CUT - Contemporary Urban Theory

contemporary urban theory

food for thought

Preface

As urbanization processes rapidly spread and change the foundations for human life all over the world, the multi-disciplinary field of urban theory becomes increasingly useful for scientists, planners and policy officials and other actors in civil society. Contemporary urban theory involves various and contrasting dialogues striving to grasp and explain urbanity and the problems, challenges and desires associated with the city as a spatial, social, economic, cultural and political entity.

The essays in this magazine are the outcome of the course Contemporary Urban Theory, given within the master program Sustainable Urban Planning and Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. The essays, authored by the participating students as a final examination of the course.

The students have read an urban theory book and were given the assignment to apply and discuss the book in relation to other literature and a specific urban phenomenon or situation.

This magazine is a compilation of the students’ essays, representing diverse perspectives and experiences reflecting the students’ backgrounds in different academic disciplines and from different cities of the world. Hence, the conversations in the course have been dynamic and heterogeneous, reflecting the wide scope of perspectives and experiences within the field of urban theory.

As teachers we have encouraged the students to explore different styles of writing – ranging from the more academic tone to the personal and experimental – with an emphasis on popular scientific writing. The students have illustrated their essays with images or collages. We are proud to present this collection of essays, however, would like to emphasize that the opinions expressed in the essays are the authors’ own. An editorial board, consisting of five students, has been responsible for compiling the essays, making the cover illustrations and naming of the magazine. Chris Knox has designed the template for the magazine and we thank him for his work with the students.

We hope that this magazine will give you a glimpse of what is, and will be, at stake for urban planners and designers in the coming decades.

Karin Bradley, Anna Hult and Nazem Tahvilzadeh Teachers and researchers at the Division of Urban and Regional Studies, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, 7 January 2014

Look for the Cut

Whether it’s for pleasing a family, delighting dinner guests, or stretching the food budget, the versatile beef roast city is a favorite choice for households across the country.

There are many kinds of beef roasts cities ranging from rib roasts megacities, the gourmet’s delight diverse, to arm pot roasts more sprawled cities. Each of these cuts can vary in quality, depending upon what part of the carcass city from which it came, but all are nutritious and all can provide good eating experiences if properly prepared planned. The secret lies in suiting the cooking exploratory method to the grade and the cut you select. Not all people enjoy the meat city and how it is produced, sometimes leading to conflicts and the emergence of alternative lifestyles.

In the collection of essays that follows, the chefs authors have tried to understand and question the city from various perspectives. The articles are divided in three themes: “Body, Space and Conflict”, “Social Justice and the Right to the City” and “Consumerism and Alternative Practices of Sustainable Societies”. The themes are organized starting from the central approaches of the political, social and cultural sphere, to the citizen-based situations of stigmatization and the right to the city, and finally to the problems of consumer society and its future.

Hopefully this will serve as a dish source of inspiration in order to deepen the discussions of the contemporary city and its complexities, and simply give you something to chew on.

Fani Bakratsa, Amanda Fröler, Mahmod Ibrahim Gedem and Boya Gou: The students’ editorial board.

Master Students at the Urban Planning and Design Program, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, 20 December 2013

Image on back cover Quique on Paxabay “Kuh Feld Hörner Brown Profil Natur“.

Retrieved 15 december 2013 from http://pixabay.com/de/kuh-feld-h%C3%B6rner-brown-profil-93218/

Content

Body, Space and Conflict Understanding and questioning the critical aspects of the contemporary city as arena for social, political and cultural change

Social Justice and the Right to the City Examining stigmatization of citizens and the processes of collective identity in the urban arena

Consumerism and Alternative Practices of Sustainable Societies Investigating the current order of increased consumption in the urban realm worldwide and the potential for change

Insecure Spaces What Happens to the Proletarian Areas when the Proletariat becomes Precarious?

Kristina Ringenson

The Life and Death of a Great Just City Robbin Jan Van Duijne

What Goes Around Comes Around New Ways of Consumption by Adapting Alternative Economies in Urban Planning Karl von Schmalensee

3

87

Womens’ Role in the City and at Home Adriana De Lima Sampaio

Role of Citizens in the Core- periphery Dialectics Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow Louise Contat

7

49

91

Pretty Vacant Finding Small Scale Anarchy a Home Amanda Fröler

Struggle to Get Your Public Life Back Jian Zhou

Who Cares?

About Ethical Actions in Economy Maxie Beetz

45

53

11

Urban Entrepreneurialist Struggles Nina Lindfors

95

Back to the Future Martin Bretz

Map of Exclusion The Construction of Stigmatisation Klara Hallberg

15

61

La Zona An Ordering-Desired Gated Community Boya Guo

Some of Them Live in Shit Marc Rupprecht

The Simultaneous Growth and Rupture of Consumer Society Maria Springman Kjell 99

65

19

Will France Experience a New Revolution?

Sophie Duval

The Regulation of Public Spaces A Review of the Case of São Paolo Arthur Lauxen Luiz

Liquid Modernity A Tale of Consumption, Insecurity and Public Space Andrei-Florin Magureanu 103

70

Traveling without Dimensions Hedvig Edholm

Neglected Right to the City Issues of Poverty and Segregation in Bogotá, Colombia Martin Phillips

107

Demand for Democracy through Gezi Park Aysegül Alayat 27

73

What do you think we’re gonna do? Ask? Riots as a Consequence of Policy Failures?

Namo Marouf

The Conflicting Transformation of Insurgent Public Space Xiaodan Li

31

77

Blame Carl Bildt for Making Me into a Monster Mahmod Ibrahim Gedem

Informal Settlements in Kibera Caroline Ovaska

23

A Day in the Zad The Uses of Disorder Diane Robert 111

35

Landscape of Fear Urban Fear in the Metropolis of Crisis Fani Bakratsa 39

81

Body, Space and Conflict Understanding and questioning the critical aspects of the contemporary city as arena for social, political and cultural change

Insecure Spaces What Happens to Proletarian Areas when the Proletariat Becomes Precarious?

Katarina Ringenson

In his book Urban Outcasts, Luïc Wacquant links class and urban space through an examination of the Parisian banlieues and the Black American ghetto of Chicago. The ghetto was a place of mixed class structure but strong area identity up until the 1960’s break from the legally forced racial segregation.

Then those who could afford it left the area, while the blue-collar working class stayed.

The banlieues are traditionally proletarian districts but have changed character with the increasingly precarious and competitive conditions for the working class. The loss of stability when the post-industrial proletariat turns into a precariat has heavily contributed to the deterioration of these areas. And the areas in their turn feed precarity back to their inhabitants. Wacquant suggests breaking the isolation of these areas the same way as the precariat is freed: Through security provided through the common.

Katarina Ringenson was born and raised in Stockholm. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology, where she is now studying at Master levels. She has also studied Statistics and Law at Gothenburg University and Urban Sciences at Seoul University and University of Tokyo.

Introduction A factory moves out of the city. And another. Another moves out of the state. And yet another moves out of the country. Left are workers without labor and unions without the unity of common working identities, in districts that now lack them both – in a society built around labor.

With his book Urban Outcasts, Loïc Wacquant wants to “relink class structure and urban structure“ (Wacquant, 2013:6) and warn that fixation with spatial dimensions of urban poverty clouds the view of how the explosive growth of social insecurity at the lowest class levels of society has a “ramifying impact on the life strategies and territories of the urban precariat” (ibid:6). Concentrating on the black ghetto of Chicago and the de-industrializing working-class neighborhoods of the Paris banlieues, he shows that their respective (different) marginality are, in part, spatial manifestations of a larger picture of a society where work has in itself become a source of insecurity and the “flexibility” of the wage market for the working class is hard to escape (Wacquant, 2008). This situation is called precarity and the people situated in it the precariat.

The Precariat While not a new concept, the precariat got a new role in public debate when Professor Guy Standing’s book The Precariat – The New Dangerous Class was released in 2011. The book explains the word as an aggregation of the words “precarious” and “proletariat”, an internationally spreading “class-in-themaking” (Standing, 2011:7) that is to a growing part replacing the industrial-era proletariat. As the word has been taken up by different languages it has come to signify different things, from unstable workers to people without any sense of security at all (ibid.). According to Stanley (2011), the precariat is signified primarily by insecure working conditions without shared work identity. The precariat does not get security from an employer, neither can they rely on the state to offer them financial protection. Wacquant calls the precariat a “miscarried collective” (Wacquant, 2013:7) without not only stable income, but also without means for self-representation and even a shared language.

The growth of the precariat is not only due to the closing down or moving of factories. Even beyond its enabling of globalization of the labor market, neo-liberal politics of labor market flexibility of “transferring risks and insecurity onto workers and their family” (Standing, 2011:1) worsen the terms of life of the poor and the new service sector jobs that partially replace the old labor work.

The fragmentation of the working class has led to a shift in attitude towards urban poor in need, from solidarity within and across groups to rather seeing vulnerability as social failure and trapping people in forced labor in exchange for economic support (“workfare” in the USA, “public utility work” in France, “Fas 3” in Sweden) or outside labor over all (Standing, 2011; Wacquant, 2008). The large numbers of industrial workers that modern 3

Who is it that works and works and never gets a job?

Illustration: Katarina Ringenson (2013).

welfare states were shaped for have shrunk together, started keeping to their own and lost their solidarity. The structure of the unions is built for solid work roles and identities, rather than workers that come and go on different workplaces (Standing, 2011).

If, then, the precariat, and thus the insecurity that follows with it, grows the most among the former proletariat, its consequences must then hit the hardest in the areas of the old proletariat. While spatial separation of different economic groups has been present throughout history, these areas have become increasingly alienated with the increasing alienation of their inhabitants.

Wacquant (2008) calls the state of segregation within urban areas urban marginality and lists the reasons for it as the same as are often listed as reasons for the growth of the precariat: fragmentation of wage labor, casualization of employment, deproletarization and state policies that do less than help.

From Place of Community to Space of Precarity The ghetto is an area of exclusion. In its American context the exclusion of the ghetto comes in the form of segregation, even isolation, of Black Americans from other groups, primarily whites – hence, “race” is the first source of segregation. The line that separates the ghetto from the rest of the city was then redrawn along class after the dissolution of the apartheid laws.

The marginality was then further aggrevated by public policies for e.g. housing and infrastructure as described below. In the banlieues the prerequisits are the opposite – the marginalization is first and foremost the result of class structural segregation, while ethno-national belonging is secondary and rather the result of an ethnification of the lower classes than of actual ethnical exclusion, although racial discrimination remains a source of exclusion as well (Wacquant, 2008).

While life in the ghetto has never been easy, it has not always been as hard as today. In the post war era, even as the product of apartheid, the ghetto was still a place to which Black Americans felt a strong positive identification – a neighborhood with a sense of community (ibid.). The ghetto of Chicago was, in the words of Cayton and Drake (1945 [1993]), a “Black Metropolis” with a rich cultural life with vivid streets and public places. The ghetto contained a small, but visible middle class, but the main part of 4

its residents belonged to an established working class of bluecollar wage laborers, and in the city’s economy the ghetto served the role of a “reservoir of unskilled labor” (Wacquant, 2008: 97).

When the downspins in economy came, as they do, and people got laid off, those who stood without a wage could still get financial and social back-up from relatives, friends or church, as most people would still remain wage-earners. The always present informal and sometimes “shady” economy provided a backup source for income, but normally mainly as a temporary solution between jobs (ibid.).

Since then this has also radically changed, as the social networks are no longer able to catch someone who falls – the fall has become more or less constant. During the 1970s’s and 1980’s, manufacturing industries – traditional employers of low-education Black Americans – were moved from urban to fringe areas, other states, or abroad, while the economy changed toward service sector and occupations that required higher education, both located far outside the ghetto (ibid.).

At the same time, the rapidly growing world-wide movement of neo-liberalism grew (Standing, 2011), not least so in the USA. ‘Flexible’ forms of productive organization and corporate attacks on unions led to intensified work competition and more low-pay, part-time jobs, all over the world. During the 1970’s and 1980’s the unions became even weaker when the racial segmentation hardened within the work force, mainly due to retrenchment and weakening of racial inequality reduction policies. At the same time, those who could afford it left the ghettos – the black middle class and still-stable working class moved out to segregated neighborhoods outside the ghetto when the whites, who had previously lived in these areas, could move out to the suburbs with the help of state sponsorship.

Neither the state nor the local authorities did much to break the remaining segregation between the poor ghetto and its stronger surroundings – rather, they have strengthened it. Almost all of the public housing that was built during the 1970’s was situated within the limits of the historical ghetto (ibid.), keeping the worst poverty within its limits. Left were blue-collar workers without an industry to work in and little backup from neither unions nor other members of their community. Now work had to be, as it is still, taken wherever it was found, in or outside the formal

Insecure Spaces

Finding one’s way.

Illustration: Katarina Ringenson (2013).

sector, whether the transformation(s) it requires is into a “childcare worker or gardener, hairdresser or mechanic, plumber or taxi driver, plasterer or nurse, body guard (for men) or body for hire (for men)” (Wacquant, 2008:125) – a truly precarious working situation, without any security or work-identity. This also undermines the strength of the social network in terms of providing a job: when everyone else could do the job you are after, why would they help you when they themselves stand without work? That the only work to find is precarious leads to an increased social fragmentation of the workers.

In addition, the ghetto in itself holds little of even precarious work places, which becomes a viscious cycle – those entitles to public welfare are few and then it often comes in the forced-labor form as workfare, and there is nothing stable about business in an area where there are so many robberies and homicides and so few with a stable income (ibid.).

The banlieue has suffered a similar fate. Wacquant (2008) makes a point out of how the banlieues are, in fact, not ghettos neither historically (formally forced separation of a group) nor practically.

They may be considered no-go areas in their societies, but while ghettos are dangerous to the point of random homicides and deletion of public space, the banlieues still have a functioning life and a flow with its outsides. But there is still the feeling of insecurity, and it still has similar patterns as the ghetto in terms of a loss of work and identity, a perception of the areas as dangerous among both residents and outsiders, and a spatial marginalization from the society and city to which they belong.

It seems then as if the de-proletarization of the inhabitants of the banlieue and the post-war ghetto has shaped the areas today, physically in the shape of degradation of buildings and houses, characteristically in the form of crumbling sense of community.

As Wacquant (2008) puts it when he describes the banlieue: “It is only logical that, at the spatial level, the destabilizing effects of the diversification and degradation of the condition of workers have accumulated in the urban zones where the unstable fractions of the new postindustrial proletariat are concentrated” (p. 235-236).

While this precarity of the labor market has shaped the urban areas, these areas in return continue to shape its inhabitants

into members of the precariat, making it even more impossible to escape – these states of insecurity in work and residence feed each other. The transformation of the labor market towards being more education-centered makes the failure of the state to educate the residents of both the ghetto and the banlieues even more devastating. The schools in these areas do not work, and a stunningly small part of its inhabitants has finished college or even high school as the schools fail to educate. In the ghettos, children as young as 10 prefer to find work in the informal economy to going to school, either in order to contribute to the household income or for their own short-term economic gain (ibid.). While education is not necessarily a way out of the precariat, work for the low-educated in the post-industrial part of the world (e.g. Western Europe, North America) is far more often precarious (Standing, 2011).

Not only does the stigmatization of the ghetto and the banlieues hinder their residents from finding stable(r) work in the area, but the address itself becomes a hinder for employment outside of it. The address is part of a person as he or she applies to a job, and in an economy where the person itself has to be sold the stigmatization of his or her area becomes part of the stigmatization of him or herself (Standing, 2011; Wacquant, 2008). In the case of the ghetto, this is further increased by the ghetto’s spatial separation from where the jobs can be found. As previously mentioned, the distribution of the workplaces shifted as the USA moved into a post-industrial state. In the 1970’s, the suburbs gained jobs in every occupational category while the city of Chicago gained employment among college-degree requiring professions but lost 119,000 blue-collar positions and 90,000 retail jobs, that is, the jobs that had previously been accessible to the ghetto residents. Why? It is not only a matter of lack of education, but also of lack of public transportation. The inefficiency and deficiency of public transportation to and within the suburbs further excludes the ghetto residents and other urban poor from the suburbian work market as owning and using a car is often too expensive for them (Wacquant, 2008).

The Urban Margin in Times of Growing Prearity: solutions?

So what will happen to the ghettos and the banlieues in these times of growing precarity? If the cause of the urban marginalization as well as of increasing precarity is indeed politics 5

of the nation-state(s), rather than the result of an unfortunate social culture of delinquency and lazy state-dependency or the result of some organic economical force, the answer must lie there as well.

According to Wacquant (2008), the currently nation-politically enforced ways of handling the situation of acute urban marginalization is either through attempted re-installment of old welfare state programs – argued for by most of the European left, but possibly fruitless if these were indeed invented for a different type of society – or what he describes as the current policy in the USA: criminalization of poverty through punitive confinement in poor districts (e.g. ghettos) and prisons.

However, throughout the world, discussants of the precariat have started to raise voices for more radical solutions. If there is a connection between where one lives and ones access to and desirability on the labor market, where labor enables housing and housing enables or prevents housing and people are structurally excluded from work and therefore from the labor-centered society in which we live, there must be found a way out of labor as prerequisite for organization and battle against neo-liberal capitalist societal commodification of everything and everyone in life. Ability to sell one’s work on the labor market should not be the sole base for security.

would also include among other things free education and job training as well as guaranteed access to healthcare and housing.

Standing (2011) also argues that labor work must be seen as instrumental, rather than in itself the road to happiness, and argues for tax paid citizen’s wages for all legal residents within a state, unconditionally in terms of for what it is used, with the national legal system to deal with undesired activities.

While the nation states has this far continuously let their citizens down and the idea of ‘legal’ residents is deeply problematic, such basic income could, if correctly and internationally implemented, be a short term goal to deal with the most acute effects of marginalization as a function of an unjust economic system.

Meanwhile, the struggle continues for truly borderless and hierarchy-free societies, where each person is valued and has what they need, work does not equal labor, and no city has to bear the mark of class differences, whether these classes go by classic or post-modern definitions.

It is highly probable that the exact fates of marginalized areas of post-industrial parts of the world will differ, but considering the impact the precarization of the working class has had on them, how they develop will no doubt be connected with the development of the precarity and the precariat.

We have to have other bases for solidarity and organization than labor, and labor should not be the only indicator and source of human value. The important thing is not a right to work, but a right to reside, eat, live and function.

There are different views on the precariat’s capability of organized movement. As mentioned in the introduction, Wacquant (2013) believes the precariat too scattered and weak to carry its own political power struggle. Moving on to his view on the ghetto, he uses the words of Susan Eckstein (1990) to describe the ghetto as having moved from being “inner-city slums of hope” to pure despair. Standing (2011) believes the precariat to be dangerous and “prone to listen to ugly voices” (p. 1) although he also sees the Occupy Wallstreet happenings as a manifestation of its collected power. But there are also those who believe in the revolutionary power of a precarity united in its precariousness: among them the Swedish Prekariatet (“The Precariat”) who have organized themselves as a loose network aiming at finding practice of the theory of the precariat. Perhaps part of an answer could lie in their slogan: “Designed by neoliberalism – heading for the common”. Because this has been suggested by many discussants of the precariat: A basic income guarantee (also known as among other names citizen wage or demogrant). If this could be done universally, it could be the solution of both the hardships of the precariat and a way to break the walls of marginalized areas all over the world. This is suggested by Wacquant (2008) as a part of a third alternative to those listed above: a larger “offensive reconstruction of the social state”, which 6

Insecure Spaces

References Cayton, H; Drake, S. 1945 [1993]. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Eckstein, S. 1990. Urbanization Revisited: Inner-City Slums of Hope and Squatter Settlements. World Development 18/2 (February) 165-181.

Standing, G. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. E-book version.

Wacquant, L. 2008. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. London: Polity Press.

Wacquant, L. 2013. Revisiting Urban Outcasts: Class, Ethnicity and the State in the Making of Marginality.

Dansk Sociologi: in press. Retrieved 2013-1126 from http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/ REVISITINGURBANOUTCASTS-Danish-article-version. pdf. Version: 2013-03-17.

Womens’ Role in the City and at Home Adriana de Lima Sampaio

Cities are in constant change, and womens’ status has been following these changes during the historical periods. However they were mostly considered shadows of men, and their liberty is commonly related with men’s decisions and intervention. This essay is based on the book The sphinx in the city: Urban life, the control of disorder, and woman, by Elizabeth Wilson, and it aims to describe diverse social position of women in different situations brought by the author.

Furthermore, the Brazilian house configuration was investigated, in order to describe how the structure of the houses has been changing, including and excluding women.

Adriana de Lima Sampaio is an architecture and urban planning student at Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil). She is currently an exchange student at the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), attending the course Metropolitan Urban Planning.

She has interest in urban design, sustainable urbanism, social housing.

The city Cities are the reflection of civilization, and are in constant change. They are an artefact, created by the human mind and imagination (Wilson,1991), constructed by multiple contrasts, as natural and unnatural, monolithic and fragmented, secret and public, rich and poor, culture and nature, male and female.

These are complementary and opposite characteristics from the cities. The hierarchies and organization of the cities have been changing along the years, however in different historical periods and in diverse cultures, women turned to be confined inside their houses.

In the 19th century, the sexuality outside the family was one of the major preoccupations of the society, and the presence of woman in the city was a problem, since the city could provide freedom and different new experiences. In the city, the forbidden become possible, the city became a place of “danger” for women, and was considered a threat to the traditional patriarchal family (Wilson, 1991).

Elizabeth Wilson quotes the 19th century in Korea, where women were rigidly confined during the day, while men were in the streets. However, when the gates of the city were closed and the major part of the men went home, women could walk around the city and socialize with other women. Although, they still protected themselves to being seen, they have the “freedom” to live in the city. This “freedom” was controlled, and women did not lived the real city, because while they were experimenting the city, the routine and daily life were not actually happening, since the gates were closed and the men were not performing their daily functions. These women were deprived of their liberty, which was dependent on male decisions. Another example that the author brings out is the decline of women status in Babylonia, which was probably related with military conquest, slavery and the impoverishment of the farmers. With this, the commercial prostitution started, and women were considered non-respectable or respectable women. According to Acton (1857 cited in Wilson,1991:41), the prostitution is not a permanent condition, and a “transitory state through which an untold number of British women are ever on their passage”. In this same historical period there was a project to vanish with prostitution, and he argued that different facts of urban life made prostitution inevitable, however “the larger number of women who have resorted to prostitution for a livelihood, return sooner or later to a more or less regular course of life” (Wilson,1991:41). Since then, prostitutes are referred to as women of the streets. As the streets are free spaces, without boundaries, are prostitutes free women? Are they part of the public space? This freedom of these women is a risk to their safety. Until today, prostitutes are marginalized and disrespected; they are targets of crime and violence.

The women’s experience of urban life is difference than that for a man. The safety is an important issue, and in different cities 7

Collage made by the author

women are private to the full experience of the city, since their safety is threatened. Thus, women have been experimenting the city differently than the men. They have been hidden inside their houses, fleeing from violence, living in a paradoxical status, not being still full citizens, as they still do not have the free access to the public life.

In the 18th century, prostitution was considerate “the great social evil of the Victorians” (Wilson,1991:38) and one “solution” for this evil was the idea of sending the prostitutes to English colonies, where they could get marriage with the local residents and through this link, recover their respectability. This idea shows women as objects that need men to be pure. A single woman or a prostitute cannot be considered complete if she is not connected with a man, preferentially by marriage. This connection gives women purity and dignity.

In the Renaissance city, Alberti supported the rational and scientific planning. Is this city, the family was patriarchal and oven again women’s place was the private space, under the authority of their husbands. This ideal city could be a reflexion of the urge of control and “fix” society. The uomo universale was other concept of this period, and it represented the complete man – competent both in artistic and scientific fields – and women were not included in this classification. This is a reflection of men superiority, in the sense that only them – through their virtuosity – could be considered “universal”, complete. This concept of utopian city repeated throughout history. In the 19th century, the cities were planned to be perfect town for their workers, where the residents should be near to green areas and to their work. They were zoned, and the residential areas were separated from the industries, segregating the functions in the city, and transforming the house a place of refuge, where women would be protected. In this same period, according to Wilson (1991), there was a belief that that the employment of mothers in the factory system was destroying the families. However, instead of 8

creating a better environment for women to work, the “solution” was to reinforce the patriarchal family, isolating them at home.

The urban solutions of this century were obsessed with the regulation of urban life, and this planning of the city can be see as an attempt to control the urban appropriation and behaviour. The working class wife should be in the domestic sphere, providing the perfect and traditional familiar atmosphere for husband and children, and it became considered indecent the women that walked on the streets alone (Wilson,1991). Women should walk always with a male company - husband, father, brother or servant – and this was another limitation in women freedom, as they were always being observed and reined by men. It defines women as confusion in the city, the city was a men’s place, women represented the domestic life, and with women’s presence in the city, it became disordered.

