Human history is all about improvements, we get out of the cave and lives in a tent, after that, we abandoned the tent then build house, and now it time to leave the house and move to building. In my opinion, a City is called City aren’t how many lands it had, neither of how it was built, but the density of the populations. It is normal to me that when the population of a City growth to certain level. The governor, people in charge of the power and wealth, need to find a way of expanding the City. Land is a limited resource, so making more buildings are the best way of expanding the City. Human are different than animal because we are intelligent, and language is one of the best ways to show human intelligent. For the long human history time, we had not lost our communication skill to severe condition, then why should we fear of loosing it just to move out of houses and be put in buildings. To be honest, does an open street safer then a close play ground or park? I believe a park or play ground surrounded with walls are safer. I’ve been in Hong Kong for couple days, stayed at one of my relative apartments. However, the place where my relative lived had no house, all buildings. To see a house, one need to drive a car for an hour. In those few days, I meet most of the family who lived in the same building and some of the people lived in another building near it. I had the feeling of the whole building is a big family, they help each other’s. just like the scene on the film “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City” when kids are playing on the street and parents watch them at the windows or in front of the doors. City is everyone’s City and community is everyone’s community too. We all have the right and the responsibility to make it better.
The films we watched in class “My Brooklyn” and “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City” clearly shows that we do not have any right to our City. Many changes can be made automatically without asking the community for our opinion. Before our city used to be safe whereas everyone got along and would look after each other children. In our city today, we are afraid to walk during the day or late at night because it became very violent. Also, while building the highway they did not think the problems it was going to cause. The traffic in our city is insane. I feel like every change that is made to our city brings another problem behind it. The Fulton Mall is where many people knew each other and would like to shop, but now what prevents them from going is that there are many tall buildings that were constructed for office use. Many persons no longer feel the sense of going because it is not the same. If we worked as a community there would not have been many problems in our city, everyone will feel secure, and would have a different perspective about our city.
In the movie “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City” clearly shows that we have the right to the change of our City!! For example, the Manhattan express way. The people who is in charge of the project unsuccessfully build the express way because we got enough people involved in the counter side of it. A City project cannot be stopped by few people, but if we had enough people, it could be stopped. For the Fulton mall, as we can see , people who is against it was the small business owner. However, when the author ask other people if they like to shop at the Fulton mall, not that many people like it and some dislike it.
Change in a city is managed by constant improvements whether it is a positive change or a negative change. The improvements in a city if often or almost all the time decided by the community of people who are involved with the area. There are also times in which the community of individuals don’t get a say in decision on the improvements presented. Based on the two films we watched in class, “My Brooklyn” and “Citizen Jane: Battle for the People”, improvements within a city both stem from an idea of a good improvement in a city based on its addition to the community of new buildings or even new freeways but weren’t mainly decided on individuals whom lived in those communities and caused some issues and difficulties. I feel as if people whom reside within the community that is due for improvement to happen, they should be granted full input on their city’s change since they have the right to their community. Everyone has the right to their city, including us.