Racialized Architectural Space: A Critical Understanding of its Production, Perception and Evaluation

Introduction

If gentrification is class warfare, its architectural byproducts are forms of spatial terrorism. Critical scholars recognize that the process of gentrification almost always produces a contentious social environment in which long-time residents of poor urban communities are displaced by more affluent – and often, white – newcomers. ¹

Sharon Zukin, “Gentrification: Culture And Capital In The Urban Core,” Annual Review of Sociology 13, no. 1, (1987): 129–47, accessed March 11, 2019, doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.13.1.129.

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Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 2005). 3–27.

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Lance Freeman and Frank Braconi, “Gentrification and Displacement New York City in the 1990s,” Journal of the American Planning Association 70, no. 1, (2004): 39–52, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360408976337.

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Lance Freeman, “Displacement or Succession?,” Urban Affairs Review 40, no. 4 (2005): 463–91, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087404273341.

The result of this demographic shift usually leads to the creation of spaces that are socially, culturally, economically, physically and racially polarized. ⁵

Philip Kasinitz, “The Gentrification of ‘Boerum Hill’: Neighborhood Change and Conflicts over Definitions,” Qualitative Sociology 11, no. 3 (1988): 163–82, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00988953.

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R Alan Walks and Richard Maaranen, “Gentrification, Social Mix, and Social Polarization: Testing the Linkages in Large Canadian Cities,” Urban Geography 29, no. 4 (2008): 293–326, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.29.4.293.

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Loretta Lees, “The Geography of Gentrification,” Progress in Human Geography 36, no. 2 (2012): 155–71, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511412998.

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Margaret Kohn, “What Is Wrong with Gentrification?,” Urban Research & Practice 6, no. 3 (2013): 297–310, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2013.846006.

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Jana Zdráhalová, “Spatial and Social Boundaries in Gentrified Neighbourhoods,” Advanced Engineering Forum 12 (2014): 23–9, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/aef.12.23.

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Todd Brown, “The Perception of Racialized Space as a Predictor for Architectural Meaning and Attributes: An East Harlem Study” (Master’s Thesis), The Graduate and University Center of the City University of New York (2016).

Politicians, planners, developers, realtors, and landlords are the most common subjects of criticism in this process. However, when examining the socio-physical aspects of these transitioning communities, architects and the resulting architectural spaces they create are not given as much attention or critique – although much evidence indicates that socially, economically and/or racially polarized spaces contribute to social conflict. ¹¹

Joan-Maria Esteban and Debraj Ray, “On the Measurement of Polarization,” Econometrica 62, no. 4 (1994): 819, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.2307/2951734.

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Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 3-47.

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Oren Yiftachel, “Critical Theory and ‘Gray Space’: Mobilization of the Colonized,” City 13, no. 2–3 (2009): 246–63, accessed March 11, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/13604810902982227.

Further critical investigation reveals that racialized architectural space is ubiquitous, ¹⁴

David Theo Goldberg, “Spatial Rhetorics: The Architecture of Conferencing,” Appendix 3, (1996): 166–73, accessed January 15, 2018, http://www.appendx.org/appendx/issue3/index.htm.

inevitably occurring – as it is the materialization of social ideologies – as an embodiment of power, class, gender and race relations (among other social constructs) in gentrified and non-gentrified environments alike.

The racial aspect of such architectural spaces ^*

It should be noted that throughout this paper, the terms “architecture”, “architectural space”, “space”, and “the built environment” are used interchangeably and all denote designed and constructed physical places that are occupied and tangibly experienced by people.

has been frequently overlooked in the prevailing academic discourse, although the foundations for such inquiries are apparent in the works of one of the first racially critical sociologist, W. E. B. DuBois. Nearly 120 years ago, in The Philadelphia Negro, ¹⁵

W. E. B DuBois, Philadelphia Negro (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1899).

Dubois’s research documented the disparate social and housing conditions of American blacks. And 115 years ago, in The Souls of Black Folks, ¹⁶

W. E. B DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks (Chicago, IL: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903).

DuBois elucidated the concept of the “colorline” as a socio-physical construct that perpetuated environmental racism and segregation in many post-slavery American cities and towns. ¹⁷

Daniel G Solorzano and Veronica V Velez, “Using Critical Race Spatial Analysis to Examine the Duboisian Color-Line Along the Alameda Corridor in Southern California,” Whittier Law Review 37, no. 3 (2016): 423–37.

One can undoubtedly imagine a scathing rebuke from DuBois in regard to academia’s failure to link what we know from multiple disciplines into one thundering condemnation of environmental hypocrisy in the production of segregated and racialized architectural spaces. With an understanding of the interconnectedness of the built environment to socio-racial disparities, the necessity to scrutinize the role of architecture is therefore warranted. This paper attempts to address this topic primarily through an analysis of how the built environment – particularly at the scale of architecture – is both socially produced and psychologically perceived as racialized. Although there exists a small but important body of theoretical and speculative work devoted to exploring this concept, a major contribution of this paper is the incorporation of two empirical socio-psychological studies that quantitatively and – to a much lesser extent – qualitatively provide supporting evidence for the basis of a claim of racialized architecture. Additionally, specific examples of both theoretical and realized design projects are used to further illustrate and concretize an understanding of the role and function of architecture when used as a tool for racial (and class) distinctions. These examples are drawn globally from various projects that exemplify [architectural] environmental/spatial racism, although the condition of American gentrification remains a focal point. Subsequently, a foundation for how such architectural landscapes can be critically and empirically investigated and evaluated, primarily through psychosocial methodologies, is proposed.

The Social Production and Psychological Perception of Architecture as Racialized

University of Cambridge geographer Susan Smith ¹⁸

Susan Smith, “Residential Segregation and the Politics of Racialization,” in Racism, The City and The State, ed. Michael Cross and Malcolm Keith (New York: Routlege, 1993), 128–44.

defines racialized space as “the process by which residential location is taken as an index of the attitudes, values, behavioral inclinations and social norms of the kinds of people who are assumed to live [there].” ¹⁹

John O. Calmore, “Racialized Space and the Culture of Segregation: Hewing a Stone of Hope from a Mountain of Despair,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 143, no. 6 (1995): 1233–73.

