He stood on the pristine stretch of his back alley and eyed the tomato on the vine in Mrs. Bracken's backyard. It was lush and ripe red and so very compelling. He surveyed the expanse of rowhouses; no one was about. He slipped the gate's latch and was in and out of the yard in a blink. He cupped the fruit in his two small hands, took a deep breath, and launched it. It hung in the blue of the August sky for an instant before rocketing back. Splat!

Out of nowhere, Mrs. Williams appeared, leaning over her chain-link fence, head shaking with disappointment. "Boy, I know your mother raised you better."

"Yes ma'am," he managed as the exhilaration choked in his throat.

Now he knelt beside the scrub bucket, working the bristled brush to gather up the mangled pulp. His mother, Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. Bracken stood over him, radiating a collective displeasure. " Just wait until your father gets home"

A wall, as a definitive term, is described and visualized as a barrier, an obstacle, or an obstruction. Physically and metaphorically, it suggests confinement, separation, struggle, imprisonment, or even hate. Walls can be tools in which to hide objects, systems, situations, or people. But what if these walls can be interpreted as something else, something nurturing?

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DETERIORATING URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE AND SOCIAL DECAY HAPPENING IN OUR CITY, THE FIRST STEP TO A SELF-ACTUALIZED PROCESS THAT BRINGS INDIVIDUALS BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY IS TO PROVIDE A SAFE AND NURTURING ENVIRONMENT.

Block by block, a new intervention-"hidden walls"-will provide a boundary between external inadequacies and internal possibilities. Existing rowhouses of an urban block will be divided into two independent parts by physical walls constructed inside the structures. To allow for lively street life, the first floor of these buildings will be available to businesses and the general public; the other floors of the houses open into a courtyard accessible only by people living within the walls. This separation provides a clear delineation of public and private space and offers an added layer of physical safety.

SOME MAY SAY THAT WE CANNOT AFFORD SUCH AN APPROACH; BUT WE WOULD ARGUE THAT WE CAN AFFORD NOTHING LESS.

Others would say that there is not the knowledge base for such a generational plan; but we could point to numerous demonstration programs at every age and stage of a child's life to say that while all the evidence is not in, we know more than enough to move forward. The question is whether we have the will.

In the 1940s, when the great migration from the South began, African Americans came to Baltimore as had others before them, poor in pocket but rich in the intangible chemistry of self-in-community. They found work in factories paying good union wages and providing good union benefits. With the security of a paycheck and steady work, they crafted neighborhoods that functioned in the normally imperfect but adequate way, providing sufficient sustenance and support, comfort and connection to keep everyone afloat. The children were reared with a sense of expectation and went off to school prepared to learn. They made accomplishments despite being judged separate and unequal.

For most, life was good.

Then, without fanfare or warning, the economic engine sustaining their world lurched. America had shifted gears and stepped on the gas, leaving the Industrial Age but a speck in the rearview mirror. History will record it as one of those seminal moments when market forces converge with unforgiving power to rip entire populations from the fabric of a viable reality. This event was as fundamentally disruptive as the Trail of Tears and the Great Depression. Today, we know these forces as globalization and technology. They are touted as stepping-stones to a better life, but for a workforce left without work, waking up to a wasteland devoid of opportunity or any meaningful definition, they were anything but.

PEOPLE NO LONGER VALUED OR NEEDED OFTEN DISAPPEAR INTO HAPLESS THIRD-WORLD POVERTY, A STATE IN WHICH ALL OF A PERSON'S STRENGTH IS EXPENDED ON THE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE.

But this time it was different. While America went about the business of business, those abandoned went about forging a new economic engine out of a singular human need: the toxic fantasy of addiction. For many who could not escape, the buying and selling of dope and coke filled the void left by the loss of legitimate opportunity. It was a new construct based on raw, unfettered capitalism. Now man viewed his fellow man as a means to an end, not an end in itself, negating rules, codes, and allegiances. If you had the mind and the might, there was meaning to be found in cash and power. If you faltered and were weak, there was meaning to be found in the pipe and syringe.

