The right to the City and Public Space

The right to the City and Public Space

Introduction

The urban space increasingly dominates the planet, because of the fact that it is the urban spaces that are developing and providing individuals a better life. Therefore, for this purpose, people from the rural spaces have also been moving into the urban spaces, thus, helping the urban spaces in becoming even more dominating in our planet. This is also known as the process of Urbanization. Urbanization is also a process that prioritizes the territory because it favors specific sites but that contaminates the rest of the space through the mass media.

This project the "urban values" over the territory as a whole and The American urbanist like Mike Davis has proposed a model for understanding the process of Urbanization, which has been called urban ecology of fear in its sense of destruction of public space. Mike Davis has presented his views in his writings by describing different aspects of Urbanization, which in turn results in the destruction of public spaces.

On the other hand according to David Harvey, “The Right to the City” is the right of everyone to create cities that meet human needs. Everyone should have the same rights to build the different types of cities they want. The right to the city as stated by David Harvey is not simply the right to what is already in the city, but the right to transform the city into something radically different.

Therefore, it can be said that both, Mike Davis, as well as, David Harvey have presented similar ideas in a different manner. Mike in his writing is critical of the destruction of public space caused by Urbanization, whereas, David is of the view that people should have the right to choose the kind of city that they want to have.

Discussion

Overview of Mike Davis Piece

Mike Davis wrote “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space”, which was published in 1990. It is as fascinating as a portrait of Los Angeles terrifying, gigantic Californian metropolis, “world city”, which becomes a metaphor for the hell of modern capitalism, true mirror of heavy trends and cities of American society. The book presents itself as a kind of dizzying labyrinth enough navigating between past and present, real and imagined. Throughout the book, the author explores the role of intellectuals in the formation of the myth of LA (Los Angeles), games and power struggles, the perverse evolution of the suburbs, and ghettos of the world trade of crack or urban planning and architecture of the city. In Los Angeles, homes increasingly resemble fortresses seen in the ultra-sophisticated security systems which they are fitted, the signs "Armed response" is becoming more and police patrol loop and poor neighborhoods in the name of fight against drugs.

Overview of David Harvey Piece

It should be noted that the right to the city is quite an old proposal dating back to the late 1960's. It was Frenchman Henri Lefebvre who presented this idea known as The Right ...