Did design have an effect on our current hyper-polarized politics?

If you guys haven’t read The Big Sort by Bill Bishop, I suggest everyone should.

We should not be surprised apparently by our current hyperbolic political environment. 

The citizens of the US have been sorting themselves into more and more political homogeneous communities. Red counties are becoming redder and blue counties are becoming more blue.

We have also stratified ourselves by income levels, look at the suburbs. There has also been a dropping participation in mainline churches, unions, fraternal organizations and other groupings. So people are retreating into these either liberal or conservative enclaves. As the old joke goes talking about the 04 presidential election. “I don’t understand why Bush won, everyone I know voted for Kerry.” And thanks to blogs, internet and cable news networks we have this echo-chamber that keeps holding a mirror up to us and just telling us what we want to hear. But I am curious are architects, planners and landscape architects design to blame somewhat for designing such communities. Another great book is Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin. He deals with a second-wave of white flight fleeing the more diverse coastal urban areas for more predominantly white-communities. 

Focus: Does culture follow design or vice-versa? Is Design reflexive? And are there ways planners, designers and other stake-holders that can create more diverse areas ethnically and economically? Should we promote such areas? Do we need them? 

here is a video of Rich Benjamin talking about Whitopias