Under this definition, two distinctions must be noted. The first point is that racialized space is not limited to the scale of cities or neighborhood blocks: virtually all built space (residential, commercial, office, recreational, conference, etc.) is racialized to some extent. ²⁰

Goldberg, “Spatial Rhetorics,” 167.

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Lynne C Manzo and Maxine Wolfe, “The Social Production of Built Forms, Environmental Settings and Person/Environment Relationships” (paper presented at the 11th Conference of the International Association for the Study of People and Their Surroundings. Culture-Space-History, Ankara, Turkey, 1990).

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Susan Ruddick, “Constructing Differences in Public Spaces: Race, Class and Gender as Interlocking Systems,” Urban Geography 17, no. 2 (1996): 132–51, accessed March 11, 2019, doi:10.2747/0272-3638.17.2.132.

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John Archer, “Social Theory of Space: Architecture and the Production of Self, Culture and Society,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 64, no. 4. (2006): 430–3, accessed March 11, 2019, doi:10.2307/25068197.

Secondly, it must be understood that racialized space is socially produced space ²⁴

Ruddick, “Constructing Differences,” 134.

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Jon Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory: Towards An Architectural Geography,” The Professional Geographer 40, no. 4 (1998): 392–403, accessed March 11, 2019, doi:10.1111/j.0033-0124.1988.00392.x.

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Manzo and Wolfe, “The Social Production of Built Forms.”

– that is to say, the racialization of space does not precede the social production of space or vice versa: they are one and the same – interwoven processes. Understanding the social production of [architectural] space, then, is akin to comprehending the racialized production of architecture.

A Marxian definition of “socially produced” means that it is a “product of the social relations of a particular economic organization” and focuses on the “political economy and specifically on urban spatial forms and/or urban consciousness as an outcome of the property relations of capitalism.” ²⁷

Manzo and Wolfe, “The Social Production of Built Forms,” 1.

Decentralizing considerations of capitalism and economics yields an even broader conceptualization of the topic that, in accordance with the original Lefebvrian theory, positions space as a product of a variety of social forces. ²⁸

Archer, “Social Theory of Space,” 431.

In addition to the economic, such social forces that shape our built environment include politics, culture, technology, ²⁹

Goldberg, “Spatial Rhetorics,” 166.

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Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory,” 392.

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Archer, “Social Theory of Space.”

and of course the classical triad of race, class and gender. ³²

Manzo and Wolfe, “The Social Production of Built Forms,” 8.

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Goldberg, “Spatial Rhetorics,” 168.

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Ruddick, “Constructing Differences,” 133.

These factors are often collectively referred to as the [social] ideologies with which buildings are invested and which also produce – and are produced by – the “spaces within, around and between” buildings. ³⁵

Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory,” 392.

Furthermore, a Foucauldian approach positions built space as an apparatus of power, “fashioning ranks and roles of people in society.” ³⁶

Archer, “Social Theory of Space,” 430.

Therefore, architecture often materializes and represents configurations of power which echo, both directly and indirectly, the voice of the ruling class that attempts to dictate the production and perception of built form. ³⁷

Manzo and Wolfe, “The Social Production of Built Forms.”

Lastly, Bourdieu situates the discussion of the built environment – including architectural space – in relation to its ability to both “serve and inform human consciousness, practice and society.” ³⁸

Archer, “Social Theory of Space,” 431.

He also posits that spatial form serves as an apparatus through which people establish identity and articulate social relations and that “the enduring capacity of buildings has the ability to sustain, protect and perpetuate those identities and social relations.” ³⁹

Ibid., 431.

The central theme among these theories is that built space is imbued with [social] ideologies, simultaneously being produced by, producing and reproducing social identities and relations. When race is considered as the primary unit of analysis for critiquing the production and perception of space, one must then critically consider how race is made in society as a foundation for the understanding of how racialized spaces are produced.

Making Race, Making Racialized Space

“There is no single force producing racial meaning.” ⁴⁰

john a. powell and Kaloma Cardell, “Homeownership, Wealth, & the Production of Racialized Space” (symposium paper presented at Harvard University, Joint Center for Housing Studies Harvard University, 2013), 20.

The making of race and, congruently, the making of racialized space is a formative process. ⁴¹

Calmore, “Racialized Space,” 1237.

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David Delaney, “The Space that Race Makes,” Professional Geographer 54, no. 1 (2002): 6–14, accessed March 11, 2019, doi:10.1111/0033-0124.00309.

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George Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race,” Landscape Journal 26, no. 1 (2007): 10–23, accessed March 11, 2019, doi:10.3368/lj.26.1.10.

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powell and Cardwell, “Homeownership,” 4.

Calmore ⁴⁵

Calmore, “Racialized Space,” 1235.

proposed that racialization is both a process and a project: “[r]acialization is a ‘dialectical process of signification’ that reaches to the societal processes in which people participate and to the structures and institutions that people produce.” Calmore specifically references Omi and Winant’s ⁴⁶

Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (Critical Thought), 2nd edition (New York: Routlege, 1994).

theory of “racial formation” as a three-step process in the making of race. Their theory states that racialization, as a project, occurs first by the organization and representation of human bodies and social structures, then by the establishment of the hegemony of certain human bodies and social structures over others and finally by the politicizing and legitimizing of this hierarchical system via policies and practices of a “racialized state.” With regard to the built environment, including architectural space, the racialization process/project relies on an understanding of race that is shaped by political, economic, social and psychological concepts of race and space. ⁴⁷

Calmore, “Racialized Space,” 1236–41.

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Delaney, “The Space that Race Makes,” 7–8.

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Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space,” 13.

Politically and economically racialized architectures, within larger spatial contexts, have been produced through a variety of discriminatory environmental practices: exclusionary lending practices, FHA loan-backing practices, predatory lending, exclusionary zoning, redlining, restrictive covenants, blockbusting, racial steering, economic disinvestment, and – of course – urban renewal/gentrification. ⁵⁰

Calmore, “Racialized Space,” 1235–55.

