“Most agree that it is the everyday experience of inhabiting the city that entitles one to a right to the city, rather than one’s nation-state citizenship. (pg.142, Purcell)”
This quotation is interesting to me because I have heard this before. The ideas that someone who lives in the city gets the right to that city over someone who is a “nation-state citizen” are always in conflict. In my opinion, the person who lives in the city is right. People are always born in a city but do not live there and therefore, they do not get to experience the everyday life of that city so they do not know how things work there.
“He says that modern citizenship takes the form of a contract between the state and the citizenry that specifies, among other things, the rights of citizens (2003a/1990, p. 250). But the current contract and its associated rights have remained much the same since their inception in the eighteenth century. What we require, he argues, is to radically extend and deepen the contract, to articulate a new and augmented set of rights, and to struggle to achieve them. (pg.146, Purcell)”
With new times come new changes. When many of this country’s laws were written, things were not as advance as they are now. The citizens only want their rights to be updated since their creation, as stated in the quote, was during the 18th century.
“was long defined either in terms of the political change at the level of the state or else in terms of the collective or state ownership of the means of production . . . . Today such limited definitions of revolution will no longer suffice. The transformation of society presupposes a collective ownership and management of space founded on the permanent participation of the “interested parties,” with their multiple, varied and even contradictory interests. (1991/1974, p. 422, emphasis added) (pg.148, Purcell)”
As I stated before, with new times come new changes. Politics can never remain the same as the country modernizes. Both politics and citizens adapt to the changes that are occurring today. If the citizens see that their voice is not being heard, they will find a way to do so. If politicians only want to benefit themselves, the citizens will speak and make sure that they are heard.
PURCELL, M. (2014). POSSIBLE WORLDS: HENRI LEFEBVRE AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY. Journal Of Urban Affairs, 36(1), 141-154. doi:10.1111/juaf.12034