Theorizing communal trauma: Examining the relationship between race, spatial imaginaries, and planning in the U.S. South

While planning theory has long acknowledged the profession’s role in producing racialized spatial realities, few have explored how place-based trauma shapes places and affects spatial processes and lived experiences. To fill this gap, I employ my experience as a practicing planner working primarily in Black communities in Jackson, Mississippi, to conceptualize communal trauma as a place-based theory that can help planners understand how racialized communities hurt and address it. In this paper, I, first, analyze autoethnographic data as trauma imaginaries, the intersection of spatial imaginaries and trauma. From this analysis, I then construct communal trauma as harm and wrong committed against targeted racialized groups so horrendous that it induces a traumatic condition. Finally, I discuss the implications for the field of planning. I propose that identifying trauma imaginaries as an indicator of communal trauma can help planners develop trauma remediation approaches that advance ethics and justice in the field.