20 NORTHERN NEVADA ARCHITECTURE .21 | 2021 | aiann.org IMPROVING RACIAL EQUITY THROUGH GREENER DESIGN How a better built environment enhances health, economies, and access to essential services for all. Climate change affects us all, but doesn’t impact us all equally. This article is part of a new series, Building Equity, that explores how architects are working with communities and civic leaders to develop creative, innovative design solutions that fight climate change, systemic racism, and inequities in the built environment. It’s time to show the world what design can do. For decades, Black Americans have disproportionately lived in unhealthy conditions, due in large measure to unjust policies, inequitable planning, disinvestment, and underinvestment in the built environment. Starting in the 1930s, banks and mortgage lenders marked certain neighborhoods — often Black and Latino — on maps as being uncreditworthy. Known as redlining, this process led to financial firms and real estate agents refusing loans, mortgages, and other investments to residents and prospective homebuyers in these areas. As a result, Black communities often remained financially stagnant, pushed into industrial zones with poor access to public transportation and inadequate grocery stores, schools, and public buildings. Once backed by the federal government, redlining was initially struck down by the Supreme Court in 1948 in the case Shelley v. Kraemer, which ruled that courts could not enforce racially restrictive practices. But redlining would not be fully outlawed by the federal courts until the 1968 Fair Housing Act banned racial discrimination in housing, followed by the 1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which required lending institutions to report public loan data, and the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (RCA), which required the Federal Reserve to encourage financial institutions to make loans to neighborhoods of all income levels. Yet despite these laws, the damage by redlining was done — and persists today. According to a 2018 report by the National Center for Environmental Assessment at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Black people in the United States are 1.54 times more likely to live near facilities that pollute, causing them to breathe dirtier air than whites and to develop health problems like heart and lung disease. According to a 2017 report by the Baltimore City Health Department, a nearly 20-year gap in life expectancy exists between Black and white neighborhoods in the Maryland capital, and cities like Philadelphia and Chicago have shown similar numbers. This discrepancy in life expectancy is tied to poverty perpetuated by disinvestment in the built environment. According to a 2020 report by the Brookings Institution, the median net worth of a white family in the United States is $171,000. By comparison, the median net worth of a Black family is $17,150 — nearly 10 times less. To address these chronic inequities, architects are designing buildings and communities that are resilient, sustainable, and reduce carbon dioxide in historically neglected Black neighborhoods, enhancing the lives and health of residents while helping to fight climate change. Below, three architects share how they are working with communities to improve the environmental and social sustainability of communities by protecting neighborhoods from gentrification, installing parks and public art exhibits in urban centers, and creating state-of-the-art libraries in financially challenged neighborhoods — inspiring future generations to improve racial equity in the United States. REPRESENTING COMMUNITIES In Seattle, the Midtown neighborhood is one of the most historic Black communities in the United States. Home to the first Blackowned bank west of the Mississippi River, the neighborhood once housed 71% of the city’s Black population. A vital economic and cultural center, it was the only area of the city unaffected by redlining. Yet, in recent years, the growth of corporate offices in
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTIyNDg2OA==