Glossary

Term	Definition
Accessibility	Accessibility is the practice of making facilities, services, and products independently usable by people with any type or combination of disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates that public facilities be fully accessible. Universal design broadens the concept of accessibility to encompass design without a need for adaptation, such as a separate doorway for a wheelchair user. (AIA’s Glossary for the Guides for Equitable Practice) The extent to which a space is readily approachable and usable by people with disabilities. A space can be described as a physical or literal space, such as a facility, website, conference room, office, or bathroom, or a figurative space, such as a conversation or activity. (Center for the Study of Social Policy)
Agency	Enabling the confidence, rights, and status of individuals or groups to act on behalf of their own interests (The Just City Index)
Barrier	Something immaterial that impedes or separates (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) In the context of this toolkit, barrier refers to any obstacles, physical, cultural, political, social, or environmental, which stand in the way of achieving equity.
Categorical variable/data	A variable that is defined by a set of two or more categories. Examples include a person’s sex, marital status, or rankings of particular stimuli (such as the relative loudness of different sounds). (APA Dictionary of Psychology)
Census Tract	Census Tracts are small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county or statistically equivalent entity. They generally have a population size between 1,200 and 8,000 people, with an optimum size of 4,000 people. (U.S. Census Bureau)
Community	“Community” has a broad scope: not only neighborhoods but any group that occupies or experiences a project, from a family to an entire city and beyond.(AIA’s Glossary for the Guides for Equitable Practice)
Community Engagement	The [AIA’s Guides for Equitable Practice] suggest that architects can engage with communities in three major capacities: as individual citizens, as professionals, and in the type of work their firms choose to do. Whichever the capacity, effective community engagement incorporates diverse voices equitably, respectfully, and authentically in all phases of work, with special attention given to context, including such elements as history, culture, politics, power dynamics, and social fabric. (AIA’s Glossary for the Guides for Equitable Practice)
Community Statistical Area	Community Statistical Areas (CSAs) are clusters of neighborhoods developed by Baltimore City’s Planning Department based on recognizable city neighborhoods. There are 55 CSAs in Baltimore City. (Baltimore City Health Department)
Design constraints	Factors that limit or restrict the possible outcomes of a design. Design constraints can be physical, budgetary, environmental, or be predetermined limits set by the partner.
Disaggregate	The process of breaking down data into smaller units or sets of observations. For example, faculty salary data initially may show a significant difference between male and female earnings. After disaggregating the data into separate levels (e.g., assistant, associate, full professor), however, one may find that there are no significant differences in salary among men and women at the assistant professor level but there are differences at the full professor level. Thus, disaggregating the data reveals a finer pattern. (APA Dictionary of Psychology)
Equity	“Equity is the state in which everyone is treated in a manner that results in equal opportunity and access, according to their individual needs. Equity in the workplace requires identifying and eliminating barriers that have disadvantaged nondominant identity groups to assure that all individuals receive equitable treatment, opportunity, and advancement regardless of identity; it also means that some individuals will need more support than others. Equity differs from equality or parity. The guides focus on equity rather than equality because our society operates on an uneven playing field. Inherent power differentials have resulted in disparate treatment, usually based on identity. Given the profound structural disparities and vastly different starting points, focusing on equality by giving everyone the same support would not accomplish the goal of just outcomes.” (AIA’s Glossary for the Guides for Equitable Practice) The effort to provide different levels of support based on an individual’s or group’s needs in order to achieve fairness in outcomes. Working to achieve equity acknowledges unequal starting places and the need to correct the imbalance. (Center for the Study of Social Policy)
Equality	Equality is a form of fairness achieved by treating people with dominant and nondominant identities in the same manner, whatever the disparities may be at their starting points. Equal treatment, however well intentioned, may sustain inequities. The term is often used in contrast with equity. (AIA’s Glossary for the Guides for Equitable Practice)
GIS (Geographic Information Systems)	A geographic information system is a system that creates, manages, analyzes, and maps all types of data. GIS connects data to a map, integrating location data (where things are) with all types of descriptive information (what things are like there). (Esri)
Justice	Justice, or social justice, denotes the assurance of fair treatment; equal economic, political, and social rights; and equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. It also encompasses a repairing of past wrongs, transformative justice, and accountability. For example, the call for racial justice in the U.S. includes a case for reparations (financial or nonfinancial) to those whose ancestors were enslaved and who continue to endure the legacy of slavery, segregation, racially-motivated violence, and discrimination.28 Design justice advocates for the potential role of architects and architecture in redressing racial injustice and inequitable power structures, including through investment in repairing the infrastructure of neglected communities.(AIA’s Glossary for the Guides for Equitable Practice)
Qualitative data	Qualitative data are data representing information and concepts that are not represented by numbers. They are often gathered from interviews and focus groups, personal diaries and lab notebooks, maps, photographs, and other printed materials or observations. Qualitative data are distinguished from quantitative data, which focus primarily on data that can be represented with numbers. Qualitative data can be analyzed in multiple ways. One common method is data coding, which refers to the process of transforming the raw collected data into a set of meaningful categories that describe essential concepts of the data. Qualitative data and methods may be used more frequently in humanities or social science research and may be collected in descriptive studies. (National Library of Medicine)
Quantitative data	Quantitative data are data represented numerically, including anything that can be counted, measured, or given a numerical value. Quantitative data can be classified in different ways, including categorical data that contain categories or groups (like countries), discrete data that can be counted in whole numbers (like the number of students in a class), and continuous data that is a value in a range (like height or temperature). Quantitative data are typically analyzed with statistics. (National Library of Medicine)
Stakeholder	Stakeholder refers to any person or group that has an interest in or is affected by the action or process in question. Stakeholders include residents, business operators and owners, property owners, non-profit, public and private agencies and organizations. Identifying the full spectrum of stakeholders is one of the early and critical steps in developing an effective public involvement strategy. (Seattle Inclusive Outreach and Public Engagement Guide)
Thematic Analysis	A qualitative research strategy for identifying, analyzing, and reporting identifiable patterns or themes within data. There are multiple phases to this process: The researcher (a) familiarizes himself or herself with the data; (b) generates initial codes or categories for possible placement of themes; (c) collates these codes into potential themes; (d) reviews the chosen themes and checks that these work in relation to the coded extracts and the entire data set, effectively generating a thematic “map” of the analysis; (e) defines and names the themes; and (f) produces the report.(APA Dictionary of Psychology)