years. Together, we have accomplished so much. I look forward to seeing more groundbreaking and impactful work from OP. Through this transition, I will be supporting the Mayor to ensure a seamless transition and find the next OP Director. 

Although OP’s work around equity and racial justice goes back well over a decade, in recent years, the importance of equity as a guiding principle for all of OP’s work has only grown. Recent efforts include the Comprehensive Plan equity crosswalk, Mayor Bowser’s housing equity work, food equity, internal racial equity training, hiring a nationally-recognized equity expert, developing practices to better engage all residents, joining Planning Directors from across the nation in a commitment to change and advance racial equity, and finally, applying the equity lenses to zoning, capital improvement planning, and area planning as presented in the updated Comprehensive Plan to all of our planning efforts.

Still, there is more to be done, and to be successful, we need to be intentional and work differently. With this in mind, OP established an internal Racial Equity Working Group to examine our past and current practices to develop a guiding narrative for OP that ensures equity is embedded in how we approach everything that we do. We are excited to share OP’s Racial Equity Narrative below, along with a link to a collection of OP’s activities to advance racial equity.

Stay tuned as future newsletters promise to be full of milestones and planning news. Please feel free to share with others, who can sign up here. In addition, you can follow our work on Twitter under @OPinDC.

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