It has its charm to be urban beings. But the truth is that cities, despite being densely populated, promote the fragmentation and isolation of its inhabitants. This makes urban environments very complicated: inhabiting them becomes difficult, since many of their dynamics inevitably absorb us. In the meantime, the issues facing every city seem too big for us to deal with.
And that is, in large part, because cities make us very individualistic…
Those who inhabit the big metropolises they lack accurate tools to contribute to having better cities. Citizens have to leave everything in the hands of governments and companies, despite the fact that these usually bring more problems than solutions.
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An example is in the policies that allow neighborhoods to be invaded by private initiative: that shopping centers are built, or that recognized commercial chains arrive. This causes the cost of living and forces many to evacuate their homeswhich constitutes a fairly recent phenomenon that has been called «gentrification».
On the other hand, there are urban areas that are abandoned, such as Detroit, in the United States. The case of this city demonstrates better than any other what happens when companies leave a city: the economy begins to falter and, with this, the city enters a process of gradual decline. Inevitably, crime begins to rise, and the only thing the government does is apply a «strong hand» against the population it abandoned.
But there is an alternative to urban decay: collective work
It has been proven that in urban areas where residents collaborate to beautify their streets and facades, crime and violence rates drop drastically. In the United States this has been observed by a group of researchers from the University of Michiganwho have documented community processes in the city of Flint.
This city became, due to its gradual deindustrialization, in one of the most dangerous in the United States, with the second-highest homicide rate. Since 2012, a group of Flint residents began cleaning their streets, lighting them, and planting plants in their medians and lots.
By 2018, violent attacks fell by 54%, robberies by 83%, and robberies at homes and businesses by 76%.
This has happened in Mexico too…
Many think that street painting is synonymous with criminality. For this reason, where there are pints there are more policemen. However, in Mexico many artists have shown that painting walls is not a crime, and can regenerate the social fabric of the most marginalized areas.
This is the case of the Las Palmitas neighborhood, in Pachuca, Hidalgo. There, the group of artists Germen Nuevo painted 200 houses, making them a giant canvas that reflected the identity of the inhabitants of the neighborhood. This caused robberies and assaults to decrease by 73% in just 3 years.
Just like this, there are many more examples in Mexico and the world, which prove that art and community work are agents of sociocultural regeneration.
However, the reason for this phenomenon is still a relative mystery, which requires further investigation so that community work and art become part of the public agendas in the fight against crime. However, not much more empirical evidence is needed to understand that the future of cities must be a shared futurein which we work as a community to have beautiful neighborhoods, illuminated spaces, walkable streets and many more green areas where individual and collective consciousness can be expanded –instead of rampant consumerism–.
Because no one will do it for us, right?
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