Race and Gender in Issues in Neighborhood and Residential Design

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• Objectives
• Historical Background
• Trends
• Case Studies

• Summary of Issue
• Case Studies

• General Solutions

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Books & Periodicals
• Web Addresses

• Approximately 63% of African American women and 49% of Anglo-American women were heads of households 
• Only about a third of African-American women and a half of white-American women lived in households with men
• Due to state aid only being available if no men were residing at home, women had to separate arrangements for child rearing from the institution of marriage.
• Only in about 13% of households were men responsible for the sole income
• In 64% of African-American households, women provided the sole income.
• 78% of the households used family resources only to cope with child day care.
• 33% of those households had moved into Grand Rapids solely to be near family, that is, female relatives, for day care purposes.
• Even in households with no spouse present, the only tasks not undertaken solely by women were washing dishes, done by children, and some yardwork and repairs.

• Upon entering the job market, Surinamese women are willing to provide housing in return for the sharing of domestic tasks (Marchand, Sisson 147) 
• The difficulties these women experience in combining their work outside of the home and management of their households make them resort to the strategy of house-sharing (Marchand, Sisson 147) 
• The economic crisis among the Surinamese coupled with the resulting limited access to housing is leading to the recurrence of the “multiple generation household”, that was once only prominent with one of the Surinamese ethnic groups known as the Hindustanis (Marchand, Sisson 147)
• Other sources (network) of income for Surinamese women
• (Marchand, Sisson 147):

VANPORT CITY  (1940s)      -Henry J. Kaiser          (Hayden 4-10)

• First new town that was designed to meet the needs of a wartime labor force composed of women and men of many diverse racial and economic groups.
• The design of this new town responded to the needs of women and men in the home and at the work place by the integration of affordable housing, on-the-job training and economic development for workers. 
• Site design and landscaping, economic organization and social services were well developed and prosperous.
• Although Vanport City demonstrated great amounts of potential to grow and provide for its residents, the aesthetics of the area, especially the housing, lacked charm and was considered to look like “housing projects.”
• Most ambitious attempt, of its time, to shape space for employed women and their families in the United States.

LEVITTOWNS  (Post WWII)       -Bill Levitt              (Hayden 4-10)

• Intended client of the Levittowns was the returning veteran from World War II.
• The woman was no longer contributing to the family income, but was now expected to stay home and take care of her husband and their children.
• The framework of the housing centered on American colonial housing and emphasized privacy within the home.
• Large scale plans for public spaces and social services were sacrificed for private acreage within each residence.
• Levittowns were an ambitious attempt at housing developments, but aimed to shape private space for white working class males and their dependents.

WORCESTER, MA

• Whether one migrated to Worcester as an adult or lived there her entire life has inevitably led to quite different life experiences, problems, and solutions for women of the same racialized group (Miranne 75)
• Family plays a lesser role in migrant women’s lives, especially in finding jobs and child care; they are more likely to rely on neighbors or on work-based contacts for the kinds of assistance that require proximity to people, such as finding a job or child care
• Long-time residents were more likely to use family members for jobs, child care, and housing; they also rely on community-based contacts, often women with whom they grew up, for emotional support
• The reasons for African American women’s spatial boundedness are generated from several mutually constitutive processes, which include residential segregation, the “racial” composition of women’s networks, and the relationship between women’s daily activity patterns and the nature and spatial extent of their networks 

Daily Activity Patterns for Women, Worcester, 1991

• Most women make their employment and child-care decisions from a fixed residential location (Miranne 75)
• Because African Americans are spatially segregated in Worcester, these women make employment and child-care decisions from an even more spatially limited residential base than white women (Miranne 75)