In the 19th century reality, even when women were supported in their right to have an independent income, it was suggested that they would be performing more delicacy activities, to keep the harmony with the “refinement of their feelings” (Buckingham 1835,cited in Wilson,1991). This is an underestimation of the female’s ability to develop complexes or “male’s” activities.

Wilson comments that this is shown even in kid’s histories.

Babar (the elephant) is a book from the 1930s, and in this fictitious reality, the characters live in a perfect city, after Babar becoming part of a civilized society, he goes back to the forest and constructs a city called Celesteville, where he introduces the civilized manners. In this perfect city, women participate in social life, however they do not have paid employments. It is the perfect middle class life, where all social and human problems are solved.

In the 20th century, the town planning was thought as the solution to the social and the physical disorder of the city.

To reach this aim, the idea was to create zoned cities, where everything has its own place to happen. The urban reformers were convinced that “the answer to the chaos of urban life was to reduce the size and density of cities and somehow to restore

Womens’ Role in the City and at Home

Collage made by the author

the relationship of city dweller to the countryside” (Wilson 1991, p. 100) developing the ideal of the “garden city”. In this context, middle-class suburbs were created, and in this lifestyle, the families could have their own backyards, creating a domestic confortable zone for women, where they can take care of the house and the family, and exercise her choice in this environment created for them. However, as the suburbs were far away from the city life, they lived isolated, and it was difficult to do their daily activities, unless they had a car.

family safe and protected. This created a redefinition of the public and private space. According to Rolnik (1985), the public space is no longer the street – place of religious parties and procession – and the parlour becomes the new public space, where the family receive their friends. Unlike the streets, where is possible to find all different kind of people, from different ages and social classes, the parlour allows a selected group, where the family welcome friends from the same social class, creating an homogeneous coexistence.

The house In different historical periods and cultures, women turned to be confined inside their houses, and historically the domestic sphere is the “place of women”. The architecture of the houses is a reflection of the society’s behaviour, and it is shaped according to social changes. According to Rolnik (1985), in different Brazilian houses, from mansions to the medium class houses, the organization of living is the same, and the residence is divided in three main areas that represents the mainly functions of a house: social, services and intimate. The intimate zone is where it is located the bedrooms and bathrooms, where the rooms are divided by gender and familiar hierarchy. The social area represents where the family receive their friends and acquainted, and the services area is where is located the kitchen and where the family keeps their cleaning utensils (as washing machine, mops, buckets). The house is divided from the street, turned to its inside, and it is segregated in its organization, what decreases the contact between the residents. Even the urban laws induce the creation of this house model, with their setbacks and the functional definition of the rooms. The house should be isolated, with the delimited three zones, separated by walls and doors, blocking the visual and physical connection (Rolnik,1985).

The confining of the family inside the house is related with the death of the streets territories as socialization spaces. The streets became ways of passages from pedestrian and vehicles, and the houses turned to their inside, closed for the streets, keeping the

In the book Contribution to the study of the Brazil’s urban evolution, Nestor Goulart Reis (2000) describes the colonial houses as organized in four different zones: the hall, alcoves, living room and backyard. The rooms were connected between themselves, without corridors, what enable more socialization among residents and reduces privacy. The houses were constructed along the streets, what defined the public space.

According to Rolnik, in this period, the women were confined in the back part of the house, with their kids and servants, producing the family’s livelihood. The living room was located in the back of the house, near from the services. The men spent most part of their days outside, and the main area that they utilized in their homes was the living room at their meal and rest times. The alcoves were protected from the sun, wind and the outside influences; these were the places to sleep. The men’s socialization areas were the streets, squares, and plazas.

Notwithstanding, “decent” women socialized mainly in public parties. However, in the 19th century, the way of living has been transformed. Firstly the houses became to have tall basements, deviating the gaze of strangers. Then, the urban laws changed, creating new rules for the setbacks, leaving the houses isolated in the lots. The corridors began to be used, creating more privacy inside the rooms. At the same time, the living room appeared as a decorated place, utilized to receive visits and as public space, welcoming people selected by the owner. This reconfiguration reflected at the houses’ organization, creating the current 9

configuration, mentioned before, with three main areas: social, intimate and services. The alcoves became bedrooms, not utilized only as a sleeping place, and becoming a private place.

The services zone is now located in the worst insolation part of the house, with smaller areas, windows, and doors. According to Rolnik, this isolation of the services zones is a reflection of the new relationship between employees and employers. If in the colonial age the slaves were always with their bosses, in this new context the employees should have their own places in the house, far away from the familiar privacy. It is in the same model of house that housewives take care, and spend the major part of their journeys isolated from the rest of the house, just going into these different areas to put it in order. This separation of the services areas, making them invisible from the visitors and men, is a way of depreciate and is an indication of the house work’s shame. In practice, not all ways of living in Brazilian cities are this way. In slums or in very low-income residences, for instance, this house segregation is not possible because there is no space available. However, the common sense is still the idea of creating this pattern of housing, providing a “normal” and “nonpromiscuous” lifestyle.

Nowadays, women work outside their homes, and are more independent from men. They live by themselves, do not get marriage and support families by themselves. Still with these differences, most of the houses have almost the same pattern, with their services areas hidden and smaller, comparing to the social zones of the houses. The idea of integrating the kitchen to the living room, seems to be a shy change, however, is a huge transformation in the residence’s configuration, and it is including the services in the social live, connecting the family, and including women in the social sphere of the house.

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Womens’ Role in the City and at Home

References Reis Filho, Nestor Goulart.(1968) Contribuição ao estudo da evolução urbana do Brasil: 1500-1720 : edição ilustrada. São Paulo (SP): Pioneira. 235 p.

Rolnik, R. (1985). Lar, doce Lar (a história de uma fórmula arquitetônica). AU. Arquitetura e Urbanismo, São Paulo, v. ano 1, n. 3.

Wilson, E. (1991) The sphinx in the city: Urban life, the control of disorder, and women. London: University of California Press.

Pretty Vacant Finding Small Scale Anarchy a Home Amanda Fröler

In the Uses of Disorder Sennett argues that cities ought to contain a level of disorder in order for people to become mature human beings. He calls for a type of planning that suits people with different interests and that enables a variety of activities to occur.

The cities of today contain areas that are too disciplined and ordered which limits the idea of what neighbourhoods and public spaces could be. Stockholm has large spaces of undefined use below some of the larger bridges. Today the planning department of the city has decided to develop one of these spaces and “make it an integrated part of the city fabric characterized by culture activities and pleasure”. But what about the informal and temporary activities that make up an alternative to the well-planned public spaces of the city?

Amanda Fröler is a student in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design at the KTH in Stockholm. She holds a bachelor qualification in Spatial Planning from the Blekinge School of Technology in Karlskrona, where she also participated in the startup and running of the urban planning office “Urban Factory” between 2010- 2012.

The jungle was wild at night A tiger roars as the moon hits his site In the city there’s no pity, in the dark without no light The sun goes down, you better be home and sound [...]

Scream in the air, people flying everywhere Bodies in the street, police starts to beat [...]

In the jungle or in the city You better be home before the sun goes down There’s no pity, be wise or witty In a world of despair, paradox between the jungle and the city

(Jefferson, M. 1986, the Jungle,

by Jungle Wonz. Chicago Trax, Vol.1.)

The jungle is a common metaphor for the chaos characterizing the city. The never realized dystopia of the movie “Blade Runner” visualizes the urban jungle in the opening scene: a Los Angeles silhouette set ablaze and covered in dusty smoke, portraying the fallen post- industrial city gone uncontrollably wild. In the book The Uses of Disorder Richard Sennett also uses the word jungle to describe a city of disorder and complexity, although in a positive sense. The urban chaos depicted in the above lyrics from “the Jungle” and “Blade Runner” could according to Sennett be translated into something that empowers the citizen rather than something that defeats her. In order for the urban jungle to become realized in our cities, there need to be a systematic change in the way we run society. Inspired by the anarchist movement of the nineteenth century, he proposes a new type of anarchism in which the bureaucratic instances and institutions would become more flexible, however not abolished, and manage their office towards the needs of the diverse neighborhoods of a city, rather than controlling them. The citizens would thus become more dependent on each other and learn how to live together, share common spaces and solve problems between themselves. The unwanted result of conflict would be if people removed themselves from the problem, by for example moving to a frictionless suburb.

The Uses of Disorder was written in the 1970s; a decade characterized by the aftermath of postwar suburbanization of major American cities, and for Sennett an appropriate case study of how family life was affected by this movement away from cities. Sennett’s criticism is mainly directed to the middle class for creating affluent communities at secure distances from the city, escaping to a world within their control. He argues that these homogenous communities, consisting of core families, are deprived the multiple contact points required for adolescents to mature (Sennett 2008:58). And it is the dense urban city which hosts a mixture of class, ethnicity and culture that is the ultimate realm for the multiple contact points to exist (ibid: 83).

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more than one public, consisting of different public groups and discourses (Cupers & Miessen, 2002:47).

[...] it is the mixing of such diverse elements that provides the materials for the “otherness” of visibly different life styles in a city; these materials of otherness are exactly what men need to learn in order to become adults. Unfortunately, now these diverse city groups are each drawn into themselves, nursing their anger against the others without forums of expression. By bringing them together, we will increase the conflicts expressed and decrease the possibility of an eventual explosion of violence (Sennett 2008:162)

Since it is the high expectations of order and coherence in the city that makes people exercise irrational and unprovoked violence, communities would become stable if people had space for expressive outlets, thus not caught between the polarities of order and violence. Conflict and problem-solving would thus be a quality of community life that would enrich people and make them more mature rather than destroy them (Sennett 2008:108).

The anarchy that Sennett proposes differs from its traditional ancestor. Instead of idealizing violence, the alternative anarchy would decrease the need for it since segregation and injustice would become reduced if people became dependent on the proximity of others, learning to care about each other. Instead of viewing the city as a mechanical idea of production, Sennett chooses to conceive it as a social order without a coherent whole form. A transformation to this kind of anarchy would require three institutional changes: First, people would have to become more active as planners and leaders, as they are experts on the specific terms of the community and the public spaces in question. Second, the political image would be less important when electing officials. Politicians would become middlemen rather than charismatic leaders. Third, since family groups usually functions as intensive shelters and shields from diversity, the family life would have to be lessened. Instead the individual would have to get involved in situations outside of the daily routines in order for the communities and the public spaces to function (ibid. 166).

In the planned city, we move between comfortable zones deprived of the necessary interactions with a diversity of people.

The zoning puts fuel to the development of an individualist society in which possession of material goods becomes more important than social acts and experiences necessary for survival. Since public spaces are increasingly commercialized they are losing the social character they once had (ibid. 178).

The emergence of the shopping mall took the definition of what public space could be a step further. Although a private institution, the spaces are designed to resemble traditional public streets with shops, trees, squares and even waterfalls and theme parks in order to attract people to consume more (Zukin 1998:829).

Inside the shopping mall, we enjoy the clean imitation of reality, although the reason why we enjoy it being the difference that it is devoid of spontaneity and crude reality of facing people, problems, conflicts and insurgency. We want the exotic elements although arranged and neat so that the experience of them is safe and controlled.

Even though The Uses of Disorder was written by the end of the 1970s, the analysis of the commercialization of public space is still current in many metropolitan cities of today. There is however a shift in the understanding of public space and to what extent it could be appropriated by other, non-commercial forces. In the book Spaces of Uncertainty the authors questions the pursuit of one definition of public space common in contemporary discussions. Instead they prefer to understand the public as being 12

In the article (Not) your everyday public space Jeffrey Hou identifies examples of informal public spaces developed from the creativity and needs of people, thus challenging the conventional notion of public space. Guerilla benching, pop-up sculptures, informal street vendors, vacant lot-farming, are examples of insurgent public spaces that recognize people as actors and functions of space as engines for individual and collective actions (Hou, 2010:16). As the title of Hou’s article proclaims, there is a duality between what we consider to be the everyday public space and not. The insurgency occurs in the public spaces we normally use, however with an unconventional twist. This reflects a reaction to the idea that public space has been killed by the commercial forces of neoliberalism and rather argues for a widening of the concept of the public realm.

Cupers & Miessen (2002) document the alternative public spaces taking place in the urban waste lands of Berlin. The life they encounter reminds of how we traditionally imagine the public social life of diverse groups of people meeting and sharing the common assets of the city. The void spaces also carry meaning; they are neither empty nor neutral. Minor traces of waste, like a broken bike, a shoe, a spray can, etc. constitutes the space through ephemeral use rather than built matter (Couper & Miessen, 2002: 95). Due to the unpolished and left-over character of the in-between spaces or terrain vauges, a variety of uses, both formal and informal, occur. Recalling the ideas of Sennett and the need for spaces that are open for several kinds of interpretations and where a diverse group of people could use the space differently, these might be the spaces where the anarchy could take place.

The hilly terrain of Stockholm creates large spaces by the waterfront below bridges. Due to height differences, the spaces are a bit below the street network, making them not a direct part of the urban fabric. Some spaces are ideal for graffiti, parties, sports, dog parks, storage or shady activities. Able to host a variety of users due to the undefined programme, they become places where the unexpected meetings occur. However, having central locations in the city, many under bridge spaces are becoming a well sought place for new and up-scaled uses.

Below Högbron in Skanstull, the city of Stockholm is having plans to create “an area of culture and entertainment by integrating offices, dwellings and hotels” (Stadsbyggnadskontoret, 2011).

The space below this bridge has been, and to some extent is, home to informal parties, night club, temporary dwellings for construction workers, permanent ship yard, and storage of building material from construction site and or public furniture.

Even though they are not considered to be the conventional public space, it is rather the combination of activities happening there that claims them as public space.

Tactics and strategy are key terms in Michel de Certeau’s the Practice of Everyday life, describing to what the extent the planned and the unplanned physical environment can enable different degrees of acting space. They represent the dichotomy between the formalized, recognized, and institutionalized, whilst the tactics represents the improvisational, temporal and maybe challenging. According to de Certeau, a place could thus be characterized by a “proper”, which is a spatial or institutional location and as such be a strategy. A tactic cannot, on the other hand, imply a place since it is not dependent on time and is constantly changing (de Certeau 1984: xix). The law system and the physical structures of the city are the strategies, which

Pretty Vacant

The urban jungle in between order and disorder. Illustration: Oskar GudĂŠhn (2013).

13

The terrain vague of the space below the Danvikstulls Bridge and its potential. Collage: Oskar Gudéhn (2013).

for example, the managers of house and techno parties are using by certain tactics in order to overcome them, such as the membership register needed for the party to be counted as a “closed group”. Tactics could thus be regarded as loopholes in the law, as well as the built environment, since the parties often are set in areas remote from dwellings, so that loud music can be played undisturbed.

The spaces below bridges are examples of a public space that enables different kinds of people to use it and interpret it independent from the ideas of how public spaces are being planned today. They offer an escape from the controlled spaces of urban interventions and reinvent the city by everyday practice. They are seldom possessed, but always available, thus regarded as spaces in need of activation by the eager planner.

This is something that Sennett opposes, thus he calls for the abolishment of the planning of functionally zoned areas and land use in advance in order to prevent consolidation of city areas.

Having areas with changeable uses and where people would be more involved in the planning process would contribute to diverse areas not satisfying a coherent urban whole (Sennett 2008: 141). This reasoning could be contrasted to the idea of the comprehensive plan that dictates certain values and strategies intended for the entire city, as for example, the comprehensive plan of Stockholm called “the Walkable City”.

Public space has always been connected to disorder, functional heterogeneity and diversity. The urban public sphere could be based on a model of confrontation and instability, as it is characterized by encounters and confrontations by people (Cupers & Miessen 2002:152). The spaces below bridges could thus be considered the iconic idea of public space in the sense that it allows for different kinds of people to appropriate it and learn to accept the various uses of it. Consequently, these spaces are outside the strategy, which de Certeau mentions, and could host the anarchical, although in small scale. These small scale urban jungles, being unpredicted and undisciplined, just as the human being herself, enables her to discover that we need diversity, chaos and disorder in order to become adults.

14

Pretty Vacant

References de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of everyday life.

London/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Cupers, K and Miessen, M (2002) Space of Uncertainty. Wuppertal: Verlag Muller + Brusmann.

Hou, J. (2010) “(Not) your everyday public space”, pp.1-17 in Hou, J. (ed.) Insurgent Public Space – Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. Abingdon/NewYork: Routledge.

Jefferson, M. (1986), The Jungle by Jungle Wonz.

Chicago Trax, Vol.1.

Sennett, R. (2008) The Uses of disorder. Bodmin, Cornwall: Yale University Press.

Stadsbyggnadskontoret (2011) Startpromemoria för program för handel, kontor, konferens, hotell och idrott inom fastigheten Södermalm 5:2 vid Skanstull i stadsdelen Södermalm. Retrieved December 10 from http://insynsbk.stockholm.se/Byggochplantjansten/ Pagaendeplanarbete/PagaendePlanarbete/?searchtype=map Zukin, S (1998) Urban Lifestyles: Diversity and Standardisation in Spaces of Consumption, Journal of Urban Studies 1998 35: 825 (excerpt also in (2003) The Consumption Reader, Eds Clark, D, Doel, M and Housiaux, K).

Back to the Future Martin Bretz

In the slums of Quito, Ecuador, people live in poor dwellings, in huts, hovels and small houses. They have no drinking water, no sewage and few of these dwellings possess latrines. The roads are in poor condition, often only made of dirt and without street lighting.

The security by night is low and at daytime you see garbage lying everywhere due to inefficient waste collection. Citizens of the slum are an oppressed class with few rights or chance to prosperity. This article gives an insight of the slums in Quito, why slums have expanded and some global power structures that are, according to Mike Davis´ book Planet of slums, the villains in this process.

Quito, the capital of Ecuador, 1992 A boy is standing on the rooftop of the family´s house, looking out over the neighbourhood. He is not from the country; born in a European country he and his family are gringos in Ecuador.

Still, he feels at home. He is seven years old and every Monday to Friday he goes to the neighbourhood’s elementary school, Quintiliano Sanchez. The children at the school are from middleand low class families, and the boy stands out compared to his classmates. He is the only foreign boy in his class, have lighter hair and is one of few children that the teachers hesitate to give physical punishment. Even though the classmates have different ethnicity and class background, on the playground they all play with each other. But today the boy doesn’t play with anyone, its Sunday and the school is closed. Standing on the sunroof, the boy looks out at the Andean valley were the city is located between the Pichincha Volcano in the west and the Itchimbía Hills to the east.

In the distance he sees the city centre and on the hills to the north some neighbourhoods of the rich class. To the east, on both sides of the ravine poor houses climb up on the hillsides. What he sees is barrios periféricos (peripheral neighbourhoods) and barrios rurales (rural neighbourhoods), two types of slums that exist in Quito. The small houses are built of wood, concrete bricks and often with tin roofs; the material is irregular and inadequate. The dwellers are low-income families and have often unsatisfied basic needs. The boy sees the poverty, but does not understand it.

Ecuador is a very diverse country, from its population with different backgrounds; European, African and indigenous, to its geographical diversity with the temperate Coast, the Andean highlands and the jungle of Amazon. The country is rich, with agriculture, minerals and oil, but also with a rich and old cultural history. Ecuador is really a nation where variety is a norm (Children International, 2013). In Quito you can see a mix of different people on the same place but also a huge segregation between, white and mestizos on one side, and black and indigenous on the other. In some poor areas there is also a segregation between indigenous and blacks because of immigration to the cities, a conflict that depends on a struggle of the same resources (UN-Habitat, 2003).

Martin Bretz is studying urban planning at the Royal Institute of Technology, which gives a huge insight on different fields, theories and ideas. For him has this article not only taught him new knowledge, it has also been a journey in time and mind.

The urbanisation of Ecuador started for real with the economic expansion in the 1950s. In the 1970s a second wave occurred with massive migration to the capital and a third with the economic crisis in the 90s. Between 1950 and 2011, Quito grew from 200,000 to 2,5 million inhabitants (UN-Habitat, 2003; Wikipedia, 2013). People with low-income have moved to Quito in hope to share in the prosperity. But all the new citizens have challenged the city´s infrastructure system, the society has not been capable to meet this groups social and economic needs.

The authorities have failed to provide and generate jobs, housing, services and infrastructure to the point that the number of families living without basic needs is growing for every year. And 15

Peripheral slums.

Source: Interamerican Development Bank (IDB)

this process has consolidated during the last decade (UN-Habitat, 2003). Ecuador´s poverty rate is high, over 33% of the population lives below national poverty line (Children International, 2013) and in Quito, many of them lives on the hillside slums surrounding the city.

History and present The lack of housing and overcrowding in low-income areas is a fact that poor people moving into Quito have faced throw the years. Most efforts from the municipality to solve the housing problem have been popular housing for people that can afford them, but the disadvantaged classes has not been involved in those solutions. So to solve their problem, the poverty´s have had little choice but to settle in already overcrowd areas and unattractive spots (UN-Habitat, 2003). This is worldwide phenomenon; the unprivileged people are the pioneers of settling in unpleasant places such as volcano slopes, unstable land and hillsides, dumps, brownfields, marshes, floodplains, railroad sidings, and the edges of the desert. Slums often begin with bad geology, the cost for infrastructure and services there are high and the authorities don’t invest sufficient, or invest at al, for the people living there (Davis, 2006). In Quito, there are three main types of slums, which either are legal or illegal settlements. Most of the low-income families live in barrios periféricos (peripheral neighbourhoods), especially in the south and north of the city. Up on the slope of the mountains, the edges of ravines and further out from the city there is barrios rurales (rural neighbourhoods).

Quito has also an inner city slum, that’s called conventillos, particularly located in the old town (UN-Habitat, 2003). The slums in Quito are smaller and different in comparison to megacities.

According to Alejandra Tapia (2013), a citizen of Quito, when talking about slums in Ecuador people always mentions Guasmo Sur en the city of Guayaquil. A slum that is more similar to the ones in e.g. Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. Although slums in Quito are a problem, they are not the most famous in the country.

There are some history trends that have created, shaped and maintained the slums of Quito. Because the creation of this new urban poverty has not been made over one night. Its evolution has been a nonlinear process, with slow growing shantytowns to an explosion of new slums (Davis, 2006). As mentioned earlier one big factor of slum-building was the increasing acceleration of dwellers due to urbanisation and the lack of giving them sufficient infrastructure and services (UN-Habitat, 2003). Also, the economic growth in the 1950s didn’t help the low-income people rise from their poverty, the neoliberal globalization with its “modernisation process” and industrial development didn’t benefit all social groups. The economic growth was for the rich 16

people and western developed countries (Davis, 2006). Since the late 70s has the neoliberal restructuring of “Third World” urban economies, according to Mike Davis (2006), had a devastating impact on the public sector. In Carrión & Vásconez (UN-Habitat, 2003) report of slums, they point out the crisis in the 1980s, when the economy decreased because of a reduction in oil income, soaring interest rates and falling commodity prices as one reason of the expansion of the slums.

Davis (2006) argues that the IMF and the World Bank programs and directives worsened the economic depression. Especially he criticises the IMF-mandated Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), which made the developing countries more marketoriented through privatization, deregulation and reduction of trade barriers in order to approve the countries new loans. SAPs made small farmers and businesses compete on an unjust global market with multinational corporations. Also the reductions in the “Third Worlds” public sector have worsen the conditions for the low-income class, which has made the people dependent on NGOs or neighbours. Much of the public health reliance from the help of foreign donors and aid-programmes, a structure that is not similar with those that has served the developed world (Davis, 2006).

Due to IMF and the World Banks use of dept as a tool to restructure and develop the economies of the “Third World”, have the cities become “… trapped in a vicious cycle of increasing immigration, decreasing formal employment, falling wages, and collapsing revenues” (Davis 2006:155). The 1980s was the years when the slums became home not just for the poor rural migrants, but also for citizens that had fallen into poverty (Davis, 2006).

The World Bank and neoclassical theories thought that the 90s should have righted the mistakes and crisis of the 80s. But although it were almost perfect economic conditions (according the neoliberal economic doctrine) and IMF tried with new methods; working with NGOs and micro-credits, the poverty in the world has increased. And it still increases. In 2020 will 45-50 percent of the population in “Third World” cities bee living in the slum (Davis, 2006).

One living condition in the slum is through squatting, normally occupation of no-rent land. Even do squatters occupy land owned by the city, public- or useless land, they often has to pay bribes and rents to politicians, gangsters or police for using them. In some cities this system has existed in decades (Davis, 2006) and Quito is one of those cities. In Quito there was 2011 around 500

Back to the Future

barrios ilegales (illegal settlements) where 400.000 citizens live in dwellings such as huts, hovels and small houses. The people who live there have no drinking water, no sewage and few of these dwellings possess latrines. Main or secondary access roads are in poor condition, often only made of dirt and without street lighting. And the waste collection service is non-existent or inefficient. The municipality works strategically with giving those areas basic infrastructure and with legalisation of the land (EFE, 2011; El Comercio, 2011). But Davis (2006) claims that illegal slums are tolerated only because the land is unattractive and temporarily worthless. And David Harvey (2013) mentions that landowners allow slums in economic decline in order to keep land values low, so that the profit gets higher when it is time to redevelop the area. How the actual case in Quito is, I can’t tell, more then that the process of giving the people basic needs goes slowly.