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Sylvia Washington, Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago: 1865–1954 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

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Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space,” 13.

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powell and Cardwell, “Homeownership,” 16–18.

These policies and practices, both historical and current, have served to materially reinforce the socio-physical segregation of whites and racial “others,” producing differentiated spatial imaginaries along racial lines.

Whiteness has been historically and socially idealized in Western culture, leading to the construction of a white spatial imaginary as a “privileged moral geography of the properly-ordered, prosperous private dwelling . . . of exclusivity and augmented exchange value.” ⁵⁴

Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space,” 13.

Congruently, racial others have been deemed inferior, ⁵⁵

Calmore, “Racialized Space,” 1237.

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bell hooks, “Representing Whitness in the Black Imagination,” in Displacing Whitness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, ed. Ruth Frankenburg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 165–78.

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Washington, Packing Them In, 17–42.

yielding an imaginary of non-white space as inferior, dangerous, crime-ridden, dirty, polluted, dilapidated, diseased, impoverished, uncivilized wasteland and having a diminished exchange value. ⁵⁸

Charles S. Johnson, Negro Housing: Report of the Committee on Negro Housing. Edited by John M Gries and James Ford. Vol. 6. (Washington, DC: National Capitol Press, Inc., 1932), accessed March 12, 2019, https://archive.org/details/negrohousingrepo00presrich/page/282.

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Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory,” 394–5.

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Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space,” 14.

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Calmore, “Racialized Space.”

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Hooks, “Representing Whiteness,” 165.

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Delaney, “The Space that Race Makes,” 10.

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powell and Cardwell, “Homeownership,” 16–20.

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Courtney M. Bonam, Hilary B. Bergseiker and Jennifer Eberhardt, “Polluting Black Space,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 145, no. 11 (2016): 1561–82, accessed March 12, 2019, doi:10.1037/xge0000226.

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Brown, “The Perception of Racialized Space,” 13–18.

Urban geographer Jon Goss ⁶⁷

Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory,” 394–5.

elucidates the concept of value applied to buildings – and all built spaces, as material objects – by referencing Baudrillard’s four-component object value system (as cited in Marchand 1982): 1) use value, its practical function as shelter or living place; 2) exchange value, its value on the market as a commodity embodying labor and capital; 3) sign value, its function as a message of difference and status; and 4) symbol value, its role in prelogical thought. Goss further posits that the value of a building is determined by its relative location (accessibility), site (physical characteristics, amenity), social setting (neighborhood status), and architecture (size, fashionability, and facilities). The multi-faceted dimensions of the value of buildings illustrates that the value of architecture is produced and understood by social, economic, political and cultural forces, all of which are also embedded with racial implications. Both groups and individuals are frequently able to discern and decipher these embedded meanings and understandings of the buildings through their specific environmental schema (habitus) and architectural semiotics. ⁶⁸

Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory,” 397.

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Archer, “Social Theory of Space,” 431.

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Shannon Sullivan, “White World-Travelling,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18, no. 4 (2004): 300–4.

Under these circumstances, racialized architecture carries with it specific perceived values, primarily dictated by the body politic’s determination of the value of specific environmental spaces. ⁷¹

Washington, Packing Them In, 17–45.

Race and Architectural Perception

However, as Lipsitz ⁷²

Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space,” 14.

highlights, often communities of color, especially black communities, have developed a counter-spatial imaginary based on sociability and augmented use value: “unable to move away from other members of their group because of discrimination, ghetto and barrio residents turn segregation into congregation.” Goss expresses the view that “in the case of gentrification, the older run-down buildings which provide low-standard rental housing or business premises have meaning for present inhabitants very different from that for the incoming gentrifiers. These differences center around the realities of exchange value versus the interpretations of use value.” ⁷³

Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory,” 401.

The racialized social and cultural ideals embedded in architectural spaces, serving as signs and symbols, can also be seen, in some instances, in the physical design of the building itself, as architectural historian Charles Davis ⁷⁴

Charles Davis, “Louis Sullivan and the Physiognomic Translation of American Character,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 76, no. 1 (2017): 63–81, accessed March 12, 2019, doi:10.1525/jsah.2017.76.1.63.

elucidates in his analysis of the concept of architectural physiognomy. Davis understands architecture as an expression of both cultural nationalism and ethnographic character, realized and materialized through an architectural physiognomy. Davis’ examples posit that all artifacts of material culture, including architecture, inherently reflect the [racialized] character of the creator of that architecture.

I would argue that there is a reciprocity in both the production and perception of architecture as racialized (among other social constructs), particularly in the context of gentrification. It appears that many of the racialized biases that we ascribe to many aspects of [material] culture (e.g., music, food, dance, clothing, cars, art, etc.) are also applied to architecture, so that these biases and stereotypes moderate our perceptions of what “kind” of people belong (or deserve to belong) in certain physical spaces. ⁷⁵

Johnson, Negro Housing.

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Ruddick, “Constructing Differences.”

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Washington, Packing Them In, 17–43.

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Brown, “The Perception of Racialized Space,” 13–18.

Bonam, Bergseiker and Eberhardt specifically refer to the concept as “space-focused [racial] stereotypes.” ⁷⁹

Bonam, Bergseiker and Eberhardt, “Polluting Black Space,” 1561.

Researching perceptions of black space – space occupied by or associated with black Americans – , they explicitly state that: “Just as generalized stereotypes about Black people can influence how people think about particular Black individuals, we propose generalized stereotypes about Black areas can influence how people think about particular locales occupied by Blacks.” ⁸⁰

Ibid.

Such perceptions – and realities – of the blighted and inferior conditions of black [residential] spaces were officially documented by the United States government as early as 1932, when President Hoover commissioned a “Negro Housing” report. ⁸¹

Johnson, Negro Housing.

