"Today's upscale, pseudo-public spaces - sumptuary malls, office centers, culture acropolises, and so on - are full of invisible signs warning off the underclass 'Other'. Although architectural critics are usually oblivious to how built environments contribute to segregation, pariah groups - whether Latino families, young Black men, or elderly homeless White Females - read the meaning immediately."
- Davis 1990; pg. 226

Those living in the cities live a precarious and segregated life. They fear one another and live in a world built in ways to keep them apart. Fear is now represented as the inability to control interaction with the "Other". When enclosed in your room, connected to the outside world only through the cybernetic touch of the telephone, television, and personal computer, one feels safe. If you don't like what you are in contact with, you change the channel, hang up, or go to a new web site. But your whole life cannot be spent indoors. To the postmodern individual, real fear is having to go out into the world, and interact uncontrollably with the masses of "Others" who inhabit it. Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in 1957, "We will soon see the house as a work of art and because of its intrinsic beauty more a home than ever." (Wright; pg. 226) Wright probably was not envisioning the home of today, bristling with security and surveillance devises. In an attempt to control contact with the "Other", architecture is becoming increasingly unfriendly and controlling, while surveillance is becoming increasingly invasive and ubiquitous. These two issues (architecture and surveillance) were once separate, but have now become completely intertwined. This meshing in order to control and observe the masses is another symbol of society's continuing racism and classism, first shown in it's electronic segregation and image construction, and then carried out further in its physical spaces.

Robert Moses, as Berman points out in his book All That is Solid Melts Into Air, is one of the first modern architects to build structures which resulted in segregation of race and class. One of the most glaring examples is his immense project, the Cross-Bronx Expressway. This project effectively destroyed the neighborhood of the Bronx, creating what is today known as one of the worst slums in the world. Aside from cutting a swath through the center of the neighborhood, he built high walls along the sides of the road, removing any contact those on the road might have had with those in the Bronx. In this way, Moses made it possible for those coming in from the predominantly white suburbs to cruise through the trashy areas of the Bronx without witnessing any of it. Mike Davis, in his book on Los Angeles, City of Quartz, points to Frank Gehry as a contemporary architect whose structures are designed to block out the public. His Frances Howard Goldwyn Regional Branch library is, as Davis describes it, "The most menacing library ever built." (pg. 239) It is fortified with 15' security walls, sentry boxes, and anti-graffiti barricades. It is obviously trying to send a message to those who might try and damage it in any way: back off. Who is this message for? It is for the "Others" that Davis mentions. Those homeless who may try and sleep on the front step or those youngsters who may try and spray paint a gang tag on the wall. However, these messages are quickly read by all members of the "Other" groups, whether their intention is to vandalize the building or check out a book on high art.

Architecture is becoming a way for the designers to enable the occupants to avoid contact with outsiders. It is also becoming a way for designers to keep outsiders locked in architectural "cells." Hotels and malls around the world are being constructed in ways that allow the guests to escape the realities of the outside world. The Pioneer Courthouse Square Mall *photo: steve/mall* in downtown Portland is a good example of this type of architecture. Covered and climate controlled, those inside are able to forget about the dreary clouds and rain outside. Lush plants and waterfalls occupy the center space, and potted plants line the walkways in front of the stores. However, amidst this utopic environment, security is tight. The four main exits, each in a far corner, are easily shut off by as many guards. The escalators, kitty-corner to each other coming down the central space, are easily watched by a single guard on the ground floor. Escape is impossible, and while the mostly white upper-class patrons may not notice, those who make up Portland's "Others" (the homeless and Blacks, for the most part) surely do, as their entry into this panoptic world would surely cause alarm and suspicion on the part of the guards. The recently (1984) redesigned New York Museum of Modern Art is another example:

"Tourists in jeans, in playsuits, in saris, in alarmingly short shorts milled through the galleries and rode the escalators in the light filled Garden Hall, conversing in a dozen languages. It was almost like being at the beach. The temperature was fine, the crowds were large but not oppressively large, and after a bracing dip in the sea of modern art you could relax in the sun or the shade of the outdoor sculpture garden, whose semi-sacred purlieus have changed very little." (Tompkins; pg. 126)

Despite this free-flowing beach feel, the MOMA is in fact a highly controlled environment: "The visitor does not wander at will in the new painting and sculpture galleries. Each room leads directly and exclusively into the next in a strict and generally chronological sequence." (ibid.; pg. 128) In some cases, the structures are designed to keep undesirables in, not out. One case in point is the Park Hill development in Womersley, England. In this case, an entire slum area was razed and rehoused in a stunningly large development. The building serves two purposes. First it removes a blighted neighborhood from the area, replacing it with nice looking buildings, but probably doing very little to improve the lives of those living there. Second, it consolidates all of the lower-class citizens of the slum into this building, giving them less reason to be out in the rest of the community. Even the design is closed-in: notice how all of the buildings turn in, not out, in order to center the community in on itself, not out on the rest of the area. (Banham; pg. 132-6) Other examples include bum-proof park benches and parks with sprinkler systems to discourage sleepers in Los Angeles (Davis 1990; pg. 232-6).

