Urban Planning Issues in the Film Children of Heaven - Essay Example

Urban Planning issues in the film Children of Heaven Family values, ties and social network To adequately put the family values, ties and social network of the movie Children of Heaven it has to be mentioned that the family and the society involve in the film are of Middle Eastern orientation and situated in Tehran, Iran. Such, they are conservative compared to western standards. One glaring familial values and ties that we can see in the film is the patriarchal nature of the family where the father/husband decides on all things about the family and also serves as the disciplinarian. In one scene where Ali and his sister Zahra were exchanging notes about her lost shoes, Zarah admonished Ali that he will tell their father implying that Ali will be disciplined. Note here that Zarah chose the father instead of the mother. In the same scene also, their parents were talking about her mother’s slip disk where the wife’s opinion of wanting to have a surgery was readily overruled by the husband. Throughout the film, we can see the struggle of the film where the family is disenfranchised due to their poverty and their options are limited because their social network only revolves around each other and to their creditors and employers. 2) Urban isolation among some family members, particularly for young children  Gender segregation is depicted in the film particularly in the scene where Zarah saw her pink shoes being worn by a classmate. It implies that children are already isolated from the other male gender and this implies that the building facilities also support segregation when it is in practice. For example, the school building of Zarah must have facilities and restrooms that were designed for girls instead of boys. 3) Physical setting between poor and rich neighborhoods  The disparity between the poor and the rich is very wide and this is manifested in their neighborhoods. In Ali’s neighborhood, it is characterized by abject poverty where they are cramped together in a small house. Their infrastructure is also unhealthy because there are open canals where Zarah chased her shoes. They have no gates and have to pass by an alley before getting to their house. The rich neighborhood was portrayed in the film to be located in North Tehran, Iran. Its location is quite far from the poor neighborhood and their long walk and ride in their bike is symbolic of the disparity between the rich and the poor in their society. The rich neighborhood, particularly the grandfather who hired Ali’s father to be a gardener had gated houses, with facilities such as swimming pool, playground and huge enough to have a garden and even trees while Ali and her sister are cramped in a small house in their neighborhood. 4) Consequences of urban environment (urbanization) in a city (noise and air pollution, for example)  We could see how inadequate the urban environment of Ali and Zarah’s in a scene when Zarah lost her shoes in an open canal. The inadequacy of the basic infrastructure of their drainage system proved to be a hazard as children could inadvertently slip into them such as Zarah’s case. It is also unhygienic where people could contract disease because the open canal can become a habitat for all kinds of bacteria. 5) Slum environment and family survival including coping mechanism  One could say that the living condition of the family in the movie is “semi-primitive”. Basic societal infrastructures are not available and even basic social support system such as organized garbage collection does not exist. Garbage is manually gathered by people through a cart and people cope with it by getting used to it. Families are able to get by and survive with their harsh economic condition by living on credit on the house that they live (rent) and the food that they eat (grocer). This coping mechanism enables them to survive because it temporarily provides them with their basic needs even if they do not have the money. Instead, they only pay it when there is money available. Their lot is aggravated due to the kind of social relationship they have in what Mennel calls as the commodification of relationships in the city (4). Government also seem to care less about urban planning because there are no socialized housing to accommodate the poor and are left to survive on their own in slum areas. 6) Attitudes and cultural differences between haves and have-nots  The attitude between the have and have nots differs in all societies. The old man who hired Ali’s father was concerned about the upkeep of his garden and landscape. They are casual about their house where they live in while Ali’s father, who is abjectly poor, dreamt of renting a bigger house. This only shows that when people’s economic condition better, their first priority is to improve the place they live in. Perhaps this could be attributed as the finest point of the movie because it was able to portray poverty in a manner that the audience can feel and relate by using the shoes as one of the focal points of its story to emphasize social inequity. Thomson hypothesized that being liked by the audience is one of the criteria of being a great movie of which Children of Heaven can be categorized due to its effective story line of portraying poverty through the use of shoes (39). 7) Use of alleys and existing neighborhood conditions for daily activities  Alleys are a mark of poor urban planning because they had to be used for people to get in their cramp houses. Instead of roads, alleys became a substitute for people to pass by which are not only eyesores but also inappropriate. They serve as a road to many houses in such little space and made slum areas passable such as in the location of the movie Children of Heaven. 8) No uniform zoning in the city  Zoning exists in highly urbanized and progressive cities. This does not exist in the movie considering that they even still have open canals. Perhaps the only implied zoning in the city was the place where the rich and the poor lives. The poor lives in the slum area and the rich lived in gated communities. 9) Building design (globalization)  When the inhabitant of a structure is abjectly poor, the design of the building is typically functional to accommodate the needs of the dwellers. This can be observed in Ali and Zarah’s house where they only have the very basic of a shelter, a roof and walls to protect them from the inclement weather. They do not even have tables when they study and instead just used the floor. It can also be observed that in slum communities, all houses/shanty seem to look the same because design was the last consideration when the house was erected due to utter lack of resources. Aesthetics and design only comes with affluence. And depending on the cultural exposure of the owner, it could transcend and incorporate other the aesthetic design of other culture as well. The old man who hired Ali’s father had a house that is more characteristically European than Middle Eastern and this could be attributed to the different cultural exposure of the old man which his money had afforded him. Works Cited Mennel Thomson, David. “When is a Movie Great?”. Read More