Bush, Moffat and Dunn ⁸²

Judith Bush, Suzanne Moffat and Christine Dunn, “’Even the Birds Round Here Cough’: Stigma, Air Pollution and Health in Teesside,” Health & Place 7, no. 1 (2001): 47–56, accessed March 12, 2019, doi:10.1016/S1353-8292(00)00037-X.

effectively illustrate how the perception of a physical space as contaminated, polluted and/or undesirable for inhabitation results in environmental stigma attached, not only to that space, but to its occupants as well. Both space-focused racial stereotypes and environmental stigma can interact reciprocally to simultaneously produce negative perceptions of physical spaces – based on biases against those who occupy them ⁸³

Bush, Moffat and Dunn, “Even the Birds Round Here Cough,” 54.

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Bonam, Bergseiker and Eberhardt, “Polluting Black Space,” 1561–1582.

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Brown, “The Perception of Racialized Space,” 23.

– and [devalued] judgements of their inhabitants – as a result of the environments in which they live. ⁸⁶

Jack L. Nasar, “Symbolic Meaning of House Styles,” Journal of Environment and Behavior 21, no. 3 (1989): 235–57, accessed March 12, 2019, doi:10.1177/0013916589213001.

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Bush, Moffat and Dunn, “Even the Birds Round Here Cough,” 54.

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Brown, “The Perception of Racialized Space,” 14–16.

Raced Space Imaginary: Empirical Evidence

Thus far, substantial theoretical evidence has been presented on the production and perception of architectural space as racialized. Although arguably sound and compelling, such propositions may be understandably contested. Unfortunately, there exist very few empirical sociological or psychological studies that explore the perception of architecture or built spaces as projecting and embodying racialized meaning. To the best of my knowledge, only two psychosocial studies exist that seek to empirically evaluate perceptions and meanings of architectural space using racial associations. Interestingly, both projects were completed, independently, and without knowledge of each other, in 2016. One project was my own field research (accepted as partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Master of Arts degree) in the CUNY Graduate Center Environmental Psychology Doctoral Program which resulted in a paper I entitled “The Perception of Racialized Space as a Predictor for Architectural Meaning and Attributes: An East Harlem Study.” In this paper, I sought to explore the relationship between how architectural space is perceived as racialized (white or non-white) and how that perception correlates to its negative or positive evaluation. ⁸⁹

Ibid., 1–49.

The other project, entitled “Polluting Black Space” was conducted by Stanford University social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt and two of her colleagues, Courtney Bonam and Hilary Bergsieker. Their study demonstrated “that the physical spaces associated with Black Americans are also subject to negative racial stereotypes” and are thus devalued by whites. ⁹⁰

Bonam, Bergseiker and Eberhardt, “Polluting Black Space,” 1561.

The following details of these two research projects elucidate, empirically, how the built environment – such as physical spaces and specific architectures – embody racial ideologies and are perceived and evaluated through racial imaginaries.

Lessons Learned

These two studies provide considerable empirical evidence that specific buildings, physical places and designed spaces are indeed perceived and/or imagined as having saliently racial qualities. They also clearly demonstrate that the built environment, at a variety of scales, when perceived as racialized, specifically as non-white space, is imbued with a devalued imaginary. Bonam’s related dissertation research ⁹²

Courtney Bonam, “Devaluing Black Space: Black Locations as Targets of Housing and Environmental Discrimination” (Stanford University Libraries, August 2010). Accessed November 5, 2018. https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:gz102cb9731/Bonam_Dissertation-augmented.pdf.

further provides foundational empirical evidence that specific types of spaces and buildings have the tendency to be associated with specific ethnic groups (p. 17). She refers to these as racially modal spaces ⁹³

Ibid., 19.

that appear to be prototypically associated with the population of a specific race. For example, the participant sample in her study most frequently associated malls, suburbs, golf courses, hiking trails, art galleries and business spaces with white people; while the ghetto, barbershops, basketball courts, stoops, dance clubs and street corners were most frequently imagined as black spaces. Additionally, accompanying valence – the intrinsic attractiveness/“good”-ness (positive valence) or averseness/“bad”-ness (negative valence) – of imagined black spaces was much more negative than that of perceived white spaces (p. 17–28).

These negative perceptions of racialized space can further polarize ethnic groups along both racial and class lines ⁹⁴

Keith Aoki, “Race, Space and Place: The Relation Between Architectural Modernism, Post-Modernism, Urban Planning and Gentrification,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 20, no. 4 (1992): 699–829.

as racialized physical environments materialize social distinctions and separations. ⁹⁵

Zdráhalová, “Spatial and Social Boundaries,” 25.

The racially polarized spaces and architectures created by the processes of gentrification in many ways represent the aesthetic sensibilities of the gentrifiers, driven by their racial, cultural and socio-economic preferences. ⁹⁶

Henry Sanoff, “House Form and Preferences” (paper presented at EDRA 2: Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Environmental Design Research Association Conference. Pittsburgh, 1970, 334–9).

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Mustapha I. Soueif and Hans J. Eysenck, “Cultural Differences in Aesthetic Preferences,” International Journal of Psychology 6, no. 4 (1971): 293–8, accessed March 12, 2019, doi:10.1080/00207597108246695.

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Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judegement of Taste, translated by Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

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Smith, The New Urban Frontier, 3–47.

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Brown, “The Perception of Racialized Space,” 14–15.

In her critical essay, Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination, ¹⁰¹

Hooks, “Representing Whiteness,” 169.

social activist and race scholar bell hooks, although not specifically referencing geography or spatiality, poignantly illustrates the resulting psychological and social effects of the forced imposition of whiteness – white culture, ideals, bodies and spaces – into black (and other minority) communities:

Socialized to believe the fantasy, that whiteness represents goodness and all that is benign and nonthreatening, many white people assume that this is the way black people conceptualize whiteness. They do not imagine that the way whiteness makes its presence felt in black life, most often as a terrorizing imposition, a power that wounds, hurts, tortures, is a reality that disrupts the fantasy of whiteness as representing goodness. (p. 169)

It is with this understanding that I am also inclined to believe the ubiquity of white culture in American society assumes a neutrality of whiteness and neglects the importance of race in the various aspects of our everyday lives. This includes one of the most abundant artifacts of material culture that we encounter nearly every moment of our lives: architectural space. It is therefore crucially important that any socially critical evaluation of architecture must do so from a racially aware lens. One way to achieve this is to incorporate the framework of critical race theory with some of the most established evaluative methodologies for architecture and built space. A specific incorporation of critical race theory in relation to an empirical evaluation of architectural space, in particular, remains in widely unchartered terrain. The underlying foundations of critical race theory have however permeated some of the more recent theoretical discourses on architecture and the built environment. The following section of this paper will highlight some examples of the critical analyses of racially polarized architectural spaces that have been either proposed or realized. The variety of such spaces throughout recent history and across varying geographies illustrates the pervasiveness of this phenomenon.

