Welcome to the Paradox

Arguably the first formal urban designer, Haussmann solved financial and political problems of the time through the rebuilding of Paris. While the term "Haussmann's Paris" generally invokes imagery of wide boulevards brimming with activity it also always brings up sadness and frustration about the complete destruction of communities that were literally in the way. What I have never been able to grasp is why this destruction continues to happen. How has a better solution not been found yet? Why do we, as a nation but also as a global community, continue to displace some of our most at-risk people? Time and time again we take from the people that have the least just to give more to the people who already have the most. And then I read this quote from The Right to the City; 

 "The suburbanization of the United State was not merely a matter of new infrastructures. As it happened in Second Empire Paris, it entailed a radical transformation in lifestyles and produced a whole new way of life [...] the question was now how to rescue capitalism from its own contradictions and in this, if history was to be any guide, the urban process was bound to play a significant role."

Urban design and capitalism are so tightly woven together that it is impossible to evaluate one without the other. Urban design as it exists today was created in support of capitalism. I'm struggling with this moment as the realization forms.

How can a communal right to the city exist in a society that demands a social and financial hierarchy? When most of our "public" space has been privatized how do we even start to imagine equitable ownership of the city? Most of the city, even at the street level, is no longer accessible to the public. Plazas owned by the building beside them, parking spaces you have to pay to occupy, parks with benches that prevent all behaviors other than what is deemed as appropriate... But urban design as it exists now, as shown over and over again, cannot be the solution. It is it's entanglement with capitalism that only allows for gentrification as the outcome of (sometimes) good intentions. Equitable capitalism? yeah right.