Defense for what?

Have a look at the following images. Take a look at them. They are both from a city with roughly the same amount of population within a margin or error.

The first photo seen here is from Valkenswaard, NL
Image A

Way to Eindhoven

The city of Valkenswaard has population around 30K.

The next image is take from a suburb of Cleveland, OH.
Take a look at the image. This suburb is between or on the route between Richmond Heights and Highland Heights, lets for this comparison say that respectively
they together have about 20K population.
image B

Route to Philips

As you observe the images consider changing economic situations or loss of capital to the region as a whole. If you, yes you the reader, were considering the creeping degradation of economic trepidation and a foreign onslaught, which would you personally want to defend? Or rather, would you believe in staying in, ‘fighting’ for so to speak?

I raise this question, rhetorical thought, in the hope of connecting the idea of space and value to our personal as well as our community.

A few questions to ask yourself?

Why is it that in the US in a majority of spaces where ‘families’ reside, there is little to no people to be seen walking about regularly, unless they ‘are doing fitness’?

What does civic space mean to you?

What type of space do you like to be apart of?

Which space would you ‘fight for’?

Lastly, does space impact cultural characteristics? Who is defining the space that we reside with in?

Do we accept the decisions that have been made for the spaces that we reside, or can we begin to question how the spaces around us have been derived and begin to ask the questions, can we do better?

And if we can, why not start today, and begin in rethinking our civic space and the spaces in which we reside?