Architecture of Segregation

“Look at these homes NOW! An entire block ruined by negro invasion. Every house marked ‘X’ now occupied by negroes. SAVE YOUR HOME! VOTE FOR SEGREGATION!” The legacy of slavery exists in the makeup of our streets and neighborhoods. This is a result of the very intentional decisions made by city planners and policymakers who divided our nation’s physical landscape along racial lines. These policies have had long-lasting impacts on marginalized groups, specifically Black families. Zoning policies prevent families from having access to better education, business ownership, employment, and housing. It is imperative first to understand what zoning is and how it functions. Zoning refers to regulations that specify the permitted and prohibited uses of real estate in particular geographic areas. Local governments can dictate which areas can have real estate or land used for specific purposes through different classifications such as residential, commercial, industrial, etc. This paper will examine the serious and damaging consequences of policy choices made by systems of power, which typically mask their decisions to seem non-discriminatory. However, zoning policies have caused racial disparities in the housing market and have led to racially segregated and high-poverty neighborhoods that face poor street and living conditions, traffic fatalities, and disproportionate outbreaks of violence.

The history of zoning policies and their racial overlay plays is essential in understanding how our cities and neighborhoods function today. At the turn of the twentieth century, African Americans in Helena, Montana, were very much established in the community, and black settlers lived in every Montana county. Helena had black newspapers, black-owned businesses, and a black literary society. However, the removal of African Americans from these communities was gradual, and by 1930, eleven of the state’s fifty-six counties had been completely cleared of African Americans. In The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein starts to track changing attitudes that resulted in the removal of African Americans from these communities. He dates it back to 1906 when public authorities claimed, “It is time that the respectable white people of this community rise in their might and assert their rights.” This claim was viewed as eloquent and masterful. African Africans were banned from marrying whites and were also forbidden from walking on the streets after sundown. In a 1915 article published in Montana, the headline stated, “Color Line is Drawn in Glendive.” The article implied that the town’s black population was now considered a “minus quantity.” In this era, African Americans were being pushed out of their towns, towns they previously were able to enjoy and feel a sense of safety and integration. There was suddenly a new motivation for public officials to ensure that white families’ homes would not be in close proximity to African Americans. Cities with larger African American populations adopted zoning rules that issued separate living areas for black and white families, which prohibited African Americans from purchasing homes on majority-white blocks.

The Buchanan v. Warley case challenged the use of explicit race-based zoning. The case involved an African American man’s attempt at purchasing a home on a white-dominated block. Richard Rothstein writes, “The court majority was enamored of the idea that the central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was not to protect the rights of freed slaves but a business rule: ‘freedom of contract.’” The court ultimately ruled that racial zoning ordinances are unconstitutional. Unfortunately, many cities ignored the Buchanan court ruling and found ways to continue to promote segregated cities. A famous city planner, Robert Whitten, responded to the court’s decision and claimed that “Establishing colored residence districts has removed one of the most potent causes of race conflict…a sufficient justification for race zoning…a reasonable segregation is normal, inevitable, and desirable” (Rothstein). When designing Atlanta, he strongly emphasized the idea that “home neighborhoods had to be protected from any further damage to values resulting from inappropriate uses, including the encroachment of the colored race” (Rothstein). As a result, the zoning plan for Atlanta divided the city into two zones: R1-white district and R-2 colored district. While Whitten’s plan was also declared unconstitutional, Atlanta officials continued to use the racial zoning map to plan the city. Other cities, like Richmond, found loopholes around the court ruling by forbidding interracial marriage. Overall, the Buchanan decision sparked an urgent interest in implementing zoning as a means of circumventing the ruling. The ultimate goal was to prevent lower-income African Americans from living in middle-class white neighborhoods. It became clear that social class elitism and systemic racism were, and still are, the driving reasons for exclusionary zoning policies.

