Building Blocks: Re-framing Urban Inestment and Community Health Through Equitable Empowerment
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Abstract
The modern city is failing at embracing the value
of difference and common ground is fading. The implicit
effects of urban policy are dividing cities and putting their
most marginalized communities in an even more vulnerable
position. The narrow perspective through which city
administration functions has made city policy willfully ignorant
to all its implications and oversights. Consequently,
these implications lie written between the lines in invisible
ink and the fates of whole communities are laid out within
them. Diversity is made into segregation and commonality
swapped for polarization. And through this the invisible
barriers to community relationship, class mobility, property
ownership grow bigger.
But the city should be a place of confronting and
celebrating differences combined with finding common
ground through facilitating connections. Cities need urban
policy reform that facilitates community investment
through empowering ownership for those who have historically
been prevented from accessing it. And the urban
architecture within needs to encourage community interaction
and reflect the needs of all community members
while adapting to an evolving model of the city.