Do people have a right to the city? Do longtime residents and businesses have a right to remain where they are?  If so, how should local governments, urban planners, and other decision-makers ensure these rights are maintained? *

People do have right to the city because they live here. They are the ones that are going to experience all these new changes. I believe that local governments, urban planners, and other decision-makers should assure the rights of longtime residents and businesses to have the right to remain where they are due to, they have been in this place for a longtime, trying to make a living. For example, in the documentary “My Brooklyn”, they didn’t care that they were shutting down all these small businesses and at no cost helped them move somewhere else to continue their business. These local governments, urban planners and other decision makers should stop and think what people want instead of what they believe they need. Urban planning should be about making the city better for the people living there, not to remove people and neighborhoods. For example, in the documentary “Battle of The City”, Robert Moses started to want to represent the people and fix the problems in these congested neighborhood and just make life easier for those living in these neighborhoods. But instead along the process he forgot about what makes a neighborhood. Which is people, kids playing on the streets, the safety of people watching the streets. Therefore, I think residents and businesses have a right to remain where they are because us people need to have a voice in the decision making when it comes to the neighborhood they live in.