Wealthy, mostly white residents of more Northern Atlanta have spoke out and opposed the expansion of the MARTA to keep poorer people and minorities out of their neighborhoods and jobs. In 1974 the city of Memphis closed a road connecting a mostly white neighborhood and a mostly bad neighborhood. The people in favor of this notion claimed it would help noise and safety. The notion was challenged, but any opposition to this notion was ignored. This action carried a strong message of discrimination, but that was some how not noticed by people who make sure things are not discriminatory.

This Article mainly focuses the discriminatory treatment of those who are exulted by how city are built more to cater to the rich and hide away the poorer citizens. The first part of this article focuses on how the built environment changes and shapes the behavior of those who live in them. This power to decide how people will act in area should give law-markers and people of power the ability to control everything, but they often ignore the impacts that some actions have on some areas.

All through history city builders and architects have used many different ways to keep people who are not wanted in an area out. Methods of law and violence are not looked highly upon when separating people, but the use of barriers such as walls and buildings is ignored and not looked down upon. We don’t really pay much attention to why things are built how they are or who they restrict. If you saw a bench with a bar in the middle you might thing it was made to have two arm rests, but sometimes things are cleverly hidden and what looked innocent is like that to keep the homeless from using it as a place to sleep. Sometimes things like this are done with some different idea that isn’t intended to restrict people, but end up doing it because of how something is designed.

The ability to control how a city is built can be good or bad. In the hands of somebody who is rich and wants to hide away minorities and the poor will you tactics like large buildings and walls around their neighborhoods to restrict their ability to move around and be seen. This is like a cafeteria who wants to promote healthy food choices by hiding and making it harder to reach junk food or poor health choices. This power to change how a city is laid out is a way of controlling people and regulating them.

Legal academics have come up with the notion that some places have racial meanings. “Elise C. Boddie argues that places have racial identities based on their history of or reputation for exclusion, and that courts should consider this racial meaning for purposes of racial discrimination claims.” These racial meaning let people like police officers keep tabs on minorities and keep some races and people away from things like parks. A leading land-use book has a chapter on tools of exclusion such as racially restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning, but done not talk about exclusion based on features of the built environment.