In decades people have migrated to Quito seeking for prosperity and better life, some have succeeded, but most of them find a tragic reality. Poor and rural migrants leave everything familiar behind, their relatives, friends and birthplace and goes to the capital. It is a hard decision to uproot the family for something unknown (Children International, 2013; Davis, 2006). According to José Laine who migrated with his family to Quito, and now lives in the slum, was the decision to move maybe not so wise.

“I don’t think coming here was a good decision. I wish I could go back in time and stay in my hometown.” (Children International, 2013). Indigenous from the mountains and the amazon region moves from well-known trees to a forest of strangers.

Most of the skills this new city dweller has, knowledge developed on rural farms and low educational level, are in an urban labour market, inadequate. Their native culture and langue puts them also in disadvantage to find a job. It is obvious that in a “modern society”, wearing traditional clothes and speaking their native language is not appropriate (Children International, 2013).

To survive the people in the slums find low-paid manual labour or household work, both in the formal but generally in the informal sector. Without job, the last chance to endure is to beg on the streets.

Due to liberalization has large informal sectors existed from the industrial era in the mid 19th century. In modern time the informal sectors had a boom due to the crisis in the 80s, which has made informal labour as the primary mode to survive in third world countries. Today the global informal working class is the fastest growing social class in the world, containing about one billion people. Big cities are today a waste dump for disadvantaged

and surplus people, having informal jobs in service, industry and trade. They are a class with poor education, low wage and no rights (Davis, 2006).

Davis (2006) argue that implementation of SAPs have forced women and their children to work in the informal sector so that the families could survive economical. The women does not only take care of the family, they also have to carry the “Third World” dept upon their shoulders. In the cities of Guayaquil and Quito, whole families were mobilized to work due to the unemployment in the 80s. The consequences were worse living conditions, especially fore the children´s health.

Economists and the World Bank have seen the informal sector as the solution of the problems of slums and low-incomes to create a better life. The recipe is to reduce the state and labour unions, provide micro-credits for entrepreneurs in the slum and legalize land for squatters. Then will the free market create new jobs and transform poverty into capital. According to Davis (2006) is that fiction and will only worsen the situation of the poorest. Those implementations create a movement of labours from the public sector to the informal, from a sector with formal contracts, rights and regulations to one without. Further does the informal sector fragmentise existing jobs, so that a one-mans work is divided between many, and not creating new divisions of labour. In already hard times is it also simple that microenterprises only becomes a way of surviving with no chance for develop or expansion. In an informal economy with an increasing competition for jobs, the solidarity between slum dwellers will decrease, a solidarity that is essential today for surviving. Those who gain most on the informal sector are the ones higher up in the economic-chain, because in the absence of enforced labour rights, the informal sector becomes like a feudal system where urban space never is free. The people at the bottom of the system, the weakest, are the ones that get abused and that are the women and children.

The future is today Twenty-one years later and the boy has grown up, Quito has been replaced to Stockholm. Christmas is just some weeks ahead and this year I´m going to travel to South Africa to spend the holidays.

Meanwhile I´m there on vacation, my plan is to see the slums of Cape Town through a guided tour. I will once again observe slums, however this time on a closer distance and in a more safe way thanks to poverty tourism. The boy in me will observe the poverty, but in a different time on a different place. Paradoxical I will spend money to see how poor people live, when I already have the image in my memories. I will pay to see people suffer.

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My classmates and me. Source: Wik-Bretz, M. (1991).

Twenty-one years is a long time, but what have changed in our world? Have the poverty´s situation got better since I was a boy?

I don’t think so, the power structures to oppress people are still there. Dreams of a better future for the poor are still just dreams, the future is here and the slums of the world remain. In this article I have tried to describe the slums in Quito, why slums have expanded and some global power structures that are the villains in this process. According to Mike Davis (2006) is the will of the states and the neoliberal economic system the reason why a big part of the world’s population lives on the edge of ruin. A high profit is more important then a person’s life. The democratic instability that has been in Ecuador through the years (Crisis Group, 2007; Latinamerika.nu, 2007) has also, in my opinion affected the poverty. The country is rich and diverse, the future of it should have been better then that it is.

But what role has we as consumers and especially as fellow human beings in this devastation of human souls? We in the developed countries benefit of the poverty in “Third World” in form of cheaper goods, food and service. In cloths I wear, food I eat and especially when I travel, poverty is with me. Who gains on my visit in the Cape Town slums? Those the money I pay for the tour benefit the people I will see, or goes the profit to someone unseen but that casts its shadow over the poor? Does my guided trip only make that the structures of the slum remains, that my money fertilises a poverty industry? The questions are many, and the answers few. I hope the boy in me will cry, so that I can reflect on how we live our lives. What impact I do on the world. The clock is ticking and the years are passing by, so also the lives of the poor.

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Back to the Future

References Children International (2013). Ecuador. Retrieved 2013-11-29, from https://www.children.org/Ecuador.

Crisis Group (2007). Ecuador: overcoming instability?

Retrieved 2013-11-29, from http://www.crisisgroup. org Davis, M, (2006). Planet of Slums. Verso.

El Comercio (2011). Así se vive sin servicios básicos en dos barrios. Retrieved 2013-11-29, from http:// www.elcomercio.com/quito/vive-servicios-basicos-barrios_0_503349751.html EFE (2011). Quinientos barrios ilegales en Quito luchan por lograr servicios básicos. Retrieved 2013-1129, from http://actualidad.orange.es/sociedad Harvey, D. (2013). Rebel cities. Verso.

Latinamerika.nu (2007). Ecuador, politik. Retrieved 2013-12-10, from http://www.latinamerika.nu Tapia, A. (2013). Favellas en Quito. Email. (2013-1127).

UN-Habitat (2003). Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, The Challenge of Slums, Earthscan, London; Part IV: ‘Summary of City Case Studies’, pp.

195-228.

Wikipedia (2013). Quito. Retrieved 2013-11-29, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito

La Zona An Order-Desiring Gated Community Boya Guo

Gated communities, regarded as closed residential enclaves, are becoming a more popular urban phenomenon worldwide as the result of the rapid change of urbanization process from all aspects, and at the same time are influencing the urban culture, urban social structure and urban landscape profoundly. This passage is trying to talk about gated community through an eye of the Mexican movie La Zona, and also relate it to the theory of Richard Sennett’s book The uses of disorder: personal identity and city life”, in order to have a better discussion of the reason why gated community is booming worldwide, why wealthy people prefer to lead a so-called “modern” gated community life even in different cultural contexts, and how gated community is shaping our thoughts and behaviors. As the development of gated community is reported from many countries and cities, I also add a case of Guangzhou, China, where I come from, to show the gated communities from an East-Asian perspective.

La Zona La Zona is a Mexican movie which tells a story happened in a wealthy community called La Zona in Mexico City. The rich community is separated from the slum neighborhoods and protected by large gates, concrete walls, fences, surveillance systems, guards and community laws, in order not to be disturbed by people from outside. However, no wall could stand still forever. One stormy night, a billboard fell over the wall and three young thieves slipped into La Zona through the breach and robbed an old lady’s house and killed her. The residents organized militias to catch the thieves, during which two thieves and one security guard got killed. But the last thief alive, Miguel, though with the help of Alejandro (a teenager living in La Zona), still found himself impossible to escape from the gated community, nor could he seek help from the police. The sixteen-year-old boy finally was beaten to death by the residents, who were regarded as the civilized and educated upper class people.

An ideal Community In fact, behind the appearance of this new kind of community – gated community, there lies a deeper culture reason which takes roots in people’s mind for thousands of years. La Zona is a prototype of ideal world, a kind of utopia, but created only for the people of property. These middle-upper class people, yearning for a safe, ordered and peaceful life in order to focus on their own career and give their offspring an “ideal” growing up environment, have not only the money but also the capacity to set up their own ideal world. Therefore, a highly closed and independent community is created by gates, barbed wires and walls in the name of “inviolability of private property”, which locates just beside the noisy, dirty, shabby slums.

Richard Sennett, described this kind of community as “Purified Community” in his book -- The uses of disorder: personal identity and city life. In this ideal world, everything is self-organized in a strict way, and every resident could do anything to protect their interests, according to their own community laws. They have their own schools, hospitals, and even courts and gradually this kind of ideal community is becoming a city with border, a utopia in a Western context or the Peach Garden in an Eastern context.

Gated community, ordered community According to Sennett’s theory, the purified community has been created because residents want to seek for a feeling of common identity. “They are talking about their understanding of each other and of the common ties that bind them, but the images are not true to their actual relations. But the lie they have formed as their common image is a usable falsehood – a myth – for the group.”

(Richard Sennett, 1970, p.36)

Boya Guo is currently a fourth year undergraduate student from Peking University, majoring in urban planning. She is interested in critical urban theories from a historical and philosophical perspective, mainly like immigrant issues, informal city, new urbanism and so on. And she is also a movie lover.

What’s more, Richard also talks about three social consequences of the myth of dignity through communal solidarity: first, the loss of actual participation in community life; second, the repression of deviants; third, its relation to violence. Related to the movie <La Zona>, the three consequences could best explain what 19

The urban landscape of the surrounding areas of La Zona.

Source: Cover of the film

had happened in La Zona and why this tragedy could occur. The first is the loss of actual participation in community life, the loss of situations of confrontation and exploration between individual groups of men. Residents convinced themselves that if the community was in hands much like their own, no matter who took charge of it, it was in good hands.

So we may understand that the denial to the people from outside (usually poor people) is a cover of the fear of having to be social beings and the fear of dealing with conflicts and challenges towards different kinds of people. Due to this reason, residents in gated communities finally choose to put a myth/lie on their social life, and claim their own purified social identity. “It is the driving power that produces the urge of men to feel socially alike, to share a myth of common identity.”(Richard Sennett, 1970, p.42) The first consequence directly results in the second consequence: the repression of deviants. To the local people, the deviants might mean uncertainty, unknown, disordered, and the “otherness”, which not only represent the threats of being overwhelmed by difficult social interactions but also a symbol of ambiguous identity, forcing local people to face their own human complexity reluctantly. “Finding the differences between oneself and the world outside oneself seem to be much more difficult to bear that finding the points of similarity.” (Richard Sennett, 1970, p.38) In that case, the repression of deviants will simplify most of the situations and avoid any possible further conflicts.

The process of simplification, which upper class people love most, defends themselves from fear, and promotes residents to live under the lie that they share the common character in some way. Therefore, just like the residents in La Zona, they built a physical and psychological barrier between inside and outside the community. This gated community with fixed social structure finally led to the tragedy: three young boys, an old woman and a safety guard died, the police lost their effect and fell out of popularity, every resident got nervous and lost their confidence of their ideal world. The purified community hated to be disturbed by deviants, fought against the deviants, but eventually shot themselves in the foot. The more you repress, the more you become fragile.

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The last consequence, is also part of the climax of the whole movie – the violence of the residents. There is an ugly and bloody scene in the movie that groups of people, carrying guns with them, ran after the sixteen-year-old boy Miguel and caught him, beat him to death. Their angry faces, like a nightmare, often come into my mind and urge me to think: why they are surrounded by such wrath and lost their basic feelings towards human beings?

Why did they have to treat such a young boy so ruthlessly? One day I realized, it is not the residents being so cruel, but the threat of disordered life and the intolerance of uncertainty push them to act violently. Anyone living in such condition would choose to fight, to kill in order to keep their ordered daily life.

Gated community and slums Having a great contrast with the gated community in the movie, the shabby slums are just standing a few blocks away from La Zona. In the end of the movie, Alejandro drove out of La Zona with remains of Miguel, like a little escaping bird, through the winding paths in the vast slums, which made me almost burst into tears. Two extremes exist in the same place, at the same time, marking the profound spatial segregation and social separation in this area. When we come to this shocking scene, it is impossible for us to neglect the wide gap between poor and rich and have a reflection from a social perspective on why gated communities have been created massively in the last several decades.

Some theorists think that gated community is a product of postmodernism. (Marcuse, 1997) While some structuralists, based on Foucault (1977), like Grant and Mittelsteadt, noted that “gates reflect the exercise of power and discipline over space.” (Grant and Mittelsteadt, 2004, p.919) Gillad Rosen & Jill Grant argued that these enclaves reinforce social identity within and may generate social capital by building commitment from members. (Gillad Rosen & Jill Grant, 2011) While, as far as I am concerned, the meaning of the gated community is not fixed. But the core of “gates” is setting up boundaries (physically and also psychologically) and cut the world into many small pieces. “The setting of boundaries is always a political act. Boundaries determine membership: someone must be inside and someone outside. Boundaries also create

La Zona

Gated community and slums (drawn by the author)

and delineate space to facilitate the activities and purposes of political, economic and social life” (Blakely & Snyder, 1997, cited in Gillad Rosen & Jill Grant, 2011). Social groups and nations employ boundaries such as those constructed by walls, gates and signage to enable and mark separation in cultural contexts of increasing social problems, especially between upper class communities (gated communities) and lower class communities (slums). Boundaries cover these problems because they block the city’s eyes, but the problems still exist. Mixing and diversity of the communities, seem to be a far-away dream.

A Chinese case Gated community urbanism is happening not only in Mexico City but also in Latin American, East and Southeast Asia in consequence of high-speed urbanization, wide gap between poor and rich, unbalanced development between capital and other cities. The similar cases are also happening on a large scale in China, the biggest economic entity and developing country in the world.

A Peking University study said that Chinese households at the top 5 percent of all income earners took in 23 percent of the total, while the bottom 5 percent earned 0.1 percent. From a geographical perspective, there is also a wide disparity between east-southern area of China and north-western area of China. The study also showed that “the average annual income in Shanghai was came to $4,700. In the Gansu Province, in northwest China, the average income was about $2,000, said the survey conducted by the Chinese Family Panel Studies at Peking University.”

(Stephen Shaver, 2013) The wide gap between poor and rich directly results in the booming of gated communities. One of the most famous gated communities in China is Clifford Estates, located in southern China, the Pearl River Delta. The Pearl River Delta is one of the wealthiest region in China, and also one of the most popular lands for immigrants. Clifford Estates target the rich people in this region and create a 500 ha community in the town of “Nancun”, in suburban Guangzhou. It is interesting to find that Clifford Estates are very proud of their gated community design and in their housing advertisement they emphasize Clifford community has big gates that do not allow strangers enter in

and 24-hour surveillance cameras are equipped everywhere to make a “secure environment” for residents. Hospitals, kindergartens, primary schools, middle schools and high schools are all included in the big community. Children even don’t need to go out of the gate. Adults drive in and drive out, with strict entry permit. Indeed, Clifford Estates succeed to create a wonderland, while when I talked with some of my friends who lived in Clifford Estates, they sighed: “My life is so narrow inside. You always know what will happen next.”

First we shaped our community, thereafter they shaped us.

Besides the residents’ cruel actions towards Miguel, there is also a very important narrative line in the movie: the change of Alejandro’s feelings towards the gated community. Alejandro is a resident or we can say, a defender of the community. But as an adolescent, he still kept his innocence and idealism towards people. Alejandro’s father was a sophisticated leader of the community committee, and Alejandro enjoyed following his father to see what event happened in his community. In this process, this young boy gradually learns the true nature of the society he has been raised in and how far they are willing to go to preserve their self-made and idealistic aristocracy.

In the beginning, as I say, Alejandro was a follower. He saw how La Zona was built and growing, he saw how his father dealt with different issues among residents. He just watched it, followed it, even joined in it without any reason, just because he lived in this community and everything he could do was to help to keep the order of the community. But when he came across the trembling Miguel in his basement, this innocent young boy, the first time felt the heavy responsibility on his shoulder, that is, if he didn’t help poor Miguel, he would to some extent give tacit consent to the orders and laws of La Zona and this is definitely the murderer of Miguel. Then Alejandro was in a dilemma. One side was his father and the order of community, the other was innocent human nature and justice. The boy finally chose to follow his heart and helped Miguel, becoming one of the rebels in La Zona. Was he protecting Miguel? Of course yes, but I also see that Alejandro was struggling to protect the openness of the community to the outside. That might be his destination: open doors to the vast world outside.

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First we shape our community, thereafter they shaped us. We close the community, then the community close our heart.

We make the community ordered, then the community rule our life. By the same token, in gated community, the behaviors of residents are greatly influenced by the existing fixed and structuralized rules and disciplines, therefore they also become cold machines which repress strangers, and if any conflicts occur, they just lead them to violence. The only little feelings they have kept for their community is for the myth/lie that binds them and sharing of a fake common identity with utilitarian to pretend how alike they are. Actually they make themselves trapped in their own trap: they create a homogenous world which has the same race, same ethnicity, same class, where no conflicts or changes would be expected to happen. However, the world in return shaped their behaviors (being cruel to strangers), make them remote and aloof, like what the community do to Alejandro and other teenagers in the beginning.

“As Denis de Rougemont has so wisely remarked, the sharing that occurs in deep relations of intimacy grows out of loving the distinctiveness, the uniqueness of the other person, not in the merging of selves into one homogenized being.”(Richard Sennett, 1970, p.39) It is the very existence of disparity could activate the city, make community rigorous and bind people together.

By sunset, Alejandro bring Miguel’s remains to a cemetery and told a burier: “His name is Miguel.” Then he drove on his car to the streets of the slums, buying snacks, standing there, watching the busy city. What he missed, must be the life outside the gates.

References Chen Wenzhe. (2008) Neighborhood scale and market-responsive urban design: a study of largescale suburban private residential developments in the transitional economy in China. Retrieved from: http://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/56502/3/FullText. pdf 2013.11.29 Gillad Rosen & Jill Grant (2011). Reproducing difference: gated communities in Canada and Israel.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Volume 35.4, 778-93.

Grant, J. and L. Mittelsteadt (2004). Types of gated communities. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 31.6, 913–30.

Marcuse, P. (1997) The ghetto of exclusion and the fortified enclave: new patterns in the United States.

The American Behavioral Scientist 41.3, 311–26.

Picture of La Zona: http://racines.canalblog.com/ archives/2008/04/06/8559469.html 2013.11.29 Richard Sennett (2008). The uses of disorder: personal identity and city life. London: Yale University Press.

Rodrigo Plá (director). (2007). La Zona. [Motion Picture]. Mexico. Memento Movies Stephen Shaver. (2013, July 19). In China, a wide gap between rich and poor. [Web log message].

Retrieved from: http://www.upi.com/Business_ News/2013/07/19/In-China-a-wide-gap-between-richand-poor/UPI-11571374248981/ 2013.11.29 Wu,F. & K.Webber (2004). The rise of ‘foreign gated communities’ in Beijing: between economic globalization and local institutions. Cities 21.3, 203-13.

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La Zona

Will France Experience a New Revolution?

Sophie Duval is a French urban engineering student from France. She has been working on the new Waterplan for New Orleans, and in public services of different cities. After 8 months abroad, she is giving external thoughts on her home country’s state.

Sophie Duval

Today’s long-lasting contentious climate in France is bringing up different questions.

Can all those manifestations of dissatisfaction lead to a new revolution in the country?

Where does it come from? Is it only a political movement? Is it an anti-capitalist movement coming up? The “potential” of the last events and demonstrations is analyzed within the light of David Harvey’s book Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, and the 3 thesis he defined to move from a struggle towards an urban anti-capitalist revolution.

These last months, the media has been using a constant vocabulary to describe the French mood: violence, riots, struggles, demonstrations, protests, anger, rage. The past of France towards “revolutions” and violent struggles brought a question: will France experience a new revolution? We will analyze that question in the frame of David Harvey’s book Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (2012), where he explains the link between urbanization, capitalism and right to the city, leading to the idea of “reclaiming the city for anticapitalist struggle” (p115). The revolution is there anti-capitalist, with strong political and urban change.

France has already experienced many revolutions The country is known around the world for its several massive riots and struggle, with a strong relation to the streets to claim for more rights along its History. Among the most important and famous there is - of course - the one that occurred in 1789. The one that changed the political context of the country. Even if it is less known, the Commune of Paris (March to May 1871) also gave an important heritage to France. This worker struggle was claiming for a re-appropriation of the city from the bourgeoisie, as well as for labor rights (Harvey, 2012). Nevertheless, it wasn’t qualified as a proletarian class struggle by Marxist analysts, as it was reuniting under the same flag shoemakers and minors, bosses of small activities and workmen. They brought up new ideas, such as women rights, night-work, rent regulations, minimal wages, etc., that did not struck a chord before the contemporary times (Voilliot, 2011). This movement failed because of strong repression, it didn’t manage to change a lot.

Massive class struggles also happened during the 20th century, particularly with the May 1968 events. This strike movement, initiated by students, was quickly followed by workers from all sectors. Students were claiming for more representation of their generation, and especially for an earlier right to vote, from 21 years old to 18. They were also willing to defy the strong authority of the state and president Charles de Gaulle, and rejecting the consumer society. The workers were re-questioning the power of the head of companies, asking for better work conditions, and claiming for a better repartition of the wealth generated during the post-war economic boom. This boom, supported by state’s programs, changed the urban landscape of the country irreparably: it brought the implementation of the highway network instead of railways, massive industrialization and individual consumerism. For Peter Marcuse, it was the first time that “the agitation resulting from the aspirations of the alienated were linked, if tenuously and in constant tension, with the demands of the materially exploited: the claims of the students to the claims of the workers” (Marcuse, 2011, p28).

The key-words of the last months media articles describing the French mood Credits: Authors own

At many point of views, May 68’s revolts are now seen as failures, especially regarding the anti-capitalist and anticonsumerism aspects. Indeed, French people and the youth in particular were already deeply installed in consummation 23

processes. Some philosophers, such as Cornelius Castoriadis, even think that May 68 was mostly a deconstruction movement (Castoriadis, 1997), or mostly based on “desire” (Morin, 1986).

The struggle brought a more complete critic of capitalism, but also a critic of the past of the French society. Nevertheless, this movement is now idealized in France; young people are feeling nostalgic about this euphoric revolution they didn’t experience.

Within David Harvey’s frame of anti-capitalist revolution, I see May 68 as a success on a cultural point of view, but a failure on a political aspect.

What about now?

How to qualify the different protest movements the country has experienced since 2000? 2005 was the stage of crise des banlieues, violent riots, which started in the suburbs of Paris, and spread out in the cités of all the country. This movement founded its roots in the poverty and feeling of isolation of the inhabitant. As Wacquant states in « Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality » (2007, p67), those spaces are disconnected to the global economy, and perceived as “social purgatories, leprous badlands” by “both outsiders and insiders”.

The support of the leading classes of the country was unequal.

The political class analyzed these events emphasizing on the insecurity and violence, while philosophers and social researchers were more comprehensive towards the rioters. For Françoise Blum, historian, these social events gave the opportunity to the inhabitants to use their right of expression, and get involve in the social and political life of the country. They asked for their right to the city that is to say to create a city of their heart desire (Harvey, 2012). They changed their streets from a void space to a crowded place, using Wacquant’s vocabulary, and became actors of this public space they were denied but asked to integrate. Those claims gave birth to organized collectives such as AC LEFEU, which created a list of complaints, brought together in a cahier des doléances addressed to the political forces. The banlieues inhabitants can now refer to representatives that can possibly be heard by the leading forces.

One year later, in 2006, a massive protestation movement against the new work contract for youth people happened. This contract, called “Contrat de Première embauche” (CPE, contract for first employment), was an open-ended one for people under 26 years old. But part of the conditions was that the employer could break it during the first two years. Protesting about the insecurity of such a job and scared of employers “flying” from a contract to another, breaking them just before the two years, the students went onto the streets to reject it. They organized the movement with the help of the student unions, and were supported by the worker unions. At some point the movement was compared with the idealized May 68, even if it didn’t have the same echo.

Nevertheless, the occupation of the streets and the blockades of the high-schools and universities ran for more than 3 months in some cities, to finally lead to the abrogation of the law. The pressure they put on the government by their urban mobilization 24

had an impact on highly taken decisions, and saved them from what they were assimilating as a capitalist assault on their rights and security.

Closer to us, the last months have been turbulent too. The promulgation of a new environmental tax for heavy goods vehicles on highways created a strong reaction within some working classes. The farmers, finally joined by employees of transportation multinational companies as well as heads of small companies, have been protesting all together against this measure. They have been occupying the urban space by blocking highways, destroying urban installations, and blocking public institutions, in order to make their voice heard. The movement is now turning into a broader one, with the support of storekeepers and citizens of all types, protesting about the entire fiscal politic carried out by the officials. I also see such a movement as the manifestation of their despair to pay for an economic crisis they are paying for, but never got benefit from the profit generated.