At first adults competed for a place in the new pecking order, but very quickly-frighteningly so-custom became culture. Children were the casualties. Many were neglected. Others were crimped up by a cruelty of punches and sarcasm, of lies and let-downs. Ironically this soul-jarring process prepared the children elegantly for the new paradigm of the corner drug culture.

For more than thirty years, the slow conflagration of despair and addiction has burnt through the neighborhoods, with thousands killed, tens of thousands incarcerated, and hundreds of thousands marginalized. This has been the visible horror recorded on the daily news for all to see. What has been largely invisible, and in the long run more profound, is the disintegration of the social infrastructure. The loss of community has doomed many to a freefall in a downward spiral that became a self-perpetuating process of failure. They went from poor to impoverished, a change not of degree but of kind. The adults lost economic well-being, job skills, work ethic, and that intangible chemistry of self-in-community. The children lost the expectation to succeed, and if they came prepared to learn it was more from duty than desire.

At first, the government relied on traditional social programs such as unemployment insurance and welfare to jump-start a population caught in a fog of suspended animation. For some people these programs were the way out. But as more jobs relocated, the mechanisms were overwhelmed and were eventually inadequate for the task. Realizing the severity of the problem, the government turned to nontraditional approaches. Under the banner of the War on Poverty, it launched a series of initiatives such as Model Cities, Community Action, Job Corps and prisoner reentry programs that were designed to target specific needs. Again, for some these were a lifeline out of the abyss.

The private sector also stepped in to try to alleviate the suffering. Soup kitchens, homeless shelters, drug treatment centers, and community health clinics soon dotted the landscape. As public schools failed, preschool programs, juvenile interventions, after-school programs, and mentoring programs were established to stabilize children. But for many, these programs and government initiatives could not individually or in combination be capable of stitching together the social infrastructure necessary for the long-term health of the entire community.

WE PROPOSE A SHIFT OF EMPHASIS FROM WHAT HAS BECOME A BOUQUET OF DISCONNECTED, SHORT-TERM DEMONSTRATION PROGRAMS TO A LONG-TERM COMMITMENT TO REBUILDING THE SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF OUR COMMUNITIES, BLOCK-BY-BLOCK AND NEIGHBORHOOD-BY-NEIGHBORHOOD.

Rather than quick, dramatic, highly publicized programs that disappear once their seed money is gone, we propose rebuilding neighborhoods by working with and supporting those who reside there-those who are committed to rebuilding their neighborhoods through supporting the most vulnerable residents: infants and their young parents.

We propose weaving a web of supports for these young families so that from before conception there is nutrition; from before birth there are the prenatal supports necessary for children to be born healthy. It means doing whatever it takes to secure both the health and vitality of these young neighborhood residents and their families; and it means providing ongoing support throughout infancy, young childhood, the school-age years, and adolescence. It involves physical and mental health services, parenting education and child education, social services, and vocational training services; and at the end of high school it involves a promissory note of employment or higher education. It means creating a space where a sense of community can return.

This concept of inserting new support elements in the old block allows architecture to become a prosthetic process of local regeneration, rather than an evasive development of erasure and dominance. The hidden walls run along all four edges of the block, forming a continuous boundary around the re-planned interior courtyard. The system provides the community with daycare facilities, a communal kitchen, an urban farm, residences, local exchange systems for goods and services, and more. This protected area acts as an extension of the womb, a child-centered environment that not only focuses on providing a space for community-based learning, health promotion, and integrated social networks, but also on rebuilding the very fabric of community life.

In the past, unspoken laws ruled neighborhoods. These "hidden walls" governed people's behavior, but in today's inner-city neighborhoods these unspoken codes of conduct don't exist anymore. But what if we brought them back? What if we put up walls that would create safe spaces in the midst of dangerous environments? Then maybe the decaying walls of our neighborhoods could experience new life. Maybe we could surpass our immutable failures.

We have the knowledge. We need the will. Failure has taught us that the solution will not come with the quick fix of a magic bullet. Instead, we need to be prepared for the long haul. It will take time to create a process that will give those who are disenfranchised the means to take control of their lives, both individually and in-community.