1. One of the reasons that i love talking about planning and infrastructure so much is because a lot of folks don't realize how certain municipalities are planned out and zoned to intentionally heighten segregation and disparities. When suburbs were originally formed, they were
2. Planned around the automobile, because that made it easier to keep certain demographics (i.e. Black, Brown and Native) from moving there. There were and still are zoning laws that would only allow only one house per developer lot to be built, which means a limited stock of
3. Housing, which makes affordable housing hard to find. Additionally, things like height requirements (not being allowed to build above a certain number of feet) was another method of limiting housing. These were some of the reasons that a lot of suburbs remained very white up
4. Until the 1980's/1990's. Once homes in suburbs became accessible due to policies becoming lax in regards to affordable housing, one would think that the problem of exclusion via planning has been solved, but you start to run up against a whole slate of new problems. As Black
5. And brown folks moved into innner-ring suburbs, white folks would tend to move even FARTHER out into the exurbs, which meant the tax base which supported these first ring suburbs would close to. This meant that businesses would leave too because of course they're going to
