One of Segregation’s main premises (first outlined on p. 11) is that urban residential segregation is a tool of power.
How does this tool work? By dividing the city into separate racial zones, urban segregationists interpose four things– physical distance, physical obstacles, legal obstacles, and human beings (often armed) empowered to enforce the legal obstacles–between the areas where people of color reside and the areas of the city where opportunities for income, wealth, recreation, and health are concentrated. Residential segregationists, in other words, rely on the fact that in all of the world’s cities, geography is destiny—one’s location in urban space to a great extent determines one’s life chances. The physical and legal barriers segregationists place within urban space help to weaken the geographical position occupied by people of color and thus further undermine their likely life chances.