We can all agree on one thing; change is the only constant in life. Change can be scary, risky, unpredictable, uncontrollable, and unacceptable. This we can’t stop, what can we do about change then?  Napoleon once said, “One must change one’s tactics every 10 years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.” In today’s society the pace of change is immensely faster, and it will only continue to accelerate. The question then becomes, how do we manage change and who has the right to make the decisions that cause these changes?

In the movies “My Brooklyn” and “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, the one constant was Change. In both movies, the decisions for the change in the area was made by high ranking bureaucrats and the civilians were left to deal with the effects of the change. They were collateral damages and the loss of their businesses and homes were looked on as acceptable losses for “the greater good”. Changes in cities shouldn’t always be about money, there are people who call cities their home and should at least be considered in some capacity while making these changes. As citizens and inhabitants of a city, we should have as much rights to the city as the decision makers because at the end of the day, without the people who make cities, there would not be any cities. We would just have a cluster of empty buildings.

The City is what it is because of the people who live in it