@zagone @sidereal @PedestrianError @Theblueone @jonny
It's been more than a decade since I've relevant stuff by folks like Mike Davis, Edward Soja, or Samuel Delany, but there's almost certainly multiple people who've written about the material & planning histories of this part of the built environment.
You definitely might look to things on Robert Moses's changes to NYC transportation as a start: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/05/887386869/how-transportation-racism-shaped-america
Folks like Nick Mitchell and others have also done a lot to connect how campuses & suburbs & prisons work as "warehousing" of people treated as surplus.
Here's a conference panel I desperately tried to type notes on: https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/our-conference-notes/2015-05-21-cultural-studies-association-2015-opening-plenary-panel/
I've also heard good arguments—again, can't remember exactly from where—that whiteness was reinforced/encouraged by the production of suburbs. Making people isolated & structurally encouraging housing to be treated as an investment reduces social ties and makes it harder to organize unions or other working political groups.
@ryanrandall @zagone @sidereal @PedestrianError @Theblueone @jonny It's struck me how most workplaces I've been in are designed as fortresses, with walls and controlled points of entry with guards. And somewhere I read an article about how the "corporate campus" was designed to isolate workers, so they don't leave the work site even for meals.