Yes. They are called McMansions 2010. All of the overbuilding in the states has lead to empty houses everywhere, and now these houses are being rented out to section 8 tenants; much to the dismay of the local house owners. There goes the neighborhood!

Wait... moving from St Louis to Las Vegas is an upgrade?

jail

i've been meaning to write about this for a while. my local big box community in allen park, michigan may be the most integrated place i have ever visited. it has a meijer (local michigan equivalent of walmart), a target, home depot, best buy, barnes and noble, chili's, taco bell, etc. the people who go there are largely middle class, but leaning more towards lower than upper. people come here for cheap shopping. it attracts the large arab american community from dearborn, the black population from detroit, and the downriver working class whites (and even a handful of college students). i used to hate these places, but for over a year i've been finding myself attracted to my "big box community." i drive the twenty minutes out here about once a week. my favorite place is the panera that sits on a hill over looking the ford manufacturing plants. it's absolutely beautiful on a fall day.

was it specifically designed to create this integration? of course it was! the free market doesn't distinguish between the dollars of whites, blacks, or arab americans.

I did this subject for my masters thesis. About half the jury RIPPED ME for taking on a subject matter that was based on social interactions (in particular how some of them can be uncomfortable) instead of a "happier" subject or something purely spatial and abstract in nature. Most of the comments centered on architecture cannot solve societies problems, blah, blah, blah.

At the time I felt that was BS way of looking at what is appropriate to deal with architecturally. If we are not interjecting some thought about things like this into spaces (many of them in the public sphere) the you are losing some of what art/architecture is valued for.

The basic problem you might find is that race relations (as well as a long list of other topics) is a sore subject and buildings cost lots of money. Funding can be hard to find for something, that the person or group putting that money up, knows will piss off a significant number of people.

I still feel its a BS attitude though.

The only one I can think of off hand is the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta. The Kirwan Institute at Ohio State U. might be a place to look for info.

mdler is right. bentham's prison is pretty sweet but you can't socially control free people, just not part of us.

no - it's used to exacerbate problems...



wall built in 1940s to separate white neighborhood with black neighborhood in Detroit.

most architecture/urban planning is designed to keep certain people out. even if we are attempting to encourage social interaction, we're still expecting a certain kind of "acceptable" social interaction.

I think you'll have a lot easier time finding examples of architecture being used to reinforce racial/ethnic/class/political segregation.

I tend to agree with toaster - won, your retail center isn't successful at integration because of the architecture. Perhaps the planning and zoning relate to the integration, but the architecture of the buildings themselves are, I'm sure, identical to those everywhere.

Certainly there are cultural triggers to avoid/enhance if you are designing a building to appeal to all ethnic cultures. Corinthian columns, for example.

If there is a loose school of work that could possibly veer close to being a-ethnic, if such a thing could exist (which I don't really think it can) perhaps the Pacific Northwest contextual/sustainable regionalism by people like John Patkau, Adams Mohler, Olson Kundig etc. are a close example. Rural Studios' work might also fall into this category.

donna - those center around political activism - the "integration" happens because of the process, not the end result - but even so - in something like the rural studio, at the end of the summer those white kids all go back to their elite institutions (and have the "giving back" thing they can put on their resumes) and the people who they built those houses for still live in the same community.

anyway - Ethnic groups will tend to congregate in specific neighborhoods simply due to their existing support systems. The "integration" that happens tends come from within individuals or groups who are being intentional about it.

you can provide space for it (urban schools are a good example), but it's up to people themselves to actually facilitate integration. just having different people using a single place doesn't mean it's actually integrated.

won - I'm from Detroit - I grew up going to eastland mall and the white kids never hung out with the black kids unless you knew someone from the other group from school or sports...

donna, i don't think it even had much to do with planning and zoning. it was almost entirely the socio-economics of the free market and to a lesser extent, the siting of the buildings (on a freeway at the intersection of three plus distinct ethnic communities) that led to the project's success. in my opinion, the topic demands that an architect look well beyond conventional "architectural" solutions, but i think that's where the real value of the exercise lies. the more we as architects can stop focusing on the buildings themselves, and instead focus on the circumstances (political, economic, social, technological, etc.) that inform their creation, the greater chance architecture has of entering into a meaningful dialogue with the world around it. if the project starts with merely architecture, it's doomed to fail from the start.

toaster, i challenge you to go to somerset these days and tell me (metro) detroit is the same place it was 20 years ago. (hint, it's far from the vanilla world you may remember). i'm not saying you're going to be friends with someone who is of a different ethnic/racial background, but you will interact with them. as the image of the wall you posted above would prove, isn't interaction a first step towards a true integration?

