Rich people like pizza, poor people like pizza

When speaking of income inequality, marginalized populations, or yes, spatial justice, we tend to hear similar responses.

“That’s not a problem here.”

“Where are all these poor people? I don’t see them.”

We tend to forget about disadvantaged populations when we never interact with them. When the poor people have their part of town, their own terrible work schedules, their own restaurants, shopping centers, and public spaces, we forget about them. We don’t interact with them, so we are able to distance ourselves from the problem. We can actually stop thinking of them as human or worthy of compassion, further stratifying the population.  

I think these political problems and the attitudes above are a result of lack of visibility. The rich and the poor rarely cross paths, making it easy for one to ignore the existence of the other. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy; wealthier people can afford to live in the nicer areas, the poor cannot. The wealthier, (and typically more politically powerful), thus do not interact with the poorer, and therefore are blind to issues around them.

Funny enough, something that really opened my eyes to the separation of rich and poor is delivering for Domino’s. In one minute, I can deliver to a college kid whose living in a 4-bedroom detached home in a gated community with a BMW in the driveway--in the next, a mother of 4 in a mobile home with holes in the walls. They don’t know each other, they don’t understand each other, and they’ll probably never realize that they live minutes apart.  

As architects, we have the power to prevent this stratification. We can create shared spaces, mixed income communities, and public spaces that can allow these interactions to occur. If we design with sensitivity to the social groups around our projects, and the economic impacts of our work, we can prevent the social separation and resulting animosity between socio-economic groups.