St. Louis’s 1919 zoning laws are an example of how a city’s zoning commission worked to preserve homes that were unaffordable to African American communities and how it also transformed areas from residential to industrial once African Americans moved in. The planning engineer, Harland Bartholomew, was tasked with proposing rules and maps to prevent future commercial, industrial, and multifamily structures from impacting single-family neighborhoods. Rothstein writes, “Keeping the first-residential designation would preserve homes in the area as unaffordable to African Americans and thus stop the encroachment.” The ultimate goal was to preserve the all-white and all single-family character of neighborhoods, which led to the discussion of implementing deeds that would prevent African American occupancy in designated areas. As a result, African Americans were pushed into industrial areas, which would “Develop into a favorable dwelling district for Colored people” (Rothstein). This had serious implications because these newly industrial zones turned into slums, forcing the African American communities to face issues such as pollution and overcrowding. According to Rothstein, “Not only were these neighborhoods zoned to permit indus­try, even polluting industry, but the plan commission permitted tav­erns, liquor stores, nightclubs, and houses of prostitution to open in African American neighborhoods but prohibited these as zon­ing violations in neighborhoods where whites lived. Residences in single-family districts could not legally be subdivided, but those in industrial districts could be, and with African Americans restricted from all but a few neighborhoods, rooming houses sprang up to accommodate the overcrowded population.” The unconstitutional desire to keep African Americans out of white neighborhoods, and the implementation of racially driven policies, led to the creation of exclusive white suburbs and African American slums.

Industrial and toxic waste zoning became increasingly common in the twentieth century. A 1983 analysis conducted by the U.S General Accounting Office found that uncontrolled waste dumps and commercial waste treatment facilities were more common in African American neighborhoods. The choice to permit toxic waste facilities in minority neighborhoods worsened slum conditions, and “The racial aspect of these choices was a desire to avoid the deterioration of white neighborhoods when African American sites were available as alternatives” (Rothstein). The potential for integration was slowly diminished because African Americans were viewed as slum dwellers. In an article called The Making of Furguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles, Richard Rothstein writes, “Whites observed the black ghetto and concluded that slum conditions were characteristic of black families, not a result of housing discrimination. This conclusion reinforced whites’ resistance to racial integration, lest black residents bring slum conditions to white communities.” As a result, black communities were deprived of the same living conditions and resources as those living in white suburban communities. In fact, one resident said, “We now have the most inadequate lighting in the city…what they are making now is a ghetto in the process…we are begging for sidewalks. Other portions of the city are being forced to get curbs. We can’t even get them to come out and look at the curbs.” It is interesting to see how zoning policies, which are “in large measure the result of deliberate racial discrimination in the housing market by the real estate industry and by agencies of the federal, state, and local governments,” play a significant role in creating racially segregated and high-poverty neighborhoods that face poor street and living conditions and constant outbreaks of violence. It becomes clear that systems of power function to maintain their position in the social hierarchy by finding ways to keep those they deem as inferior without access to equal resources and opportunities.

Zoning laws have demonstrated a clear impact on housing supply and social welfare. Research has shown that zoning, a government regulation, can include minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, setback requirements, and open space designations. These restrictions add extra cost to a construction project, which impacts the housing supply. In the article, The Impact of Building Restrictions on Housing Affordability, it states that, “...housing is expensive because of artificial limits on construction created by the regulation of new housing…there is plenty of land in high-cost areas, and in principle new construction might be able to push the cost of houses down to physical construction costs…this implies land prices are high, not due to some intrinsic scarcity, but because of man-made regulations.” Their evidence suggests that if we want to begin lowering housing prices, “we should begin with reforming the barriers to new construction in the private sector…reducing the implied zoning tax on new construction could have large effects on housing prices. Perhaps the impact of the regulatory tax on housing prices is local regulation’s strongest political appeal.” To summarize, regulation appears to increase house prices, decrease construction, decrease the elasticity of housing supply, and change the appearance of cities. An example of this can be seen in Manhattan, where it was found that zoning restrictions resulted in a fifty percent increase in condominium prices. We are faced with a serious issue where rising housing prices become unaffordable to the average person, leading to exclusive neighborhoods dictated by wealth and class.

The disparities in homeownership substantially impact the racial wealth gap. In The Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters, research is conducted to showcase how the U.S. racial wealth gap results from public policy decisions. It states, “While 73 percent of white households owned their own homes in 2011, only 47 percent of Latinos and 45 percent of Blacks were homeowners. In addition, Black and Latino homeowners saw less return in wealth on their investment in homeownership: for every $1 in wealth that accrues to median Black households as a result of homeownership, median white households accrue $1.34; meanwhile for every $1 in wealth that accrues to median Latino households as a result of homeownership, median white households accrue $1.54.” This research suggests that if public policy worked to eliminate racial disparities in the housing market, the wealth gap between black and white households would shrink by 31%. Therefore, officials must make efforts to confront our nation’s racial wealth gap resulting from exclusionary public policies with a clear racial overlay. An example of this can be seen in mortgage rates. The study claims, “When households of color access mortgages, they are more often underwritten by higher interest rates. Mainstream lending institutions were deeply implicated in discriminatory lending: in 2012 Wells Fargo Bank admitted that they steered thousands of Black and Latino borrowers into subprime mortgages when non-Hispanic white borrowers with similar credit profiles received prime loans.” These discriminatory lending practices are still existent in our society today. There is a clear correlation between homeownership and discriminatory housing laws that lead to residential segregation. Studies show that “Residential segregation is a key reason that Black and Latino homeowners do not benefit from as great a rate of return on homeownership as their white counterparts. By limiting the residential market, segregation means that homes in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods accrue less value…Black and Latino homebuyers still face barriers to purchasing homes in predominantly white areas.” The racial wealth gap could be significantly reduced if housing anti-discrimination laws were better enforced. This would allow more people of color to own homes in higher-value neighborhoods.

