Prof. Lily Song Will Use Fulbright to Research Reparative Planning and Design

“Urban built environments are material cumulations of past decisions and actions across multiple scales—of agency, space, and time,” says Prof. Lily Song. “Past wrongs and injustices outlast the human lifespans of victims, perpetrators, and witnesses—reified in physical structures and scars on the land.” 

A recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for academic year 2025-2026, Prof. Song will conduct research in Estonia and Germany to advance her book project on reparative planning and design. The research explores spatial planning and design initiatives that seek to expose, confront, reconcile, and heal historical injustices in cities through reparative methods of reckoning, reimagining, and rebuilding that center the experiences and insights of most-impacted communities and pay forward the lessons to broader publics to build more equitable and just futures.

 The book argues that reparative planning and design efforts focused on infrastructure facilities and networks are especially ripe to incorporate multiple scales of critical analysis and creative intervention. In addition to the introductory and concluding chapters, the book will have four sections—on mobility infrastructure, industrial infrastructure, carceral infrastructure, and military infrastructure. Each section will feature relevant case studies along with their comparative analysis and discussion of key findings and themes.