23) What’s equality?

Equality has two different aspects: equality in law and equality in fact. Many laws establish that we are all equal before the law, even though in practice people living in the same city— women and men, old and young, low- and high-income, migrants and non-migrants—rarely experience this equality.

Architects can lobby for significant changes to building codes. Not just green building codes—but all codes. In such codes, certain measures should take precedence. Rehabilitation of slums instead of demolition could become mandatory. Good codes as we know can quickly bring striking results. We’re not cutting emissions in the way we need to. We’re not managing inequality as well as we can. The depth of understanding of the immense risks of human rights violations are not yet evident. What has to happen now is a catalyst that will en-able all of this to become the new normal. We have to care and be informed about rights, not needs, where we recognize those “in need” for what they lack, rather than value them for what they have. 

Common logic links the rich with the poor and by doing so casts the poor as responsible for their own lack of empowerment, and the alienation they suffer due to inequity. One suggestion is to reflect on Muhammad Yunus’ vision: think of all the things you get at your bank and imagine those products and services tailored to someone living on a few dollars a day. Think of all aspects of designing a beautiful house: choosing the right materials, light, color, and then imagine them tailored to someone living on a few dollars. As I stated before, the poor are not a mass of people in need with abject lives who are owed something better. These people are valuable as a group. They have their own unique perspectives, experiences, priorities, aspirations, and realities. They are communities currently denied the political, civil, economic cultural rights that they are entitled to under international human-rights principles. These are not people crushed by poverty. These are people busy helping each other to get out of poverty just as fast as they can.

The poor have their own social organization, complex friendship, kinship, and acquaintanceship networks, and associational ties rooted in family and social life. They engage in neighborhood activities with one another—including borrowing tools or food, having lunch or dinner, or helping each other with problems. It is not the case that slums undermine prosperity; they help create prosperity. While zones, districts, sectors are boundaries imposed by census geography, the ecological properties of neighborhoods are shaped by social interactions. Neighborhoods are interdependent and characterized by a functional relationship between what happens at one point in space and what happens elsewhere. 

When we say that a person or a community “needs help,” do we suggest that they are less than, and that we as “problem solvers” are inherently better or more capable? Architecture does not create neighborhoods, but it should explore the cultural dimensions and social organization of cities, the interface between the cultural and physical or spatial dimensions of urban areas.  It should also explore the role of cultural diversity in terms of ethnicity, language, gender, sexuality, etc. in either bridging or reinforcing the urban divide. Architecture must address a multitude of issues: social and spatial segregation; diversity in social, economic, and cultural life; active cultural expressions in the city by diverse citizen groups; cultural pluralism and tolerance (or the lack thereof) in cities; diversity in gender, age, sexuality, minorities, and vulnerable groups; preservation of cultural heritage (in terms of both built and social environments); urban entertainment; marketing of cities through culture (such as festivals and events); culturally and socially inclusive policies and approaches.

Given this diversity of issues, might it be that equality is simply a set of well-meaning aspirations without legal or philosophical foundations? Could architecture develop a secular and meaningful idea of dignity that can offer wider grounds for human rights? And what is dignity anyway? Inequality opens up opportunities, and we have to look at it as an integrated thought process of building. That’s what sustainability is.