multi-dimensional

miniature cities

Spaces between campus buildings Outdoor water features Green roofs Rain gardens

Interaction with natural environments (especially green nature) employs faculties of concentration not normally used – involuntary ones – thus allowing the neural mechanisms underlying directed attention a chance to rest and replenish

. After a period of prolonged cognitive demands and mental saturation, difficulties in concentrating, reduced performance on tasks, higher rates of irritability and tension, and more impulsive and hostile behavior may arise

ring road” type of plan, in which vehicles were mostly kept outside the pedestrian oriented campus core

Furthermore, increased technology use within today’s multitasking society is likely to hijack a student’s attentional resource placing her/him at risk of underachieving academic learning goals and undermining success at a university

Americans expect a university campus to look different than other places (Gumprecht, 2007) and that the campus “expresses something about the quality of academic life, as well as its role as a citizen of the community in which it is located”

an attentional learning

s. In 2009, 20.4 million students were enrolled in 2- or 4-year colleges and universities. By 2019, enrollments are expected to rise 9% for students under age 25, and rise 23% for students over the age of 25 (Snyder & Dillow, 2011)

American higher education institutions face unique twenty-first century changes and challenges in providing good, holistic learning spaces for the diverse and evolving needs of today’s college student.

Miami intentionally located I-95 so that it would cut through Overtown, an inner-city black community.161 Although it had previously been known as “the Harlem of the South,” Overtown became “an urban wasteland dominated by the physical presence of the expressway.”

Because there are a number of benefits to living near a transit stop,122 the Homevoter Hypothesis suggests that homeowners will readily lobby for them.

n some communities, the purpose of rerouting traffic is to inhibit harmful behaviors tied to drugs and crime. Concrete barriers were put in place near the highways of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to block quick access into the city by those who wanted to buy drugs

“[s]idewalks and bike paths are rare and do not connect to those in other communities inhabited by residents of lower social and racial status.”87 If someone wanted to walk or bike to another area, then, it might have to be along the shoulder of a busy road or on the road itself.

By including these features in a common interest community, a developer can deter unwanted potential residents—generally poor people and people of color—from buying homes in that development

prioritize the flow of pedestrians and traffic through a physical space, with a focus on civil engineering, rather than prioritizing equal access to a physical space for all, with a focus on civil rights

“monumental structures of concrete and steel embody a systematic social inequality, a way of engineering relationships among people that, after a time, becomes just another part of the landscape

This Article examines the sometimes subtle ways that the built environment has been used to keep certain segments of the population—typically poor people and people of color—separate from others. Further, it considers the ways in which the law views and treats the exclusionary effects of these seemingly innocuous features of the built environment—which the Article terms “architectural exclusion”—as compared to more traditional and more obvious exclusionary practices. Although exclusion is perhaps the most important stick in the bundle of property rights, and although certain forms of exclusion can have beneficial results,18 this Article focuses on forms of exclusion that result in discriminatory treatment of those who are excluded. This Article builds on Lawrence Lessig’s regulatory theory, which asserts that behavior may be regulated or constrained, in part, by “architecture.”19 Lessig broadly defined architecture as “the physical world as we find it, even if ‘as we find it’ is simply how it has already been made.”20 The Article also employs the term “architecture” quite broadly to encompass civil engineering, city planning, urban design, and transit routing. The decisions of those who work in these varied fields result in infrastructure that shapes the built environment. The resulting infrastructure is included in this broad definition of architecture and functions as a form of regulation through architecture.21

At the request of white residents, in 1974 the city of Memphis closed off a street that connected an all-white neighborhood to a primarily black one.9 Supporters of this measure argued that it would ostensibly reduce traffic and noise, in addition to promoting safety.

Wealthy, mostly white residents of the northern Atlanta suburbs have vocally opposed efforts to expand MARTA into their neighborhoods for the reason that doing so would give people of color easy access to suburban communities.