Week 5: The Right to the City

This week our conversation was based on different aspects of a community and how these aspects can create an urban divide. We created web diagrams of how all these factors could affect each other (education, income, occupation, location). Our group came up with income being the main contributing factor to a lot of these different aspects of the community. Income strongly affects your education, which in turn will determine your occupation, which effects where and how you live. One thing mentioned in the weekly reading is that access to education is much more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas. Quality of education could have a strong influence on the outcome of one’s life, even starting in elementary school.

Also, we discussed “The Right to the City,” meaning the right to basic needs/goods that we,the people, set as rights. In the city, there is discrimination which prohibits people from moving (civil rights laws) based on ones access to a good, service, or location. Professor Sanchez also heavily stressed the roles of sidewalks in cities, stating they were the biggest public space we utilized every day. Local governments do not allow congregating on the sidewalks because it apparently “Stops disruption of business and safety.” But, Professor Sanchez took what was on the tip of our tongue and said it: “Is that really the problem? Does banning congregation on the sidewalks really help business’s conduct affairs more smoothly http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/engineering/sidewalks.cfm? According to this website, it provides “continuous and accessible networks to improve mobility for all pedestrians and are particularly important for pedestrians with disabilities.” Alternatively, in the words of our Professor, one could think of things in this way: we, as citizens of the city, are being segregated. We have to say or do what the government says in this part of the city, which restricts our rights to the city. Yet, how can one object this infringement upon our rights?

Adding on to this, we delved into the sensitive issues of Health care policy. Does someone have the right to health care if they don’t have income, skills, or contribute to the city in any way? Why should you enjoy the rights of those who pay http://www.balancedpolitics.org/universal_health_care.htm? This site posted in the previous sentence gives interesting view points on each side of the health care argument. 

Lastly, Professor Sanchez was going to make a Mississippi joke towards the end of class, but he decided not to. Thus, here are a few Mississippi jokes, provided by jokes4us.com: http://www.jokes4us.com/miscellaneousjokes/worldjokes/mississippijokes.html.