INTRODUCTION

“We are going to have to have people as committed to doing the right thing, to inclusiveness, as we have in the past to exclusiveness.”

Whitney M. Young Jr., addressing the American Instutute of Architects Annual Convention in Portland, Oregon, June 1968

Architecture and related disciplines rarely take into account racism and social equity, yet the built environment serves as a backdrop to both. Segregation, unequal access to infrastructure and opportunities, and an economic system that allows private interests to be disguised as public interest have fostered systemic inequalities that, even when recognized by the profession, seem removed from the problems architects are trained to address. This symposium will explore how, starting with their formal education, architects and designers in related disciplines can gain a better understanding of how our built environment helps shape society’s inequalities, how our decisions have consequences, and how we, as design professionals, can help bring about better social equity.

Architects and those in related disciplines are trained to seek solutions to problems that are largely defined through client values and demands. Additional stakeholders, such as users or community members, are rarely consulted directly. This has resulted in architecture’s success being measured internally (through positive reviews by other architects or critics) or through the prestige or economic opportunities projects create for the client. that ignore, and often work against, social equity. This has been especially prevalent in an economic system that encourages zero-sum thinking, where improving social equity is seen as cutting into a company’s potential profits. Consumption, rates-on return, and market advantages drive innovation, often to the detriment of social justice concerns.

Increasingly, successful design hinges on technological advances that integrate technology into both the design process and its outcomes. Such advances are seen as a form of progress that allows for novel designs while attaining cost and labor savings and opportunities for new functionality. Yet the singular focus on technological advancement ignores social concerns, including the effects of opaque and biased algorithms used in decision-making, surveillance overreach and privacy breaches, and unintended consequences of the technology itself or its accessibility.

In both situations – architectural design used primarily to enhance the designer’s and client’s prestige, and technology in design that focuses on creative novelty or cost savings – criteria for successful design have equated “success” with factors

Social equity extends to how design problems themselves are framed: What biases are inherent in the questions asked, what stakeholders are affected, and what are the extended consequences of proposed solutions? A few examples can illustrate the problem. Increased reliance on technology in the built environment benefits wealthier segments of the population with access to the newest products, smart devices, good internet, and credit that allows for online payments. Communities of color are disproportionately left out of the technology equation, leading to an acceleration of economic inequity.

The COVID pandemic illustrates further problems with how we are framing our built-environment questions. Before COVID-19, shifts in housing, office work, retail patterns, and recreation were already designed to serve more privileged communities, often driven by a search for comfort in the face of climate change or environmental hazards. Already segregated communities of color, by contrast, systematically experienced cultural de-valuation, exposure to environmental hazards, and a dearth of infrastructure including adequate housing, healthcare, transportation, and food. Current concerns for viral pathogens have accelerated social and spatial trends that have privileged wealthy communities. White-collar workers shape social and spatial networks to meet their needs, discounting the needs faced by communities of color, who are more often employed in low-income, front-line service sectors. to better understand underrepresented voices is an important first step. Learning to design for social sustainability is a necessary goal. In their work, the contributors to this symposium explore how to reshape our design agendas for more inclusivity and social equity.

The Design Consequences symposium allowed speakers to present their work or thinking on a topic related to social equity. Each panel was followed by a roundtable, where speakers discussed methods to bring social equity thinking into the professional curriculum.

How can architects and other shapers of future systems and spaces design for social equity and social sustainability?

Change must begin through reframing our design problems. Breaking down social and cultural value assumptions

In the first panel, speakers discussed means by which we can design for a more just society. This panel proposed methods to increase awareness of how injustice is generated and perpetuated, and examined both policy and built-environment solutions toward needed social change.

The ensuing roundtable explored how these questions should be addressed in the classroom: How can architectural and design programs innovate to help students learn to design for inclusivity? How can we best bring ethical practices into the field of architecture and design? How can students transitioning into the workplace continue the quest for more inclusive design? How can we design the built environment to foster social equity?

The talks recorded online and in this catalog will hopefully provide readers in design fields with ideas for their own work. I would like to thank the speakers for the wealth of thoughts they have shared and the openness of the ensuing discussions. Inclusiveness takes commitment, and this is something we can all chose to do.

In the second set of talks, speakers examined how to better understand and predict consequences of technology on equity in the built environment, as well as their approach to integrating ethics in the field of technology and design. How can technology be designed to improve lives, how can such improvement become more equitable, and how can we better measure success in these endeavors?

Alexandra Staub State College, PA, October 2021

The ensuing roundtable explored the questions: How can we ensure that the technology we develop and use benefits all members of society? How can we avoid unintended technology consequences? How can we design technology for more inclusivity and social equity?