Community planning and redevelopment should be done for the purpose of improving the lives of its inhabitants but from the readings we have done thus far,  it seems that these efforts do very little to accomplish this. Instead, redevelopment projects seemed to be done with the rich in mind.

In examining the history of community planning, the colored and poor constituted a large portion of those displaced because early redevelopment projects often allowed those involved with the planning to identify the communities that needed to be redeveloped; however, these evaluations were often made based on the people living there rather than the environment itself. Afterwards, conditions started to improve slightly, as dissatisfied tenants and citizens banded together to protest the unwanted changes made to their communities. One such example is when the inhabitants of Morningside Heights and Columbia students successfully prevented the establishment of a gym in place of the community park. Other events that marked an increased involvement of citizens in community planning projects include the Model Cities Program and the establishment of Community Boards. These developments seem to indicate a progression in the fight for greater involvement but upon closer inspection, one will see that these advancements were met with setbacks. The Model Cities Program ended after President Johnson’s term and members of the Community Board, in reality, had very little say. In the end, their words had very little power in causing the changes that actually occurred.

This can be extended to the current problem of rezoning. Current rezoning efforts are said to involve the residents as much as possible through meetings which are held to determine the direction that redevelopment should go. But as mentioned in Savitch-Lew’s “Will the City’s Rezoning Plan for East Harlem Heed Community’s Vision?” , many residents are complaining that involvement is in fact minimal. While it is clear that community planners can no longer exclude residents from their plans, the question is: have we really progressed in terms of resident involvement?