They have the feeling of being exploited by multinational companies to get out of their production force the more profit, with no redistribution. Besides, they have chosen to wear a red beany during their demonstrations, which is not a choice without any meaning. This refers to the Phrygian hat, symbol of liberty during the Revolution of 1789. They are now identified as a group by this accessorize, as the media call them the “bonnets rouges” (“red beanies”). Some anti-capitalists claims are heard, but not asked consciously.

Other movements are going one, mainly class demonstrations, claiming for gratitude and a better status of their work, or protesting against delocalization or suppression of their jobs.

We’ve seen midwifes, teachers, farmers, industry workers, etc.

All those activities are creating a defiance climate towards the political power, which is now constantly obliged to smooth their actions and negotiate with the different unions and groups.

Individually, those movements can’t be seen as anti-capitalists revolutions, as they didn’t bring yet to massive urban and political anti-capitalist change. Nevertheless, they initiate new ideas, which have a political impact.

A loss of faith in the political forces Between the crise des banlieues in 2005 and the demonstrations of the last weeks, the political landscape of France changed: the government is now directed by the left (this vote is said to be a reaction against the former president Nicolas Sarkozy), and the far-right wing support is growing. A political deception is sensible, because the different political parties are said to follow the same lines of action. Castoriadis said in an interview given in November 1996 that the quarrel between right and left wing in France was now insignificant, as the different leaders of the different parties that followed each other in the governments acted the same.

Today, this can be seen in the different surveys measuring the popularity of the actual President. Indeed, the popularity of

Will France Experience a New Revolution?

President Hollande is very low (20% in November 2013), but 74% of the interrogated people also said that the right wing and far-ring party wouldn’t have done better to improve the condition of the country (IFOP and Journal du Dimanche survey, November 2013).

The left politic is said to be weak, and too oriented towards the right. This can be explained by Wacquant’s statement that the French Socialist Party that “reoriented [itself] towards the educated middle-class” (2007, p73). They are excluding some social categories, and can’t “engage the public policies necessary to stem the spiral of advanced marginality”, especially in the banlieues of Paris or Marseille. The right and far-right wing is surfing on the rise of anti-immigration thoughts created by the economic instability. The inhabitants of the cités are more and more stigmatized. Some of them have finally decided to engage themselves in the political stage. It is interesting to notice that the president of AC LEFEU has chosen to engage himself in the municipal elections of Clichy, creating his own party based on the cahier des doléances of his association. This denotes the fact that he wasn’t recognizing his values in the “classical” parties.

For Harvey, the urban struggles are underestimated and misunderstood by the left parties, while the Marxist “ignored and dismissed “ them “as devoid of revolutionary potential or significance” (2012, p120). His statement shows how the political stage is standing out of those events, not taking any part in it, or organizing it. The only visible radical left party who lately initiated urban movements with demonstrations toward the Place de la Bastille is the Front de Gauche, led by Jean-Luc Mélanchon. Their motto is to “let the place to the people” and they want to bring up an anti-capitalist politic, using 1789 symbols. During the last presidential elections they reached unexpected good results, showing that a part of the population, fed up with the classical opposition left vs. right wing wanted to see something else. The economic crisis was already there and the people were already paying for the capitalism’s “mistakes”. A wave of anti capitalism was then felt in the country, but quickly faded up after the elections because of the confusion and opposition of the different left groups, in my opinion.

At the same time, the unions and the popular movements are starting a breakdown. The subscriptions are lower every year, and the spontaneous popular movements are supported by more people than those initiated by the unions. But then, how to organize a perennial movement to change indeed the city and its system? How to lead the country towards a more fair and less capitalist one as it seems to be asked by the population? Will those struggles lead to a revolution? We have met anti-capitalists claims, which are not always conscious. But will those struggles evolve in an organized anti-capitalist movement?

From a struggle to an urban anti-capitalist revolution David Harvey states that 3 thesis are necessary mutation from a struggle to a revolution (pp138-140). Let’s test the potential of the sum of all the recent movements through these thesis.

First, the movements have to find some strong local support; “this presumes that strong links between workers and local populations already exist or can be quickly constructed”. In the 21st century movements, the community support hasn’t always been equal. The violence and “hooligans” within the movements are always blamed, and some confusion between the mobilization’s claim and those events often happen. The crise des banlieues found local support from the youngster, and the mediators, but not always with the inhabitants of the cities or politics. By contrast, the anti-CPE demonstrations found their support within the entire educational community, but also retired people, workers, and parents, worried for the future integration of their children in the active life. The fear of more instability for the new generation first brought together an entire community.

Nevertheless, after 3 months of blockade of the universities, some of the students started to express their disagreement with the method conducted to make their voice heard. Some students couldn’t afford the loss of one university year; they had the feeling to be kidnapped by the student unions. Communities support the actual movement of les bonnets rouges, as it found its roots in the threat of unemployment and taxes. The whole family and local groups share the same issues, as they are common to an entire class of workers. The fact that it is now spreading to different class of workers can be seen as a first sign of an enlargement of the roots of the struggle, which could led to a revolution.

Second, Harvey states that to move toward an urban revolution, “the concept of work has to shift from a narrow definition attaching to industrial forms of labor to the far broader terrain of the work entailed in the production and reproduction of an increasingly urbanized daily life”. This means that the struggles have to involve more than one only labor class. They have to concern all the actors of the urban chain system. The bonnets rouges struggle isn’t that broad yet. Nevertheless, as many different work classes have been protesting (doctors, midwifes, farmers, industry workers, teachers, etc.), a global mood of discontent is growing. The question is then: will the different groups find a way to associate their claims?

Finally, Harvey argues that both exploitation and recuperation of the surplus produced claims have to stay at the same level of importance during the struggle process. Today, the claims are regrouping the two values. Indeed, the different worker classes are asking for better conditions of work, such as the midwives, who wants a re-evaluation of their status in the hospital, or the institutors protesting about the reform of school rhythms and the implication on the kids, but also on their mean of education. The broad movement created by the bonnets rouges is also asking for a fairer repartition of the profits generated by the companies 25

through the riots against the industries closure while some of them are making benefits, asking for better wages instead of payouts to the stakeholders. All the values are shared, but still the working class claims and demonstrates and the bonnets rouges are not united yet, and fighting on self-oriented claims.

In addition, one shouldn’t forget the increasing support to the far-right wing. I am wondering how a global urban anti-capitalist revolution could happen if some of their participant want to exclude other? Would it lead to an opposition of two movements?

Or, on a more optimistic point of view, would it open a dialogue and integration process? The three thesis don’t take into account the stigmatization of a part of the population that Wacquant denounces. Yet, we have seen with the crise des banlieues that this phenomenon itself could lead to powerful riots. Can this strength be used within the process of an urban revolution? Or will it weakened the movement by dividing the supporters about the solutions to carry out? I have the feeling that the nationalist’s ideas are now too strong in some classe’s minds to make the union possible. Indeed, some new protests movements are being more visible, for example supporting self-justice when a jeweler shoots a robber (which appeared to come from the famous Cité Nord of Marseille).

How will those urban movements evolve, if the economic crisis and austerity imposed to the people lasts? Will the movement stay within the boundaries of the country? Or will the revolution be European? Will there be a continuity of the Spanish Indignados movement? Will old Europe start a new era of economics after the proof of an impossibility of the cyclic capitalist movements?

Some elements seem to be combined, but the movements are spread out within the working classes, and some major divides exists between the groups. Only time will say if they will join their strength to one common fight or not.

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Will France Experience a New Revolution?

References Harvey, D., 2012, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso.

Wacquant, L., 2007, Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality », Thesis Eleven November 2007, 91, p. 66-77.

Voilliot, C., 2011, L’Utopie réalisée de la Commune, Le Monde Diplomatique, December.

Morin, E., 1986, Mai 68: complexité et ambiguité, Pouvoir n°39, p71-79.

Castoriadis, C., 1996. La montée de l’insignifiance.

Interviewed by Mermet, D., November. Available at: http://www.costis.org/x/castoriadis/montee.htm Blum, F., 2005, Ils sont entrés en politique, Le Monde, 11 November.

Marcuse, P., 2011, Whose right(s) to what city?, in Brenner, Marcuse, Mayer, Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City, Routledge, p24-41.

Pratviel, E., 2013, La capacité de l’ump et du front national à faire mieux que le gouvernement actuel, survey realized by IFOP for Le Journal du Dimanche, November. Available at: http://www.ifop. com/?option=com_publication&type=poll&id=2400

Demand for Democracy through Gezi Park Aysegul Alayat

In June 2013, protests have raised the dust of Istanbul streets. Resistance that spread over the whole country started with the occupation of the Gezi Park as a reaction against the recent planning decisions on reconstruction of the old Ottoman barracks. On that area where today the only central park of Taksim region, Gezi Park, lays. With a conflict about the planning decision, other disregarded suppressions and unexpressed political and social sorrows came to the surface and the protests spread over the country. Of course when researching Gezi Park the issue should not be simplified by defining the park as the only reason of nationwide protests as Turkey is a special case with multilayered and interrelated relations between dynamics that requires reading of subtexts of events.

This article focuses on the democracy, commodification of space and issues through Gezi Revolt.

Aysegul Alayat is a masters student in the Sustainable Urban Planning and Design Programme at Royal Institute of Technology and board member of jagvillhabostad.nu. She is engaged in public space, social justice, social movements, and democracy.

Introduction In June 2013, protests have raised the dust of Istanbul streets.

Resistance that spread over the whole country started with the occupation of the Gezi Park as a reaction against the recent planning decisions. The new plan for Taksim area proposes reconstruction of the previously torn down Ottoman artillery barracks on the area where today the only central park of Taksim region, Gezi Park, lays. Today there have been built 94 shopping malls only in Istanbul (Ozdemir, 2013) and according to the proposal Ottoman barracks –which used to lay there seventy years ago- would turn into yet another shopping mall. As a reaction to the planning decision a modest group of protesters gathered in Gezi Park to stop the bulldozers entering the park to tear down the trees. This, followed by police violence, the conflict about the planning decision and top-down authoritarian reactions of both Prime Minister and Istanbul Mayor about the protest brought other disregarded suppressions, unexpressed political and social sorrows to the surface. Led by unpolitic Y generation and their humorous and peaceful actions Gezi Park suddenly became a symbol for many and turned into a meeting point where divergent views found place to be voiced and heard.

Though surely when researching specially Gezi Park the issue should not be simplified by defining the park as the only reason of nationwide protests. The fact that Turkey is a special case with multilayered and interrelated relations between dynamics requires reading of subtexts of events. In this article some of the less related issues will be disregarded in order to discuss the issues of interest, democracy, commodification of space and urbanization through David Harvey’s economic crisis and Mitchell’s social justice theory. Further the narratives used are built on lived experiences of the resistors. In the following parts the article will focus on the democracy, commodification of space and urbanization issues through Gezi Revolt.

Everywhere is Taksim! Everywhere is Resistance!

People are shouting “go to the front, don’t run away!”. Choking cloud of tear gas covers the streets of Istanbul. Makeshift barricades built from fences, paving stones, and debris block main streets towards Taksim Square from police riots. The park is white now. Us, trees and stray animals, we are being strangled together. The pain in my eyes and my throat is nothing comparable to the joy of relief from oppression. Following the crowd I end up on a back alley of Istiklal Street. It is difficult to see through the thick air full of chemicals, burning eyes and throat, making it impossible to see or move. Without much of sight, I hear a woman’s voice shouting somewhere; “Talcid!”.

None of us knew what our parents’ favorite nonprescription gastritis medicine was capable of, the woman sprays my face with homemade solution based on this medicine in a rush, an ease then I am all ready to go again. This is a homemade resistance, supported by women, people have mask made from googles, plastic bottles, absorbents and even bras. Bottles filled with solution are laid on window sills and in empty corners of the streets. Grabbing one I start running to the front with several 27

Resistors with gas masks (Photo taken by: Fethi Baskurt)

others that also want to help the frontline resistors. The air gets more and more thick again, it smells like democracy.

The word democracy derived from the Greek word demokratia, demos from ‘people, masses’ and –kratia from ‘power, rule’.

In other words it means people’s power to rule. However the individuals power of ruling remains limited as number of direct democracies are basically extinct. What now exists instead of direct democracy is representative democracy. There is an unspoken trust in the representative democracy in the elected parties to fulfill their promises during their term. When promises are not fulfilled by the elected ones, people feel misrepresented and that the elected ones misappropriate the given power. There by all means are more reasons than the following for the feeling of power misappropriation. The first one is possible economic crises. Harvey states that urbanization and construction has a big influence on Turkey’s fast growing economic bubble and the recent situation has similarities with Madrid 2005 before the crises (in Twickel, 2013). In the last few years, not only Taksim Square but also Tarlabasi, Fener-Balat, Sulukule and Tophane regions faced renewal projects, Emek Theather on Istiklal Street got destructed to build yet another shopping mall.

These plans that are done by the Turkish planning authorities goes through technocratic planning processes that do not utilize the participation of the users and the social consequences of the plans are paid by the vulnerable population. Other than these renewal projects similar to the building of Istanbul’s third bridge, third airport, which would cause further construction of development projects, other infrastructure projects have been growing Turkey’s economic bubble. This constant growth indisputably gives power to the current government to strengthen their image. While on the other side it creates an economic bubble that is ready to explode any second.

The other reason is the interventions on private life through laws and personal statements of politicians on moral issues. During the last years, limitation on access to webpages and social media, moral questioning on women’s life including number of children for family and possible anti-abortion law have been some of these issues. After three terms in power, Erdoğan –he regularly reminds that he is chosen by fifty percent of the population- finds 28

more power in himself to become more authoritarian while being criticized for not representing all. Possible economic crisis and interventions on private life are named as misappropriation by the minorities and by the oppressed. Then what happens if elected power misuses the trust? According to Lefebvre (2000:61), democracy is nothing different than the struggle itself for democracy and democracy is a movement more than a state.

In any situation, on an ordinary day at the parliament between ministers or on an urban battlefield on Gezi Park in Istanbul, in Sorbonne University in Paris, on People’s Park in Berkeley or on Tahrir Square in Cairo, the issue is always about making the disregarded suppressions and unexpressed political and social sorrows heard. That’s why in some points of history people go back to the streets.

Shoulder to shoulder Against Fascism!

The frontline is more difficult. While my eyes get filled with water, the air gets even thicker. Masks and googles do not work anymore. Police riot are close now, I hear the guns they use to shot pepper gas. Some who have thick gloves protecting their hands from the heat of the gas cannons put them in huge water bottles to deactivate. Again there is a woman shouting; “Come inside!”. The trust we have for others is dazzling. Without any second thoughts I rush into the apartment. There are others in the poorly decorated room, including a few more resistors who came in after me, and the woman shouting on the street two minutes ago now is serving tea. While a few words are exchanged quickly, we hear police riots and water cannons passing in front of the apartment. We take a breath talking to each other and checking our phones to be updated, we wait for the police to pass and pepper gas to diffuse. Finally we are back on the streets again.

Harvey (2008:24) states that there is a close connection between capitalism’s development and urbanization. Gezi Park is located in the very core of Istanbul. Environmental and social benefits of such a central park are certainly unquestionable. However the commodification of space opens up space for conquest, facilitating ‘highest and best’ uses to supplant present uses (Blomley,2002 cited in Clark,2005:261). The demand of building and profiting in this location is immense as there is no other place in such size that is as central as Gezi Park. As a consequence, ‘the vagrant sovereign’ would define Gezi Park a vacant space

Demand for Democracy through Gezi Park

Burned public bus in Taksim Square (Photo taken by: Fethi Baskurt)

in the center of the city. Today the land values in the area go through the roof and there is no other land to meet this demand of insatiable investors. This situation puts Gezi Park under the spotlight. Considering the possible profit from commodification of this space determines the social and environmental consequences of losing such a value to be seen as inevitable. As Harvey (2012:14) states quality of urban life became a commodity for the rich, as the city becomes a world of consumerism, tourism, cultural and knowledge based industries and the neoliberal protection of property rights became a hegemonic form of politics even for lower-middle class. This undemocratic situation, where the only interest is economic, widens the social segregation between the rich and the rest.

Voices of different people spread through the vast square in Taksim. Everyone is looking towards the scene where the voice is coming from even though it is impossible to see anything through the crowd. After each person talks the crowd starts applauding, screaming, whistling and chanting. I decide to get closer to the scene to improve my view. As I get closer a warm feeling full of excitement shivers my body. It feels like there is hope in humanity, it feels like we are not alone. A young guy gets the microphone and starts talking, a bit shy and a bit embarrassed, “I have been participating in the demonstrations for a few days now, even the first day I participated I had fascist ideas that I did not know about”. Applauding crowd becomes silent. ”I would like to apologize for my fascist thoughts and for every day that I wished for police to have the right to shoot the protestors”.

Turkey because of its’ history and geography possess people of different background. Through the more militarist/nationalist history of the country distribution of things was not just and this fact was never questioned. Women, Kurds, Alevis, Zazas, Circassians, and LGBTQ persons were suppressed and not recognized by the majority. This is why Gezi Park events have been revolutionary from a social perspective. Initially each resistor had their own reasons and reasoning to go out and take action on the streets, the Revolt has changed all of them at least by starting a discussion in their minds. A discussion that brings questions one never asked and a new more sensitive understanding of ‘the others’. This understanding enriches the pluralism from the bottom and a new process of change spreading from the

individual to their surrounding and possibly in the long run to the whole community.

Harvey (in Akar & Moumtaz, 2013) articulates that Gezi Revolt is an urban uprising around discontent. The main question is how to make the resisting mass content. Remembering the first days of the revolt, the resistors manifested that the Gezi Revolt is not related to any political party or ideology. They were Alevis, Kurds, Armenians, socialists, nationalists, feminists, LGBT persons, environmentalists, football fans, unpolitic Y generation, activists, doctors and lawyers. They were the public that was not heard or listened to. As they were heard by each other, they listened and felt empathy through their experiences. They learned about themselves from others and enjoyed they admitted their faults and promised themselves to be better for all. By these resistors of the nationwide protests, that started from Gezi Park and spread through the whole country, presented the pluralism of the population as well as the demand of a new inclusive politic organization and asked for social justice for themselves and for others.

Mitchell (2003:31) explains that social justice should not only include distribution of things but also a framework where effective participation on decision-making of oppressed groups is possible. To achieve this there are several actions that needs to be taken. Due to the current ten percent election threshold, many social groups are not represented in the parliament. Those that are not represented are being oppressed by the majority and this causes discontent. For a more pluralistic and “real” democracy the threshold should be lowered. Technocratic top-down planning processes that are applied in Turkey let only the politicians and the related investors participate in the process. A more transparent, inclusive planning process is urgently needed.

Conclusion Things are totally different now; I came back to my parallel reality again. Autumn arrived and the sky in Sweden gets dark much quicker. There is complete silence in the room; it’s not even possible to hear noise of a passing car. It is quite cozy to be indoors and to enjoy being under a warm blanket. Everything is still including me; the only movement in the whole room is the candle flame. I’m on the phone with a friend while I start 29

checking my Facebook. Even my newsfeed is calmer then before I think. The subject of the conversation comes to Gezi Park. “So, how is the situation?” she asks, “Nothing has changed after Gezi Revolt, right?”. There happens a moment of silence, feels like minutes but it is probably just about seconds before I answer.

It is hard to believe how noisy such a silence can be. I say “It depends on what you define as change?”.

As a consequence of the protests Ottoman barracks project is suspended. Other than that Gezi Revolt perhaps did not have any physical consequences on physical space, policies and laws for now. By physical consequence I mean a physical outcome that can be directly related to the events. And perhaps there will never be any consequence of that sort. To search for Gezi Park’s consequences would be naïve since also stated by Lefebvre (2009:61) democracy is the struggle itself for democracy.

So other types of consequences or interrelations should be mentioned. The crowds that filled the squares demanded a pluralistic more inclusive democracy for all. They demanded more inclusive planning, more pluralistic democracy as they have also started a process of bottom-up change towards social justice and democracy.

References Akar, H. B., Moumtaz, N.(2013). On Why Struggles over Urban Space Matter: An Interview with David Harvey. Retrieved 27/11/2013, from http:// www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15156/on-whystruggles-over-urban-space-matter_an-interv?utm_ source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_ content=bufferad60a&utm Clark, E., (2005). The Order and Simplicity of Gentrification: a Political Challenge, R. Atkinson & G. Bridge (eds.) Gentrification in a Global Context: the New Urban Colonialism, London: Routledge Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review. Sept-Oct, 2008. Issue 53, p.23-40.

Lefebvre, H. (2009). State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Edited by N. Brenner and S. Elden.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Mitchell, D. (2003) The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, Waveland Press.

Ozdemir, C. (2013). AVM Sayisi Müze Sayisini Geçince! Translated by the author. Retrieved 27/11/2013, from http://www.radikal.com.tr/ yazarlar/cuneyt_ozdemir/avm_sayisi_muze_sayisini_ gecince-1132448 Twickel, C. (2013). Urban Class Warfare: Are Cities Built for the Rich?.Retrieved 27/11/2013, from http:// www.spiegel.de/international/world/marxist-andgeographer-david-harvey-on-urban-development-andpower-a-900976.html

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Demand for Democracy through Gezi Park

What do you think we’re gonna do? Ask? Riots as a Consequence of Policy Failures?

Namo Marouf

Marginalized areas, in cities in the advanced capital countries, have been the scenery of ‘street unrest’ or riots, many times emerging as a consequence of police violence. Often they are seen as ‘irrational outbursts’ and rioters are given bad nicknames by politicians as to find a blaming factor, but behind the riot lies a less visible revolution; the gradual but fast retrenchment of the welfare state in the uneven expansion of economic growth in capitalistic countries. In Sweden the state shift towards a neoliberal politics, has, according to Catharina Thörn, lead to the “death of Swedish Social Democracy”.

This article start by providing the background to the riots that emerged in Stockholm, starting in Husby, and the basis of the article, deriving from Loïc Wacquant’s book “Urban Outcasts”. Further, place, people and policy is analyzed to get an understanding about the logics of riots. Finally I make a point in the end, arguing that what has to be radically transformed, is not the built environment, it is not the people that need to be put in jail, but the need for change in policy. Policy has failed and those struck are the lower-class families and youths, unskilled women and stigmatized ethnic categories.

Namo Marouf is a student of Civil Engineering at the department of Sustainable Urban Planning at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), with a special interest in social matters in general and concerning planning in particular. She is born and raised in Stockholm suburbs and has a burning interest to decrease social inequalities, lack of opportunity and the negative image attached with million-program suburbs (förort).

A man was shot in the head – the ‘invisible’ policy and the visible police A man was shot in the head by a police officer on May 13, 2013. By the Police Force, a governmental institution financed by income tax revenues, financed by the people. I’m not writing about a shooting in the ghetto in the U.S, or in the banliues of Paris, nor the ends in London, but to the so-called problemområde (read förort ) Husby in Stockholm. All of these are places where ‘urban outcasts’ reside. Places that, according to Loïc Wacquant, author of the book ‘Urban Outcasts’, are “stigmatized neighborhoods” and “at the very bottom of the hierarchical system” (Wacquant, p. 1). The book is about urban marginality in advanced capitalistic countries. The author points out that, despite similarities in capitalistic politics and social issues in different cities such as inequality, poverty, marginality and stigmatization there are major differences in the historical development and emergence of what is causing these issues, depending on context, saying that his cases in U.S and Europe remain two distinct socio-spatial constellations.

For many, the shooting in Husby seemed to appear as an unexpected event because of Sweden’s association to the social democratic welfare state. During the 1970’s the gradual retrenchment of the welfare state (also in the US according to Wacquant) lead to, according to Cathatina Thörn (2013), the “death of Swedish Social Democracy”. Weather it is “dead” or not is unclear (Sweden still has a welfare system), however concerning the Swedish housing market; the old welfare legislation has been nullified, and taken a clear path towards neoliberalism (Hedin, 2008). Wacquant points out this general retrenchment, or what he calls, ‘violance from above’, as the deproletarization of people (not only mass unemployment but the new types of service jobs, unskilled labor, and insecurity for youth to get employment), the social fall of working-class/immigrant areas, and the stigmatization in daily life. The old definition of the “working-class” still exists, however today it has emerged into a more fragmented structure where also other factors plays a part, not least ethnicity.

Police Police involvement has been the starting point in various riots, but it cannot be explained as an underlying reason, but rather as ‘the spark that lit the fire’ (to use journalistic terminology).

Because, behind such riots (or protests) lies deeper historical context-based, structural inequalities. Wacquant (2008, p. 37) explains that urban protests’ underlying factors, (in advanced societies in the capitalist West) “find their roots in the epochal transformation of their economies (deregulation of financial markets, desocialization of wage work…), the social polarization of their cities, and state policies…”, all of which in some sense is visible in a Swedish context. As Wacquant states, the urban protests happens in almost all advanced society in the capitalistic era (not only Europe). In London; the protests in 2011 emerged after the police shooting of a man in Tottenham. The same in 31

The history of protests in Husby.