While these designs are merely prohibitive and elitist, other designs are becoming downright aggressive. Davis provides further examples of this:

"Tall buildings are becoming increasingly sentient and packed with deadly firepower. The skyscraper with a computer brain in Die Hard I (actually F. Scott Johnson's Fox-Pereira Tower) anticipates a possible genre of architectural anti-heroes as intelligent buildings alternately battle evil or become its pawns. The sensory system of the average office tower already includes panoptic vision, smell, sensitivity to temperature and humidity, motion detection, and, in some cases, hearing. Some architects now predict the day when the building's own Al security computer will be able to automatically screen and identify its human population, and, even perhaps, respond to their emotional states (fear, panic, etc.). Without dispatching security personnel, the building itself will manage crises both minor (like ordering street people out of the building or preventing them from using toilets) and major (like trapping burglars in an elevator).

When all else fails, the smart building will become a combination of bunker and fire-base. When the federal Resolution Trust Corp. recently seized the assets of Columbia Savings and Loan Association they discovered that the CEO, Thomas Spiegel, had converted its Beverly Hills headquarters into a secret, "terrorist-proof" fortress. In addition to elaborate electronic security sensors, a sophisticated computer system that tracked terrorist incidents over the globe, and an arms cache in its parking structure, the 8900 Wilshire building also has Los Angeles's most unusual executive washroom: Tom Spiegel's office, in addition to the bulletproof glass, was designed to have an adjoining bathroom with a bullet-proof shower. In the event an alarm was sounded, secret panels in the shower walls would open, behind which high-powered assault rifles would be stored." (Davis 1992; pg. 4-5)

"[During 1991's riots] while windows were being smashed throughout the old business district... Bunker Hill lived up to its name. By flicking a few switches on their command consoles, the security staffs of the great bank towers were able to cut off all access to their expensive real estate. Bullet-proof steel doors rolled down over street-level entrances, escalators instantly stopped and electronic locks sealed off pedestrian passageways." (ibid.; pg. 4)

As in Park Hill, the inner-city is closed in. Where the crime rates are high, the people are locked in by curfews, a belligerent police presence, and barred doors and windows. Police "containment districts" (Davis 1992; pg. 10) are rigorously controlled, often with random searches and controversial "gang lists", criminalizing even the innocent simply for where they live (Trujillo). The Los Angeles Police department, always on the cutting edge of personal rights infringement, has painted a numbered grid on the roofs of homes in some neighborhoods, in order to facilitate cooperation between squad cars and helicopters, while police department representatives sit in on city planning meetings in order to push design in more "Other"-unfriendly directions (ibid. 1992, 1990). At the time it was filmed, the movie "Escape From New York", in which all of Manhattan has been walled off into a huge prison, was a fantasy adventure film; now it seems it may have had future-sight, as the slums of many large cities move in that direction.

Besides the obvious effect that this type of architecture would have on the psyche of the "Others" it is meant to deter, it has a pronounced effect on those who it is meant to benefit. To a Black teenager or a homeless adult, the world looks like a pretty foreboding place. They are not welcome anywhere, and this is made very clear - whether it be from the ever-watching cameras, or the anti-sleeper sprinklers, turning parks into assailants. Even the spaces which are designed for them, such as low income housing, are built with bars, set away from the city, and laid out in easy to follow grids. This instills the residents with a fear of their own kind, tearing the community apart internally. To the middle- and upper-classes, these designs "prove" that the lower classes can not be trusted, even amongst themselves, and justifies their own security measures. Our cities are looking and feeling increasingly like Huxley's "Brave New World", which is a, "rigidly stratified society divided into five castes: Alphas and Betas constituting the intelligentsia and the semi-moronic Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, the lower castes. Class prejudice (Elementary Class Consciousness) is instilled at birth in the State Conditioning Centers. Thereafter castes live and work separately." (Huxley; Blowers, et. al. pg. 315) All of this could be said about our society as well. It is true that in our society fear of the other is instilled at birth. Constant inundation of imagery begins at the moment one enters the world. We are divided into the lower class, and the middle- and upper-classes (making up one group of non-lower class citizens). These two groups have virtually no contact with each other. the goal, as I have shown throughout this writing, of technology and architecture is to guarantee this fact.

Click to read further: Conclusion