This study examines the extent to which road connectivity and physical barriers—such as highways, railroad tracks, and waterways—structure spatial patterns of racial and ethnic residential segregation and shape how segregation is locally experienced by residents. Our focus is on physical barriers that are also social boundaries—features of the built environment that reduce physical connectivity and mark a social boundary between geographic areas. We measure residential segregation with attention to the proximity and road connectivity between locations, which allows us to identify areas where physical barriers mark a social boundary between geographic areas with different racial and ethnic compositions. Our approach integrates ethnographic observation of three such areas in Houston, Texas, to investigate residents' perceptions and local experience of social and spatial division. The results reveal that physical barriers are associated with heightened levels of ethnoracial segregation, and residents experience the barriers as symbolic markers of perceived distinctions between groups and physical impediments to social connection. Although barriers like highways, railroad tracks, and bayous are not inherently harbingers of ethnoracial segregation, our study demonstrates that physical barriers can provide the infrastructure for social boundaries and facilitate durable neighborhood racial divisions.

本研究探讨了道路连通性和物理障碍（例如高速公路、铁轨和水道）在多大程度上构成了种族和族裔居住隔离的空间模式，并影响了当地居民体验隔离的方式。我们的重点是物理障碍，它们也是社会边界——建筑环境的特征，减少了物理连通性并标志着地理区域之间的社会边界。我们衡量居住隔离时会关注地点之间的距离和道路连通性，这使我们能够确定物理障碍标志着不同种族和民族组成的地理区域之间的社会边界的区域。我们的方法整合了对德克萨斯州休斯顿三个此类地区的民族志观察，以调查居民对社会和空间划分的看法和当地经验。结果表明，物理障碍与种族隔离程度的加剧有关，居民将这些障碍视为群体之间感知差异的象征性标志，以及社会联系的物理障碍。尽管高速公路、铁轨和河口等障碍本质上并不是种族隔离的先兆，但我们的研究表明，物理障碍可以为社会边界提供基础设施，并促进持久的社区种族分裂。