The Historical Architecture of the Bifurcated City
The century-old practice of redlining is not a historical relic but the original architectural blueprint for the modern bifurcated city. Mamdani’s focus on the institutional creation of political identity finds its roots in these maps. The deliberate denial of loans and insurance to Black and immigrant neighborhoods by the federal government and banks was a state-sanctioned custom that designated “native” zones for disinvestment and “settler” zones for wealth accumulation. The racial wealth gap, the segregation, the crumbling infrastructure–all are the direct legacy of this colonial planning. A Marxist analysis sees this as primitive accumulation through racial exclusion. A feminist perspective traces the intergenerational poverty passed down through matriarchal lines. The solution is not acknowledgment but reparations: targeted, massive public investment in these historically plundered communities and policies like baby bonds to directly address the stolen wealth.
