INT342 | Time, Culture, Context

SP25

ASSIGNMENT 03: INCLUSION & EXCLUSION

The built environment is full of obstacles and invitations- some are deliberately designed, some are the result of some other goal.

Some discriminate against specific kinds of bodies. When is this an issue of spatial justice?

This assignment is designed to observe, record and analyze those conditions in our immediate environments.

The assignment was inspired by Interboro Architects’ research, recorded in their book The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion.

PART 1: observational research (campus-scale)| in-class exercise C8 (3.25)

- all responses delivered via MIRO

In class, pick a team of 3-4 people.

Review Appendix A (excerpts from The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion) & Appendix B (The 7 Principles of Universal Design).

For this exercise, you can also reference ANY text you’ve read so far for this class or issues raised in lectures…

Anywhere on the Pratt Campus (inside or outside) find & photograph conditions that foster connection & inclusion OR divide people or exclude them. Be analytic. Example: if a condition falls short on a principle of Universal Design, you can consider it a weapon of exclusion. You may interpret the principles & weapons: for example, what operates like a beach badge?

Do not record conditions that are clearly in support of public safety (i.e. signs that tell you to stay off fire escapes).

Post photos to the MIRO board, as part of your team.

Label/cite each image clearly:  

- Include a SHORT text description with each photo> where/ what is it?

- Cite it: what kind of weapon is it, who is excluded or invited? What principle does your image illustrate?

- You MAY need to add lines, circles or arrows to the photo to make the identified condition easily legible.

Put your name somewhere on your contribution.

Every labeled & cited post is a point, with caveats:

Only (1) instance of any Pratt condition is allowed-first person to finish their post gets the point

The team with the most points at 11:00- gets those points added to their grade for this assignment.

PART 2 |observational research (neighborhood-scale)| due C9 (4.1)

a

Choose a neighborhood you’ve lived in as a basis for your analysis. It cannot be Pratt’s campus, but it may be an adjacent neighborhood. Use one block in every direction, using your home block as the center= this should result in an area of 9 blocks total.

b

Using the references listed above, identify & photograph conditions of inclusion and exclusion in your selected neighborhood. Your goal: identify & document at least 8 conditions, more= better.

For this exercise, you are encouraged to select your own reference texts beyond the ones provided.

For example, you could identify conditions that support a neighborhood’s social life (and argue that these are actively inclusive) using William Whyte’s essay “The Design of Spaces” or the Project for Public Space website.

c

Using a base map of your choice (a google map is fine, should be roughly to scale), post the photos onto the map in such a way that an observer can identify their locations. Use of symbolic/ diagrammatic elements encouraged for maximum legibility. Include written explanations and referenced texts, as outlined in the first part of the exercise. Post your work to the assignment MIRO board.

Note: keep in mind that under conditions of capitalism & private property, a lock on a door of a residential building or a store that is closed would not necessarily be considered exclusionary- that is, if no one’s rights are violated.

in-class C9 (4.1) ARC-GIS workshop

PART 3 | mapping your neighborhood | due C10 (4.8)

Using the data collected for the last part of the exercise, create a map that documents conditions of inclusion and exclusion in your selected study neighborhood that identifies those conditions without explicit labels. The drawing should achieve an aesthetic unity.

Unlike the last exercise, the map & representations of your selected conditions are not discrete drawings, the goal is to create a single drawing.

a

Represent at least 5 conditions of inclusion or exclusion. Based on feedback received in class or via MIRO mark-ups, you MAY need to (or choose to) edit or augment your previous observations.

b

Use a map created via ARC-GIS as your base map. Your base map should include information salient to the conditions of inclusion & exclusion you have identified via your observational research. The ARC-GIS layer may document conditions that are NOT visible in the environment. Example: no nearby subway stations? You could add a layer to your GIS base map identifying bus routes or other city transportation services.

c

Compose your map. The conditions you’ve identified should now be integrated into your map. The map MAY utilize different projection methods and you make take liberties with the scale, color, transparencies (etc) of elements - see precedent MIRO board for suggestions. Consider the use of human figures to help illustrate your identified conditions clearly. You may use fragments or elements derived from photographs, but again: integrate them into the composition.

d

Provide a written list of the conditions represented in the map as a separate artifact, do not incorporate labels into the map itself.

note: you may use imagery generated by MidJourney or graphic elements derived from add-on apps to large language models like ChatGPT or Claude. All AI use must be cited (identify the platform) and described (include all prompts) as per stipulations in the class syllabus. That said: do not use an AI platform. to generate the map as a whole. Experience tell us it does not do this kind of task well.

