29) Building as usual.

What happens if architectural practitioners and consultants fail to address in their work problems that go beyond their formal remit to encompass questions of human rights, bio-politics, fair trade, fair economy, politics, sustainability, technological transfer, and so on? Conflict is always more likely to occur in pre-categorized areas—in places where the “others” live. When such conflict occurs, whole communities of people lose opportunities for a good education, quality housing, living-wage jobs, services, and support systems.

As a practice, just as capable of exacerbating divisions as securing them, architecture has tended to challenge ways of working, thinking, and relating within a given society with the help of historical, geographical, and speculative strategies. We have to be thoughtful about our involvement in global development efforts, realizing that good intentions do not translate into mutually beneficial outcomes. I see too often an architecture driven by unconscious bias and I have learned that a city can have racism without racists.

Apartheid has been over for decades, but cities and towns are still designed to give white people access to the central businesses districts and homes in the leafy suburbs. Black people have to live far outside of the city, only venturing in for work. These living spaces have remained a challenge and socio-economic inequality is still stubbornly divided along racial lines. Can we imagine other ways in which things could be done, thought, or produced?

It is no secret that segregation and inequality persist in much architectural design. We now have the tools to see the cities on a larger scale: aerial photography, the global positioning system, GIS, and computer simulations. Through these tools, we can now visualize the urgent need for change through better urban planning. We can then begin to implement these changes with the effort and attention required by struggles for greater social-environmental justice.

Other links between architecture and human rights are clearly reflected by the fact that residents of slums and informal settlements are often more susceptible to eviction, family breakdown, poverty, food insecurity, ethnic conflict, religious conflict, crime, health, rape, and unemployment. In most of our cities, people in richer areas live anything from five to 13 years longer than people in poor areas. Poorer people have less control over their lives and less access to resources, infrastructures, and economic opportunities. They also get less respect in an urban setting. Increasing homelessness, overcrowding, and declining quality of life for families and individuals all painfully reflect the human costs of this predatory approach to development. Building as usual will just get us further from where we need to be.

When it comes down to it, at the personal level, our living in a city as poor or as rich people, Rome or Addis Ababa– are not that different from each other.