Illustration by author.

A symbol of policy failures.

Illustration by author.

Athens, when in 2008 a 15-year-old student was shoot. In Paris the 2005 riots started as a result of the death of two youths, 15 and 17, (while running away from police they were electrocuted while hiding in an electrical substation). In 2013 it happened in Husby, Stockholm. Through presenting some underlying factors in this text, the purpose is to create an understanding of the “logics” behind the riots in Stockholm (without trying to justify criminal acts).

Police; the (sometimes only) visible authority in society in many suburbs around Stockholm. Their job; enforce the law, limit civil disorder and protect the people. A symbol of power and authority, a visible force in society that by their very presence can symbolize hierarchical power structures, remind people of policy failures and can contribute to the feeling of ‘social closure’.

Because the only time “they” show up is in a reactive- and not in a proactive sense, it is to “quick fix” damage. At least this is the feeling reactiveness contributes to, for residents. When policy has failed and police is the only visible authority, whom do you think will be blamed? Is it the visible or the invisible? And is it correct? After the shooting in Husby, Swedish police provided the public with incorrect information, inter alia that the man who was shot was taken to hospital where he later died, when in reality the man died immediately by the bullet aimed at his head, in his apartment.

A demonstration was held against the shooting on May 15, 2013, initiated by ‘Megafonen Husby’ (a youth organization working towards a more ‘just society’). Because the people of Husby wanted answers about the tragic incident, they wanted to put a stop to police brutality in the suburbs. And suburbs is written in general, because though spatially “disconnected”, connections exist of collective experiences, why also the riots spread to other Stockholm suburbs.

A riot emerged on May 19, 2013. The burning of cars was the youths’ fault. It was the ‘angry young men’s’ fault (at least if you ask Mr. Reinfeldt). “I should emphasize that the core represents young angry men who believe in violence as a method” (Karlsson, 2013), it was said in an interview with Prime Minister Reinfeldt, on May 21th, when he broke his two days of silence.

In Paris President Sarkozy called the protesters “racaille” and “voyous” (Le Monde, 2005), David Lammy (local PT in Tottenham) named rioters in London ‘mindless mindless people’ (Bridges, 2012).

Förorten: a ‘no-go place’ where “angry young men” reside “They can be overlooked at little cost by politicians – except, precisely, when they become the site of visible unrest and street clashes” (Wacquant 2008, p. 30).

Let me introduce you to Husby located on the blue metro line in the northwestern part of Stockholm. Its housing, built during the million-program-scheme, are characterized by 78%, or 3817 32

rental apartments (the remaining are co-operatives). It’s a ‘nogo’-place (Wacquant definition), and an LUA- neighborhood (best translated as a “Local/Urban Development Agreement” between the government and the municipality, not with the people). A LUA is a governmentally labeled neighborhood where there is a “large proportion of exclusion” where extra recourses are put in order to decrease unemployment and criminality. Wacquant (2008, p.29) writes “they must also bear the weight of the public scorn that is now everywhere attached to living in locales widely labeled as ‘no-go areas’, fearsome redoubts rife with crime, lawlessness and moral degeneracy where only the rejects of society could bear to dwell”. Further, a recent governmental report from November 2013 (Urbana utvecklingsområden) shows that Husby is the district where the gap between the amounts of paid-workers (ages 20-64) is largest in relation to the rest of the county (Regeringen, 2013).

Husby was the initial scenery of the Stockholm riots in May 2013. Once, a place built in the dreams of the post-war era; with functioning neighborhood units, attached with a local center (not only to function as a commercial trade center but also as a social meeting place with basic services). But the longstanding housing legislations that were the efforts of a Social Democratic era is today nullified (Hedin et al., 2011). Husby today, a site where neoliberal processes connected to urban transformations, are visible in the urban realm. Without using the term “death”, privatization and changing legislation regarding housing and the working sector is visible in areas as Husby. The place has been facing impoverishment of fundamental service functions and there are issues concerning peoples’ lack of opportunity, exclusion from above and ‘social closure’. Despite this, Husby has a history of peaceful protests towards such processes from above; gentrification schemes and closure/relocation of service functions e.g. against: Järvalyftet and its failures , Husby’s walkable bridges , increased rental schemes, the relocation of the county councils health center and other function such as the dental office, the relocation of ‘Husby Träff’ which resulted in occupying ‘Husby Träff’ , and in May a demonstration towards police brutality .

What is a bit different in the Husby case for some years is that the site has not been ‘overlooked’. This can be explained partly because of its soon non-peripheral location, hence there are potential profit motives for a ‘lift’ scheme like ‘Järvalyftet’ to take place. According to the city of Stockholm, ‘Järvalyftet’ that started in 2009, is a long-term investment to create a social and economic development in the area Järva (Akalla, Hjulsta, Husby, Kista, Rinkeby and Tensta). Not only concerning the built environment but also social aspects such as decreasing unemployment and social exclusion. “Järva will also be an engine for growth across Stockholm” (Vision Järva, 2013). But already the scheme has received a lot of critique in media, inhabitants and by politicians, because of its already high expenses and lack of transparency. It could rather be called a facelift, leaving the

What do you think we’re gonna do? Ask?

inside (root causes) unchanged while the face (urban form) of Järva will be changed, further the discourse of growth lacks to focus on the social enhancements that are needed in Järva.

Why this article started with an interview with Tupac might not seem so far fetched. Wacquant’ brilliant analysis of the differences in the historical emergence and context of the ghetto in US, the banliue in France or problemområde in Sweden (Wacquant, 2008, p. 1) also tells us (implicitly) that many people still share common life experiences independent of a place’s context, why also the Husby ‘unrest’ spread to other förorter around Stockholm.

Thörn writes “Behind the urban revolts that set Stockholm on fire lies another, less visible revolution: the slow, deliberate, devastating assault on the Swedish welfare state” (Thörn, 2013), this is connected to the ‘visiblility’ of riots and Wacquants’ analysis, that marginalized areas will only be visible when they become sites of unrest. And with no exception Husby has been ‘assaulted’. The governments ongoing shift towards the commodification of the public sector (Hedin et al. 2008, Thörn, 2013), the view of the citizen as a consumer, the new forms of governance, and less secure forms of employment (Thörn, 2013) can all be witnessed in Husby. But whether Husby actually is dangerous or not, if it consists of minorities, poor people or foreigners matters little in the end (Wacquant, 2008). The place and its ‘outcasts’ are still labeled. However, I can ensure that there are many good qualities in Husby’s. It is still a place where social ties are strong. And only the tradition of peacefully organizing protests tells us a lot.

The Presence of Policy Failures In Urban Outcast, as mentioned before, the author seeks to explain the historical differences and the emergence of the French banliue and the U.S ghetto. Why one cannot speak of a ‘ghetto’ in a European context, hence it would take away the societal patterns behind the term. Nevertheless ‘social rejects’ still share a collective feeling of closure from ‘the rest of society’ and I would argue that, likewise, in a Stockholm context, it is not only a spatial issue but also about the ‘lack of opportunity’.

Swedish policy has played its part in both, Wacquant writes (p. 6) “it might at first glance seem to be absent, passive or puny, it is still the national state that, through its multisided action, shapes not only the markets for housing, employment and educational credentials, but also the distribution of basic goods and services, and through this mediation governs the conversion of social space into appropriated physical space”.

He laughed at me – the ‘shocking’ news I lived in London during the riots in 2011. A guy asked me where I was from because of my strange accent. I answered, a bit humoristic “I’m from ‘the Hood’ in Stockholm”. He laughed at me and said; “there is no hood in Stockholm”. And I understood why he laughed. In comparison to the cities explained in “Urban

Outcasts”, Swedish cities ‘lack’ behind (in a positive sense) the stigma attached to residents living in the equivalent of förort in London or other cities in the advanced capitalist countries.

During the Husby uprising, international media seemed to be just as surprised (Thörn, 2013) as the guy I had met in London.

Nonetheless, the neoliberal path (at least concerning the housing market) that Sweden is and has going towards for at least 30 years, (Hedin et al, 2011, Thörn, 2013) has resulted in an even more polarized, gentrified, segregated society (Wacquant, 2008) with increased social inequalities and gaps between society’s affluent and its “rejects”. The fast pace of this shift has resulted in Sweden having the fastest growing income gap when compared with the other 34 OECD countries, which also has translated into the urban realm (Thörn, 2013).

Marginality in Sweden (if not yet advanced?) isn’t something that should be laughed at. Yet it may surprise many because of the relatively fast transformation, the dismantling of the welfare state in some sectors, has – may it be intentionally or not – affected Swedish society as a whole in a negative sense.

Wacquant writes, “even in societies that have best resisted the rise of advanced marginality, like the Scandinavian countries, are affected by this phenomenon of territorial stigmatization linked to the emergence of zones reserved for the urban outcasts” (Wacquant 2008, p. 239). He also states that public policies have effects on territorial stigmatization.

So, I wonder if the guy would have laughed if we had met after the uprisings in Husby. In the article that Thörn wrote, with the title “The Stockholm Uprising and the Myth of Swedish Social Democracy”, only days after the riots, the author “goes as far” as saying that Swedish social democracy is “dead”. I cannot say that I was surprised when the riots occurred, as a suburb resident, when opening ones eyes much of the policy is visible. Thörn (2013) states that “when the poor suburb of Husby lit up, the surprise in the newspapers was palpable: even in Stockholm!“ SURPRISE! Or? What is important to point out is that this article does not state that all the involved people in the riots where acting with a conscious political agenda, and not that the demonstrations participants are the same people as those participating in burning cars. Husby, as every other place in the world, has different kinds of individuals. However I argue, with backup from Wacquant that the riot was not an “irrational outburst”, and both ways of showing frustration/opposition to ruling orders are rational. An editorial article in a daily newpaper in Sweden emphasized a Husby residents claim that the rioters are “bored” youth. However nobody that does such things is merely ‘bored’ or ‘angry’ for no reason (these arguments where in the early debates about the riot). In turn, Mr. Reinfeldt identified the “young angry men” as the core and politicians all over assign ‘rioters’ bad nicknames.

And these arguments, barely scratch on the surface of the problems, they explain only one thing; the result of something 33

(and not the reasons), which in this case ‘anger’ and ‘boredom’.

Further, the early debate seemed to miss out the vital point of this “something”, or the understanding. Because it is essential to try to understand, however not accept, why the riots took place in Husby to be able to avoid it. What had been going on before the uprising? Why did the police lie? Why does policy fail the people in order to enhance growth? From an outside perspective it’s not strange that the riot was perceived as an “irrational outburst” and Wacquant states that “it is tempting to view outbreaks of collective violence ‘from below’ as symptoms of moral crisis, pathologies of the lower class, or as so may signs of the impending societal breakdown of ‘law and order’” (p. 24). In crisis leaders have to come with answers, answers to something that is more complex and multifaceted, than to blame a certain group (and blaming politics seems excluded). So, though difficult, one might at least try to understand why Reinfeldt, Sarkozy or Lammy gave the youth bad aliases, while alienating them. Or can we? What Thörn explains in her article (about the sudden death of the Swedish welfare state) can also help to explain the surprising reactions internationally, or why the guy in London laughed at my answer. And if that is not enough OECD presented the increasing gaps in Sweden and now we ought to know.

The days that followed, media and rightwing politicians tried to find answers for the riots. It was as if “the fire” was trying to be extinguished by a fire hose with a hole in it. Answers, only scratching on the surface of a deeply rooted issue that has been the result of decades of policy failures in advanced capitalistic societies, and ought they be indented or unintended, it doesn’t matter. The issues are still a fact, the politics “destabilizes and further marginalize their occupants”, and it “submit them to the deregulated labor market, rendering them invisible, or drive them out of a coveted space” (Wacquant, 2008). The fast pace of neoliberal politics only offers fast ‘radical cures’ (Wacquants words) in order to enhance growth, that trickle down nothing else Will the problem be solved if society imprisoned the “racaille ” and “angry young men”? Or by “changing” the coveted space, trough Järvalyftet and similar schemes or by simply demolishing the million program housing areas (as was suggested by the former minister for integration, Nyamko Sabuni)? OR, is it really the tangible things that need to be removed and manipulated? Or is it policy that needs to be changed?

I could have been an “angry young man”. A ‘rioter’. Because there is no doubt that I am angry. However I was lucky somehow – I enjoyed writing. So, I used words as means for my ‘riot’; some people (because of what’s been explained above) use other methods to channel frustration. But the anger is never irrational, also, why one should try and understand but not accept. And I really wonder if Mr. Reinfeldt ever asked himself why these supposed ‘young angry men’ are angry?

34

What do you think we’re gonna do? Ask?

References Bridges, L., (2012). Four Days in August. Race & Class, 54(1), 1-12.

Hedin K., Clark, E., Lundholm, E., Malmberg, G. (2012). Neoliberalization of Housing in Sweden: Gentrification, Filtering, and Social Polarization.

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(2), 443-463 Karlsson, J. (2013 May). Regeringen skyller på unga arga män. Aftonbladet. Retrieved from http://www. aftonbladet.se.

Le monde (2005, November 11). Nicolas Sarkozy continue de vilipender “racailles et voyous”. Le Monde. Retrieved from http://www.lemonde.com.

Regeringen (2013). Urbana utvecklingsområden 2013 - Statistisk uppföljning utifrån 7 indikatorer. Retrieved from http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/16976/a/228980.

Vision Järva, (2013). Vision Järva 2030. Retrieved from http://bygg.stockholm.se/Alla-projekt/Jarvalyftet/ Thörn, C. (2013). The Stockholm Uprising and the Myth of Swedish Social Democracy. The New Left Project. Retrieved from, http://www.newleftproject. org.

Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcats. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Blame Carl Bildt for Making Me into a Monster Mahmod Ibrahim Gedem

In a time where neoliberal policies are forcing the welfare state of the past to withdraw itself from the center stage, a new form of urban life is being created. One, which is characterized by growing income gaps, the never ending quest for capital and an increased marginalization. The development is allowing a chosen few to enjoy the new prosperities while on the other end an increasing number of people are left empty-handed. In this article I attempt to characterize what this development is and can lead to by writing about ”monsters”, a product of neoliberal policies, stigmatization and our own fears.

Mahmod Ibrahim Gedem is currently enrolled in the master program Sustainable Urban Planning and Design at The Royal Institute of Technology. He holds a special interest for social aspects of planning and will after graduating attempt to save the world.

Through the creation of a self-image of people from stigmatized areas into being all kinds of negative stereotypes, society and the media are creating monsters. Monster is here defined as “a strange or horrible imaginary creature” (Merriam-Webster) or in other words someone who you should fear. To generalize people in this way is of course wrong but even more important, it is dehumanizing. The problem here is that when the monster realizes that no matter how much effort it puts into proving the stereotypes wrong, people will never consider it as being human and that it can only be a monster and only that, a monster. At first the monster fights itself, trying to kill its inner monster, but after some time it finally comes to peace with its monstrosity.

The monster comes to realize that there isn’t actually anything wrong with him but what’s wrong is the image imposed on the monster by media, government and also by the society we live in. What the monster then does is embracing this image of it, accepting this from the outside-imposed image of itself and uses that to its advantage, meaning that the self fulfilled prophecy becomes real and thus Frankenstein is alive! The monster that wants to create change in its community and eradicate the injustices existing there has many of the change creating doors closed or inaccessible to it. It is then that the monster decides to use whatever channels, assets or powers it has to create this change and it is also here that the monster understands that it can use all those negative stereotypes used to label it to create the change it wants. Using peoples fear is after all a very powerful tool. You can just take a look at the post 9/11 world to understand what impact fear and potential threats can have. The monster, deprived of any kind of humanity is driven by a desire of being vindicated, a desire that can be transformed into a desire for vengeance. A song that I have listened a lot to and that I would say musically “embodies” the feeling of being a monster was recorded by the Swedish music duo “Ison och Fille” and their song “Stationen”, which in my opinion largely circles around the idea of “monsters” and the ways the city has influenced them and how they in turn have influenced the city. The last verse of the song is performed by Ison, in which the artist reflects around his younger self only feeling accepted in the subway station, older generations not understanding them and how they used to cause commotion in the outskirts of the city and not really caring about the potential consequences while also comparing himself to baby gremlins (monster) but in a human form. There is an ambivalent feeling in the verse of the artist coming to terms and embracing his monstrosity but at the same time trying to fight of the accusing fingers and accusing glances, which make him feel, as he was “King Kong”, a simple monster. The song ends up with Ison and Aleks, who sings the chorus, embodying the search for vindication/revenge stating that he’ll show the world what he’s capable of doing, he’s intent on not allowing the labeling of him as a monster to act as a barrier, on the contrary he’ll use that to get wherever he wants. Similarly to how the song ends, “my” monster is also driven by the idea of being vindicated, a vindication that is thought lead to the ultimate prize, regaining its humanity. The sad part is that, there is no such thing as an 35

“You want a monster? I’ll show you what a monster is capable of” Copyright © LA HAINE: ™ & © 1995 Canal+

ultimate prize. The same people that made him into a monster, made him human, thus still holding him imprisoned by the stigmas and prejudices from the “ruling class”.

Making of the monster When I was younger, I was ashamed of living in an area like mine. When people asked me where I lived I used to say the name of a neighboring area, which had a good reputation in the ears of the people. I convinced myself that I wasn’t like the other ones living in my area and that the prejudices associated with my neighborhood weren’t about me. I studied hard and was a good student, I didn’t cause trouble or bother anyone but I soon realized that no matter how hard I tried I was still just another criminal immigrant, parasitizing on the welfare state that was built up by the hardworking “natives” tax money. It was like the Swedish rap group Mohammed Ali wrote in their song “Svartskalle och Kriminell” loosely translated to “immigrant and a criminal”, no matter what I did couldn’t be considered as anything else than a criminal immigrant.

We were ashamed of living where we lived and adopted a, from the outside, imposed view of our area and started resenting the others who lived here, blaming one another for what our area had evolved into and for the negative reputation it had given itself and thereby also us. It was my neighbor’s fault that our area had a bad reputation and it was the people from across the street’s fault that the built environment as well as the social life, had started to deteriorate. We were like crabs in a bucket, fighting each other, trying to make it, out from the bucket but at the same time we shared a collective fate of not being able to leave it. But the worst part for me wasn’t that we weren’t able to leave the bucket, it was the fact that we were able to see and desire the life outside of the bucket that made life on the inside so intolerable. After graduating from high school I found work in the car industry but when gloomier economic times came, our jobs were moved to other countries where the working conditions were very bad but 36

at the same time saved the company a huge amount of money on salaries. My colleagues and me were told to apply for jobs at a staffing firm, which enabled the company to hire us whenever they wanted. This kind of solutions became more and more common and although it offered us a way to make ends meet, it actually only moved the problem around and instead had the impact that it “strengthened while simultaneously lengthening the golden chain that imprisons vulnerable and marginalized populations within orbits of capital circulation and accumulation” (Harvey, 2012 p.20). Thanks to the liberation of the market and commodification of humans we became disposable, if our companies weren’t satisfied with us they could easily dismiss us with out having to worry about lawsuits or issues with the workers unions, they just had to go and pick up another crab. This further broadened the void between us and the rest of society and some had to find alternative ways of financing themselves.

The uncertainties of the labor market stole our sense of security and we ended up trying to survive instead of trying to live, living was after all a luxury reserved for the more affluent people in our society. We saw our lives change, from being full of social contact to only revolve around money and that change had immediate effects on us. A society only concerned with the accumulation of money creates “one dimensional people” (Marcuse, 2012, p.27).

Similarly to the welfare state of the past that today has started to withdraw itself from the center, people have started to withdraw ourselves from social life, instead adjusting us to our new found one dimensionality and buying material objects (those who can afford to take part in that lifestyle) that are attempting to fill that void. This development has lead to an “increasing individualist isolation, anxiety and neurosis” (Harvey, 2012, p.14) when man at the same time has created the city, which is supposed to be “one of the greatest social achievements ever constructed in human history for the realization of our hearts desires” (Harvey, 2012, p.14). The income gaps are becoming wider and wider and this can be seen in the “spatial forms of our cities, which increasingly become cities of fortified fragments, of gated communities

Blame Carl Bildt for Making Me into a Monster

“Guns & Roses” Copyright © M. Ibrahim Gedem

and privatized public spaces kept under constant surveillance.

(Harvey, 2012, p.15).

After finally being sacked I ended up with a lot of time on may hands and I started to reflect on our situation, wondering if this was the way everything was supposed to be. Was it even possible to find an alternative way of living? In order to understand the situation we were in I had to understand how we had gotten to this point and it was here I decided to start reading. I went to the local library, one of the only public services that hadn’t been dismantled or moved anywhere (yet). While in the library I met a friend who recommended a book by David Harvey called Rebel cities (2012), which I started dissecting. In the opening pages of the book the author cites Robert Park, a prominent American urban sociologist, on what the city mean/is “Man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself”(Park in Harvey, 2012, p.3). Harvey took it a step further stating that what city we want cannot be separated from what kind of people we want be. I agree with them both but I use another angle to the idea and that is if when making the city, man remade himself, what does that tell us about “man”? Is a city filled with injustice, homelessness, castles and extreme riches what man is? Is it this that our hearts desire?

Today one can find examples of the above described characteristics in any city, sometimes you can even see the extremely rich living right next to the extremely marginalized.

Seeing luxurious skyscrapers and seeing people who have nothing sleeping outside, right next to the tall monuments of mans ingenuity, residing right next to each other as if they were next door neighbors. Sights like this will become a more and

more common sight in our cities in a not too distant future if the development patterns currently in the workings are to continue (OECD, 2013).

From a Swedish perspective, the neoliberal strive for deregulations and privatizations has forced the state to withdraw itself from the center stage allowing powerful corporation and multinational enterprises to fill the gap left behind. The welfare state, where the welfare of the citizens was central is becoming a fading memory and replaced by a workfare state, in which it is each citizen’s duty to work. Work is here synonymous with doing the right thing. (Abrahamson, 2012, p.11). Simultaneously the wages of “low- skilled” labor has stagnated which has helped to create an increased income difference. Seen through Swedish eyes, the income difference between rich and poor is still relatively limited, however this gap is among the fastest growing in Europe (OECD, 2013). This increase has especially affected those who already feel marginalized and excluded, further adding to the feeling of not being able to affect their own situation.

The “borders of inclusion” as Abrahamson (2012) call them (in contrast to the more popularly used term borders of exclusion) together with the diminishing welfare and an increased income gap is affecting the legitimacy and trust towards authorities.

I soon realized that the reason why my staircase smelled like a mixture of urine and garbage could be seen as a simile to how my neighbors and me felt treated by the state. We used the elevator as a toilet because we felt the government didn’t give a shit about us and we threw the garbage anywhere but in the garbage chute because we felt treated as if we were garbage by the authorities. Pissing on the built environment was like a revenge on a government that had turned its back on us and left us to our own fate while at the same time catering to the needs of the rich.

The presumed positive impacts of former US president Ronald Reagans (The White House) trickle down affect (Camebridge Online Dictionaries) were left nowhere to be found. Instead 37

of benefitting from the tax cuts directed towards the rich, the only thing trickling down was urine from the rich, pissing on us beneath them in the class pyramid. Jay Z, an American musician, famously wrote in his song “Blue Magic” (2007) that “ Blame Reagan for making me into a monster” in which he was referring both to the former presidents economic politics, “Reaganomics” and to the CIA Iran-Contra (counterrevolutionaries) affair where the American government instead of officially aiding US loyal rebel groups allowed for cocaine to be smuggled into the country in order to finance their wars (US Justice department). A Swedish alternative would be “Blame Carl Bildt for making me into a monster”. Carl Bildt is currently the minister of foreign affairs, but during the early 90’s he held the role as Swedish prime minister.

During his time as a prime minister he allowed for several neoliberal policies to be integrated into the Swedish system, e.g. the dismantling of the department of housing, privatization of banks and other state-owned corporations and more importantly growing the seed for neoliberalism to become the hegemonic system in Sweden (Hedin et al, 2013, p.444).

References Abrahamsson, H. (2012). Städer som nav för en global samhällsutveckling eller slagfält för sociala konflikter. Underlagsrapport till Malmökommissionen, Malmö: Malmö Stad.

Concluding remarks In the after shock of neoliberalisation, a chosen few have made gigantic personal fortunes while many are becoming more and more marginalized. All around the world, citizens (monsters included) are opposing the ruling class and uprisings can be seen from El Alto to Cairo, London and Stockholm. The benefits reaped by the dominating class, in combination with the injustices suffered by dispossessed has started a reaction that has (and will) lead to confrontations with police which in many cases became violent. The cry and the demand for having the possibility to influence your situation is growing stronger and stronger and accompanying these cries and demands are a new wave of social movements. Movements such as Megafonen (2013) and Pantrarna (2013) are giving “monsters” a way to make themselves heard, the Swedish hiphop movement is giving a voice to the voiceless monsters out there, subsequently affecting urban life and new movements and voices inspired by the ones mentioned above are taking shape in cities all over Sweden.

