Rights aren't Right
“The right to the city is, therefore, far more than a right
of individual access to the resources that the city embodies: it is a right to
change ourselves by changing the city more after our heart’s desire. It is, moreover,
a collective rather than an individual right since changing the city inevitably
depends upon the exercise of a collective power over the processes of urbanization.
The freedom to make and remake ourselves and our cities is, I want to argue, one
of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” – David Harvey
As David Harvey mentioned in the quote above, we as
architects and as the public have some type of collective right to change the
city to better suit our needs. Unfortunately, oftentimes what is better for
some (the rich) might not always be better for all (everyone else). Throughout
the past 3 years working in Greenville, I have had an internal dilemma about architecture
and urbanization/gentrification in general. The old mills in Greenville that
are being converted into apartments were briefly mentioned during class today. The
firm I work at is responsible for many of these projects, and they are often
located in less-desirable neighborhoods. We often have to convince the
neighbors at the neighborhood meetings to allow us to convert these massive,
abandoned buildings into something useful. They know it is in the city’s best
interest, but not theirs. Rent prices become extremely high because living in
an old loft apartment is super hip and it is only a matter of time until the
run-down businesses and homes surrounding the new apartment buildings are
bought out, wiped out, and changed into something new. Yes, this will make the
neighborhood more “appealing,” but at what cost?
You know what's really scary, the fact that I can't even afford most places on the market now. But anyway, that's such a tough position. It's unfortunate we can't have better social housing or systems in place for all of our society. To me, it's crazy how we treat everyone with less money to their name like it's their fault they weren't born into a million dollar family or smart enough to get out of poverty. It sucks that America's solution to everything is to push out to "ugly" and forget about it. When really we should be trying to incorporate these people into successful social housing in the city. When people like where they live and feel supported, they thrive.
ReplyDeleteI have a similar dilemma and it's one that I was also forced to tackle head on when I was working in city planning. We were working with HUD on a public housing plan and I feel like gentrification, our housing demand, and the global housing inequity is an issue that we still have no idea how to solve. As Harvey states in The Right to the City, "we seem to lack the stomach for systematic critique" of this problem. To try and improve conditions through new development means that you are gentrifying the neighborhood, to leave it alone means that you don't care. If you are interested, there are some really interesting equitable finance mechanisms such as community land trusts (https://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/clts/index.html) that start to combat this catch 22 in an interesting way. But, most of the time, these are not implemented intentionally as a preventative measure and in relationship to urban design. To relate to our last module, I think that we need to find a new role of the urban designer or planner as well as how we talked about a new role of the architect.
ReplyDeleteLydia, it is a dilemma that just won't go away. Something that I did not fully realize until my time spent in Charleston and listening to Ray discuss with our class about gentrification is it can be found all the way to the supermarket. He spoke of how a local grocery store began to have newer, higher priced items on the shelves, a larger diversity of some products, and a decrease in others. Upon inquiring it was due to the change of population in that area of Charleston. Funny how something seemingly so innocent in the grocery store has such a heavy, underlying meaning to it.
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