This reading was very interesting. It brought to my attention something that I hadn't thought of before such as what happens to the homeless people that occupy abandoned places when the city decides to rebuild them. Also, a park was going to be renevated and some of the statues were going to be cleaned up and all of the homeless people were going to be kicked out of the park even though it is one of the only places for them to reside. Henry Stern, the former Parks Commissioner, supported regulations that wouldn't allow homeless people back into the park stating that there was no way that a park could eliviate their homeless situation (Duetsche, p. 156). I really liked Wodiczko's "projection" called Proposal for Union Square, 1986. He did this projection to symbolize what the city had done to the homeless people who lived at the park. If I had seen this instillation in the park, it would have really brought to my attention the meaning that he was trying to convey.
I also thought that it was very interesting how the city would decide to make over a building or a couple of buildings and apartments next to each other and the effects that would have over the people living close to that area. Essentially, this makes it to where people who were living their can not afford it or the homeless people that were living their now have to find somewhere else to live. I know that the city is just trying to make the overall look of the city more appealing by doing all of these renovations, but they need to think about the other problem that they are cuasing, more homeless people with less places to go to help them. I think alot differently about city restoration now.
Rosalyn Deutsche. "Architecture of the Evicted." Theory in contemporary Art since 1985. Ed. Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 150-165. Print.
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The "Architecture of the Evicted" made me think about city restoration in a different way as well. Until someone opens your eyes to the bad side of revitalization you only think about the good. It is a very conflicting issue though. On the one hand, cities are made safer and more enjoyable places to live. On the other, people are displaced from housing and the number of homeless individuals increases. It seems that cities could make a greater effort to avoid these problems beyond kicking the homeless out of parks because as posted above "there was no way a park could alleviate their homelessness."
ReplyDeleteGentrification does do a lot of horrible things, such as displacing lower income families, small businesses, and even homeless people. However, it also has good qualities. It increase the property values of people who already live in the area and some could probably also argue that it reduces violence. Also, gentrification could not happen in the first place if there was not at least a little support from the community. It seems fair to say that gentrification can be both good and bad and really just depends on where you are standing.
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