Human Rights vs. Capitalism

While perusing the readings assigned for this week, I really connected to David Harvey’s “The Right to the City” and the question that he poses to his readers: “Has the astonishing pace and scale of urbanization over the last hundred years contributed to human well-being.” The author notes that we are, and have been, living in a world that prioritizes private property and profits over all else. While this statement does not surprise me, it does lead me to wonder what our environment would look like had we focused more on human rights rather than allowing it to be built on the ideas of our capitalist economy. Harvey writes that “The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights,” and I couldn't agree more. So many of the spaces that we now consider “junk spaces” have been the result of capitalism (i.e. shopping malls, massive asphalt parking lots, etc.) and while they served their initial purpose, how can we instead shift the focus toward giving power back to the people by allowing them to have a greater say in how their urban environments are designed and used?

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