Throughout Sarah Schindler’s article, “Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation through Physical Design of the Built Environment,” a secret behind the architectures of the community is revealed. Schindler fully discusses the buildings and structures that were constructed throughout the city and neighborhoods, thus proving that the government has purposely designed these built environments in order to separate the poor from the rich and the colored from the white. To be able to control the ways that people travel and lead society into unconscious segregation is a very powerful yet dangerous idea. This article gives us a summary of how the government has been able to isolate socially different classes by the slightest differences of how the architecture has been built and designed. Often times, people are unable to identify the feelings of enclosure and rejection from the area that is separated from the rest of the public. Robert Moses, who is known as the “Master Builder” of New York, is introduced as the man who built the low bridges that prevented public buses from entering the area of the wealthier people. Those who depend on public transportation are unable to pass these bridges into the neighborhoods, and as residents believe, blocking people out of their wealthier areas will help prevent crimes and violence. Even these wealthy neighborhoods have voted MARTA out of the community, believing that it will help keep the troublemakers out of the area as well as keep it clean. Some also believe that it will help the economy and only increase the wealth of the neighborhoods if only wealthy residents lived in the homes. Shown throughout the article, many examples such as the low bridges, gates, highways, and benches with individual seats that prevent the homeless from sleeping on them are ways that the community has been divided and inevitably discriminates one another. These architectural regulations are invisible to the naked eye and are forming a social barrier between people of different social standings or color. Additionally, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, who are both choice architects, agree that all architectures are built with a meaning, and “neutral designs” do not exist. No matter how ordinary the building or bridge may look, there will always be a reason for why it is located in its specific location or looks that certain way. This article helps display that people should look into more of the details of why such things are built instead of paying attention to only the surface of the architectures constructed. If buildings, roads, and other features of the community are continued to be built in order to separate social classes, humanity will be hindered by the government and the builders of the constructions. Schindler thoroughly explains the issues that have proven that architecture shapes society today. She also suggests that everyone becomes more aware of these divided walls and take action to stop the segregation and the discrimination that is still occurring to this day. Instead of allowing the government to control our society, we need to bind all cultures, groups, and colors together into one.
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