Ryback Anwar, M. Farok M Ali. R, Marouf, N. (2011).

Svartskalle och kriminell, Bad Taste Records, Sweden.

Finally, Monsters are usually just a fiction of our imagination, created in a Hollywood studio or by an author somewhere, in other words, we create the monster in own our heads. The reason why they feel so real is because they instill real emotions in us such as fear. The monsters that I’ve written about are very much a result of these fears, but in contrast to the monsters under your bed, “my” monsters won’t disappear when you turn on the light and they certainly won’t sit and wait for the right to the city and also the right to themselves to be given to them.

US Department of Justice, viewed on the 28th of November http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ ch01p2.htm

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Blame Carl Bildt for Making Me into a Monster

Carter, S. Williams, P. (2007). Blue Magic. (C) 2007 Roc-A-Fella Records, LLC. Glasgow, I. Wenger Leiva, F. Manojlovic, A. Azocar Infante, U. (2010). Stationen. Hemmalaget/Tanisawa Music, Sweden.

Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution. London: Verso.

Hedin, Clark, Lundholm & Malmberg (2012).

Neoliberalization of Housing in Sweden: Gentrification, Filtering, and Social Polarization.

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102:2, 443-46.

Marcuse, P. (2012). “Whose right to what city”, In Brenner et. Al. (eds) Cities for people, not for profit.

Routledge.

Cambridge Online dictionary, retrieved 27th of November http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/ british/trickle-down Megafonen, retrieved 27th of November 2013 http:// megafonen.com Merriam- Webster, retrieved 8 December http://www. thefreedictionary.com/monster Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), retrieved 27 November 2013, www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality.

Pantrarna viewed on 27th of November 2013 http:// pantrarna.wordpress.com The White House 2013, retrieved 28th of November http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/ ronaldreagan

Landscape of Fear Urban Fear in the Metropolis of Crisis Fani Bakratsa

The dominant metabolic system within urban environments often involves deep socioeconomic inequalities, exploitative productive practices and a persistent sense of alienation among the vast majority of the population. We depart from notions described and introduced by Loic Wacquant and take into consideration his whole contribution to our understanding of the hyperghettos.

We try to link the concept of ghettoization and segregation to a more holistic approach regarding segregation patterns and a dominant sentiment of urban fear within the contemporary cities of crisis. How do contemporary cities look today under the light of crisis? Are ghettos and slums associated with notions like urban fear and economic crisis? Is the situation in Southern Europe, and especially in Athens, similar either to the hyperghettos of the United States or to the working class ghettos of France, as described

by Wacquant? How did crisis and fear affect the daily urban practice?

Fani Bakratsa is a post-graduate student in Urban Planning and Design, in KTH University. She has a degree in Planning Engineering and a strong background in bottom-up initiatives for urban design and in political activism. Fani has written essays and academic articles about inequalities, localist movements and the socio-economic structure of cities in advanced capitalism.

Intro ‘I know 3 trades, speak 3 languages, fought for 3 years, have 3 children and no work for 3 months. But I only want one job’.

This is one of the most famous images in the history of ‘29’s recession. A man wearing this placard stating he is in need for employment. Almost the same quote is cited in Wacquant’s book ‘The Urban Outcasts’ (2001) revealing almost the same meaning: ‘I don’t have a job and I’ll never have one. Nobody wants to help us get out of this shit. If the government can spend so much money to build a nuclear submarine, why not for the inner cities?’

(Wacquant, 2001: 31).

Watching a documentary recently about contemporary cities under crisis, what actually caught my attention was a really powerful image, as the one described above: a man sitting in one of the busiest streets of New York, wearing a similar placard as the man in 1929: ‘I have 3 diplomas, speak 3 languages, have 3 children but I just want one job’. The documentary ended with this image, in the heart of N.Y., and this man explaining his action: ‘I did this so people can see that we are in the middle of a crisis.

If you have a look at the city, you can’t tell it’s in crisis’. It seems that the ’29 image is actually one of the most powerful images of today. Nevertheless, the above quote reveals a rather interesting aspect; does the financial crisis have an image? What’s the image of contemporary cities? How are cities structured below the light of economic crisis and what other aspects are revealed?

I’ve always been interested in the notion of Polis ; its origins, its structure, the dynamics that correlate and formulate the city and its peripheries as we know it. Walking around the streets of contemporary cities, different aspects are revealed: ‘The widening gulf between rich and poor, the increased closure of political elites onto themselves and the media, the increasing distance between the lower class and the dominant institutions of society all breed disaffection and distrust’ (Wacquant, 2001: 32). I used Wacquant’s words showing in the best way possible the image of the city today. His words reveal, in fact, that crisis has a concrete image, translated into segregation patterns, inequalities and ghettos. But how do contemporary cities look like and different are they from the ones envisioned by planners and architects?

The image of the Ideal City?

Urban planners and architects envision the city as clean, safe, full of places for social and cultural stimulation (Sennett, 2013), with good networks and transportation, close to the nature and to public or private amenities and services. It should be the place that can perfectly ‘hide’ the urban illnesses of today, including the divisions between class, race, ethnicity, religion and so forth (Sennett, 2013). In the past, they envisioned the city of the 21st century made of steel and glass, but the reality is a lot different.

The dystopian present reveals that cities challenge the problems of land and work exploitation, economic differentiation and 39

The ‘glowing’ figure of homeless in public space.

Collage by author.

Delinquency and inequality in Athens suburbs. Collage by author.

inequality, as well as urban poverty. Wacquant (2001) asserts that the current economic and sociopolitical changes, combined with the welfare state retrenchment, result into class polarization, ethnoracial segregation and city dualisation. In fact, cutdowns on social expenditures by the state have caused a redistribution of wealth upwards and divergence in living standards between the working and upper classes (Dunford, 1995; cited in Wacquant, 2001).

The percentage of people under the poverty line is growing even more, at the same time where the national wealth is held by only the richest 1% (Wacquant, 2001). The majority of the urban population lives under unacceptable conditions. By the year 2050 the number of people living in cities is estimated to be double than it is today (Davis, 2006). The urban space corresponding to the majority of them is the shanty dwellings, the favelas, the slums (Brazil) and the bustees (Kolkata). Ghettos separating rich and poor, a feeling of being an outcast, an unwanted in the society, deriving from the increasing inequalities and socioeconomic segregation, is a concrete phenomenon (Wacquant, 2001). If we have a look in different examples of city structures we see cities made of plastic, scrap wood and cheap material. Slums and ghettos are two of the main forms of contemporary human settlement, where the outcasts reside in, and in one way or another, are ‘forced’ to live in there (Wacquant, 2001); These are the ‘ideal’ cities of the 21st century and this is how crisis (economic, political, social) is translated into an image.

The Outcasts Referring to the concept of the Outcasts, I would argue is a ‘must’ for urbanism to read ‘Urban Outcasts’, written by Wacquant. I found intriguing his effort to theorize the concept of advanced marginality in the context of the (hyper)ghettos.

Wacquant takes the reader into a journey starting from the hyperghettos of Chicago, ending to the ‘banlieues’ in Paris, enhancing our understanding of how social and economic processes lead to new urban poverty crisis and, therefore, to the rise of new segregation patterns and ghettos. Trying to identify under which circumstances the polarization and socio-spatial segregation rise, he links current city structures to the current working trends.

40

Indeed, working and occupational trends play significant role in the rise of the urban poverty and thus in the ghettos of the outcasts. Maloutas (2009) asserts that the transition from Fordism to Postfordism created new waves of immigrants, basically unskilled and in need for job, resulting in urban ghettoization and segregation. Moreover, the employment shift, from manufacture to education oriented jobs, together with the need of deskilled services, automated technologies and the erosion of working unions produce not only income loss but also a permanent denial to access wage-earning jobs. He calls this process as ‘deproletarianization’, affecting the residents of the disposed neighborhoods (Wacquant, 2001: 26-27). In fact, he stresses that the rise of the outcasts is associated, also, with processes of globalization and deindustrialization; new waves of immigrants in advanced countries are ‘forced’ to live in degraded neighborhoods , where housing is cheaper and there are more opportunities to work in the informal sector (Wacquant, 2001).

Therefore, ghettos are highly marginalized in an economic sense, also.

Wacquant helps us understand the image of the city in crisis, but in my perspective, we have to link his theory to other aspects also. Although Wacquant contributes our understanding towards the existence of the ghetto, basically in an economic and social perspective, I would argue, is of high importance to link contemporary ghettos to the actual spatial context. Wacquant theorizes the ghettos of how they are formed. But where do ghettos arise? Furthermore, is critical to link segregated areas to psychological aspects and to the concept of ‘urban fear’, being one of the reasons why gated enclaves become popular.

The death of Human Ecology Wacquant doesn’t emphasize where segregation patterns are revealed. In order to answer ‘where’, we should take into consideration the theories of Human Ecology and the Chicago School; the ethnographic map done by Burgess in 1920’s, represents the segregation and concentration patterns of specific social and economic groups in certain parts of Chicago (Savage and Warde, 1993).

Landscape of Fear

According to Human Ecology, the areas close to the city center are disorganized, characterized by urban decay and ghettoization of lower classes and ethnic minorities. On the contrary, territorial organization comes together with the suburbs and the upper classes; suburbs are the new types of ghettoization by the rich.

Therefore, patterns of segregation are highly linked to specific urban areas; according to the Chicago School, when a group of people starts to climb upwards in the socioeconomic hierarchy they also tend to move outwards from the city center, closer to the suburbs.

I would argue that urban reality is more complex, as the one described by the Chicago School, following the needs of political regimes and power. This is why I entitle this section as the ‘Death of Human Ecology’. The theories of both Wacquant and Chicago School make us understand the structure of cities, in different ways, but seem to miss the link to psychology, especially in times of crisis. I would argue that modern city structure has two sides: the one is the rich and happy side and the other is the side of misery, inequality and deprivation. That’s the city where the modernist doctrine ‘Form follows function’ is replaced by the new doctrine ‘Form follows fear’ (Ellin, 1997).

Form follows fear The Urban theorist M.Davis investigating the city of Los Angeles, especially after the riots of 1991, argues that, in order to refer to segregation patterns we have to take into consideration new parameters, being ignored so far. Davis underlines the contribution of the sentiment of fear, seen as a driving factor of urban structure. Inequalities, unemployment, urban poverty create a sentiment of fear in the city. The upper classes, having the fear of being stolen, mugged or.., tend to protect their assets and take the initiative to increase private investment for their physical security (Davis, 1998; Low, 2003).

Studying the city of L.A., Davis asserts that segregation patterns, from one hand, may follow Chicago School’s theory (disorganized city center vs organized suburbs), but one the other, urban fear plays a crucial role. Ha asserts that because fear sentiment rises, new segregation areas arise: the ‘Social Control Districts- SCD’ in L.A., for example, emerge from segregation, militarization of the landscape (Davis, 1998) and territorial stigmatization . These

regions are ‘areas of special legal status’, where any criminal offense within their radius, gets a higher sanction, compared to other regions not subject to a specific legal regime (Davis, 1998). Examples of SCD’s are the ‘abatement districts’, against graffiti and prostitution, the ‘drug-free zones’, the ‘containment districts’, against epidemically social problems and the ‘homeless containment zone’, against the homeless invasion in the upper class residential areas. Wacquant (2001: 176) stresses that residents of the ‘adjacent neighborhoods learn to fear and shun the ghetto and organize their daily round so as to never come near to or inside its dreaded perimeter’. These areas show in an evident way the segregation and the image of the city under crisis.

I would argue that, especially in historical periods where the consequences of an economic crisis are evident, like in the early ‘90’s in L.A., there is a growing sentiment of urban fear, contributing to further marginalization of the lower classes, spatial/economic segregation as well as territorial stigmatization.

This could be easily seen throughout history: ghettos and exclusive enclaves emerged in periods where socioeconomic inequalities are getting deeper, see the examples of LA in the ‘90’s or the cases in Latin America, where slums and ghettos are the basic forms of residential structure.

Examining the case of LA, we could link Wacquant’s theory about territorial stigmatization to Davis’s urban fear theory. In LA, the areas to be fearful are mainly the areas with high levels of stigma perception, being the urban hellholes. For an area to be feared as a dangerous neighborhood it is not so much about the actual data and statics of criminality and delinquency, but it’s more about the perception of the area being dangerous (Davis, 1998; Wacquant, 2001). What we are afraid of is more about our thoughts, our subconscious beliefs; the stigma. Glassner (2009) enhances this argument by stating there is an emerging ‘culture of fear’; television and private security companies advertisements create a subconscious fear about the urban otherness and a fake need to protect yourself and your assets by those who are different, belong in different class and live in different areas.

Landscapes of fear in Athens’s neighborhoods Wacquant (2001) stresses that European ghettos stem from the 41

decomposition of the working class territories and not from racial separation policies, as in US. Marginality and stigmatization can take different forms.

What is the case of advanced marginality, stigmatization and fear in Southern parts of Europe and especially in Athens? According to Maloutas (2009), in Southern European cities, advanced marginality has mitigated consequences, because of a smoother transition to Post-Fordism, something that didn’t happen in the case of US, as described by Wacquant. Southern parts of Europe are not so much depended on wage labour and industry, having different institutions, apart from the welfare state, for social reproduction like family. This played a crucial role in the formation of the hyperghettos in U.S., as the retrenchment of the welfare state combined with other reasons lead to economic marginalization of the lower classes (Wacquant, 2001). Moreover, the large waves of post-war immigration were gradually and successfully integrated to the society, making territorial fixation and marginalization a mitigated phenomenon (Maloutas, 2009).

The post-war crisis of the Balkan countries, in the late ‘90’s, bringing immigrants to Southern Europe, has not affected stigmatization and marginalization; in the case of Athens, the immigrants coming to the city, mostly from Balkan countries, were smoothly integrated to the indigenous population. They worked in the local labour markets, in a way replacing and not displacing the current workforce (Leondidou, 1990 as cited in Maloutas, 2009). They used to live in densely populated areas in the center of Athens, contributing to social and economic mix of the population (Maloutas, 2009) and not in specific ‘urban hellholes’ as in US. But is the same situation in Athens today? Now that economic crisis has an actual image on the city, with the inequality gap growing, the urban poverty being evident, stigmatization and territorial fixation levels have changed. The growing crisis has contributed to difficulties in the reproduction and the actual living standards of the middle and lower middle classes, in a way contributing to a growing sentiment of fear of the urban otherness and to a growing feeling of racism. Immigrants and the not indigenous people are blamed, either from the Media or from the government, that played a crucial role in the economic rundown. Territorial stigmatization makes the fear of the urban otherness grow; Athens’s neighborhoods with high concentration of immigrants are considered the ‘no-go areas’, although the data reveals in these neighborhoods are lower criminal rates compared to other more homogeneous areas.

immigrants. Police forces try to keep the areas of the city center ‘untouched’ by the homeless and the unwelcome, in a daily basis, by displacing them from parks and other public places (Illustration 1). Crisis has showed its dystopian and ugly face on the city. Government policies, political parties and stakeholders treat people like outcasts and unwanted especially now that the inequality gap increases (Illustration 2). Seeing how this images of the economic crisis are translated, I keep wondering whether the portraits of the Greek dystopia continue to resemble even more Davis’s representation of LA in the late ‘90’s?

The two illustrations that follow show the dystopian present and future of Athens. Usually, when planners and architects represent the image of the city try to make images full of colors, happiness and people enjoying the public space. When it comes to the context of advanced capitalism under crisis, where, systemically, inequalities and marginalization grow, planners should represent the real, dystopian image of the city.

Police forces, in cooperation with the fascist political party, are taking over the public space. Trying to eliminate the presence of the ‘unwanted’ in the urban fabric, this picture shows how homeless people are being kicked out of benches from public parks in the city center of Athens. Unfortunately it reminds us of the ‘homeless containment zone’ described by Davis in L.A. Affluent suburbs seem to have all the aspects needed in order to enhance protection and safety. Impenetrable walls outside rich houses protect people’s assets from the ‘unwanted sights’.

Neighborhood watch signs and CCTV cameras together with police forces protect both assets and physical security. Could this picture be too far from happening in reality in the streets of Athens?

Segregation is now an evident phenomenon: the northern and east-northern parts of the city are the exclusive enclaves of the upper and upper-middle classes, whereas the city center and the southern parts of the city are mostly ‘suitable’ for immigrants and low, working classes. Areas in the city center are considered to be the lawless areas, where ‘only’ delinquent actions occur and high levels of disorganization made them even more unwanted; there immigrants are considered to be the reason and the cause of the crisis and the downgradation of the urban structure, as described by the Chicago School. The dystopian LA, described

by Davis, is now present in Athens, with the sentiment of urban fear being dominant almost everywhere in the city. The fascist political party is the one to ‘secure peace’, by knocking out 42

Landscape of Fear

References Davis, M.(1998): ‘Beyond Blade Runner-Urban control, the ecology of fear’, Futura Press, Athens.

Davis, M.(2006): ‘The planet of slums’. Verso, London.

Ellin, N.(1997): ‘Architecture of fear’, Princeton Architectural Press, United States.

Glassner, B.(2009): ‘The culture of fear’, Basic Books, New York.

Low, S.(2003): «Behind the gates: Life, security and the pursuit of happiness in fortress America», Routledge, New York.

Maloutas, T.(2009): ‘Urban Outcasts: A contextualized outlook on Advanced Marginality’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 33.3, 828-834, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Savage, M. and Warde, A.(1993): ‘Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity’, The Macmillan Press Ltd, London.

Sennett, R.(2013): ‘The Open City’. SLUM LabSustainable Living Urban Model 8, 88-91.

Wacquant, L.(2001): ‘Urban Outcasts: A comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality’. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Social Justice and the Right to the City Examining stigmatization of citizens and the processes of collective identity in the urban arena

The Life and Death of a Great Just City Robbin Jan van Duijne

In The Just City, Susan Fainstein hails Amsterdam as the most just city in the world, that is, a city that shows high levels of equality, diversity and democracy. According to Fainstein, it is a city to which others should aspire in terms of social justice. My own experience as a long-term resident of Amsterdam differs considerably from her views. When I now wander the streets of Amsterdam, I don’t see diversity and equality at all. The city looks and feels different compared to fifteen years ago. I see a city that is increasingly being divided along socioeconomic lines, a city that is becoming less equal, and a city to which only the middle and upper classes appear to have the right. By using the housing market as a conceptual and empirical lens, I will present spatial data on the trends and patterns of rental price and real estate price increases over the last decade.

The data show that Amsterdam is increasingly becoming unaffordable and inaccessible to low income households. The city that is the poster child for the most just city in the world is implementing a housing system that is conducive to social inequality, polarization and socio-spatial segregation.

Robbin Jan van Duijne has bachelor diplomas in Human Geography and Urban and Regional Planning (cum laude). He is currently enrolled in a two year research master’s programme in Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

In the summer of 1977 Susan Fainstein arrived in Amsterdam for the first time. I can almost picture her strolling along the beautiful, sunlit Herengracht and Vijzelstraat in the historic canal district, walking towards Museumplein and the Albert Cuypmarket in the more southern districts of the inner city. She must have seen thousands of people of diverse ages, races and incomes being brought into daily interaction while wandering the streets of Amsterdam back in those days. After several return visits in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Fainstein was sure: Amsterdam was the city that approached her ideal of a just city.

She discovered in it a better, more egalitarian, equal and socially just city-model compared to the cities of the Anglo-American world in particular. The capital of the Netherlands was for her the pre-eminent poster child to which others should aspire in terms of social justice.

Ten years later, in 2010, she had crystallized her thoughts on the topic and published her book The Just City. Amongst contemporary urban planners and theorists her writings on urban justice are highly influential, but a first fundamental question that needs answering is: why do we care so much about these theoretical concepts of the world? The answer is generally quite instinctive and clear: it is a lens to look for what we want, what we desire. A better city that shows diversity in the streets, a city to which everyone has an equal right, and a city in which everyone’s opinion is respectfully heard, is what we yearn for and what our hearts desire. This highly normative and utopian thinking about cities and city life can be found in many influential writings, of which some of the earliest date all the way back to the classics. Plato’s The Republic can be considered as one of the first writings about a right, or just society. In his book, Plato sets out the guidelines for an ideal society in which all classes perform its appropriate function. According to Plato, a society is considered just when the relations between the classes are right.

In more recent decades, famous philosopher and sociologist Henry Lefebvre framed the quest for urban justice in terms of Le Droit à la Ville, the Right to the City. The claim to a better and just society has many different names, that all more or less seem to overlap: a humane society, or a democratic society, or one allowing for the full development of the human capabilities (Nussbaum, 1999), or a society supporting strivings for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all, as in the US Declaration of Independence, or a society in which all members are free from oppression (Young, 1990).

I believe Fainstein’s writings on the topic differ considerably from other scholars who are concerned with social justice issues in the sense that she does not talk about a highly abstract and far away utopian society, but instead provides practical, hands-on guidelines to achieve a high level of urban justice. Throughout the book, but also in her previous work (e.g. Fainstein, 1997), it becomes clear that she implicitly builds her entire foundation for a “just city” around the concept of justice in housing markets.

Fainstein identifies three pillars for the assessment of urban 45

Table One. Developments in tenure in Amsterdam.

Source: author’s own processing of data provided by the O&S Amsterdam, 2013

justice; social equality, diversity and democracy. By translating these three pillars of her theory into the field of housing, she argues that housing ‘systems’ are the key variables for both understanding and achieving social justice in cities.

Three Pillars of Justice The first pillar on which the just city rests is social equality.

Fainstein argues that housing should be affordable and accessible to all income groups, that everyone should have an equal right to the city and everyone should be able to access the city’s housing market in a similar way. All new housing developments should provide units for households with incomes below the median, with the goal of providing a decent home and suitable living environment for everyone. Furthermore, housing units developed to be affordable should remain in perpetuity in the affordable housing pool and households should not be involuntarily relocated – read displaced – for the purpose of obtaining economic development.

The second pillar for building a just city and society is diversity.

This indicator relates to providing a varied physical design, mixes of uses, but most importantly, providing heterogeneity in the urban population. A broad range of housing types and prices will bring people of diverse ages, races and incomes into daily interaction, thereby creating diversity in the streets. It refers to the notion of inclusion of all city users within the space of the city, regardless of their economic, cultural or social differences.

Spatial segregation and polarization tendencies – like witnessed in many cities in the Anglo-American world – are the biggest threat to diversity.

The third and final pillar of the just city is democracy. The ideal that everyone’s opinion should be respectfully heard and that no particular group should be privileged in an interchange, is an important normative argument. Preventing economically or institutionally powerful interests from defining the agenda and maintaining minority rights is a crucial part of this third pillar of Fainstein’s theory. This aspect of a just city also involves consultation with local communities about urban development projects and holds that any decision should favor the city as a whole rather than a small segment of the population. Everyone should have an equal voice in this decision making process.

The most just city in the world By assessing these three indicators of housing justice in Amsterdam, Fainstein soon learned that the city has all the crucial ingredients of a truly just city, that is, a city that scored highly on equality, diversity and democracy. Around the time 46

of her investigations in the late 1970s, 80s and 90s, housing in Amsterdam was to a great extent decommodified, that is removed from market forces. Amsterdam’s housing stock has historically been characterized by a large, highly regulated social housing sector, of which the dwellings are owned and managed by a number of non-profit housing associations. Rental dwellings which fell under the social regime were open to a wide segment of the population: all low- and middle-income households were eligible for housing in the social housing sector. In 1995 the sector reached its peak when it accounted for almost 65 percent of the city’s housing stock (Van Gent, 2013). The fact that housing was so far removed from market forces, from profit making, from flows of capital into real estate investment, created the diversity in the streets and the notion that everyone had an equal right to housing and, thus, to live in the city. A house was not considered a commodity, as a market product out of which you can make a profit. This is what Fainstein witnessed when she wandered the streets of Amsterdam in the 1980s and 1990s: a broad range people of diverse ages, races and incomes brought into daily interaction via an equal and decommodified housing market.

Past tense The observant readers amongst you must have noticed that I have written the previous section explicitly in the past tense.

I believe that in the last 10 years the situation in Amsterdam was rapidly reversed under the influence of a neoliberal turn in Amsterdam’s housing system. Budgetary problems started to occur at the end of the 1990s, which made the Dutch national government in general and the municipal government of Amsterdam in particular realize that they took up too much responsibility for housing. Like in many cities in Western Europe, Amsterdam’s housing system was transformed by a new ‘free market’ ideology, which was thought to cater a more efficient, and less demanding provision and allocation of housing.

