The Inauspicious Prospect of Exclusionary Places

For the past few weeks the airwaves have been saturated by accounts of the senseless killing of 17 year old Trayvon Martin, a Florida teen allegedly gunned down by neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman during the teen's walk home from a nearby convenient store.   Ample space has been given to editorial pages, and cable pundits have devoted hours attempting to examine the tragedy from a social/racial perspective.  - Could the hoodie Trayvon wore that faithful evening caused Mr. Zimmerman’s unreasonable anxiety? What factor did the teen’s race or the neighborhood watchman’s ethnic background play in the ill-fated encounter, - what bigoted feeling did he harbor? What about the competence and/or objectivity of the City of Sanford, Florida’s Police Department…

In an event such as this, reasonable, law abiding citizens should have a plethora questions. However, in the spirit of this blog the questions which interest me particularly come from a spatial/ land use policy tack. How did the very construct of gated community set the stage for this type of confrontation  -  This case has now garnered national attention, however, on a daily basis, in communities across the nation, how are these gated concept defining the idea of belonging, exclusion and citizens/pedestrian mobility.  With the passing of ‘Stand You-Ground’ law and the liberal interpretation by the Stanford Police Investigators, such lethal confrontation can’t be seen, truly, as an anomaly, but instead as a prescriptive method of dealing with a ‘foreign body’ in our midst.    

According to an article on gated communities in a blog called “Heavy Trash,” “The problem is, gated communities do not increase people’s trust in each other or the overall quality of life. They may in fact do harm to both.” Healthy neighborhoods depend on contact between people of all incomes and races. (USATODAY.com)

1995 -2012