Do-it-yourselfers seem to be different from regular criminals, even though they are criminals themselves. Their actions of, well vandalism, are legitimized because they are not reprimanded by local authorities. If anything, they are praised for their illegal acts, because unlike Rios\u2019s and Jacques\u2019s and Wright\u2019s teens, these people are partaking in \u201cconstructive resistance\u201d, not self-destruction or communal destruction. Their resistance to their respective city\u2019s inaction is for \u201cthe good of the community\u201d. They alter signs to make them clearer to drivers, engage in \u201cguerilla planting\u201d, spray paint bike lanes onto roads, etc. Although these changes seem like positive modifications to the community at large, it begs the question: Do the DIYers have the right to make these changes? I think they have every right to recognize and address a problem they think they have in their community, but I don\u2019t believe that they should be taking these matter into their own hands. Although they are residents, there are still certain channels they must navigate in order to enact the changes they are wishing for. Once people start to believe they can do whatever they want because they were not initially held responsible, a chaos will ensue that at some point the city will not be able to control lightly. There are processes for a reason, and although the residents who engage in urban modification refuse to go through said processes because \u201cthey might as well,\u201d it doesn\u2019t detract from the fact that going through the city is the legal route and all else is unlawful.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also this sentiment that the changes by these residents could also be a nuisance for others. Bike lanes are a great idea until drivers begin to get pissed off because now the street is narrower. Planting food in an empty lot is great unless someone bought the land to develop a building on that plot. If someone gets hurt from perhaps a resident\u2019s poor design of a bike lane or new road sign, who would be responsible: the individual or the city? I\u2019d say the individual but then the city didn\u2019t hold them accountable so they would be partly at fault as well. Some cities just are not built for these changes and so residents could cause unnecessary headaches for city planners. For example, Boston is a very old city, with winding roads that often don\u2019t make a ton of sense.\u00a0 Putting bike lanes in a lot of these streets would make the already narrow streets even narrower, maybe even leading to accidents like bikers getting hit during turns or running into an open door from a parked car. When many residents decide to make alterations, it is to help people but it isn\u2019t to help everyone. If it isn\u2019t going to help or please everyone, why go through the trouble and<\/em> risk arrest or a fine? In addition, going about these changes alone makes the residents look selfish rather than activists. Partaking in collective action makes the issue seem more important and in need of a course of action instead of a self-centered resident who doesn\u2019t like something and so changed it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do-it-yourselfers seem to be different from regular criminals, even though they are criminals themselves. Their actions of, well vandalism, are legitimized because they are not reprimanded by local authorities. If anything, they are praised for their illegal acts, because unlike Rios\u2019s and Jacques\u2019s and Wright\u2019s teens, these people are partaking in \u201cconstructive resistance\u201d, not self-destruction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cities-and-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}