From Colonization to Gentrification: Learning from the Past and Present

Socio-spatial polarization along racial lines has been exemplified across space and throughout history via a variety of land use/appropriation processes that have served to disenfranchise particular groups’ rights to the physical environment and even specific architectural spaces. The socio-political and economic forces of processes such as global colonialism (i.e., European imperialism), South African apartheid and American Jim Crow are all such examples. The mechanisms by which they were conceived and implemented demonstrate many parallels to the processes of gentrification currently affecting urban communities in the United States and around the globe. The common characteristics of all these conditions pivot on the deliberate creation of race-and class-based architectures and environments, whether implicit or explicit, that serve to physically embody distinctions between the economically disparate racial and/or ethnic groups that occupy them. The following historical examples of the racialized socio-spatial conditions created by discriminatory planning, design, policy and practices also elucidate the central role that architecture has always played in materializing social ideologies around racial distinctions.

European Imperialism

The Age of Imperialism, a time period beginning around 1760, saw European industrializing nations engaging in the process of colonizing, influencing, and annexing other parts of the world. ¹⁰²

John Haywood, Atlas of World History (New York: Barnes & Nobel, 1997).

This second expansion of Europe was a complex historical process in which “political, social and emotional forces in Europe and on the periphery” were highly influential in shaping [material] culture, society, politics, religion, and economics around the world. ¹⁰³

Joe Painter and Alex Jeffrey, Political Geography, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009), 184.

These influences were undoubtedly evident in the production of architectures and physical spaces in the many colonized non-white countries under hegemonic European control. The architectural products of imperialism served as apparatuses of power to physically embody the might and dominance of the respective European countries responsible for their construction. Race inherently and inevitably assumed a distinct and tangible role in illustrating spatial distinctions between the white colonizers and the non-white indigenous populations which they colonized. As various native peoples of color were socially constructed and psychologically perceived as inferior, the colonial architectures that emerged were deliberately designed to suggest the superiority of European culture (i.e., whiteness), particularly in relation to that of indigenous populations. One of the innumerable design projects that elucidates such intent is the unrealized 1933 proposal of the renowned Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier, in Algiers (Figure 3). His Plan Obus was meant to be an iconic symbol of French imperialism in the heart of the Algerian Casbah (citadel). ¹⁰⁴

Brian Ackley, “Le Corbusier’s Algerian Fanatasy: Blocking the Cabash,” Bidoun, 6 (Winter 2006), par. 3, accessed January 3, 2019, https://bidoun.org/6-envy#le-corbusier-s-algerian-fantasy.

In celebration of the centennial of French rule, Le Corbusier proposed a megastructure that would literally cut through and block the center of this socially and culturally rich historic North African city (Figure 3). This massive project, positioned to make Algiers a world capital, consisted of three main components: “[1] a new business district on the Cape of Algiers . . . [2] a residential area in the heights accessible by a bridge spanning over the Casbah, and [3] . . . an elevated highway arcing between suburban cities and containing fourteen residential levels beneath it.” ¹⁰⁵

Ibid., par. 4.

This behemoth proposal would have ultimately – literally and spatially – positioned French nationals over the heads of Algerian locals (Figure 3), while simultaneously disregarding and disrupting Algerian social and religious traditions: segregating Algerian workers from the more affluent French colonizers through an “abrupt change in the spatial arrangement brought on by its brutal scale.” ¹⁰⁶

Ibid., par. 5.

Fortunately, Le Corbusier’s proposal was never constructed; however, if his plan had been realized, it would have served as a tangible spatial manifestation of the prevailing social ideology of Algerians as exoticized and inferior others. Unfortunately, this has indeed been the case where nearly all of the materialized colonial architectures served and/or continue to serve as overt representations of white dominance in non-white locales. One example where this is extremely apparent is in the planning of the Indian capital of New Delhi under British rule (Figure 4). Both the city itself as well as its particular architectures were created with the primary goal of symbolizing British power and supremacy. ¹⁰⁷

Balmiki P. Singh and Pavan K Varma,The Millenium Book on New Delhi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

American Jim Crow

Leaving the African continent, similar spatial configurations can be seen in the design and production of architectural spaces in American society during the Jim Crow era of the 1870s through the 1960s. Arguably, the remnants of this period still persist in various forms even today. During this post-slavery period, the physical spaces of every city and town, particularly in the deep south, were explicitly delineated along racial lines, at almost every spatial scale: from entire neighborhoods, to specific buildings, to lunch counters, buses and even water fountains (Figure 5). Whites and blacks (in reality, virtually all non-whites) had distinct and separate spaces governed by a variety of laws and social practices. ¹⁰⁸

David K. Fremon, The Jim Crow Laws and Racism in American History (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2000).

The policies and practices that reinforced spatial segregation were augmented and materialized architecturally through what historian Robert Weyeneth has termed “spatial strategies of white supremacy” such as “isolation and partitioning” which were created by means of “adaptive use and new construction.” ¹⁰⁹

Robert R. Weyeneth, “The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematic Past,” The Public Historian 27, no. 4 (2005): 12, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1525/tph.2005.27.4.11.