Assessment criteria:

 50% will be based on the quality of the drawing

 50% will be based on conceptual innovation and writing

 Grading will take into account the amount of improvement between iterations

APPENDIX 01 excerpts from The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion [link to unabridged list]

This list is edited to conditions discernible by physical observation (visibly manifest in the environment).

In some cases, the descriptions below will not seem applicable to the Pratt campus or to a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Think analytically: is there an analogous condition that IS present?

- possibly too obvious example: what would be a local equivalent of a beach badge (#4)?

You are welcome to use the unabridged list in The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion, but you would need to back up assertions that those factors are in play with some form. of evidence beyond photographs (like researching zoning or other laws).

3. Armrest
To deter the homeless from sleeping on park benches, decorative armrests are sometimes installed at the midpoint of the benches, making it impossible (or at least very difficult) to get too comfortable on them.

4. Badge
The use of beach tags to restrict access to beaches proliferated in the 1960s and 1970s in suburban municipalities in the densely populated northeastern corridor. Wealthy municipalities along Connecticut’s Gold Coast adopted some of the more extreme measures of exclusion, allocating beach access permits to residents only, installing guarded gates at points of entry, and aggressively patrolling beaches for violators. / Andrew Kahrl

8. Cul de Sac
A cul de sac is a “closed-end street,” which produces closure and discontinuity. Another name for the cul de sac is “dead end.” Interestingly, in 2009, Virginia became the first state to ban (or at least seriously limit) culs-de-sac from future developments.

9. Curfew
Teen curfews are arbitrary and legally-murky. Teen Curfews can be less arbitrary—for example when Baltimore in 2011 announced a teen curfew in response to a rash of teen stabbings—but many teen curfews represent an unlawful imposition of martial law. In early 2010, San Diego overturned its curfew law due to ambiguous language, and Indianapolis recently overturned its curfew laws when it determined that they forcefully undermine adolescents’ first amendment rights. Nonetheless, teen curfews are common in cities and suburbs around the country.

10. Eruv
Eruv is a Hebrew term for a symbolic boundary, defined according to Jewish religious property law, which allows Jews to conduct activities on the Sabbath (the traditional day of rest) within a broader urban area that would otherwise be prohibited outside of the home. In the contemporary city this boundary is typically built by stringing wire between the tops of existing utility poles, forming an uninterrupted yet nearly invisible enclosure of “doorframes” (wire between two poles) that allows the “wall” of the eruv to be maintained. The eruv is in the Arsenal of Inclusion because it allows practicing Jews who might otherwise be required to segregate themselves to enjoy the benefits of living within a larger urban area while satisfying the traditional requirements of religious property law. / Michael Kubo

11. Exclusionary Amenity
An exclusionary amenity is a collective good that is paid for by all members of a community because willingness to pay for that good is an effective proxy for other desired membership characteristics. If the community wants to exclude a particular group, and members of that targeted group are systematically unlikely to want to pay for a polarizing and costly amenity, then the exclusionary amenity may function as an effective mechanism for denying access. / Lior Jacob Strahilevitz

[possibly applicable example]

11a) PGA Village
As Strahilevitz points out in his essay for the forthcoming book The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion, a golf course is another type of “exclusionary amenity.” Strahilevitz writes that during the 1980s and 1990s, as African Americans began moving to the suburbs in growing numbers, the number of “mandatory membership” residential golf communities in the United States grew significantly. At the time, golf was the most racially segregated warm weather, mass-participation sport in America. (In 1997, 93.4 percent of all American golfers were Caucasian while just 3.1 percent were African American.) Might developers have discovered a method for creating racially-homogeneous communities?