The notion of neoliberalism has been widely recognized as a regulatory reorganization that puts greater reliance on market mechanisms (Brenner et al., 2010; Harvey, 2005). Since this neoliberal turn there has been a strong tendency towards increased marketization of the housing sector; privatization (conversion of social rental housing to homeownership), commodification (housing is increasingly seen as a product), financialization (increased flows of capital into real estate investment), and increased sector deregulation can now all be witnessed in “the most just city in the world”. Hence, approaches to the provision and allocation of housing are undergoing radical and accelerating transformations in the Amsterdam context.

This can be evidenced, for instance, by looking at the sharp and continued rise of home ownership (which quadrupled in

The Life and Death of a Great Just City

Map 1 – Developments in average real estate price increases in Amsterdam’s neighbourhoods between 2002 and 2011. It becomes clear from the map that the nineteenth (A) and twentieth century rings of neighbourhoods (B) surrounding the city centre have gone through the fastest percentual increases. Buying a home in the inner city becomes increasingly unaffordable and, thus, inaccessible for lower income households.

Source: author’s own processing of data provided by the Statistical Office Amsterdam, 2013.

Amsterdam in the last 20 years, see table one). This rise of home ownership has mainly been at the expense of social rental housing, thereby making it more difficult for lower income households to access the urban housing market.

Most people would argue that a city that has a social housing sector of 46 percent of the city’s housing stock still has a fairly just housing system. However, in the years to come, the municipality aims to further reduce the amount of social rental housing to 35 percent (Municipality of Amsterdam, 2008). In addition, the social housing sector in Amsterdam has a strong spatial dimension, meaning that there are huge differences in the amounts of social housing per district. The historic inner city and the surrounding neighbourhoods built in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, for instance, have an almost none existing social housing stock, while neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city have a housing stock that consist almost entirely of social rental housing. Thus, the city’s average will be 35 percent in 2020, but most of the social rental housing will be concentrated on the outskirts of Amsterdam, thereby further segregating and polarizing the city along socio-economic lines. As will be shown in the remainder of this essay, diversity and equality in Amsterdam is strongly diminished as housing becomes increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible for low income households.

Mapping affordability and accessibility By analyzing and processing datasets made available by the Statistical Office Amsterdam, I will show that the neoliberal changes in the city’s housing system are directly shaking the foundations on which the just city of Amsterdam was built, i.e. equality, diversity and democracy. Data on real estate price increases come from actual developments in real estate values per neighbourhood. Data for the rental price increases come from the Living in Amsterdam survey (Wonen in Amsterdam), a biennial study conducted since 1995 in which on average more than 20.000 Amsterdammers participate. The dataset includes a respondent’s partial address, making it possible to aggregate the data to the neighbourhood level. An over-time analysis of the housing market was carried out by looking at trends and patterns in rental price and real estate price increases per neighbourhood over the period 2002-2011.

For real estate price increases a thematic map was created in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This map shows the average real estate price increase (in percentages) for all 95 neighbourhoods of Amsterdam. For rental price increases an advanced cluster analysis was carried out in GIS. In a cluster analysis you analyze the situation of an area with respect to

its surroundings. You compare the value of a neighbourhood (in this case a neighbourhoods average percentual rental price increase over the period 2002-2011) with the values of surrounding neighbourhoods. If a neighbourhood has a high rental price increase, and the neighbourhoods surrounding that neighbourhood have similar high rental price increases, than a cluster analysis picks this up as being a cluster of high rental price increase neighbourhoods (High values surrounded by High values). If on the other hand, a neighbourhood has a low value, and its surrounding neighbourhoods have similar low values, then this is considered to be a cluster of low rental price increase neighbourhoods (Low values surrounded by Low values). Maps 1 and 2 show the outcomes of the analyses for real estate and rental price increases respectively.

Map 1 shows that the neighbourhoods on the inside of the A10 ring road had the highest real estate price increases in the city.

Almost all neighbourhoods that are part of the nineteenth (A) and early twentieth century ring of neighbourhoods (B) show increases of between 75 and 125 percent, while districts on the western and southern outskirts of Amsterdam generally show much lower real estate price increases. The fact that inner city living becomes more and more expensive and, thus, exclusive should hardly come as a surprise, but it is exemplary for the commodification of housing as a product in Amsterdam.

Increased flows of capital into real estate investment are pushing up housing prices in the inner city in a rapid paste. This makes it almost impossible for low income households to enter into homeownership in the inner city districts.

The cluster analysis of rental price increases per neighbourhood (map 2) is even more explicit. It shows that rents have increased significantly faster in the inner city neighbourhoods (High-High clusters) compared to the outer districts (Low-Low clusters). In some inner city neighbourhoods rents have increased by over 80 percent in just 10 years time. These kinds of rent increases are only possible in the unregulated private rental market, as rent regulations restrict rent increases in the social housing sector to 2 percent per year. It is clear that the unregulated private rental market is located in the inner city districts, while clusters of social housing (in which only low rent increases can occur) are located on the outskirts of the city. There is a huge High-High cluster in the downtown area, again specifically in the canal district and the nineteenth and early twentieth century ring of neighbourhoods, and there are three Low-Low clusters in Amsterdam’s northern, western and southern outskirts.

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Map 2 – Developments in rental price increases, mapped using a cluster analysis. It becomes clear that there is big high rental price increase cluster in the nineteenth century ring of neighbourhoods (A) and early twentieth century ring of neighbourhoods (B). Low rental price clusters are found in the outer districts where the social rental housing sector is increasingly being concentrated.

Source: author’s own processing of data provided by the Statistical Office Amsterdam, 2013.

Most people intuitively know that the city is becoming less affordable and accessible, specifically to lower income households, but the trends and patterns as observed in the maps show a clear and frightful tendency towards spatial segregation along socio-economic lines. The most just city in the world is implementing a housing system that is conducive to diminishing diversity and increasing inequality. In one of Amsterdam’s official policy documents, the municipality explicitly states that it tries to expand the territory of the middle- and upper classes in order to make the city more attractive and internationally competitive.

A process of gentrification is rolling itself out from the canal district outwards, a development that is warmly welcomed by the municipality (Municipality of Amsterdam, 2008).

households is no longer represented in these big decision-making processes, it further jeopardizes their right to the city.

It basically all comes down to one devilish dilemma. Do you want a city that is accessible, affordable and available to all, or do you want to have a city that can compete with the global players, that focuses on attracting affluent households, on private investment and on increasing economic competitiveness? The municipality has obviously made up its mind: rest in peace, just city of Amsterdam †

An in memoriam In her book, Fainstein applauded Amsterdam as being the most just city in the world, a city with high levels of diversity, equality and democracy. However, when I now wander the streets of Amsterdam, I don’t see diversity at all. The city looks and feels completely different from the experiences Fainstein writes about in her book. In the gentrified and ‘super gentrified’ inner city and canal district you will generally find either tourists or the gentry, but no longer the lower income, working class ‘average Joe’. The amenities and services found here are a point in case, as they are not for a broad public but rather for the higher educated, upper classes. Exemplary are the yoga studios, book stores, highend restaurants, biological bakeries, ecological supermarkets, traiteurs, French pâtisseries, and fancy espresso bars.

In the more outer districts, specifically on the outside of the A10 ring road, you will increasingly find concentrations of lower income, working class households. This is where the high amounts of social rental housing are being clustered, and this is where housing for lower income households is still relatively affordable and accessible. With this diminished diversity in the streets, the interconnected equality pillar of the just city is crumbling down. The size of your wallet is increasingly determining how much right to the city a person has.

The final pillar of the just city, democracy, is also directly at odds with current developments. Research in Amsterdam has shown that lower income households are less likely to participate in decision-making processes compared to the very vocal and active middle- and upper classes (Hurenkamp & Rooduijn, 2009).

If only the interests of middle-income and more affluent households are looked after, and the voice of low income

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The Life and Death of a Great Just City

References Brenner, N., Peck, J. & N. Theodore (2010) After Neoliberalization?, Globalizations, Vol. 7(3), pp. 327-345.

Fainstein, S. (1997) The Egalitarian City: The Restructuring of Amsterdam, International Planning Studies, Vol. 2(3): pp. 295-312.

Fainstein, S. (2010) The Just City. New York: Cornell University Press.

Gent, W. van (2013) Neoliberalization, Housing Institutions and Variegated Gentrification: How the ‘Third Wave’ Broke in Amsterdam, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 37(2), pp. 503-522.

Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

New York: Oxford University Press.

Hurenkamp, M. and M. Rooduijn (2009) Kleinschalige burgerinitiatieven in perspectief [Citizens initiatives in perspective], in P. Dekker (ed.) Vrijwilligerswerk, pp.

197-215, Den Haag: SCP. Municipality of Amsterdam (2008) Wonen in een metropool: woonvisie Amsterdam tot 2020 [Living in a metropolis: white paper on housing in Amsterdam until 2020]. Dienst Wonen, Amsterdam.

Nussbaum, M.C. (1999) Sex and Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Young, I.M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Role of Citizens in the Core-periphery Dialectics Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow Louise Contat

Reading Lefebvre’s book The Urban Revolution in 2013, more than forty years after its publication, led to ambivalent thoughts on his theory about space organisation, evolution of the shape of the cities in the past few centuries, and about the different ways of governance. This article deals mainly with the relationship between city centres and their peripheries, firstly in a general sense as Lefebvre presents it in his book, and then through the case study of Paris. The influence of people’s involvement on urban life is also discussed, regarding their specific culture and the context in which they live. Finally, I was able to provide some insight into the future of the relationships between cities and their peripheries and between cities and the countryside: is the traditional city/countryside opposition still relevant today? How will it evolve in the next decades? How could we shape cities mixing urban and agricultural areas?

Introduction Although published more than forty years ago, Lefebvre’s book The Urban Revolution contains some very interesting concepts that are still relevant today; among which, his theories about space organization (core/periphery relationship), his explanation about the evolution of the shape of the city in the past few centuries, and about the different methods of governance, which I chose to discuss in this article. Through the case study of Paris, this article deals first with the relationship between city centers and their peripheries. Exploring further the example in France, the influence of people’s involvement on urban life is investigated in a second phase. Finally, in order to detach myself from Lefebvre’s book, I thought about the city/countryside relationship in a more contemporary context and the new emerging kind of “cities” ’ shapes, which mix urban and agricultural areas.

The Urban Revolution Henri Lefebvre is a French sociologist, geographer and Marxist philosopher, who got into urban issues after the social movements of May 1968 in France. Just a few years later, his books – more than sixty! – were already a great influence for British and American thinkers and urban theorists such as David Harvey who looked deeper into his theory about the “right to the city”. The Urban revolution is Lefebvre’s first main book describing his spatial and urban theories. Amongst others, he describes the evolution from rural era to industrial era and then to a so-called “urban era”, and tempts to analyze in details the urban society.

Although the book was published in 1970, many of his theories are still relevant today, and can be put into perspective within the current situation all over the world, in particular in France.

Center and peripheries In his book, The Urban Revolution, Henri Lefebvre argues that the opposition between town and country has been gradually replaced by the opposition between center and periphery.

His basic assumption is that “society has been completely urbanized”; by taking the completion of the urbanization process for granted, even if it had not come to an end when the book was published, he means that the whole “industrial society” from the 19th century has evolved into a so-called “urban society” in an irreversible way. For him, this term encompasses many other names that come from the specialized sciences but tell only part of an empirical truth: “leisure society”, “postindustrial society”, “society of abundance”, “consumer society” (Lefebvre, 1970).

In 1970, only one third of the world’s population was living in cities; a figure which reached 50% in 2002 with the urbanization process tending to continue to accelerate.

Louise Contat is a 21-year-old French student from the Engineering School of Paris. Throughout her studies, she gathered an important international experience, with 2 internships (Berlin, New York City) and an exchange semester (Stockholm). Her skills are technical and theoretical: as an engineer, she also likes to understand urban phenomena.

Historically, especially in Europe, the city center has always been a political center, gathering the capital, the decisional power, the means of information and communication, the scientists and influent professions. Paris was thus the Enlightenment capital city in the early 18th century; all important events took place in the city, all philosophers and scientists met in elitist 49

Future hubs in the Paris area:(1)Confluence Seine-Oise (2)Saclay (3)Sud de l’innovation (4) Ville Durable (5)Est Seine-Saint-Denis (6)Roissy-Villepinte-Tremblay (7)Gonesse-Val de France (8)Le Bourget (9)Création-Seine Saint Denis (10) La Défense. Those ten hubs are gathered together in order to make seven of them : Saclay should become a center for education and research, La Défense is rather a financial district, “Sud de l’innovation” should become an area for research and innovation as well.

Illustration by author.

places such as the opera, the literary and artistic salons and so on.

Many thinkers from the 20th century considered the relationship between center and periphery of a city. While imperialists, like Rosa Luxemburg in Germany in the 1910s, came up with political advice regarding the redistribution of capital from cities to countryside in order to slow down the marginalization of the countryside (and also clearly encouraging a state-backed development), Lefebvre considers the creation and disappearance of centers over time as a natural dialectical process. Growing more and more and gaining ground at the expense of surrounding areas, urban centers become saturated at some point, and other centers, only a few kilometers further, appear and grow up. This phenomenon occurs when the focal points concentrate too many functions and/or to too large an extent. Lefebvre argues that the production centers from the industrial era become informational and decisional centers, while offices take the place of production units. In the fullness of time, they are the places where authority, even repression, is held. Hence many social disruptions are encountered. People, especially low-income populations, are forced to move away from the city center while the center itself gets more and more powerful. This prefigures Lefebvre’s later work that will influence many other urban theorists in the following decades: he analyses the French social movements of May 1968 as a claim for the “right to the city” (Lefebvre, 1970), or in other words for the “right to the centrality”. Those spontaneous riots in France were initiated by the youth and students in the Paris area, then joined by workers and finally all social classes, in an attempt to gain their cultural and social rights. They denounced the government from De Gaulle in place, and more generally the traditional society, the capitalism and the imperialism. This movement took its roots in a constantly and quickly changing world: the increase of standard of living, the acceleration of rural exodus and urbanization…

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Lefebvre’s way of thinking fits pretty much the case of the Parisian area’s development until the beginning of the so-called “urban era” (Lefebvre, 1970). Furthermore, even if the book The Urban Revolution was published in France more than forty years ago and had a very poor national influence at that time, it appears that some of its important ideas are still particularly relevant in this day and age.

Since Haussmann’s works during the 19th century, “Les Halles” (Lefebvre, 1970) has unquestionably become one of the biggest centers of the city. More than just a place for commercial exchange, it has become a place for social meeting and, nowadays, a nerve center for the public transportation network. The failure of the 1871 “Commune” (a political system close to self-management) laid the foundations for a strong state-backed urbanism in the 19th century, as can be seen from Haussmann’s works a few decades after. From this period, Les Halles remained a central point in Paris City and the surrounding Paris area. This Paris example seems to be an example of city development as Lefebvre describes it, as the center absorbed the countryside until the industrial era and then kept growing further. However, Paris in the past decades has become far too dense and crowded, or far too “central”, therefore the need to decongest and decentralize it has had become urgent. The first attempt to counterbalance the hegemony of Paris was to build some “villes nouvelles” (“new towns” in English) in the 70s and 80s, which would aim to encourage a multipolar urban development. However, this was a relative failure: the new housing opportunities having a very low price compared with the core of the city attracted many people in the beginning, but the government wasn’t able to make these hubs as dynamic as they were intended to be. Marne-la-Vallée, Cergy-Pontoise, and Evry, the three main new towns that emerged at that time, remained, until lately, lifeless neighborhoods; they were almost excluded from the Parisian conurbation from any point of view. As the densification process has continued, the decentralization problem

Roles of Citizens in the Core-periphery Dialectics

How will the City of Tomorrow look like?

Source: Student Association ‘Studies in Urban Planning’, EIVP, Paris, France

has remained one of the top priorities of the French and Parisian government up to now. A consensus seems to have been found on a long-term strategy, aiming to develop seven competitive hubs around Paris together with housing constructions and many new subway- and train lines.

A transportation network should develop in parallel, in order to connect those hubs to each other, since for now they are only in direct link with Paris.

Paris is also a center on a national level. In order to counterbalance its supremacy as a political, cultural, juridical, economic, power center, François Mitterrand, who was the French President at that time, led a strong decentralization policy up from 1982. This process is nowadays still in progress.

structure” is a village ; otherwise, for example in such big cities that have grown up in the last decades, people have no frame of reference and tend to feel out of touch with their social and living environment. Secondly, the lack of space in a city or even in a neighborhood prevents the liberation of social forms; people move themselves within an overcrowded frame and do not recognize themselves or their actions, beliefs or identity in their everyday environment. To take the analysis a few steps further, one could say that people are even indifferent, if not hostile, towards the city councils and other governing bodies, at a local or a national scale.

Which should be the place of the citizens in the urban development process?

As an echo of the role of the State, the Government and to what extent politicians, planners and architects should act and take part in the urban management, Lefebvre concludes The urban revolution by deploring the “extraordinary passivity of the people most directly involved, those who are affected by projects, influenced by strategies” (Lefebvre, 1970). This rather pessimistic statement appears to the author as an incomprehensible deadlock. Where does “blockage” come from? It is especially worrying as citizen’s involvement is a condition for a city or a country to be a consistent entity.

Regarding the French example, I could add to all the elements mentioned above that the French population is in my opinion traditionally prone to contestation and tend to confront automatically the top-down urbanism guidelines to which they are subjected. From inside the country and from abroad, French authorities are regarded as rather directive, tending to enforce their decisions regardless of the common opinion. This enables them to implement large-scale projects but sometimes without any approval or support of the citizens. However, the City of Paris has made many efforts in the past few years to reverse this trend and succeeded, in a way, by leading some rather important reforms from a municipal point of view. Some among them have been very popular such as the introduction of “Velib”, a very efficient bike sharing system set up in 2007 and already used by more than 250 000 people, with regularly more than 140 000 journeys per day1.

Through this book, but also from other books written by Lefebvre such as The Production of Space (Lefebvre, 1974), I found many elements that could contribute to an explanation of this confusing fact. Firstly, Lefebvre argues that the contemporary city doesn’t enable people to appropriate their own social structure. He is inspired by the Soviet theoretician Kropotkin around 1925 (Lefebvre, 1970), who states that the “urban optimal

I mentioned, above, the “Grand Paris” project, a master plan for the whole Paris area over the next few decades. Will it actually manage to create these new poles and actually reduce the congestion in Paris and its most adjacent neighborhood cities? Will it thus be a way to give again some space back to the inhabitants, create some “empty” spaces where they could express themselves? Lefebvre also echoes back to the social 51

movement in May 1968 and apparently attaches importance to the fact that especially the youngest generation should be able to appropriate the city, in order to avoid any malaise, indifference, or non-involvement in urban life.

Is the passivity of the citizen’s deplored by Lefebvre still actual?

However, Lefebvre’s theory about user’s passivity is nowadays brought into question. Can we still regret that people are not involved in their neighborhoods and city’s life? The international context has since changed a lot, and likewise in all the countries considered individually. The national scale tends to disappear at the advantage of the international one: trade, business, diplomacy are all handled internationally, currencies become cross-border… But people remain people, and tend to feel even more disconnected from the international exchanges than from the national politics they were rejecting a few decades earlier.

However, so-called “grassroots initiatives” tend to develop a lot in all parts of the world – almost regardless of the wealth or the social origin. As argues Seyfang (Seyfang, 2011), grassroots initiatives aim to reinforce social links, and answer to social aspirations as well as economic reasons and a wish to think of different ways of consuming. These grassroots initiatives occur in very different fields of everyday and urban life; most of them are based only on local people’s involvement and are, at least in a first phase, not supported by any type of government. One will always find some detractors who would hold theses grassroots initiatives as trivial when developed through the social networks or because they are representing a very small amount of social exchanges among the globalized world’s system. In France, such initiatives take place especially in rather poor neighborhoods and in newly gentrified areas. And hence the question arises: do the grassroots initiatives really demonstrate the emergence of a new way of consuming? Are they evidence that citizens are turning to be less passive than in the 1970s when Lefebvre published The Urban Revolution? Or is it only a fad?

Centers and peripheries in 2013 and after Regarding the discussions about the passivity of users and the international situation nowadays, to my mind it is necessary to complete Lefebvre’s theory about center and peripheries. Will the supremacy of urban centers last forever? Remi Hess, a French sociologist who worked together with Lefebvre (Hess, 2001), points out Franco Basaglia’s idea about the turnaround of the relationship between centers and peripheries: as for them, marginalized people have become so numerous that they almost supplant the people living in core parts of cities.

With a very contemporary perspective, one could put forward the fact that, at least in Western Europe, governments tend to reduce the size or the power of centers. At that point, the historical and cultural background of each country plays an important role. To mention a few examples, while the City of Paris is encouraging multipolar development for the next decades 52

and trying to decentralize some political and economic functions from the capital city onto other French cities, the Netherlands go even further by implementing planning projects for some areas in the country which don’t include any so-called “city center”.

For example, the development project of Almere Oosterwold, a neighborhood of the Dutch city of Almere, integrates both housing plots mixed with agriculture fields, without creating any “urban center” in a traditional sense. This example is also relevant regarding the aspect of public participation and citizen’s involvement: it is interesting that not only do planners encourage a different way of living by trying to feed people in urban areas with food they produce themselves next to their dwellings, promoting urban agriculture and short distribution routes for those products, but also that people that will be willing to live in this area and will have to engage themselves into producing food or meat up to a certain point, and designing their own house so as to respect some required levels of energy efficiency fixed by the planners and different stakeholders. The traditional opposition between city and countryside may be redefined over the next decades, as well as the opposition between center and periphery.

Since the world’s population is growing more and more and the food consumption per person is increasing, feeding cities and people will become a major strategic challenge in the next decades and, in relationship with a reflection about the resources consumption and with the background of Lefebvre’s theories on core/periphery dialectical movement and citizens’ passivity, could lead to a total rethink of urban forms. Are we now at a decisive point, where we should think of mixing so-called rural and urban areas into a new model of city?

References HESS, R. (2001). Centre et périphérie, 2e édition, Paris, Economica Jansma, J. E. (2013). Urban Agriculture : how to create a natural connection between the urban and rural environment in Almere Oosterwold (NL), Retrieved from http://www.corp.at/archive/ CORP2013_134.pdf Lefebvre, H. (1970), La révolution urbaine, Paris, Gallimard Lefebvre, H. (1970, translation 2003). The Urban Revolution, Translated by Robert Bononno, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press Lefebvre, H. (1974). La production de l’espace, Paris, Anthropos Seyfang, G. (2011). The new economics of sustainable consumption: seeds of shange. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke.

Sangla, S. (2010). Politique et espace chez Henri Lefebvre, University of Paris VIII, Paris Figure 2: Student Association “Studies in Urban Planning”, EIVP, Paris, France. Retrieved from: http://www.sup-eivp.fr

Roles of Citizens in the Core-periphery Dialectics

Struggle to Get Your Public Life Back Jian Zhou

This essay is written based on the Hou’s book Insurgent public space. Urban insurgence comes from struggles, reflecting the basic human needs for public life and city.

Grassroots struggles take important roles in transforming and making use of urban context to achieve their rational and basic needs of public life and right to the city space. These struggles are innovative, self-help, bottomup, from every social group, everyday seen, representing citizens’ claim, actually designing our public space. They also make us rethink the strategies for better public space design, and the working methods planners take in future work for urban design.

Your surrounding insurgent public space and public life There is no perfect public space and there is endless work to design public life. Watson (Watson, 2006) argues, “Public space is always in some sense, in a state of emergence, never complete and always contested”. Just take the metal pig in chapter 1 (Hou, 2010) as a good example. The sudden appearance of a new grand landmark sculpture attracted unbelievable attention from all citizens. People came in crowds, taking pictures, discussing how and why it was place there. Before its appearance, people sit in a café along a commercialized street, enjoying the drink and listening to the soft music, thinking it is the peaceful and perfect public life. All of a sudden, upon its appearance, they jump, keep eyes on the unrealistic scene, feeling excited, curious, younger, a little bit upset and scared. However long this complex feeling lasts, it definitely gives us an importance hint: the public space we see every day could be changed totally and appear in another face, with another experience for us. The everyday public life within it, of course, could function in another way. This essence of insurgence is potential, invisible, but companying us all the time.

Grassroots struggle constitutes and functions as the main force and reason of this insurgence, more and more. With the development of society, ironically, public space and public life face more challenges and threats. We can category two main reasons of the erosion of public space and public life: 1 No plan or considering for the actual and multiple needs of residents, for instance, some original public space is taken by new traffic infrastructure, and some townhouse districts are designed without enough public space; Too much planned or structured, defined by state, regulated, simplifies the public use and contradicts with reality.