Weyeneth further elaborates on isolation and partitioning as the two major ways in which racial segregation was established architecturally: “Architectural isolation represented the enterprise of constructing and maintaining places that kept whites and blacks apart, isolated from one another. Architectural partitioning represented the effort to segregate within facilities that were shared by the races” (p. 13). Exclusionary explicit signage that indicated which buildings and areas were for whites only and where blacks were permitted were applied to nearly every public space in the Jim Crow South. Although most of these signs were not integral parts of the architectural design, they served as unequivocal indicators of racialized boundaries that were fortified by both official laws and unofficial practices dedicated to the separation of the races. There were also many instances where signage was unnecessary because it was socially understood that particular types of architectures were reserved for whites only: libraries, major hotels, doctors’ offices, most municipal parks, etc. These designed spaces were thus de facto white spaces. Such spatial segregations frequently necessitated the duplication of architectural spaces to accommodate both racial groups. In the instances where duplication was not economically viable, “only white space was provided.” ¹¹⁰

Ibid., 18.

Temporal separation was also used as a mechanism for architectural isolation. In the event that facilities such as parks, theatres, zoos, army posts, and doctors’ offices had to be used by both races, laws and practices were enforced that such usage and/or occupancy could not be simultaneous: “entrance and exit doors, stairways, windows, and pay stations” were temporarily segregated, often by statutes that dictated which race could use them during specific times of day, days of the week, or time of the year (pp. 18–19). When certain spaces had to be occupied and/or shared simultaneously by both blacks and whites, partitioning was employed as an architectural strategy to ensure racialized spatial segregation. The division of waiting rooms, movie theaters, railroad stations and even liquor stores, often used fixed or malleable barriers to clearly delineate the spaces for each racial group. Additionally, behavioral separation was a tool used to prohibit the mixing of races in shared spaces: “One learned the lay of the land through friendly advice, tense encounters with whites, and simply watching to see what other African Americans were doing.” ¹¹¹

Ibid., 25.

The strategy of behavioral separation controlled how the races – more specifically, blacks – were to behave when a place was theoretically open to both races. This always meant deference to whites who had the most privileges, while black behavior was “significantly constrained” (p. 23). Customary practices coupled with visual and behavioral cues defined the racialized boundaries of such architectural spaces when no specific law governed spatial segregation. This form of de facto seclusion may be of particularly interest to contextualize modern forms of georacial polarization – such as gentrified spaces – that are not legally bolstered but nonetheless have similar disenfranchising outcomes.

South African Apartheid

As the continent of Africa has been arguably one most devastated by the processes of European domination – at least in regard to the sheer number of countries – a return is therefore warranted in the examination of the creation of race-based architectural space. However, this time, we travel from Algeria, the second northernmost country, to the southernmost government on the continent: South Africa. Having been first colonized by the Dutch in 1652, South Africa’s history of de jure racial and spatial segregation begin in 1856 with the passage of Dutch discriminatory and segregationist laws ¹¹²

n.a., A History of Apartheid in South Africa, South African History Online, n.d., accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa.

and culminated in the 1948 enactment of apartheid under white Afrikaner rule. Interestingly, apartheid began in South Africa as the Jim Crow era in the United States was nearing its last decade of existence. Apartheid, which lasted for nearly half a century until 1994, operated along strikingly similar lines as Jim Crow. The recurring actuality is, as poignantly illustrated by environmental historian Sylvia Washington, ¹¹³

Washington, Packing Them In, 17–43.

that spatial injustices occur after the psychosocial construction of a particular group as inferior. This step is necessary to justify the segregating and discriminating spatial practices imposed upon such “othered” groups. During apartheid, only whites were allowed to live in the central areas of South African cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town. Individuals categorized as black or colored were spatially relegated to the fringes of urban life, forced to occupy suburban shanty towns and rural reservations ¹¹⁴

Jonathan Manning, “Racism in Three Dimensions: South African Architecture and the Ideology of White Superiority,” Social Identities 10, no. 4 (2004): 529, accessessed November 18, 2019, doi:10.1080/1350463042000258944.

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n.a., “A History of Apartheid in South Africa,” par. 3.

(Figure 6). Rooted in the ideals of white supremacy and colonialism, South African architecture and planning practice and expression during the era of apartheid clearly echoed the racial hegemony embedded within its social, cultural and political context. ¹¹⁶

Fassil Demissie, “Editorial Note,” Social Identities 10, no. 4 (2004): 437, accessed on December 10, 2018, doi:10.1080/1350463042000258881

As in the case of Jim Crow and gentrification, social relationships and transactions in these architectural spaces served to reinforce the racial and spatial distinctions that permeated the physical environment itself. The racialization of architecture in apartheid South Africa was made explicitly apparent through the stark spatial dichotomies that were easily read by both whites and non-whites. This occurrence elucidated and continues to illustrate that architecture is a cultural system inextricable from its social context. ¹¹⁷

Hannah le Roux, “Building on the Boundary – Modern Architecture in the Tropics,” Social Identites 10, no. 4 (2004): 440–5, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/1350463042000258889.

Towards a Racially Critical Empirical Analysis of Architecture

Critical Race Spatial Analysis (CRSA) is a very new and still evolving “explanatory framework and methodological approach that accounts for the role of race . . . racism, and white supremacy in examining geographic and social spaces, and that works toward identifying and challenging racism and white supremacy within these spaces as part of a larger goal of identifying and challenging all forms of subordination.” ¹¹⁸

Solorzano and Velez, “Using Critical Race Spatial Analysis,” 429.

Rooted in critical race theory (CRT), this conceptual approach has thus far been applied primarily to educational systems, institutions and spaces. ¹¹⁹

Ibid., 423.

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Deb Morrison, Subini A Annamma, and Darrell Jackson, Critical Race Spatial Analysis: Mapping to Understand Educational Inequality (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2017).

However, as both a spatial analytical technique and a critical racial framework, CRSA has an undeniable potential to utilize mapmaking and other socio-physical techniques to highlight racial injustices and considerations at a variety of spatial scales in a process similar to what Peake and Kobayoshi ¹²¹

Linda Peake and Audrey Kobayashi, “Policies and Practices for an Antiracist Geography at the Millennium,” The Professional Geographer 54, no. 1 (2002): 52, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1111/0033-0124.00314.

refer to as “anti-racist landscape analysis”. Ground-truthing is one such technique implemented in CRSA research. Traditionally found in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) research, ground-truthing is “a process whereby GIS technicians are sent to gather data in the field that either complements or disputes airborne remote sensing data collected by aerial photography, satellite sidescan radar, or infrared images.” ¹²²

Solorzano and Velez, “Using Critical Race Spatial Analysis,” 435.

