Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through
Physical Design of the Built Environment,
by Sarah Schindler
The “Built Environment” are structures that create difficulties for low income communities. Built Environments are sometimes directed at people of color specifically. The Built environment concept creates barriers to restrict or redirect people away from these communities. These exclusionary zoning ordinances have racial impact and restrict residence from equal access actually but legally recourse is futile. Communities go without sidewalks, crosswalks, and other design elements that contribute to a viable community.
Architectural exclusionary practice has been in place for decades on a national scale. It is a common practice to design highways through the poor communities. There is no regard for existing community commerce flow or public space usage. The high will divide the communities and influence property values and voting blocks. The high way will also deliberately eliminate installing exits and bypass these communities. This means the commerce potential from travelers is not available like other more affluent communities. The Highway often create a hardship for people with physical disabilities, and the elderly. The barriers are obstacles to transportation and local store access as well. The highway always create any number of dead-end streets that contribute to dimly lit areas and help promote crime potential.
The lack of public transit stops is another type of planed environmental barrier directed at low income communities. The lack of transit is an added difficulty to finding and maintaining employment.
Figure 1 Mario, by New York: Aperture, 2000 (1)
Mario is a displaced worker, of a homeless community.
Legislators and most legal scholars have paid little attention to exclusionary urban design racism. Schindler’s focus of this article is as follows; “This Article examines the sometimes subtle ways that the built environment has been used to keep certain segments of the population—typically poor people and people of color—separate from others.” (1)
The article continues and defines Architectural exclusion as a feature of “Built Environment.” Architectural exclusion focuses on forms of exclusion that result in discriminatory treatment. Schindler talks about Lawrence Lessig’s theory, architecture is used to regulate behavior in low income communities. Lessig’s theory, “It examines the literature that discusses infrastructure placement and design as physical and symbolic contributors to economic and social inequality, exclusion, and isolation.” (1)
Schindler continues by siting examples of architectural exclusion by residents, police, and local elected officials. These entities plan how to construct physical barriers to detour access, siting the well documented “Low Bridge” barrier to Jones beach, New York. It is difficult to charge the human rights violators because the proponents are members of the local officials. Schindler offers concepts for solutions to stop planed exclusion. The Americans with Disabilities Act should provide for some relief like sidewalks, hazard removal, barrier free zones, wheel chair ramps, reserved parking with access. Many of the amenities are addressed by the American with Disabilities Act 1990. Public education of the general public and engagement activity could bring more awareness to the fact built environment often promote exclusion of people of color. Schindler states; “People used the law by passing ordinances saying that certain individuals could not access certain locations.” (1)
Low Bridge
“A number of localities have used physical barriers to exclude. A paradigmatic example of architectural exclusion through physical barriers is Robert Moses’s Long Island bridges that were mentioned in the Introduction to this Article.80 Moses set forth specifications for bridge overpasses on Long Island, which were designed to hang low so that the twelve-foot tall buses in use at the time could not fit under them.81 “One consequence was to limit access of racial minorities and low-income groups”—who often used public transit—”to Jones Beach, Moses’s widely acclaimed public park. Moses made doubly sure of this result by vetoing a proposed extension of the Long Island Railroad to Jones Beach.”82 Moses’s biographer suggests that his decision to favor upper- and middle-class white people who owned cars at the expense of the poor and African-Americans was due to his “social-class bias and racial prejudice.” (1)
Schindler cites this example of low level racist design level treatments. She gives for example “one might think it a simple aesthetic design decision to create a park bench that is divided into three individual seats with armrests separating those seats. Yet the bench may have been created this way to prevent people—often homeless people—from lying down and taking naps. Similarly, upon seeing a bridge, or a one-way street, or a street sign, many people tend to think that these are just features of a place—innocuous and normal. These structures are barriers and limit our relationships. These architectural features of the built environment control and act as constraints on our behavior.
A Current Event
“San Francisco Nudges Homeless Away From Super Bowl Fan Village” is a current political issue about changing behavior. (4)
“When a lot of cameras are going to be pointed on the city, they want to have an image of the city that does not include poverty,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director at the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness. “They want to decrease the physical presence and remainder of poverty and create an illusion that poverty does not exist by removing poor people from the vicinity of the Super Bowl party.” (4).
Figure 3: People loiter in front of the Ferry Building.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg (4)
“The city now has the eighth-worst homeless rate in
the nation and is fielding a growing number of complaints
about encampments, shopping carts, feces and urine.” (4)
Different people but the same faces that legislate from a non inclusive platform. Even now in 2016 the face of the forces who see separation and division as a standard operational fix by engaging with eviction of the homeless population.
A Personal Encounter with Existing Exclusionary Structures
A personal observation encountered in Rosalyn, Washington. The town of Rosalyn has historic significance. The Black men who built the Northern Pacific railway system could not reside in Seattle. Black man and other immigrants resided in Rosalynn, WA. The town survived through the coal rush and grew to a thriving river town owned and governed by black people by the 1960. During the 1960’s the I-90 corridor was built to pass through Rosalynn and that divided the farming community from the community. Evan more devastating was the elimination of an exit or entrance access to the freeway. The town was driven from flourishing to extinction in 10 short years. Today the primary income is from forestry and tourism.
Figure 2 The Brick Tavern
“The Brick Tavern is the oldest continuously operating tavern in the state, and was featured prominently in Northern Exposure (1990 to 1995). Roslyn was used as the site for filming the fictitious town of Cicely, Alaska, in the hit CBS television series (3)
Work Cited
1. Margaret Morton, Fragile Dwelling (New York: Aperture, 2000).
2. Schindler Sarah, Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment, Yale Law Journal, April, 2015. Web.
3. Majors, Harry M. (1975-11-01). Exploring Washington, Van Winkle Publishing Co. pp. 89–90
4, Vekshin Alison, San Francisco Nudges Homeless Away From Super Bowl Fan Village, Bloomberg Company, January 22, 2016. Web.
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