"Urbanized"

I Netflixed that documentary we watched in class before spring break and I have watched it more than once now, really thinking about what each segment is saying.  It's really good...  All of my classes this semester, while different, at the end now all seem to relate and make me think, and this documentary helps me understand more clearly what I am thinking about... if that makes sense.  A few segments really stood out to me.

The first person to speak is the Director of the New York City Department of Planning.  she says "Urban design is really the language of the city.  When you walk down the street, everything you see has been designed:  The width of the sidewalk, where trees are planted, the scale of the trees, how the street furniture interacts, how many store you have per block, the height of the buildings, where they are set back; each one of these things has been thought about."  That statement kind of blows my mind.  Maybe my mind should've been blown the first week of this class, but perhaps it took a whole semester of this class and to hear that statement again for it to really sink in.

They go on to talk about various things from slums in India to public transportation to Jane Jacobs.  One of the final segments that we didn't get to view in class is about a proposed massive redevelopment of a large piece of Stuttgart to replace and bury existing old railways and build tons of apartments and stores on the surface.  This sounds like a great idea to me, but then you are presented with what has to happen in order for the project to take place:  You have to demolish an old and historic train station that is very important to the people of Stuttgart, as well as removed a park and cut down huge trees that are hundreds of years old.  The segment profiles the massive opposition to this redevelopment project.  Apparently, almost 20 years ago the people of the town did approve a sort of redevelopment, but the process of designing the new project was plagued with problems and stops and starts and spanned many years and this made it nearly impossible for the community to be involved and informed about the process.  It is said that nearly 2/3s of people in Stuttgart now oppose the project and there is a massive opposition organization that stages rallies and protests.  When workers came to start cutting down trees there was basically a riot with police macing people and spraying them with fire hoses and arresting people.  It reminded me more of the Arab Spring or something than community participation or whatever about a public works project.  Community participation isn't the right word, but really, it was insane.  The community was so polarized by this issue and the people cared so much, just about saving a park and a building.  It was impressive how much they cared.  I know people get really worked up over issues like this in Austin, but I don't see anything like this happening here.  Not to say that we don't care, or that the people in Stuttgart are barbarians, but there just has to be something about our American society that is engrained in our DNA that while we are attached to our communities, by comparison, and as a whole, we are apathetic.  Does this make sense?  America is just so huge with so much space and we have become spoiled and come to take things for granted that we just don't care so much.  Either that, or it's because our society has been broken up into so many different groups and factions all wanting different things and we are too busy arguing that we can't some together to fight for what is important to us.