Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

I have seen the city of the future.

Architecturally it is a landscape of low-rise sprawl. Interspersed among the Price Choppers, Ford dealerships, Macys, Mobil/Exxons, are gated residential communities forbidding casual entry and outside these residential barracks are houses surrounded by high, impenetrable walls. All this is carefully designed in such a way that despite the absence of an obvious ‘Jim Crow’ presence, whites and blacks seldom cross paths with each other. In the white enclaves to the north of this city most residents are remarkably prosperous; the streets resemble moving Audi, Porshe, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW dealerships. Members of this prosperous community look with a mixture of puzzlement and scorn upon ‘the others’ , those people who exist for them only on the nightly news as fodder for “If It Bleeds It Leads” broadcasts, always appearing so angry, so out of control, so frightening. Throughout the day trucks of dark-skinned men move silently from house to house, tending to manicured lawns and adjusting sprinkler systems, then disappear at night, going somewhere else, some unknown destination to the south. In the city of the future this all seems so normal; some occasionally argue it is perhaps even desirable. While the privileged residents of the city of the future are quick to point out that you will find no remnants of the de juro racial segregation of the past such as signs indicating “Whites Only” in the local restaurants and coffee shops, they are not inclined to wonder why they seldom see anyone who isn’t white in their neighborhoods. In fact, in the city of the future, the distasteful, heavy-handed segregation of ‘Jim Crow’ has been replaced by a sleek, new, polite version: economic segregation. The beauty of this for the city of the future is that the ‘Haves’ can far more easily make believe that the ‘Have-nots’ have only themselves to blame.

The specific city referenced above is Dallas, Texas. I joined my family there for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Dallas, like many other sunbelt cities, is where America is going. A vast demographic shift has been underway for a few decades: the population of the United States is moving to places like Dallas, Houston, Memphis, and many other ‘Sun Belt’ cities from the Northeast. Those of us who make our living as architects or builders in the Northeast can hardly imagine the amount of construction happening there. Last year the construction cranes covered Dallas like pine trees. Even today, deep in a recession, housing - apartments and single-family units - proceeds apparently unfazed. Except for a limited city center where tall building proliferate, the majority of this development is low rise, spreading out in all directions at a frantic pace.

Unlike the messy evolution of the older Northeastern cities, the structure of Dallas and all of these new southwestern cities is more closely akin to the ‘Berkshire Outlet Village’ in Lee, or a typical ‘corporate park’ in Albany. As I noted in a previous column there is little to no room in this planning model for the unruly but necessary forces that shape a viable democracy, the give-and-take of various constituencies intermixed, each seeking recognition and a piece of the pie. In these cities, the pie is divided and that division, no matter how inequitable, is codified in the law and within the de facto economic structure. Sadly - tragically - the cities of the future are in many ways reflections of our fears and biases, bastions of ‘every-man-for-himself’. In cities like Dallas, we are armed, scared, and suspicious. Perhaps even more disturbing, we are increasingly if not exactly unconcerned about any of this, accepting of it. Democracy, I believe, is ultimately based on the concept of fairness and even if difficult to define, in the words of the supreme court ruling on pornography, you know it when you see it.

In last weeks New York Times magazine section, James Traub writes in his succinct article, “Return to Segregation”, that integration is not happening today and that unlike the immigrant Irish, Jewish and Italian neighborhoods of the past, predominantly black neighborhoods are, “uniformly more black…” This is not an abstract point : he notes that it was in those older mixed neighborhoods that, “the hard edges of ethnic diversity were blurred…”

I believe this is the new face of’ ‘Jim Crow’, less obvious but no less deleterious. I have seen the city of the future and I fear a new and pernicious ‘American Way’ is emerging, slouching even now toward Dallas to be born.