12. Fire Hydrant
Much of Duxbury, MA’s coast is blocked by large private residences. In the eighteenth century, the Town established a series of public landings allowing waterfront access at streets dead-ending at the water. Today, however, fire hydrants are often placed directly in front of the only parking spot available at public landings, excluding anyone who comes from outside the neighborhood and needs to park to visit the waterfront. / Meredith TenHoor and William TenHoor

[professors’ note: careful with this one- it’s hard to prove that the average city fire hydrant is a tool of exclusion. They are also pretty critical to public safety]

14. Gate
The gates that guard gated communities offer one of the more obvious examples of how we keep out “undesirables.” Though statistically there is little evidence that gated communities are safer (or have higher home values) than non-gated communities, the perception that they are has led to more and more Americans living in them each year.

15. Hockey Rink
In 1994 the Division of Parks, Public Grounds & Recreation in the borough of Glen Rock, NJ, a wealthy, white, suburb of New York City with a population of 11,232, made a decision to replace two basketball courts in the town’s Wilde Memorial Park with a street hockey rink. Glen Rock—which is 88 percent White Non-Hispanic—borders Paterson, an older, poorer city that is 13 percent White Non-Hispanic. The decision raised eyebrows because the basketball courts were heavily used by African-Americans from Paterson. It is well known that hockey is played primarily by whites and basketball primarily by African-Americans: while 79 percent of NBA players are African-American, only 2 percent of NHL players are. Moreover hockey—like golf—is often criticized for being elitist: the equipment required to play it—skates, sticks, pads, goals—is expensive, and one typically needs a car to transport it.

19. Lavender-lining
Gays and lesbians have long conveyed queerness through the performance of personal style, but it was only after the birth of the modern gay rights movement that they began to openly delimit queer territory, using sexual orientation as a tool of inclusion to create communities that celebrated queerness, most famously in the Castro in San Francisco and in Northampton, Massachusetts, but also in lesser-known places such as Alapine, a lesbian-only community in rural Alabama. / Gabrielle Esperdy

22. “No Loitering” Sign
Loiterers have it tough. Consider the following, taken from the website ehow.com: “People who loiter will often do some type of damage to property, such as tagging buildings with graffiti or damaging concrete with skateboards. Loiterers are sometimes associated with the sale of illicit drugs. . . In short, loiterers almost always do some level of damage to your business, and rarely provide anything positive.” How do you keep loiterers away? The scourge of teenagers and homeless people everywhere, the “No Loitering” Sign is the most commonly-used weapon homeowners and businesses use to discourage people from hanging out outside their buildings.

25. One-Way Street
Greenmount Avenue between 33rd Street and Cold Spring Lane in Baltimore is an interesting wall. On the east side, 85% of residents are black, 16% have a Bachelor degree, and the median income is $40,000. On the west side, 96% of residents are white, 75% have a Bachelor degree, and the median income is $75,000. Such rapid shifts in demographics are common in Baltimore, but this stretch of Greenmount Avenue is interesting for the physical devices that one side deploys to maintain a disconnect from the other. For example, of the eight streets that intersect Greenmount Avenue between 33rd Street and Cold Spring Lane, only one (39th Street) allows travel from east to west. Six of the streets are one-way pointing east (i.e., out of the wealthy, white side), and one of the streets (34th Street) thwarts westward movement with bollards.

[professors’ note: careful with this one, too- is every one-way street a weapon of exclusion?]]

29. Residential Parking Permit
Residential parking permits create restricted parking districts and exclude the larger public from specific areas. While Residential Parking Permits make sense in congested, residential areas next to universities, medical institutions, sports complexes or tourist attractions, they are often established and enforced in very low-traffic neighborhoods that have plenty of street parking available, especially wealthy ones that are next to poor ones.

30. School District
The stellar reputation of some public schools can segregate family households from non-family households, especially in urban areas. When a family is in a good district, the money mom and dad save not having to send Ella and Emma to private school is tacked on to the cost of housing. This in turn results in a self-sorting: people who don’t have kids find that it is not worth their while to live in the district, and opt (or are forced) to live somewhere else where rent is cheaper (and where they might find retail amenities less suited to the needs of young parents).

