It’s assumed that innovative architectural design and progressive city planning promise to improve lives. But what if you and yours are locked out of the promise? After centuries of inequality, Black communities continue to inherit segregated neighborhoods with compromised infrastructures. Exposure to environmental toxins and unequal access to institutions are just some of the problems they face. As the writer and critic Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it, the built environment “argues against the truth of who you are.” In this exhibition, 10 U.S. cities are placed under a magnifying glass. For each, an intervention is proposed, one that reconstructs a fractured and unfair plan. —E.C.