City Air Makes You Free”. Urban Resistances And Counter Power in Bologna

CITY AIR MAKES YOU FREE Urban Transformation and Counter-Power in Bologna

Maurilio Pirone

In Medieval Age, the famous popular motto “Stadtluft macht frei” (“City air makes you free”) addressed urban spaces as sites of liberation from feudal duties. Nowadays cities seem to be an effective ground to experiment with emancipatory practices within and against the post-democratic neutralization ofpolitics and the neo-liberal market economy. Indeed, there is a strong connection between the valorisation ofthe urban dimension as a space for re-production and the development of experiences that pose themselves as an alternative to social exclusion, poverty, and exploitation. Such ambiguous transformations are flourishingeverywhere in Europe, and Bologna is among them.

What are the present duties and constrictions from which cities need to free themselves? Generally, municipalities have been politically reduced to administrate the effects and the normalization of austerity policies imposed (often undemocratically) by central State powers or by EU agreements. At the same time, urban spaces became sites for capitalist profits as real estate investments andplatform capitalism expansion. Local institutions often act as partners 1 in these processes of valorisation, trying to attract companies and financial funds and changing the geographical profile ofcities through infrastructural transformations. Moreover, security policies 2 –that are imposing controls and barriers inside cities –are a tangible sign ofdemocracy erosion, in favour ofgovernance and administrative procedures. Ironically, their task is to manage one of the consequences of urban over-exploitation: social exclusion.

In recent years, Bologna attracted manyofsuch vectors oftransformation and radically changed its economic vocation 3 , moving from motor industry and third sector to tourism and food business. Symbolic ofthis new urban imaginary in Bologna is Fico Eataly World, the so-called Disneyland of food: an agribusiness park built in the suburb of the city thanks to private investors, cooperatives and a municipality that promises “a unique and authentic experience” of Italian food specialities. At the same time, the city centre is increasingly crowded with restaurants and major brands shops for tourists, thus replacing students and inhabitants. Digital platforms offeringhost orfood delivery services are rapidly expanding, not by chance. Several new infrastructures have been planned. Some of them have been completed but largely criticised (such as the new high-speed train sta

1 See David Harvey, ‘From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation ofurban governance’, Geografiska Annaler 71B, pp. 3-17. 2 See Marco Allegra, Anna Casaglia, Jonathan Rokem, ‘The Political Geographies ofUrban Polarisation: A Critical ReviewofResearch on DividedCities’, GeographyCompass, 2012, 6/9, pp. 560-574; Ralph Brandand

Sara Fregonese, The Radicals’ City: Urban Environment, Polarisation,

Cohesion, Ashgate, 2013 3 See Struggles in Italy, What is really happening in Bologna, https:// strugglesinitaly.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/en-what-is-really-happening-in-bologna tion), while others are under construction (such as the shuttle service to the airport). Other projects have also been abandoned. In response to these transformations, multi-level urban experiences developed, re-inventing social and political participation. Bologna turned into a contested zone, with manyevictions against squatted houses, social centres, collective spaces, thus whitewashing the so-called “Red City” 4 .

In the last few years, different phenomena took place in the urban spaces of Europe, such as occupations, innovative unions and local voting coalitions, which allowed to contrast austerity policies andto renewdemocracy. Itis possible to categorize three different directions of city radical innovation: experiments ofself-organized welfare, social unionism, andmunicipalism. Ineachcase, the long history of socialist and working-class practices is brought and re-invented for the neo-liberal city. These experiences highlighted problems and gaps in public intervention: the lackofhousing policies, the inefficiency ofmigrants’ reception system, the requirement of places for public and social life instead of private instances. The practice of occupation 5 acquired new energies in last years, especially in countries harshly affected by austerity policies. At the same time, practices ofurban regeneration widely spread not only in the form of neo-liberal gentrification but also fostering citizens’ commitment to the city as collective good. Squatted or regenerated spaces host medical ambulatories, small-farmers’ markets, workers labs, migrant hospitality, free cultural production. The volunteering works as a form ofpractical social engagement in the construction ofa community welfare from below, opposing policies of privatization carried on by central governments.

Different urban subjects started to self-organize beyond classical trade union forms: food delivery riders’ protests, housing movements, peddlers, and migrants. Experiments of horizontal and urban unionism allow for the definition of new rights and the overcoming ofexclusion from city life and benefits. In particular, the so-called gig economy represents both a field for capital real subsumption through digital platforms and the site for labour struggles: since 2016, riders’ resistance 6 in food platforms spread all around Europe cracking the narrative ofthe end ofwork because ofdigital technologies andcollaborative economy. Moreover, it is at the city level that we saw forms of popular voting coalitions flourishing 7 . Spanish experiences,

4 See Darren Patrick, Bologna’s latest eviction threatens to whitewash the ‘red’ city’s political legacy, The Guardian, 14 October 2015, https:// www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/oct/14/bologna-eviction-atlantide-red-city-political-legacy 5 See Squatting Europe Kollective, Squatting in Europe. Radical Spaces,

Urban Struggles, Minor Compositions, 2013. 6 See Callum Cant, ‘The wave ofworker resistance in European food platforms 2016-17’, Notes From Below, 1, 2018