According to Mike Davis ecological view point, cities are organized based soley upon fear. Cities are seen as zones of danger. Another belief is that this damage and danger must be contained in order to make the city a safer place.Key targets that cause fear in cities include immigrants, those of the lower class, and as obvious by the title of this post-the homeless.
In an attempt to contain homeless people social boundaries are hardened-in other words fortified against the homeless. Another way to explain this is that select groups-such as the homeless are kept out through psuedo privatization. They are also kept from loitering around the city because they are considered unwanted. Examples of "keeping the homeless from invading the city" are such like how in NYC ledges of buildings have spikes on them in order to discourage the homeless from spending the night there. In some cities, park benches and bus stop seats have been replaced with tubes, also in order to prevent the homeless from sleeping there-and for the record the tubes are solid so the homeless cannot sleep INSIDE the tubes.
Truthfully though, I feel that most of this "fear of homeless people" is inside the majority of the city's populations heads. Acting like this against the homeless makes it seem as if the homeless are going to run around ruthlessly attacking people if something isn't done to prevent this from happening. In truth, this sort of behavior is rare-yet not impossible. Years ago I read in a Daily News tabloid that a homeless woman on a train in the city killed a father (in front of his young daughter) because she detested the way he was looking at her. Yet I seriously doubt that cities are going to become any safer once the homeless are detained from loitering around on park benches and bus stop seats.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=&no=321234&rel_no=1
No comments:
Post a Comment