o acquire these habits and dispositions, we need settings where they can be practiced, where we can literally see our diversity, where we belong but others belong as well, people who are different from us but with whom we are interdependent precisely because we live together. In other words, we need changes in our rhetorics that will help us practice better public problem-solving, and we need changes in our environments that will bring us closer together so that such problem-solving is unavoidable

After providing historical background to the formation of the Chicago ghetto in chapter 4, I examine three options for revitalizing this particular neighborhood. Chapter 5 explores the idea that the problem behind inner-city, African-American poverty is the city itself; and the solution, suburban relocation. Chapter 6 considers another theory: that the best hope for Cabrini Green’s families is poverty deconcentration, best effected by “importing” higher-income residents to the central city and allowing some of the poor families to stay. Chapter 7, meanwhile, posits a very different idea: that urban African-American poverty is a function of social oppression and political marginalization, and its solution: helping low-income, inner-city blacks chart their own destiny and take control of their own neighborhoods.

, I try to offer in the end a glimmer of hope. After all, rhetoric and design share a positive orientation toward the world, a creative impulse, a commitment to fashioning practical solutions to common problems. Perhaps bringing them together can help us rethink and rebuild our communities

As for our cities, it’s hard to think of them as places where diverse indi-viduals, free and equal, come together to make binding decisions about their common affairs. Our landscape not only separates us from one another and the world we share; it alienates us from our species-character as human beings.

For the ancient Greeks who fi rst conceptualized it, rhetoricwas precisely the skill of inventing and delivering arguments in contexts of public debate and disagreement. In order to manage together their common world, citizens met in assemblies, courtrooms, council chambers, theaters, and other places to hear opposed speeches and pass judgment on the questions put to them. In this way, they governed themselves.

By the early 1960s, however, the CHA had become the primary landlord in the area; and poor blacks, the majority of inhabitants. Everyone else fl ed. Even the St. Philip Benizi church, its par-ish long since relocated, was torn down in 1965.32 It was about this time that the urban black family itself began to deteriorate, casualty of a dramatic rise in joblessness, a large increase in welfare dependence, and a sharp decline in two-parent households.

It was a contrast he found unhealthy: “The isolation of the populations crowded together within these few hundred blocks, the superfi ciality and externality of their contacts, the social distances that separate them . . . the inevitable result is cultural disorganization

Indeed, for most Chicagoans, inured to their city’s cold social logic, these families had caused the neighborhood’s problems; and their removal, clearly foreseen by the mayor’s plan, was the fi rst step in its transformation

the Modern Language Association

thinking of space as apolitical and of politics as ageographica

the unavailability in this country of an everyday politics based on pluralism and propinquity, in which individuals different from one another can come together, regularly, through discussion, debate, and nego-tiation, to supervise what they share

an aversion to the city itself

. But, long after the demise of the polis, people’s ideas about politics, their ways of organizing space, and their pedagogies of public discourse remained linked, even when they lacked the language to recognize that linkage or the ability to use it in support of genuine participatory democracy.

an impoverished African-American central city neighborhood; a well-to-do, mostly white, sub-urb; a racially and economically mixed “urban village”; and a self-governing, low-income, African-American housing cooperative—

In terms of “intimacy” and “openness,” those are traits that we might consider feminine versus perhaps maybe thicker walls, and things that are stronger, and privacy as things that are masculine.

Moving away from the hunter green, deep burgundies to a softer, warmer, and lighter palette.

. A lot of people don’t want to be in a benching system.

introverts vs. extroverts

How can designers help address a situation like that—especially in a work culture where everyone is expected to collaborate closely?

as designers, we can’t fall behind in embracing that,

In the workplace, the barriers and hierarchies have started to come down as women have become more prominent. With Mother Nature becoming more important, sustainability started coming into play, and an emphasis on windows, daylight, and views has accompanied that. People are also craving more softness in interiors, with the open plan, the influence of hospitality, and an emphasis on tactile and textural materials like carpeting and textiles.

Designers, who should focus a critical eye on society’s issues, need to work within this discourse and help promote acceptance and change.

We are living in a time of gender revolution.

that is emphasizes something deeper than what meets the eye

Traditional campus indoor spaces, by necessity and function, provide ample opportunities for structured learning experiences that draw upon students’ direct attention.

Viewing the campus landscape as a holistic spatial and mental dynamic entity

For example, more than two-thirds of the Cornell University campus is open space; its ecosystem services are visualized along a spectrum of naturalness as greenways, quads and greens, streets and walks, et

nvoluntary attention occurs when individuals are presented with stimuli that are “inherently intriguing”

It is this holistic view of a campus’ spatial patterning and the student’s relationship with the natural and built environment or its landscape that is capable of having an effect on student learning. Interaction with nature, in particular, can help to maintain or restore cognitive function such as direct attention, problem solving, focus and concentration, impulse inhibition, and memory, which can become depleted from fatigue or with overuse

Defining “nature” can pose a bit of problem however.

to understand and describe the many benefits of human-nature interactions

older campus plans emphasized disciplinary boundaries andnewer campus designs are more amorphous and integrative

ampus construction was sparse during the Depression and World War II of the 1930s and 1940s

he concepts are – 1) direct and indirect attention and restoration, and 2) a holistic landscape

attentional

the quality of academic life,

the natural landscape of a university campus is an attentional learning resource for its students

architectural exclusion

This Article examines the sometimes subtle ways that the built environ-ment has been used to keep certain segments of the population—typically poor people and people of color—separate from others.

Supporters of this measure argued that it would ostensibly reduce traffic and noise, in addition to