Stadiums are very powerful places where all segments of the society gets together. Spectators are increasingly carrying messages of political content or discontent. Anywhere you pack 30-100,000 people on concentrated seating in consistent weekly competitions, is potentially interesting place to incubate all kinds of agendas and social conditions.

Won, you really love praising the free-market thingy. Even when the topic at hand has nothing to do with free-market. Figures that you would pick a friggin' shopping mall as a beacon of cultural integration. Sad.

Having a strong middle class is probably the most important aspect for racial/cultural unity. Once the living basics are covered, and you still have plenty of money left for life's perks, and if everyone around you is in the same boat, the visible differences between people stop being terribly important. You can see this work relatively well in some multicultural cities that have strong social policies (Vancouver, Toronto).

As far as free-market goes, there are still states that would gladly repeal the civil-rights laws and allow businesses to be more 'selective' with whom they wish to do business with.

Orhan, yes. Nothing says intelligent political discourse more than a shirtless football fan with a hat that looks like a chunk of cheese. :p

do ethnic groups really want to be intergrated anyways???

public libraries are still one place that are open to every kind of person. The Seattle main branch (OMA designed) is unofficially the biggest homeless shelter in the city

... watching the same game with the president of the country. it is a perfect triangulation..;.)

Do women REALLY want to vote?

Yes, ethnic groups also want access to education, good jobs, property and all kinds of nicer things in life that us non-ethnos want. New immigrants tend to live in same neighborhoods for practical reasons, but that stops being important to the second or third generation. The issue isn't integration, it's equality.

I agree with steelstuds.

Bunch of my friends that live in Toronto are beyond themselves over a recent mayoral election. An ultra-conservative that won promises to wipe out all bicycle lanes in the city, shut down homeless shelters, and outsource most city services to companies that will pay minimum wage... The running joke is that the election happened on a non-hockey night. If there was a hockey game that day, the conservative candidate would not have gotten as many votes. I almost believe it.

won - my best friend in HS was pakastani - I would have never been friends with him if we weren't both on the soccer team. my neighborhood was far from vanilla, but the only place us kids "integrated" (both ourselves and our reluctant parents) was in school, on sports teams, and at our minimum wage jobs, not as random shoppers in a mall.

This is more or less a problem with planning than it is architecture per se.

(But considering that most of planning these days falls under the 'licensed practice of architecture,' it is an architectural issue!)

Racial integration projects tend to almost entirely fail-- especially within the United States. Particularly, the problem with the U.S. is that this has been tried too much and failed too much.

If anyone remembers a news topic from a few months back, it was about rehabbing a project with superficial upgrades to see whether or not it helped. Come to find out-- a little paint, crown molding and some clip on neoclassical trim was effective in reducing many of the unwanted problems.

However, we often run into the issue within the U.S. that somehow governmental-sponsored development cannot encompass all classes and all income levels of people. And that government housing cannot surpass in quality or function other properties.

And not necessarily to dig up the diatribe about white flight and the suburbs but I will anyways. The reason as to why the concept of white flight and the growth of the suburbs is important to understand is not necessarily for any planning or architectural motivation. The bigger reason for the study of the phenomenom of 20th century white flight is to start a dialogue over said racial tension. If the suburbs were created primarily out of a form of passive racism, then the construct of the suburbs themselves is malevolent.

That's an important issue here-- whether buildings and zoning are benevolent, malevolent or neutral

In a sense, though, it would be easier to deal with urban affairs if the population at large was not necessarily chastised for voicing their prejudices and motivations honestly.

The problem we face right now is that in a legally colorblind society-- most policies end up attacking the poor rather than attacking any specific ethnic or racial group.

damn straight.

Yeah, toaster, I wasn't talking about Rural Studio actually *fostering* integration - I was talking about their work, along with some other, being, aesthetically, work that doesn't actively discourage integration via cultural motifs that make some feel unwelcome; that doesn't really pull strongly from one dominant historical cultural aesthetic: Colonial, MCM, Greco-Roman, Aztec, what-have-you. I think when one works in a climate-appropriate vernacular, one tends to get closer to an aesthetic that is more a-ethnic (if that exists at all).

won said: the more we as architects can stop focusing on the buildings themselves, and instead focus on the circumstances (political, economic, social, technological, etc.) that inform their creation, the greater chance architecture has of entering into a meaningful dialogue with the world around it. Amen to that.

haussmann's renovation of paris could begin to touch the idea harold but i doubt the surface can be cut. nationalism and socialism are, after-all, two different things. though something can be said for the hygienic improvements.

as far as ethnic groups wanting to be integrated, most studies actually show that they don't unfortunately. we have an overpopulation issue on a shrinking planet, thus we are left with no other choice.

the closest thing you will find is some ridiculous memorial or statue.