Solorzano and Velez further state that in CRSA, ground-truthing can be “reimagined as a process whereby community members, particularly those at the margins, gather or analyze “spatial” data, historical or contemporary, that either complements or disputes information portrayed in maps.” ¹²³

Ibid., 436.

I contend that, in relation to racially critical architectural evaluation, a technique such as ground-truthing can be a participatory process by which researchers and community members gather in-field socio-physical data on specific buildings, or groups of buildings, that either complements or disputes the social impact/social performance statements produced by architects, planners and/or developers.

As an offspring of both critical spatial analysis (which examines hegemonic human–environment relationships) and CRT – which rigorously examines the intersection of the law, power and race ¹²⁴

Lewis R. Gordon, “A Short History of the ‘Critical’ in Critical Race Theory,” The Frantz Fanon Blog: Reading Frantz Fanon in Grahamstown, South Africa. June 24, 2011, par. 2–3, accessed March 28, 2019. http://readingfanon.blogspot.com/2011/06/short-history-of-critical-in-critical.html.

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Tara J. Yosso, “Whose Culture has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth,” Race Ethnicity and Education 8, no. 1 (2005): 72, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/1361332052000341006.,l,,’/’;//.

– CRSA has endless applications in critiquing the intersection of socio-racial and geo-spatial aspects of architectural landscapes. CRSA also seems extremely promising in its potential adaptability to existing empirical methodologies for architectural evaluation. Such methodologies include post-occupancy evaluation (POE) and building performance evaluation (BPE). Currently, both processes are almost exclusively technocratic exercises ¹²⁶

Bill Bordass and Adrian Leaman, “Making Feedback and Post-Occupancy Evaluation Routine 3: Case Studies of the Use of Techniques in the Feedback Portfolio,” Building Research and Information 33, no. 4 (2005): 362–3, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/09613210500162032.

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Mike Riley, Chris Moody and Michael Pitt, “A Review of the Evolution of Post-Occupancy Evaluation as a Viable Performance Measurement Tool” (paper presented at BEAN Conference at the BEST Research Centre {Built Environment & Stustainable Technologies}, Liverpool: Liverpool John Moore’s University, 2009).

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Adrian Leaman, Fionn Stevenson and Bill Bordass, “Building Evaluation: Practice and Principles,” Building Research & Information 38, no. 5 (2010): 565–7, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/09613218.2010.495217.

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Todd Brown, “A Critical Assessment of the Place of Post-Occupancy Evaluation in the Creation of Socially Responsible Architecture,” Intelligent Buildings International 10, no. 3 (2018): 182, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/17508975.2018.1437708.

used to assess building performance in terms of physical measurements that include carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, energy use, and on-site water management ¹³⁰

Leaman, Stevenson and Bordass, “Building Evaluation,” 564–6.

– the metrics of which all are easily quantifiable and correspond to optimizing economic outcomes. ¹³¹

Brown, “A Critical Assessment,” 185.

However, there is much room for POE and BPE studies to lend themselves to the inclusion of racially – and thus, socially – critical approaches, through the incorporation of CRSA principles, particularly through an integration of such principles within their current occupant/user surveying techniques. ¹³²

Ibid., 187–9.

Some innovative variations to traditional POE research – such as international architectural firm, HKS’, Functional Performance Evaluation (FPE) – has proved promising in its potential to critically address the psychological and social dimensions of human–environment relationships in designed spaces. ¹³³

Kate Renner, “From Target to Test (Did We Get It Right?): The Functional Performance Evaluation,” Editorial, HKS Architects, LINK, A Publication of HKS, n.d., accessed March 13, 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/eEHtHn8NUDWiWE7uk9z4/full.

CRSA, in the combining of critical social theory, social science methodologies and spatial analysis techniques has much potential for reconceptualizing the mapping of architectural space, from the simple and broad exploration of large-scale external spaces to considering the complex psychosocial relationships of people to internal geographies. ¹³⁴

Morrison, Annamma and Jackson, Critical Race Spatial Analysis.

The application of CRSA methodologies has the potential to highlight how the privileged may differ from oppressed communities in regard to socio-spatial perceptions of, and relationships to, specific architectural spaces, and what may be learned from both perspectives. CRSA readily lends itself to the incorporation of innovative techniques such as participatory mapping, and qualitative approaches, such as interviews, where occupants/users/experiencers are able to simultaneously identify, visualize and narrate their perceptions and experiences in particular spaces while being allowed to critically reflect on the socio-racial nuances that contribute to their perspectives. This dynamic form of documentation will serve to provide a comprehensive framework from which to understand the complexities of the social and spatial contexts that moderate one’s engagement with the built environment.

Any racially critical analysis of architectural landscapes must – as both CRT and CRSA principles dictate – challenge color-blind, “race” neutral, ahistorical and apolitical points of view on a variety of structures, politics, institutions, systems, epistemologies, practices, research methodologies, etc. while providing counter-narratives of marginalized voices in an activist agenda. ¹³⁵

Lee Harvey, Critical Social Research (London: Unwyn-Hyman, 1990), 117.

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Daniel G. Solorzano and Tara J Yosso, “Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework,” Qualitative Inquiry 8, no. 1 (2002): 23–44, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1177/107780040200800103.

^{, 137}

Cynthia Tyson, “Epistemology of Emancipation,” in Interrogating Racism in Qualitative Research Methodology, ed. Gerardo R Lopez and Laurence Parker (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 19–28.

^{, 138}

Miri Song, “Introduction: Who’s at the Bottom? Examining Claims About Racial Hierarchy,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27, no. 6 (2004): 860, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/0141987042000268503.

^{, 139}

Miri Song, “Is There ‘A’ Mixed Race Group in Britain? The Diversity of Multicultural Identification and Experience,” Critical Social Policy 30, no. 3 (2010): 338, doi:10.1177/0261018310367672.

^{, 140}

Benjamin Blaisdell, Seeing with Poetic Eyes: Critical Race Theory and Moving from Liberal to Critical Forms of Race Research in the Sociology of Education (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2009).

