Urban segregation’s psychological comfort exacts physical costs we call the urban crisis

Evidence

So, too, the spatial order which dominates the modern city derives its stability and, therefore, its usability, from the fact that it is not merely voluntary but enforced-enforced by shared beliefs, by shared preferences, by shared customs, and by law. The paradox of the situation is that having created the spatial order, we now throw up our hands in horror at its continuing unfolding, and speak in hysterical tones of the “urban crisis.” What is the urban crisis but the inexorable expression of the spatial segregation of persons and activities-the essence of spatial ordering. That this order has created poverty-stricken central cities ringed by sprawling suburbs hooked together by pollution-creating transportation devices does not gainsay its serviceability in keeping the urban world social psychologically, if not physically, livable. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1034

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes the ‘urban crisis’ not as a failure of spatial order but as its inevitable, intended bill — a dense inversion worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: Segregation yields real psychological safety benefits that complicate any push to integrate — Miles Hewstone and Ed Cairns and Alberto Voci and Juergen Hamberger and Ulrike Niens, Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness, and…, 104