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My son went to law school @ Washingon University in St. Louis, so I’ve had recent three years’ experience of visiting the city, learning to walk long distances to get around (because we couldn’t walk through) the gated communities there, learning along the way about some of the history of racism and segregation in that particular conjunction of South-and-Midwest.

I’m writing here now, though, to say less about the particularities of that geographical location than about a more general phenomenon of “paranoid space.” This concept comes from a 1994 pamphlet by Steven Flusty, Building Paranoia: the Proliferation of Interdictory Space and the Erosion of Spatial Justice, which looks @ all the exclusionary design strategies that we have used to create public-but-protected-and-policed spaces he calls “stealthy” (camouflaged), “slippery” (can’t be reached), “crusty” (can’t be accessed), “prickly” (can’t be occupied), and “jittery” (can’t be used unobserved…). Flusty reviews the various forms of “interdictory space” we now incorporate into our urban and suburban environments, including pocket ghettos, and “strongpoints of sale” (like secured malls, where members of the public are redefined as public enemies…)

This is my current context for thinking about the report that Darren Wilson stopped Michael Brown and his friend “because they were walking down the street blocking traffic.” It’s an account of spaces of daily life under proprietary control—replaced now by all the images of public protest and assault.

I’m struck by the contrast of these images with what Serendip offers here: a site (several commentators thank Alice for “creating space for this conversation”--) where traffic is not “blocked,” but exchange encouraged.  How to make our streets into more “open forums” like this one? How to make forums like this one more engaged, like the streets of Ferguson? Less an arsenal of exclusion?