The idea that people in a community have a "Right to the City" was coined by Henri Lefebvre. He meant that humans have a right to shape and mold the world they live in, not to simply be sold property and have access to places and resources that others have constructed.
This Right to the City is almost undetectable in the modern suburbs: everything is pre-planned like a machine that humans inhabit, not of their own creation but created by a "developer" off in an office somewhere who does not live in the community and has no personal contact with anyone there.
Interestingly, in some of the poorest neighborhoods humans have more exercise of their ability to create their own city: building costs and barriers to opening businesses are lower, and often graffiti and public art becomes a central part of the neighborhood whereas it would have been illegal in more affluent areas.
David Harvey gave a summary:
"The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. 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."
It is something to think about: when you pay to live in an upscale community, how much ability to shape and create the public places you live in are you getting for your dollar? Any at all?
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