Can good urban planning reduce racism? It's a pretty audacious point, but Nate Silver, numbers wizzard at 538.com who predicted the 2008 Presidential Election outcome to within fractions of a point, argues so.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/521
The argument is, bascially, that interaction with others of other races of cultures leads to tolerance (which is fairly logical).
Then he points out types of neighborhoods that are likely to foster that interaction (like a dense neighborhood on a square grid) and neighborhoods that aren't (like winding suburbs, where high fences separate the homes).
He could have gone into much more detail on HOW cities and dense neighborhoods foster that interaction, but 80% of the video is simply about discussing which states have self-admitted racism in their voting patterns or voted against Barack Obama in 2008 simply because of his race. Then he mentions the statistics that distinguish those states - particularly low education rates and highly rural populations.
But I do think there is a lot of truth to what he is saying, because certain kinds of neighborhoods ARE more racially tolerant than others, and I know from my experience canvassing door to door all summer and fall in 2008 that you can pretty much tell how 80% of the people in a neighborhood are going to vote once you step foot on the sidewalks and look at how the houses are built. I am white, but a lot of the people I was canvassing with were not and the way people treated them in a neighborhood was basically predictable. It's really incredible how easy people's political views are to stereotype - and how accurate you will find your judgments being - based on what kind of home design they live in.
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