The AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community (HCD) is a network of architects and allied stakeholders that promotes equity in housing, excellence in residential design, and sustainable, vibrant communities for all, through education, research, awards, and advocacy.
The course will show how residential segregation was neither normal nor natural, but invented by the organized real estate industry. The first all-white neighborhoods were created not in the South but a mile from Berkeley’s campus. Racial deed restrictions, home owners associations, redlining maps and federal rationales for excluding minorities were all pioneered by America’s realtors. To justify continuing segregation at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, realtors developed an idea of American freedom as the right to discriminate that has dominated our politics for the last half century. The course will show how residential segregation transformed America in ways that continue to shape the country today.
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