Jonathan Weiler: Invisible Boundaries, Visible Harm: "But policy instruments remain that deepen ethnic and racial differences, even if that isn't the overt intent of these policies. Neighborhood schools could be, under some circumstances, one such policy instrument. Another set of policies, all but ignored in most media, is called 'under-bounding.' Under-bounding occurs when a local government draws its boundaries in such a way as to selectively include certain neighborhoods while excluding others. The excluded neighborhoods may be, as Ben Marsh, a professor at Bucknell University, and Allan Parnell, of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities in North Carolina, have pointed out, 'ecologically indistinguishable from the dominant municipality in terms of density. They are part of the same employment, commuting and retail structure. In some cases, they are entirely surrounded by the municipality, but politically they remain on the outside looking in.'
These typically minority enclaves are denied the infrastructure and services that the included neighborhoods receive: sanitary and storm sewers, sidewalks, water supply, streetlights, police and fire protection, trash pickup, street sweeping and code enforcement."
Comments