“Given the choice between modernity and barbarism, prosperity and poverty, lawfulness and cruelty, democracy and totalitarianism, America chose all of the above.” - Matthew Desmond in The New York Times for The 1619 Project Four hundred and odd years after colonialism and racial capitalism brought “twenty and odd” enslaved people from Africa to the dispossessed indigenous land that would later become the United States, the structures and systems that generate inequality and white supremacy persist. Our cities and their socioeconomic and built environments continue to exemplify difference . From housing and health to mobility and monuments, cities small and large, north and south—like New Haven and Baltimore—demonstrate intractable disparities. The disparate impacts made apparent by the COVID-19 pandemic and the reinvigorated and global Black Lives Matter movement demanding change are remarkable. Change is another essential indicator of difference in urban environments, such as disinvestment, disaster, or gentrification. Cities must navigate how considerations like climate change and growing income inequality intersect with politics, culture, gender equality and identity, immigration, migration, and technology, among other conditions and forms of disruption. In Urban Difference and Change, we will explore together some key questions: How are cities and their environments shaped by difference, including the legacies and derivatives of colonialism and modernism? How do the structures and systems of difference operate in our spaces, places, and cities? How might we better understand and find agency in the past, present, and future of urban contexts using an anti-racist and decolonial approach to design and urbanism? How can frameworks like cultural heritage, environmental conservation, and social equity and inclusion challenge dominant narratives or unjust past and present conditions?