Boundaries

In the book Planet of Slums, written by Mike Davis he writes about the different boundaries that are built into a city system, some not even visibly so. According to Davis there are two different types of boundaries, hard and soft. Both types of boundaries are put in place to exclude certain individuals from certain areas. The unwanted people are usually lower class, homeless, or deviants who give a bad image to the surrounding area.

A hard boundary is one that is visibly built into the environment. Los Angeles is a city that has many visible hard boundaries. This is most likely because of the high levels of homelessness and poverty that are present in LA. Some things that the government did to physically exclude the homeless were change the seats at bus stops. They were all changed from benches to round tube like seats. This was done to make sleeping on the benches uncomfortable and to prevent the homeless from doing so. Another major example of a hard boundary is the road system in LA. The highways were built to divide communities and isolate the homeless into a centralized area. They isolated the old downtown that had become overrun with homeless and poor and built a new and improved one. The homeless became isolated because with the new highway system a car is absolutely necessary. They were no longer as visible and are not considered as much of a problem. This is a textbook example of a hard boundary because roads are a physical entity that is built into the environment, which is exactly what a hard boundary is.

A soft boundary is less visible. It is present and still built into the environment but not as clear. Examples of a soft boundary would be when a private officer patrols a public area. They really have no authority yet they refuse to allow "certain" people into public areas because they are considered undesirable. Another soft boundary would be a fenced in grassy area where it is not permitted to walk on. This fence creates a boundary excluding people from entry.