Yes, people should have a right to the city because they are the ones who inhabit it. They pay taxes that help the city develop, vote for the city’s representatives, and are responsible for the city’s culture.
Longtime residents and businesses have a right to remain where they live because of the reasons mentioned above. The documentary “My Brooklyn”, explores this by looking at gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn and how it caused the community to lose homes and businesses due to increasing property values and collusion between developers and government officials. The message of the documentary consists of the following; raise awareness to plans that could impact the neighborhood, make sure everyone involved is heard, and carefully examine developments unfolding in the community (Dean 2015).
The way local governments, urban planners, and other decision-makers can ensure these rights are maintained is by creating a government office that can accurately represent the community’s residency needs, create laws that protect tenants and housing rights, and not collude with an entity that wishes to undermine said rights. This sort of protection took place in the documentary “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, where Robert Moses, a public official, sparred with Jane Jacobs’ philosophy on urban development. Moses had a desire to remove “cancerous” parts of New York City and build large infrastructures in its place. Jane Jacobs, a woman who examined the neighborhood by living in it, disagreed with Moses and argued that the inhabitants of the city should have a say on what gets built in their community (Kenny 2017). Jacobs was maintaining the people’s rights by showing how Moses’ projects would affect the city negatively, creating a network of support, and rallying with residents until the projects were canceled.
Works Cited
Dean, Allison Lirish. My Brooklyn Study Guide. 2015. https://mybrooklynmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/MYB-StudyGuideFINAL.pdf
Kenny, Glenn. “Review: Jacobs and Moses Star in ‘Citizen Jane: Battle for the City’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Apr. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/movies/citizen-jane-battle-for-the-city-review.html.