Well, what I find mildly humorous is that many cities pride themselves on certain kinds of segregation-- Chinatown, Koreatown, Vietnamese District, Germantown, Ukrainetown, [New Jersey-- haha], Little Italy, even Harlem [both very old (Jewish) and very new ('gentrified')] et cetera.

These varieties of situations are symbols of pride but they more or less are forms of segregation.

But why is it perfectly acceptable to have and support a segregated neighborhood (like many of the Chinatowns across the USA)? Why is it that we tend to put a focus on 'fixing' black and Hispanic neighborhoods?

Black... well, I can understand that. That is more or less an unhealable wound. For a lack of better words, violence has been 'bred' into many Black Americans... and it is a cycle of violence that will take all parties involved and many more years to break.

But Hispanics? Other than a very small percentage of Latino gangs and organized crime, I really don't see the calls for interference into these neighborhoods.

This is a bit of an offtopic rant. I know.

But I just wanted to bring up the idea of why is it okay to have a 'Little Italy' but not a black neighborhood.

That might have been the case in pre-automobile times, but all of these districts are primarily 'themed' commercial entities that are otherwise very diverse. Some of the newer immigrant groups still tend to 'cluster', but days of Germantown or Little-Italy are long gone.

violence has been 'bred' into many Black Americans...

That was very dumb unicorn. Unless if by 'violence' you meant so say 'systematic poverty': violence being a predictable side effect. One thing that separates the black community from other visible immigrant groups is lack of fresh reinforcements. Chinese community (for instance) greatly benefits from having new people just get off the boat.

I was more or less talking about the Toni Morrison viewpoint on American race relations since the Reconstruction (even prior to that).

The scholarship of Tony Morrison (Chloe Ardelia Wofford) and her works relies on the core concept that the effects of slavery are cyclical. If we look at many of her works (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination) along with Nell Irvin Painter (Southern History Across the Color Line) and even David Roediger (The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class)...

... points to the idea that both physical and emotional violence make up the majority of inter-racial relations and racial relations in post-slavery America.



What makes slavery even more dangerous than the actual practice of slavery is that slaves themselves, devoid of any previous cultural construct, extend the practice of slavery to their descendants post slavery.

A person who is beaten for their mistakes will more than likely beat others for future mistakes.

And this idea of slavery having an impact on the social interactions of the times isn't regulated to slaves or slavemasters themselves... but there are plenty of narratives dealing with the wives and children of slave owners themselves. (Some of these descendants you could consider America's first hipsters).

But if you grow up in a society based on phyiscal punishment... you're more than likely going to extend that variety of physical punishment on others.

A fascinating question.

Have you thought about contemporary architecture in places like South Africa, where there has been a conscious effort to integrate/reintegrate?

Tent cities (read: refugee camps) would be a great way to integrate the masses. Apparently they're popping up all over LA now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnnOOo6tRs8

And we can expect this trend to continue as unemployment rises and the true extent of the foreclosure crisis reveals itself. Like my homeboy SteelStuds pointed out, ethnic integration is only a "problem" when there are economic inequalities. Since the middle class is evaporating about as quickly as a drop of water in the desert of Lost Vegas, we can expect to reach economic (and thus ethnic) equilibrium not in some idealistic middle class, but in the trenches of the lower class.

won/toaster....

touche'

<----rouge

dellafella: that video was just downright depressing. And as wealth continues shifting up, the nation votes in a new army of corporatists. ugh.

Check out this piece about "Viral Cities," which describes the exact inverse process. It proposes creating cities that isolate and segregate, that are deliberately provincial.

http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=13948

Check out this piece about "Viral Cities," which describes the exact inverse process. It proposes creating cities that isolate and segregate, that are deliberately provincial.

http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=13948

I dont know of any project in which the design intent or brief specifically pointed to racial and ethnic integration.

However, remember the Russian constructivists?

Moisei Ginzburg once did a project [that has since fallen into disrepair] called Narkomfin which was a housing block specifically [consciously] designed as a social condenser [under the USSR].

Literally, the idea was that you could script people's interaction's through the built environment. And, in this case, the goal was to 'equalize' everybody. The way the building worked was that you had double height flats and single height flats for the upper and lower 'strata'. But they were all fed from the same corridor. It's difficult to explain without seeing the section, but do a bit of google and you'll get the idea.

The gist is that, it was thought, that you could control social 'class' or 'strata' through built space. This 'scripting' eventually led Rem to architecture [or so he says, I'm in no position to actually posit].

I understand that in 1930's Russia, they weren't so concerned with racial integration as they were with class integration, but perhaps some interesting parallels could be drawn.