The Design Politics of Space, Race, and Resistance in the United States

Abstract

This essay provides an overview of how space has been linked to systems of oppression in the United States as well as how design presents possibilities for action. It outlines historic and relational contexts of culture, geography, and physical infrastructure through which racialized systems, actors, and inherited practices of politicization impart both physical imprints on the landscape as well as impacts on hegemonic or shared identity. It also introduces a framework for liberatory futuring, considering how architects and planners intersect with systems of race, identity, and place and how they might become advocates and active co-conspirators for liberation.