^{, 141}

Linda T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People (London: Zed Books, 2006).

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Kevin Hylton, “Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk: Defining Critical Race Theory in Research,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 15, no. 1 (2012): 23, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/13613324.2012.638862.

^{, 143}

Solorzano and Velez, “Using Critical Race Spatial Analysis,” 435.

^{, 144}

Morrison, Annamma and Jackson, Critical Race Spatial Analysis.

In relation to the built environment and other socio-physical considerations, Bradley and Wolf ¹⁴⁵

Eileen Bradley and Maxine Wolfe, “Where Do the 64 Year-Old Jewish Latina Lesbians Live?: Diversity of People as an Environmental Issue” (paper presented at EDRA 18: Proceedings of the 18th Annual Environmental Design Research Association Conference. Ottawa, Ontario, 1987), 175–81.

state that a critical approach to exploring “the conception and design of public places . . . must [also] be based on a definition of who constitutes the public which they serve” (p. 176). This definition imperatively recognizes the centrality of both diversity and intersectionality in order to properly situate individuals and groups of people in relation to the structures of power that moderate their relationships to environments. Unfortunately, prevailing architectural evaluation methodologies – by most often not specifying who the users, occupants and experiencers are – assumes an orientation towards white, adult, heterosexual, able-bodied, privileged males. ¹⁴⁶

Bradley and Wolfe, “Where Do the 64 Year-Old Jewish Latina Lesbians Live?,” 180.

Lessons for the racially critical evaluation of architectural landscapes can also be learned from a variety of other interdisciplinary studies that critically evaluate psychosocial issues as they relate to human–environment relationships. One such study was environmental psychologists, Valera and Guadia’s ¹⁴⁷

Sergi Valera and J Guardia, “Urban Social Identity and Sustainability: Barcelona’s Olympic Village,” Environment and Behavior 34, no. 1 (2002): 54–66, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1177/0013916502034001004.

research of Barcelona’s Olympic Village in which they conducted a study that assessed urban social identity and social sustainability issues of built space. Other research has demonstrated that levels of social prestige, inter-neighbor relationships, and sense of belonging are all concepts directly linked to dwelling in specific physical environments. ¹⁴⁸

Hamam S. El Din, Ahmed Shalaby, Hend E Farouh, and Sarah A Elariane, “Principles of Urban Quality of Life for a Neighborhood,” HBRC Journal 9, no. 1 (2013): 86–92, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1016/j.hbrcj.2013.02.007.

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Jane M. Cramm and Anna P Nieboer, “Social Cohesion and Belonging Predict the Well-Being of Community-Dwelling Older People,” BMC Geriatrics 15, no. 30 (2015): 1–10.

Centering race as a primary consideration in such studies may be key to calling attention to the accountability and role of architecture in materializing spatialized racial and social inequality and reflect a response to architectural historian Anthony Ward’s ¹⁵⁰

Anthony Ward, “The Supression of the Social in Design: Architecture as War,” in Reconstructing Architecture: Critical Discourses and Social Practices, eds. Thomas A Dutton and Liam H Mann (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 27–70.

call to the inclusion of socially critical considerations throughout the entire design process. In Housing As if People Mattered, Cooper-Marcus and Sarskissian ¹⁵¹

Claire Cooper-Marcus and Wendy Sarkissian, Housing As If People Mattered: Site Design Guidelines for the Planning of Medium-Density Family Housing. Vol. 4. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988).

stress the need to critically consider the psychological and sociological aspects of architecture, planning and design – emphasizing the importance of the ethical dimensions of the impact of the built environment on specific individuals and groups. Understanding the racial and cultural diversity that exists among architectural occupants/users/experiencers is critical for the future of the discipline. Research has shown that the architect’s concept of what constitutes “good” or “beautiful” design often does not coalesce with that of the general public. ¹⁵²

Herbert J. Gans, “Towards a Human Architecture: A Sociologist’s View of the Profession,” Journal of Architectural Education 31, no. 2 (1978): 26–31, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/10464883.1977.10758597

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Kimberly Devlin and Jack L Nasar, “The Beauty and the Beast: Some Preliminary Comparisons of ‘Popular’ vs. ‘High’ Architecture and Public vs. Architect Judgements of Same,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 9, no. 4 (1989): 340, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1016/S0272-4944(89)80013-1

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Nasar, “Symbolic Meaning of House Styles”.

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Goss, “The Built Environment and Social Theory,” 394.

Much of this disparity is linked to the creation and reproduction of what Le Febvre, in critiquing the work of Le Corbusier, calls abstract and “repetitively patterned space [that] consumes and regulates the differences between places and people.” ¹⁵⁶

Mick Smith, “Repetition and Difference: Lefebvre, Le Corbusier and Modernity’s (Im)moral Landscape,” A Journal of Philosophy and Geography 4, no. 1 (2001): 31, accessed March 13, 2019, doi:10.1080/13668790123378.

Environmental ethicist Mick Smith further refers to such architectural spaces as “anti-social and instrumental . . . [encapsulating] a normalizing morality that seeks to reduce all differences to an economic order of the Same.” ¹⁵⁷

Ibid., 42.

This argument reinforces the ethical obligation for the responsibility in the design, creation and operation of buildings to produce social spaces that respect Otherness.

There is still much room for growth in empirical social research on architectural space to include some of the more critical social issues around race and place as central considerations in the evaluation of built spaces. ¹⁵⁸

Brown, “A Critical Assessment,” 189.

Such investigations can significantly advance the cause to hold those involved in the creation and control of architectural space directly accountable for the types of socio-physical spaces they produce and compel them to recognize the possibilities of their role in furthering – or remediating – discord along social, racial and spatial lines.

Author Biography

Todd Levon Brown is a PhD candidate in Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. His dissertation research seeks to explore the visual environmental cues – such as architectural design features and other physical properties – that are used in the development of one’s socio-physical and racialized environmental schema. Todd received his B.A., MPH and M.Arch from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He currently serves on the faculty at Queens College, CUNY and the Fashion Institute of Technology.