Right to the city Flashcards
(14 cards)
What is Gramercy park in New York? What is the controversy?
A private 2-acre park in NYC that only residents around the park who pay an annual fee can get a key that costs 7500/household per year
Key holders pay the same property taxes as non key holders in the neighbourhood which frustrates people who live nearby and cannot access it.
When a keyholder took a group of underprivileged kids there in 2000, they were kicked out. A lawsuit was filed, and each kid was paid 15K and permission to visit one day a year
What are the common features of cities in the Global South as discussed in ‘Locating the Right to the City in the Global South’? What are 3 defining aspects?
-Complex and dynamic social and spatial divisions being actively reproduced
-Strategic divisions by governance practices informed by local histories and market-based approaches
-Wealth gap growing
-Policy makers support principles of integration but often actual policies have the opposite effect.
1) There is increasing social polarization and spatial division
2) There is currently a refashioing of specific parts of the city into cosmopolitan landscapes but challenging to integrate unevenly developed spaces
3) Each reveals the complicated politics arising from and feeding into the changes cities are experiencing– many competing claims being made and intense political struggles to exert influence over city spaces and to remake, defend, or control those spaces
What do divided cities look like?
Depends on where you go in the world– gated communities, gated condo complexes, new cities built from scratch, single-family zoning, slum clearance, etc.
How is eradicting slums framed as “helping the poor”?
Often they clear slums to make more housing, but this housing is often luxury or unaffordable.
What are some examples of recrafting exclusionary policies?
- Gated communities are now banned in China
- Providing ownership papers to ‘squatters’ or residents who predate legal ownership paperwork
- inclusion of the poor in decision-making, trying to accomodate needs of all residents
-foriegn property ownership is banned in New Zealand (and Canada for 2 years) - formalization of hawkers(mobile food sellers) in Singapore
What are some examples of ‘slum’ upgrading in Indonesia?
ex) Water sensitive slum upgrading, creating more walkable spaces while using the water for plants
ex) Kampung Pelangi transformed into ‘Rainbow Village’
What does Su-Jan Yeo discuss in her paper, ‘Right to the City (at night)’?
She examines how night changes our experience of public space and who is included or excluded at night. She focuses on:
1) The expansion of the nighttime economy, urban regeneration, placemaking, and street vitality
2) Surveillance and the contentious practice of monitoring people in public spaces as a way to curb instances of transgressive activities after dark
What are three of Singapore’s ethnic districts? How/ why did they develop?
Chinatown
Kampong Glam
Little India
They developed from legacies of colonialism, created by Britsih colonial rule
How have these districts changed since being given conservation status?
Boosted cultural tourism
Conservation guidelines allow for adaptive reuse, which means new commercial activities (yoga studios, microbreweries, etc) along with older businesses
–> retail gentrification has turned Chinatown and Kampong Glam into lifestyle enclaves for middle class and creative industries
Little India is still a migrant labourer district and is considered the most authentic ethnic neighbourhood
How has commercial gentrification tension about right to the city in these ethnic districts?
Singapore has nearly 300 000 low-paid migrant workers, many from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. They often do difficult and dangerous work, with no path to citizenship.
Little India is a space for South Asian migrant workers to socialize, shop, and find products from home
There are class and racial tensions between Singaporeans and migrant workers
Explain the Little India riot. What happened after?
The Little India riot was caused by a bus accident where a migrant worker was accidentally run over. This resulted in other migrant workers rioting.
After the Riot, the area was equipped with police cameras, surveillance, street lamps, and a ban on alcohol. Top-down ‘taming’ of the night
What is Little India like now?
Little india rebranded for tourists, palatable for diff crowds rather than migrant workers, murals honouring migrant workers as if they aren’t around anymore
What does the article argue about how we should treat nightlife?
Nightlife CANNOT be treated as a homogenous form of mass leisure, as the production and consumption of nightlife in public spaces can both liberate and alienate
What are 3 key lessons fro nightlife urban policy and planning?
1) Most urban agenda promote 24/7 ethos and standardized experiences of nightlife
2) The public can be educated about varied possibilities of public spaces after dark
3) More imaginative thinking is needed to generate alternatives to heavy surveillance (ie. innovative lighting design, interactive installations, community-derived programming ideas)
