People have a right to the city such as engaging the city improvement schemes and ways to live. In the film “Brooklyn”, Anderson shows us the gentrification of Brooklyn begins in 1988. The old neighborhood is forced to reshaping due to the government’s plan of rezoning. As a result, hundred small businesses are evited by the developers and the politicians. Small stores are replaced by high rise luxury housing and chain retail. The small store owners are so desperate about to be forced to moving out of their district due to the “improvements” by the developers and politicians. The old residents who created a culture that got dismissed with oblivious racism. The city officials disregard the needs of the less privileged is as same as much-maligned as Robert Moses. The film of Citizen Jane: Battle For The City is about Jane Jacobs has a voice against the most powerful ideas that urban planning movement of willing to displace the entire city blocks by rebuilding them, and she doesn’t agree the beautiful architecture was superior to crowded streets. She insists the mixture of stores, offices, and housings for longtime residents will make the city great rather than nationwide to build new high-rise, civic plazas, and office buildings interspersed with parks. Compared to Le Corbusier saw the streets as “an dislocated organ” that is crowed, noisy and unpleasant and want to change it by building multiple high-rise and beautiful skyscrapers, Jane Jacobs saw something different about the streets that she thinks a “sidewalk ballet” of people interacting with and depending on each other. Longtime residents know their neighbors for long time which provide them emotional connection and make them feel safe in their life. Jacobs focus on civil lives such as how sewer system working, what exist in that area for people use a lot, and the connection between the streets and the neighborhoods and the function of the city that is similar as the ecosystem. In the other hand, Robert Moses is a hungry and powerful man who built highways, housings, parks by displacing thousands of people. He is willing to sacrifice small group of people to achieve his goal, and he would take down anyone in his path without caring the consequences of his actions. Even though some plans are good for the city, his action causes lots of people get isolated and desperate.

The local government should implement the solution such as create special zoning to protect small business by limiting land owners who couldn’t consolidate several small areas to build big and high-rise buildings for privilege people. They should facilitate the development of communities and their life style on the basis of the right to the city and the right to living. Urban planners and developers can not just come in and build something they want without considering the old neighborhoods. They need to figure out the way to preserve the neighborhood character while improving the city and inviting the density, and they have to build enough affordable housings for the old habitants, they must avoid increasing the segregation and inequality in the city. Both of developers, government and urban planner need to reform the land use process and create benefits for communities with their consciousness about the preserving the old neighborhoods in stead of treating them as an obstacle to powerful people to making more money, and ensure the city with sustainability, democracy, equity, and social justice. People do have their own rights to the city which is about democratic control in the city with the right to access, occupy and use urban area instead of demolishing and evicting the old neighborhoods.

People do have the right to stay in the communities that they want to live because they are the  first group of people who live in there. They witnessed the development of the community from prosperous to desolate. Small businesses had established relationships with their customers and residents already get used to meet their neighbors in the street every day. In the film “My Brooklyn”, the local governments, urban planners and decision makers had released the new plan to rezone the downtown Brooklyn, which they forced those small businesses to move out, so they could build their luxurious stores or apartments. However, they didn’t offer any financial assistance or provide the information of recommend location for small business owners move to other than just inform the owners to leave within a month. I don’t agree on how the local governments and city planners treat small businesses of the local community. Yes, those planners may try to come up with a new plan to make the community better, but they didn’t make a reasonable deal with the small business owners before they start with their plan, which what they did is just inform the small business owners and snatch their property. The local governments and urban planners should hold several meetings and survey to inform not just the small businesses but also the residents that live in the community to ask their opinion of the new plan. Meanwhile, the city planners should research and make a site analysis about what people, and the community actual need instead of building something that shouldn’t belong to that area.

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.