If it doesn't affect me it doesn't matter
Soja's and Till's text are about being critical of how we perceive spatial equality within the city. It's about asking whether our decisions as designers are either marginalizing groups or providing spaces for people of all different walks of life. Essentially, to be agents of spatial equality by challenging ideas that have been the norm and having a different outlook on some existing ideas that seem good on the surface but are are also socially ignorant in the way they do things, like the sustainability movement. The question arises why should I care and although the topic strays away from design and architecture I think it's an important one to have.
The idea that physically separating people based on social status into different places is what we have been doing for the past 60 years (flight from cities to the suburbs during the 60s and 70s in the US favored middle class white families who got a disproportionate preference when it came to bank loans and mortgages). Not only has it not worked, in the sense of creating social disparity along class lines but I think it's related to our current social tensions. People who are born into a "bad" neighborhood are stuck in a cycle of limited opportunities. Studies show that kids that are taken from these neighborhoods and integrated into charter schools perform just as well as kids from good neighborhoods. Just being around other people of a different class, race, political orientation, etc. is a huge help for some of these people. This goes back to the principal of universal spatial access, just being able to share the same space with someone else is huge! But also, having access to the same opportunities and the same treatment no matter where you come from. I think this is just as beneficial for the kid who was brought to a charter school from a bad neighborhood as it is to the kid who was born with all the opportunities. If you isolate yourself how could you ever understand the problems of a social group? Society and the city are an organism, we can't have the attitude that what doesn't affect us doesn't matter specially now when the global neighborhood is also a thing we have to consider.
Thank you so much for sharing your ideas, I totally agree with the point that people who are born into a "bad" neighborhood have the same abilities in every aspect as those living in good neighborhood, like the example of charter school, if they get the same opportunities. And I can see the good image that all the people share the same space no matter their race, class, gender. But part of me suspect that whether it could be realized. Personally, it seems like Marxism, to be more precise, Marxism believe that all the people will share all the resources together eventually, they are able to get whatever they need based on their own requirement without considering how much value created by them. It is a very ideal status in my mind and I believe that it is a wonderful happy world for sure. However, I may be a pessimistic man, I cannot stop me from suspecting human nature, I mean, some people may break the balance because of greed. So when I think that all people share the same place which also mentioned in Soja's article, a big question come out in my mind, I was wondering whether sharing the same space will be realized in the real world? Thank you so much for your share.
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