no loitering

I recently spent almost a week in the greater Boston area at the StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation with an amazing group of people. After it ended, I stayed at a high school friends and spent the afternoon wander her neighborhood of Davis Square before my evening flight. I wrote this post on a small yellow legal pad and have tried to transcribe it, accurately capturing my feelings and reflections. 


Wandering Davis Square I was impressed by the blended neighborhood of small mom and pop shops, a Post Office, copious restaurants of different cuisines and price points, and even a Planned Parenthood "Express Center." I could have gotten my shoes repaired, a tattoo or a passport photo taken, all on the same block. It was an instantly comfortable neighborhood, clearly in a city but with open courtyards and parks that kept the cityscape from feeling rushed and impersonal.

Then I noticed this sign. In a plaza with outside seating plus  open benches under trees for seating. I wondered how long it was there, what caused the owners of the building to put it up*. The Urban Equity Development Center pulling a move directly from the Arsenal of Exclusion playbook.

[Instgram-ed for effect]

Of course, like most signs, it was ignored. As I ate my lunch, I watched waiters on break having smokes at the back of the plaza, folks cutting through the plaza from one street to the next. To me, it didn't disrupt what I had already observed. But I had paid to sit in the plaza for lunch, so I can't speak to what one of those cutting through the plaza would have felt if he had a decided to make a phone call, sat down on a bench, and mid-call had noticed that sign.

*I will note, due to the proximity of the PP clinic, the sign could actually be a preemptive step to allow the owners to actually make a distinct population safer by shutting protesters out. This particular sign may have good intentions, but the reflections remain true of "No Loitering" signs in semi-public spaces throughout cities. 

arsenal of inclusion

[The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion, illustration by Lesser Gonzales]

Now that I've started writing about 99% Invisible podcasts, I may just never stop. This week's podcast featured David D'Oca of Interboro Design and their project The Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion. Roman Mars focused on the exclusion side but I found myself wondering about the inclusion side. Would it be all mixed use development, walkable communities and farmers markets? What would accidentally inclusive design look like? I supposed that it looks like, well, like benches. The kind you can sit on with a friend, without an awkward 'arm rest' dividing the space between you. Or making it impossible to catch a snooze in the sun. Inclusion is grass that you can walk on. Public buildings whose entry ways still have helpful signs, places to sit and no guards. Mostly accidentally inclusive places are places that haven't tried to exclude anyone yet.


In fact, most of The Arsenal website talks about exclusion. It's valid. The exclusive arsenal tends to be a lot sneakier. It is full of things, like the one way streets discussed in the 99% Invisible podcast, that seem like decisions based on how much room there is or in managing traffic flow, but really are about managing who can access the space. 


That said, one inclusive tool that I hadn't heard of before is the the eruv, a Jewish symbolic boundary formed by wire that expands the 'home' and therefore expands the area that the observant can travel on the Sabbath. "The eruv is in the Arsenal of Inclusion because it allows practicing Jews who might otherwise be required to segregate themselves to enjoy the benefits of living within a larger urban area while satisfying the traditional requirements of religious property law" (From Esquire's article on The Arsenal.) This increases the ability a community of people to enjoy the space, while having virtually no effect on others living the same area. Many of the tools of inclusion are also similarly intentional, often part of government regulation or other activist intervention. 


Listen to the podcast here. Check out The Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion here. Get a quick peek at the Arsenal via Esquire here.