According to the article “Urban walking isn’t just good for the soul” made me realize that during my commute to school I run to the train instead of focusing on my surroundings. Seeing the same thing every day gets boring. It seems like I know my neighborhood from the back of my head. There is nothing interesting to do around my neighborhood. There are days where men just sit down in front of the building looking at people pass by. When I take the train to school during my 45-minute ride I play sudoku which keeps me entertained. I do not pay attention to who is coming in or out the train. When I walk to class it is hard to walk fast because it gets so crowdy which sometimes can make you get annoyed. I agree with the article that it gets boring seeing the same surroundings every day because even if they open a new place I do not enter the store at all. I just walk by like if it had always existed.

After I read “Urban Walking Isn’t Just Good For The Soul” and using this reading for observational exercise with my everyday commute to college which is by train. It has become a daily routine that after reading this article I realize that I haven’t give a lot of attention to my surroundings, sometimes I see something new at the train station or sidewalks, but at the same time I wonder if it really is something new or if it’s something I haven’t notice. The article points out that the countryside is boring because “one field is very like another, and many of them are filled with cows…” which i totally disagree, to my personal opinion it’s better the countryside rather than a noisy and congested city.

After reading “Urban Walking isn’t just Good for the Soul” and thinking about my daily walks to the train station, I then realize I don’t even pay attention to my neighborhood anymore. I’ve walked that same route for many years to the point where it’s a norm. In the article John Elledge states “I’ve since done that route so often that I’ve grown bored with it,” which relates with exactly how I feel about my walks to and from the train station every day. I did notice they added a new traffic light to a block that never had one. The only reason why I saw was that it affects me when it comes to crossing the street, some cars still don’t realize that the traffic light is there and they were both at the crosswalk looking at each other like are you going to cross or not.

City changes according to the change of society and culture. In my opinion, I believe that people are the major source of that change because people are expressing their culture and their traditional that they learned from their parents in the city that they are living in now. They change the atmosphere of the place that they are living in according to their culture. You can see that very clearly in the cities that have many different people from different countries. Brooklyn is a great example of that, it shows how city changes according to the people culture because it has the most emigrants from everywhere around the world. As you can see in the film “My Brooklyn”, it shows how society change very fast in past few years in Brooklyn because the traditional that people express from all around the world on one city. They are not controlling that change because they are doing that without feeling that they are impacting on the other people around them. Of course, people have the right to manage change in the city and I see this in a good way because you can learn a lot of new things and information from the people around you. In Brooklyn, you can meet hundreds of different cultures which is a great experience for anyone. I totally believe that PEOPLE are the CITY.

How is change managed in a city? Who manages that changes? Do people have a right to the city?

As the population of New York City is actively increasing the city itself seems to be improving overall. There are new changes that benefit New Yorkers as a place to live. Mayor Bloomberg, who agree to the ideas of “improve this city”. The mayor is allowing the plans of tall buildings to be built in Brooklyn. However, there are cons to those plans. In a film called “My Brooklyn”, they explain how Brooklyn’s markets and stores are being overpriced and kicking people from their location to replacing with new modern office buildings. We as New Yorkers should have a right to our city. This means that our voice should be heard.  However, now they are trying to clear out Fulton Mall… A place where you can hear jazz playing and people promoting their sales. People who work at the mall are trying to protest to keep it open. However, the city isn’t listening to them and giving everyone a deadline to leave the building. These people are being mistreated. Their voices are not truly being heard. So, do we have a right in our city? When it really matters… the people who “own” the city (government) make it harder for the true creators of New York to promote change. The true creators are the people working in that mall pushing their limits to create business and earn money for their families.

The city as we know it has gone through a lot of changes from industrialization to Modernization. Change is inevitable and it happens everyday in ways we might not even realize sometimes. However even though short the history of the city has shown that change in cities is unstoppable and sometimes not at the hands of the people. Change is a scary thing we might not all deal with or want to deal with but are forced into it, like the people from the “My brooklyn” movie. Even though they did not want to and wanted to save the fulton mall, most store owners had to move and leave their business because the area was going through process of gentrification.  I believe people do get a say in the change of the city , however they aren’t always as strong to make the changes happen. As an example in such a big and modern city New York, it is mainly managed by corrupt bureaucrats and politicians, whose main interest is money or to protect the privileged ones forgetting about the low/working class. It seems quite unfair because as the people who live in the city and help grow the city we should have a say or right in it, and even though the democratic system claims to be one of the people we can all agree that’s not always the case. My brooklyn is an example on how the people can get put down easily and lose all their properties and culture because of  gentrification. However in the film “Citizen Jane:Battle for the city” we can see how when people get together and fight for what the think is right they can make change happen or in this case stop it from happening in a way that the people were the only ones to lose. It should be remembered that a city wouldn’t grow without the people living in it, so as the creators and residents they should be taken more into consideration when change happens, because most of the time they just end up being the collateral damage and seen as a minority.

Through watching the films of “My Brooklyn” and “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, we see that it is impossible to avoid the changes along with the developments of cities. As we see, most power which used to decide a change was held by the government or some other industries. Old streets and old systems created a specific environment and safety for our public life, however, when it becomes an obstacle for the development of a city, personal property or privatization will no longer be respected. We appreciate what had done by Jane on battling on the decision of tearing up the entire neighborhood. Without her hard work, we would not know what New York would be like today. Still no one will blame on the heavy traffic in New York today because that was how it is like always. But this situation will not last forever, since people and city are always counted as a whole and the thoughts of people are always keep changing, the original cities will be changed along with the developments of society eventually.

“Change” within cities come about when there is a shift of ideas and ideals to make a profit from the land that is currently being used to bring communities together. From the films we watched there was one command trend that I observed. Where ever there was a possibility to make a profit and drive out the lower class is when the “city” would push to implement change. Not everyone can be pleased when change happens especially the people that it affects however, the victim to these changes should have a strong influence on how this change is implemented because the future of these cities rely on how people interact with the cities and its environment.