Low-income families are pushed out of high opportunity neighborhoods, which impacts education and labor. On a granular level, neighborhoods affect children’s long-term outcomes, such as average earnings, incarceration, and teenage birth rates. The Opportunity Atlas suggests that “Children growing up in the bottom decile of neighborhoods have predicted mean income ranks in adulthood below 35.0 (roughly $25,700). Those growing up in the highest decile of neighborhoods have predicted income ranks above 49.7 (roughly $42,000).” A child’s immediate surroundings and their neighborhood characteristics correlate to their overall outcome. In fact, “Areas with higher mean household incomes, a larger share of college graduates, and higher test scores also all tend to have higher levels of upward mobility (controlling for race) on average.” These results demonstrate that wealthier neighborhoods, which are dictated by zoning policies, have better resources and opportunities. Residential segregation leaves “many Black and Latino students, particularly those from low-income families, concentrated in low-quantity, under-resourced schools…Predominantly Black and Latino schools spend less per student than predominantly white schools, a disparity that is only partly accounted for by the different property-tax bases of school districts creating a highly unequal educational system across the country.” The makeup of our cities and neighborhoods impacts the future of our children and leads to greater social inequalities over time. There is an urgent need for policy change, often in the hands of those in power.

Furthermore, street safety and crime rates are dictated by race, class, and place. High poverty areas are marked by limited opportunities, which makes it very difficult for struggling families to achieve social mobility. The lower a median household income, “the more dangerous its streets are for people walking. And similar trends persist for gun violence: a small set of high-poverty neighborhood, typically born out of decades of racial segregation, experience disproportionate clusters of violence that concentrate fatalities among marginalized groups.” It becomes clear that exclusionary zoning policies perpetuate the cycle of poverty. High-poverty neighborhoods have poor sidewalk, crosswalk, and intersection conditions. Residents have to paint their own crosswalks and care for community members who are shot on their streets. A study, published in JAMA Pediatrics found that “62% of the more than 67,000 firearm-related deaths that occurred among youth between the ages of 5 and 24 from 2007 to 2016 occurred in counties where the percentage of residents who lived below the federal poverty level was 15% or greater.” The study suggests that high-poverty neighborhoods have serious risk factors for youth deaths related to firearms. Gun violence falls heaviest on neighborhoods already struggling with poor school systems, unemployment, poverty, and poor street conditions. This all stems from the historical injustices in our cities’ planning and construction, which policymakers purposefully segregated.

To conclude, land use and building code requirements have prevented the construction of affordable housing in neighborhoods. Exclusionary zoning policies function to keep racial minorities out of wealthy and middle-class neighborhoods. We have seen the damaging effect of these deliberate legal practices, as they deny low-income families the access to the same educational and employment opportunities found in wealthier neighborhoods. While some efforts have been made to eliminate exclusionary zoning, such as the American Jobs Plan, the legacy of slavery is still present in the construction of our cities. Zoning policies have created poor neighborhoods by regulating lot size requirements, minimum square footage requirements, single residence per lot requirements, and very costly building codes. These requirements reduce the supply of available land and promote single-family living, which makes it very difficult to build multi-family rental units that would allow for the integration of low-income families in wealthier neighborhoods. This ultimately feeds the cycle of poverty and forces us to reevaluate if we have truly made any progress from the twentieth-century zoning policies that advanced racial segregation and inequality. Necessary policy changes must be made to create integrated, safe, and affordable cities that provide their residents with equal opportunities and resources.

Works Cited

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Love, Hanna, and Jennifer S. Vey. “To Build Safe Streets, We Need to Address Racism in Urban Design.” Brookings, Brookings, 9 Mar. 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/08/28/to-build-safe-streets-we-need-to-address-racism-in-urban-design/.

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