The reason for the forced deviation of the city poor from the city public space, which is basically the street here, is usually attributed to the aesthetic of the modern cities and city diseases such as congestion. “A consuming concern with bringing the panoramas of their cities and also their pavements up to what they believed to be world aesthetic standards” is adopted by officialdom, aiming for “attracting the eye of the investor, along with his/her capital” (Sollinger, 2013, p. 16). More investments, higher economy, that is the logic of officialdom. For that reason, these city managers are “putting a very high premium upon ‘modernizing’ and ‘beautifying’ its visage” to fit to the city aesthetic standards. And in this case, the city poor has been forcedly sacrificed. In addition, the city disease in terms of the congestion is also the reason for limiting the function of pavements and streets. Whether the former or the latter, the the appeal to returning the right to use the streets to the city poor is on schedule, but the reason behind may be rooted more deeply.
A Chinese documentary recording the combat between chengguan (city managers) and a family who owned a street stall is in a hot discussion (link is here). The family includes a 70-year-old guy, his wife who had a cancer, disabled son and the young granddaughter who is in senior school. They occupied a large area of the street, selling from fruits to clothes to earn a living. This behavior is learned by those shop owners, Though they have their stores, they also occupy the street to sore their goods and they announced they will not move the goods until the family is moved. There are a lot of combats between them and chengguan, and they insist in taking actions against chengguan such as lying down on the middle of the road with a traffic. The family is so aggressive and so sympathetic. In the end, chengguan seek a store for them to make a living. Both the supporters of family and the chengguan exist. For the former, they concentrated on the difficulties of the peripheral groups, pointing out the ridiculousness of the so-called “beautifying the city”, while the latter sees the conflict between the stall owners and other citizens. The reason for their support is the harm to their rights that the stall owners bring to them. Congestion due to their occupation does harm to their rights to use the streets. It is a big city disease and there is no solution. Because of the city development, more and more migrants rush to the cities and lead the cities to extremely dense. It is not merely the problem of public transportation infrastructure or the wrong city planning, in fact, the cities are overloaded. In addition, street stalls are often accused by citizens of making the environment dirty, full of trash, loud voice and unpleasant smell. Considering the Community gates are often the locations of those stalls, this does disturb other citizens. Moreover, one situation does exist. Even if stores can be provided to those stall owners, they refuse to move in because they do not have to pay the rent and there is no greater flow of people than intersections and community gates. Consequently, the contradictions are irreconcilable.
Inequality would be at least one of the reasons. The inequality between the rural area and cities caused the urban overload. The inequality made periphery groups less educated and no culture, which forces them on the one hand, to struggle for a living with every effort, while on the other, less care about others’ rights out of their families. The protection of right of the poor to the city should be started by diminishing inequality, yet it might never be solved.
Leave a Reply