Architectural exclusion is rarely addressed in legal courts. Residential areas are generally designed in a way to make them less available to poor people and people of color, and the “racial meaning” of a place provide a way for authority figures to effectively make decisions about who “belongs” in a place and who does not. Despite several authors drawing attention to these issues, “law and lawmakers habitually overlook the way that the built environment functions as an express tool of exclusion.” Although architectural regulation is as effective as law in separating people by class or race, it is less obvious and distinctive to courts – even when the segregated outcome is intended, officials tend not to see these actions as needing regulation.

Julianne Register, Jennyfer Chica, Ayman Vaid, Brianna Reynolds