31. Sidewalk Management Plan
Portland’s sidewalk management plan, proposes a 6′ – 8′ “pedestrian use zone” in which pedestrians “must move immediately to accommodate the multiple users of the sidewalk.” Importantly, the zone measures out from the property line, ruling out leaning on (or sleeping on) buildings. Such a plan isn’t needed on the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan; what justifies one in relatively serene downtown Portland? Needless to say, this is a barely disguised attempt to rid downtown Portland of homeless people.

32. Skywalk
Skywalks are elevated bridges that create interior connections between adjacent buildings. Many cold-weather cities have extensive skywalk systems: Calgary has one that is ten miles long. In Minneapolis, which boasts the largest continuous skywalk system in the United States, skywalks span 8 miles and connect 69 blocks of the city’s downtown. While the appeal of skywalks is obvious to anyone who has visited places like Calgary and Minneapolis in the Winter, the fact that skywalks can be privately owned and controlled appealed to other, less frost-bitten cities, who used them to build a secondary, access-restricted circulation system that avoided confrontation with the elements of the public sidewalk below.

APPENDIX B: The 7 Principles of Universal Design [link]

Principle 1: Equitable Use

The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.

Principle 1 Guidelines

The following guidelines underpin Principle 1:

● 1a. Provide the same means of use for all users: identical whenever possible; equivalent when not.

● 1b. Avoid segregating or stigmatizing any users.

● 1c. Provisions for privacy, security, and safety should be equally available to all users.

● 1d. Make the design appealing to all users.

Principle 2: Flexibility in Use

The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.

Principle 2 Guidelines

The following guidelines underpin Principle 2:

● 2a. Provide choice in methods of use.

● 2b. Accommodate right- or left-handed access and use.

● 2c. Facilitate the user's accuracy and precision.

● 2d. Provide adaptability to the user's pace.

Principle 3: Simple and Intuitive Use

Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.

Principle 3 Guidelines

The following guidelines underpin Principle 3:

● 3a. Eliminate unnecessary complexity.

● 3b. Be consistent with user expectations and intuition.

● 3c. Accommodate a wide range of literacy and language skills.

● 3d. Arrange information consistent with its importance.

● 3e. Provide effective prompting and feedback during and after task completion.

Principle 4: Perceptible Information

The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities.

Principle 4 Guidelines

The following guidelines underpin Principle 4:

● 4a. Use different modes (pictorial, verbal, tactile) for redundant presentation of essential information.

● 4b. Provide adequate contrast between essential information and its surroundings.

● 4c. Maximize "legibility" of essential information.

● 4d. Differentiate elements in ways that can be described (i.e., make it easy to give instructions or directions).

● 4e. Provide compatibility with a variety of techniques or devices used by people with sensory limitations.

Principle 5: Tolerance for Error

The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.

Principle 5 Guidelines

The following guidelines underpin Principle 5:

● 5a. Arrange elements to minimize hazards and errors: most used elements, most accessible; hazardous elements eliminated, isolated, or shielded.

● 5b. Provide warnings of hazards and errors.

● 5c. Provide fail safe features.

● 5d. Discourage unconscious action in tasks that require vigilance.

Principle 6: Low Physical Effort

The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.

Principle 6 Guidelines

The following guidelines underpin Principle 6:

● 6a. Allow user to maintain a neutral body position.

● 6b. Use reasonable operating forces.

● 6c. Minimize repetitive actions.

● 6d. Minimize sustained physical effort.

Principle 7: Size and Space for Approach and Use

Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user's body size, posture, or mobility.

Principle 7 Guidelines

The following guidelines underpin Principle 7:

● 7a. Provide a clear line of sight to important elements for any seated or standing user.

● 7b. Make reach to all components comfortable for any seated or standing user.

● 7c. Accommodate variations in hand and grip size.

● 7d. Provide adequate space for the use of assistive devices or personal assistance.