"Constructing Inequality"- My thoughts

Before I get started with my post, I have learned a cool tip that some of
you who are new to blogging, like myself, might find interesting. Thru your
blog settings you can create an email address that will allow you to post
blogs via email. This is especially handy if you are trying to post from a
PDA, some of which don't easily allow you to post. Very nice......plus, this
has the added benefit of allowing you to create your post with your email
program and use things like spell check........very very nice.......

Okay, so where was I......Oh yes, Susan Bickfords "Constructing
Inequality".......forgive me for oversimplifying Ms. Bickford's thesis, but
I have a tendency to do that sometimes.....my conclusion after finishing the
paper, is that the author 1.) has had a bad experience with either a gated
community, or the ghetto, or a downtown somewhere, or all of these, and/or
2.) misunderstands the role that the built environment plays in our
society....... Let me expound upon the latter.

Design is produced by the designer........it is the tangible solution to
some 3-dimensional problem......now there are better solutions, and worse
solutions, judged by a whole host of factors, most importantly how "well"
the problem has been addressed......My point here is that design is a
REFLECTION of society's percieved wants and needs........should I work on
designing a "bum friendly" park bench???? Or maybe a "bag-lady friendly"
enclosure around a restaurant dumpster??? Of course not, (unless it is in
the program, because then I want the bum friendliest bench on the
planet).......I do this so I do not encourage bums to sleep on these benches
or frequent these enclosures.....I design gates around communities because,
like it or not, some people want to live inside a community that is
protected by a gate........does that mean that I think societies treatment
of the homeless is what it should be, or that I want to run out and by a
home in a gated community???....not at all.....what it does mean however is
that I think that author is inaccurate of her portrayal of the space/society
relationship when she states, "space and society are more interactive than
that, more mutually constitutive."........Yes the built environment can
evoke emotions and reactions....you may even say manipulate
behavior.......but the fact is that, just like the presence of mall security
is a reaction to a cause (namely theft), the built environment is a reaction
to a cause (namely, the percieved wants and needs of its
inhabitants)........

Now, all of this being said, bad design is bad design.....plain and
simple.......ever since residential design fell predominately in the hands
of builders and developers post-depression, and suburbia was born post WWII,
a general decline in quality of homes and neighborhoods has been pretty
evident......likewise, without some real effort on the part of the decision
makers, how can anyone really expect low income housing to feel like
anything less than that?? There is always the opportunity for designers to
create better places, and interject more socially responsible solutions as
we are able....but in the end, our solutions are problem driven........and
if people want to live in gated communities, and municipalities want to get
low income housing for as cheap as possible, and town managers don't want to
encourage the homeless to take up residence in their parks, we as the
designers will continue to come up with the best possible solutions for the
problems that they present to us......the authors contentions are societal
problems, brought to light by design, but by no means attributed to it....

Lastly, if the United States can be considered a successful democracy, and
be made up of multiple states, and each state can be made up of multiple
municipalities, why can't each municipality be made up of smaller
communities and neighborhoods of likeminded individuals? Ethnocentricism, as
I understand it, is a normal social condition.........as long as we all
remember that, in a democracy, our allegiance lies with the greater
community as a whole......

And, in the immortal words of Forrest Gump....."That's all I have to say
about that"..................