Restrictions

“To claim the right to the city in the sense I mean it here is to claim some kind of shaping power over the processes of urbanization, over the ways in which our cities are made and re-made and to do so in a fundamental and radical way.”

According to Harvey, the people who live in a city should have a major influence over how their city is organized and designed. In present time, this is hardly the case. Sure people are able to go to committee meetings to discuss their opinions on certain projects being built. But in the end the architect doesn’t necessarily have to listen to them. They can take account for their opinions but they are not required by law to have to take action if the majority of the congregation doesn’t like something. Also, the way current laws are written within some cities makes architectural design very restrictive to some degree. For example, some cities in the Dallas area have very strict regulations on façade treatment for public and residential buildings. In Frisco, TX public buildings are required for 70% of the façade facing the public street to have a masonry veneer finish. In Arlington, it’s required for homes to have 75% of their envelopes be covered in brick or stone veneer. I realize that this notion might be trying to create a sense of uniformity within these cities but to me this seems to be way too extreme. A home owner or a client should have more freedom to choose how their building should look like, without having the city pressing these strict regulations on them. Sure, having some consistency for building designs is a good thing. But cut these people some slack: let them be able to have a little bit more creative freedom.