2 Under the issues of urban ownerships, more public space are being privatized, controlled by state, commercialized, regulated by main stream, for instance, in some Asian countries, public space is both an expression of power and a subject of political control. They are representing and controlled by the state (Hou, 2010); some named “public space” is actually exclusive of some certain groups, like migrants, low-income people, sex workers, etc.

Jian Zhou holds a bachelor of architecture from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is now a master student in the program of Sustainable Urban Planning and Design at the KTH, in Stockholm. His main interests concerns social factors on urban landscape transformation and social justice issues.

Although today public life and space are heavily distorted and regulated, we still can see the struggles and attempts coming from individuals, communities and small groups. Mitchell (Mitchell, 2003) argues that, struggle is the only way that the right to public space can be maintained and only way that social justice can be advanced. With the efforts of these struggles, we can see the alternative spaces, expressions, and activities.

And these insurgences, in an urban perspective, lead to the new opportunities, transformation of public space and life. The invisible aim of these movements is to approach a more suitable, diverse, just, and democratic society.

53

This book contains six parts. According to the analyzed problems above, I would like to put them into three categories and elaborate my comments, reviews, reflections and arguments with them.

So when there is no public space, grassroots have to develop their own, and Beijing locals have made their temporary dancing space a new activity typology, which is from bottom to up, transforming the city.

1 Who design our public space: part “appropriating” ”reclaiming” ”transgressing”

And from the Latino urbanism case, we can see the transformation of streets is rational based on the needs of communication with fellow citizens, selling labor, religious life and recreation. And more excited, they even transform the outdated gas stations into taco restaurants with outdoor eating, sitting, talking facilities to make them attractive and active. (Rojas, 2010)

2 Who has the right to public space and public life: part “pluralizing” ”uncovering” 3 Rethink strategies and approaches for better planning public space: part “contesting” Who design our public space?

Quite commonly, there are some neglect or badly planned urban spaces without enough consideration of public life needs of locals. Where there is such a problem, there will be urban improvisation and reinvention. They are created by grassroots individuals and groups, rather than dominated by professionals and experts. They are self-helping and renewing the city use.

They don’t require investment or infrastructure. They create an unintended use of public space. Their work is more participatory and spontaneous, more open and inclusive (Hou, 2010).Take the dancing in Beijing’s street in chapter 2 as a starting case.

Compared to western world cities, Chinese cities have been lack of squares or big open space since 2000 years ago. That was because governments were afraid that people could gather together easily and threatened their state power. So, Chinese citizens have been adapted to making street liner space as public.

However, the rapid changing urban landscape in Beijing still compresses this last little street space. Beijing residents are actively searching for new spaces for their public activities, like dancing “yangge”. They make use of parking lot, park gates, sidewalks, and space under high way bridges. The latter seems ok, which is large, usually empty, and works as a shelter from sunshine. However, it is a temporary and helpless way.

But from the map, people would argue that Beijing has so many parks and that is not enough? The reality is that, Beijing’s parks are used to be royal forbidden park and nowadays full of worldwide visitors. They even charge the entrance fee for administration. And Beijing residents urgently want local open space away from tourists, be unrestrained from opening hours, neighboring reachable, easy to access, without entrance fees.

(Chen, 2010) 54

From these cases, we can conclude this design of our public space comes from local urban dwellers, grassroots groups.

What they do addresses the needs of sustainability, public life, economic and social justice, and embraces the everyday acts of individuals, families and communities.

However, here a famous word comes to my mind--disorder, that how do we regulate and properly lead the improvisation and reinvention in a rational range? Since sometimes unrestrained improvisation will touch the private ownership or have negative effect on social functions. More or less, we can feel some upset elements behind these improvisations if they lose basic regulation.

Take the informal market as an instance. In many Asian districts or even in Italy and Spain, inform markets form important roles in daily life but often overlooked. Compared to formal markets, informal markets are often linked to the presence of immigrant populations; has anonymous and transient characteristics; usually fill abandoned urban spaces; market deals escape from the usual regulatory mechanisms (Mooshammer, 2012).

Informal market provides an unexpected place-making effect, however, the upset or dangerous elements are also clear.

It has its own regulatory forces, and is full of murky deals, dubious contacts, and unregulated control. It relies on people’s relationships.

For the ownership issue, Isami (Kinoshita, 2010) in the book introduced a good case. Japan’s private gardens are usually closed, which makes the street life indifferent and inactive.

Through negotiating, some elders are very glad to have their gardens open and flowers taken after by neighbors since they are quite old without energy. And some families agree to transform their abandoned carport into open space for community. And these negotiated open space become welcoming gathering

Struggle to Get Your Public Life Back

Public participation in Kitamoto city.

Source: http://kitamotoekimae.seesaa.net/

space for community members. Well, the other issue--the control of negative effect--always reminds me of a recent popular concept—tactical urbanism, or we can call it as flexible urbanism.

At a glance, tactical urbanism behaves like street art or flash mob show, in which you can put your chairs and tables or sofa on the traffic roads which are usually taken over by automobile on the weekdays. Or you can build a temporary garden, exchange market, or small library. From above Beijing and Latino cases, we can see the urban improvisation has certain target groups—the elders and the migrants. But tactical urbanism has much larger beneficial group. And this makes it even more attractive and it looks fashionable and more participatory.

A common characteristic of these tactical improvisations is that they are all against traffic and bring our general public life back to the traffic roads. But they appear regularly in short time, are easily removable and don’t harm urban transport. As Blaine said in the seminar (Merker, 2013), “the temporary softens the threat of change”. If the traffic roads are really taken back permanently by us, the society will definitely be crashed. Don’t forget we still need cars in these years. In this term, tactical urbanism is a good idea for negotiating, and balancing between our public life need and rely on automobiles. It always reminds us of our public life needs and creates opportunities to satisfy us of experiencing the future life on streets without being taken over by cars. Anyway, tactical urbanism is a good reference for thinking about policies of regulating and leading urban improvisation & reinventions, both for the individuals and for the government heads.

Who has the right to public space and public life?

Some other public spaces have the problems of being privatized, gentrified; commercialized; controlled by state; regulated by main stream, exclusive of minority social groups. Similarly, we can see their struggles to get back their right to the public space from the individuals and groups.

Rights and claims are a defining characteristic of citizenship.

Public life like festivals and rituals express an explicit cultural identity. Latino migrants spontaneously transform urban vacant properties, streets, parking lots into the community meeting house, the leisure area of their chess games (Rios, 2010). And the night markets in Asian cities, with its inexpensive food and merchandise, usually attract lots of working class and migrant workers, college students. It greatly extends the social and commercial life of a city beyond the normal business hours.

Although this temporary urbanism functions as an important part of local popular culture, their existence is traditionally

marginalized (Hou, 2010). More obviously, night market in Seattle becomes a place of Asian migrants seeking for identity and sense of belonging, with multiple activities like traditional majiong game and karaoke contests except for commercial activity. In some Taiwanese towns, marriage migrant women don’t have the access to social service. Immigrant sisters rebuild and transform the abandoned pig barn into a meeting place and classroom of learning language. This action shows their strong claim to public life.

From their wisdom of transforming urban space, we need to think about the right to the public space. We can hear their voices and strong claims about the right to the public space and public life.

What will happen if the ‘right’ segregation continues? The similar minority group will live together, forming the “stigmatization” area. The residential segregation makes the stigmatized area more isolated and marginalized in a vicious circle, which exacerbates the society polarizing and “precariousness” (Wacquant, 2007). A city with this segregation and inequality is upset and dangerous for its sustainable development. The Filipino gathering in ChunShan does create some tensions with the rest of Taipei. Locals think their space is taken over by outsiders, and they make the area so crowded and lower the property values.

(Hou, 2010) The right to public space is a significant part of the right to the city. The right to the city is a unitary right, a right to social justice.

It is both a right to the necessities for a decent life, and also a moral claim that demands “a better system in which the potential benefits of an urban life can be fully and entirely realized” (Marcuse, 2012). The former mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-jeou stated several times “the guest workers are also residents in Taipei”, claiming their presence and they have the right to the city.

The Brothel (Chiu, 2010) case in Taipei, raises a fierce discussion about the equality of right to the city and place in a city’s history.

Who has the right to erase the culture of others? Can the middle class’s value decide the city memory as the mainstream historical preservation discourse? If we agree the sex selling was part of city history, we should respect the past sex workers’ working building in which their life and memory resided there. If urban planning is to “know the city” (Rendell, 2002) the historical preservation in the city must include the memories of everyday lives, from people of all classes, work types and genders.

No matter they are poor or rich, outsiders or local, white collar or sex workers, ordinary or powerful, they have the same need to 55

public life, and should have the common right to the space and place in city history.

Strategies and approaches for better planning public space Before we make a conclusion about how we should do public space design with respect to bottom improvisation, as sited above about the urban disorder, we clearly notice some disadvantages of single grassroots forces in urban landscape, although the struggles really make the alternative uses of urban space and embrace the citizens’ need. The cooperation between grassroots and professionals, individuals and governments is a suggestive way for future urban design.

I elaborate this participation and cooperation with a good case-Kitamoto Station Development. In Tokyo, many cities have been developed with railway infrastructures. Some of them are of the design practice of the Howard’s “Garden City” (Howard, 1898).

Kitamoto city is one of the these cities, so there is a station square in front of the railway station, with retailing stores and some community facilities built around the square. The population in Kitamoto city is 69,275 (Anon, 2012) and 19,563 (Anon, 2011) people use the railway station a day, which is nearly 30%.

A design project has been proposed for the station square. The municipality of Kitamoto city realized that city shrinking would occur by continuous decreasing population. So, the fundamental objective of the project is to gather people in the station

References Anon., 2011. East Japan Railway Company WebsitePassengers in 2011. Retrieved 20 November 2013, from http://www.jreast.co.jp/passenger/2011_01.html Anon., 2012. Kitamoto City Official Site – Population Consensus. Retrieved 20 November 2013, from http://www.city.kitamoto.saitama.jp/shisei/toukei/ jinkou_setai.htm Chen, C., 2010. Dancing in the streets of Beijing— improvised use within urban system. i: J. Hou, red.

Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge, pp. 21-35.

Chiu, Y.-T. A., 2010. Mapping the space of desire: brothel as a city landmark, Wenminglo in Taipei. i: J. Hou, red. Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge, pp. 204-212.

Hou, J., 2010. (Not) your everyday public space. In: J. Hou, ed. Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge, pp. 2-16.

Hou, J., 2010. “Night market” in Seattle—community eventscape and the reconstruction of public space. i: J. Hou, red. Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities.

New York: Routledge, pp. 111-122.

Hou, J., 2010. How outsiders find home in the city—ChunShan in Taipei. i: J. Hou, red. Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge, pp.

123-134.

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square. Atelier Bow-Wow was chosen as the main architect for renovation of the square, and students from Tsukuba University were hired to do a research of Kitamoto city. Importantly, in the process of the project, dual-meeting-system has been invented: one is the design meeting which is for professionals, and the other is the research meeting for encouraging public participation.

The space itself was constructed in half a year, but before the construction, the research took three years and public ideas were simultaneously implemented after the construction.

Till now, we can clearly know what we should do for future urban design and planning for public space: One the one hand, we should respect and provide for “spontaneous self-diversification among urban populations” for our urban policies (Jacobs, 1961).

This urban insurgence should be paid attention; grassroots struggles should be respected; their urban improvisation and reinvention ideas and actions should be highly encouraged; individual needs and social groups’ claims should be listened and fully considered.

On the other hand, form the view of planners and officials, rational strategies must be made for leading, regulating these struggles without destroying their improvisation freedom, and getting continuous resource support. In one word, we need better, inclusive, public participation, and respective, fully idea, resource-exchanged cooperation between grassroots and professionals, between citizens and government.

Howard, E., 1898. Garden Cities of To-morrow.

London: Faber and Faber.

Jacobs, J., 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Modern Library.

Kinoshita, I., 2010. Private gardens serving the public realm. i: J. Hou, red. Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities.

New York: Routledge, pp. 159-167.

Marcuse, P., 2012. Whose right to what city. i: N. Brenner, P. Marcuse & M. Mayer, red. Cities for people, not for profit critical urban theory and the right to the city. New York: Routledge, pp. 24-41.

Merker, B., 2013. Tactical Urbanism, Stockholm: s.n.

Mitchell, D., 2003. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: Guilfordn Press.

Mooshammer, M. &. H., 2012. Trade Flow: Architectures of Informal Markets. i: A. B. a. C. Smith, red. Architecture in the Space of Flows. London: Routledge, pp. 17-134.

Rendell, J., 2002. The Pursuit of Pleasure: Gender, Space and Architecture in Regency London. New Brunswick: Rustgers University Press.

Rios, M., 2010. Claiming Latino space—cultural insurgency in the public realm. i: J. Hou, red.

Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge, pp. 99-110.

Struggle to Get Your Public Life Back

Rojas, J., 2010. Latino urbanism in Los Angeles—a model for urban improvisation and reinvention. i: J. Hou, red. Insurgent Public Space- Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge, pp. 36-44.

Sennett, R., 2008[1978]. The Uses od Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life.. 2nd ed. New Haven Conn: Yale University Press.

Wacquant, L., 2007. Territorial stigmatization in the age of advanced marginality. Thesis Eleven, 91(1), pp.

66-77.

Watson, S., 2006. City Publics: The (Dis) enchantments of Urban Encounters. New York: Routledge.

The Neoliberal City illustration

by Namo Marouf

This is Not a City collage

by Karl von Schmalensee

The City illustration

by Mahmod Ibrahim Gedem

City Twine illustration

by Amanda Frรถler

Voices from the Authors “I owed it to my teenage self. I’d longed since I was twelve.

I went and the city was exactly as I’d dreamt it. Maybe better. But it was different because I was there. I walked its streets, made it my own. So it became dirtied by myself.

So I went home.”

“People look but they don’t see, they walk fast. Sometimes I feel lonely, but I’m never alone. This city is life, people, mess, noise, pollution, and it’s love… Life is too short to not live this.”

“I want to help the city get rid of urban barriers. Usually, they are some negative spaces like wide traffic road, inhuman scale bridge. They prevent initial social & physical connection, which can lead to social group segregation or even territorial stigmatization in long term.”

“How to make an Urban Chaos Cake: Add Add Add Add Add Add

6 billion people a limited amount of resources injustice struggle conflict gasoline

Now blend the ingredients all together and heat till it has reached the critical limit of 3 degrees.

Enjoy your cake of 2014”

“Making every day urban life easier: why not try to wake up the grumpy subway? Start by saying hello to your neighbor, and smile !”

“ Okay, now you find yourself outside... In the public realm, surrounded by people, buildings, trees. Your vertical boundaries are the ground and the sky, you can do whatever you want (can you?).

But don’t be afraid, you are not in the jungle, you do not need to pick your phone from your pocket and live in a parallel reality. Face the scenario around you, look into people’s eyes and experience real life, even if it means stay and stare. Never mind if others look at you like a crazy one. [regarding the need of gadget usage as a symptom of modern society in public spaces]”

“1. Deliberately go astray, Try to find your way back (amazing method of getting to know new cities).

2. Stalk a random person on the street (like the first person with a red hat). Notice how the person uses the city and where they end up.

3. Next time you go somewhere, Make a detour that you have not used before.“

Map of Exclusion The Construction of Stigmatisation Klara Hallberg

The subject for this essay is space and politics and the connection between them. I depart from the book Badlands of the republic (2007) written by Mustafa Dikeç. The book focuses on the French Banlieue and how urban policy formed them. Dikeç sees urban policy as place making and has the underlying thought that space is something constructed and uses the phrase problem in space and problem space.

In this essay the subject is connected to a Swedish context and I choose to study the term exclusion (in Swedish utanförskap).

Nothing is given. Nothing is unaffected. Space is not given. Space is affected. Politics creates. Politics affect. Space is politics.

Politics of space. Space is nothing that just happened, that just becomes. Space shows something, means something, tells something. It is not neutral and it is not objective. Space has a history, a present and a future.

Exclusion was first used by the Swedish liberal party Folkpartiet Liberalerna with the aim to show a problem in the labour market. I focus on their Map of exclusion. The map defines areas in Sweden, which they mean is situated in exclusion, the indicators for this is: high unemployment, low participation in municipal elections and low grades in elementary school. I then connect this to the perspective of territorial stigmatisation since I mean that by talking about excluded areas Folkpartiet actually created exclusion. This is done by using a structural problem and connecting this to certain residential areas. Exclusion therefore forms an example of going from problem in space towards problem space.

This is my thought and understanding and it is from this that I depart. The essay below is based in my reflection and concerns regarding politics and space. After reading the book Badlands of the republic (2007) by Mustafa Dikeç I wanted to give a Swedish perspective on the same topic, the connection between space and politics. For me the phrase problem in space or problem space (Dikeç 2007:170) worked as an inspiration and can be seen as the overall theme. Based on a literature overview, I use the example of the liberal party, Folkpartiet Liberalerna, and discuss the concept of exclusion (in Swedish utanförskap). Not only will the connection between politics and space be discussed, I also want to point out how politics of space often is developed from an outside perspective. This can sometimes work in a counterproductive way and the aim with such politics can be questioned.

Klara Hallberg is a student in the master program urban and regional planning at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. With a background in political science she is interested in questions concerning democracy, politics and social justice and how these concepts becomes tangible and concrete in a spatial context.

Politics can affect space, it can decide where space is going, what it is becoming. It can change its path and create a new future. But more over and more importantly it can change the articulations, the labels, the definitions and the categorisation of space. It can make us see space from a different perspective, from a different angle. It can make us discover things that we did not know, that had been forgotten or neglected. That wasn’t included in the articulation, labels, definitions and categorisation.

This is a from of political activity. Space becomes a part of politics. Politics becomes a part of space. Politics of space.

A relationship between politics and space The articulation and definition of space and the feeling that thereby becomes connected to space, shows the relationship between space and politics. Between space and politics, there is urban policy. Urban policy is an articulation of space, a practice of definition of space. This practice creates a spatial ordering, a creation of hierarchy between spaces. This is done by descriptive names, categorisations, definitions, designation and mapping, which generates a certain discourse about space. A discourse that is associated with feelings and prejudices about space (Dikeç 2007:21). There is a relationship between space and politics (Dikeç 2007:4). Politics of space.

The ways of formulating an imagining space influences the definition of the problem as well as the solution. Different imaginations of space can therefore create different kinds of politics (Dikeç 2007:7). Urban policy documents, with proposed solutions, functions as a way of articulating space by using politics. It is not only an administrative tool “but an institutionalized practice of articulation that actively constitute 61

Exclusion can also be connected to words as, loneliness and stranger. However in Sweden the term has a broader meaning.

As mentioned above exclusion is frequently used in the Swedish political debate, both by media and politicians, and here the term act as a way of describing certain aspects of the Swedish society (Davidsson 2010:150).

To understand the connection between politics and space it is important to understand which discourse the term comes from.

In the Swedish political debate the term is often connected and used together with words as: welfare dependency, immigrant and criminality (Davidsson 2010:157). Exclusion is also closely related to social exclusion and lower class. Social exclusion concerns the relationship between the included and the excluded within society. In a Swedish context the concept is often connected to segregation. The core of the concept of low class is that a group of people are behind the development of the majority. Therefore this group is seen as a left behind group that has a marginalised position in society. Exclusion thereby has a negative meaning (Davidsson 2010:152ff).

With that being said, and the context behind exclusion explained, I will now continue to further investigate Folkpartiets construction and use of the term exclusion.

This map shows Sweden’s 156 excluded areas in 2008 (Folkpartiet 2008:1)

The map of exclusion As mentioned above Folkpartiet in the year of 2004 released their first map of exclusion. Their categorisation of areas, so called excluded areas, is based on three different indicators: employment, participation in municipal elections and grades in elementary school (Folkpartiet 2008:9). The levels of these indicators decides if an area will be defined as an excluded area.

space” (Dikeç 2007:170). Space becomes objects in a policy process. By using policy documents, mapping, statistics, categorisation, descriptive names, definitions a space is designed. From the outside, an official discourse is created that withholds perceived problems, proposed solution and legitimised state interventions. The politics of space is therefore a place making practice that in the end will affect peoples lives (Dikeç 2007:21).

One example of spaces that have been formed by urban policy are the Banlieues in France. The word Banlieue means suburb, from the beginning an administrative concept that represents areas in the peripheral parts of French cities. Today however, Banlieue is associated with threats of security, social order and peace. Banlieues are associated with problems. “It stands for alterity, insecurity and deprivation“ (Dikeç 2007:8). A definition of the space from the outside. But not only are the Banlieue as a space defined also the people living there are labelled. Often in ethnic terms. Stereotypical and constructed ideas about immigrants thereby creates a social order (Dikeç 2007:8).

Exclusion - a Swedish example It was the Swedish liberal political party Folkpartiet Liberalerna (from now Folkpartiet)that started to use the term exclusion before the election 2006. Their goal with using the term was to show a problem in the labour market that created a division in Swedish society. In the year 2004 Folkpartiet presented a report that they called The map of Exclusion (see figure 1), with the aim to show how the exclusion was spreading in Sweden (Davidsson 2010:150). The frequent use of the term exclusion can be seen as a Swedish example of politics of space, as the Banlieue in France.

The term exclusion does not say much on its own, it needs to be explained in its context. Exclusion means to be outside something common. Outside home and family, labour market or culture activities, as well as other communities in society.

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According to Folkpartiet the amount of excluded areas has increased drastically since 1990. In the 90’s Sweden had three excluded areas and in the fall of 2006 this number had increased to 156 (Folkpartiet 2008:3). In 2006 the excluded areas were spread from Malmö in the south of Sweden to Luleå in the north. Gotland and Jämtland are the only counties in Sweden without any excluded areas. However, the intensity of exclusion within areas does differ, where Skåne has the highest amount of citizens in exclusion. In Skåne, 11,4 percent of the population is, according to Folkpartiet, situated in an excluded area. Also the counties Stockholm and Västra Götaland have a high amount of population in exclusion. The municipalities with the highest amount of excluded areas in Sweden are Botkyrka, Landskrona and Malmö, where 35 to 40 percent of the population was situated in exclusion in 2006 (Folkpartiet 2008:25f).

According to Folkpartiet are these areas are creating islands in all large or medium-sized cities in Sweden. The islands are separated from the established society (Folkpartiet 2008:6). Folkpartiet also writes: A new social landscape has emerged in Sweden, a landscape characterised by exclusion from the labour market, residential segregation, welfare dependency, powerlessness and vulnerability. It involves thousands of people for whom the vigourous social mobility has ceased to function and whose neighbourhoods are almost entirely characterised of socio-economic conditions that in a significant way differ from the rest of society. It is areas where exclusion has become the joined glue in a collective identity that is based on a strong sense of being rejected and not belonging to the rest of society.

(Folkpartiet 2005:24 author’s translation)

With the map of exclusion and the formulation above, Folkpartiet has established a territorial dimension of the concept of exclusion. Exclusion has become a spatial phenomena. In the map Folkpartiet has mapped out specific areas that according

Map of Exclusion

An illustration representing labelling of space. By the author, Klara Hallberg.

to their indicators are placed in exclusion. The top five areas in Sweden are (presented by ranking): Södra Rosengård (Malmö), Östra Bergsjö (Göteborg), Norra Rosengård (Malmö), Kungsmarken (Karlskrona) and Husby (Stockholm).

People there commonly hide their address, avoid having family and friends visit them at home, and feel compelled to make excuses for residing in an infamous locale that stains the image they have of themselves.

(Wacquant 2007:68)

With the citation above Folkpartiet also, has created a common identity, an idea about what exclusion is and how people that lives in these areas are. This identity is separated from the rest of the society. Exclusion is something that is attributed to people without employment, that are dependent on subsidies and that live in segregated areas. Also people that have no power and feel vulnerable and rejected are defined as a part of the concept of exclusion. The citation also indicates how Folkpartiet distances themselves from the excluded.

Exclusion can not be broken from the outside. It is only from the inside, where the affected can take matters into their own hands, that something positive can happen.

(Folkpartiet 2009:28 author’s translation)

This citation provides an example on how Folkpartiet is separating and distancing themselves. This time by telling that they actually are not the ones that can make a change, instead it is the people on the inside that are responsible for that and for their own situation. According to themselves, Folkpartiet is not a part of exclusion.

Territorial stigmatisation: a consequences of Folkpartiets politics The concept of stigmatisation concerns a dimension of us and them and also how societies react on so called deviant behaviour.

Thereby the central thought in this concept is about how the “established” society brand or stigmatize the “abnormal”. This leads to continued development towards a deviant identity, by the ones that are being stigmatized. Stigmatisation can lead to exclusion, because the one who are different, often are fixed with their stigma and the fear of others’ disparaging. However, it can also be reversed, exclusion can lead to stigmatisation. Since the excluded often are being categorised as dangerous, unworthy or as the others (Sahlin – Machado 2008:176).

From the concept of stigmatisation comes territorial stigmatisation, which is connected to advanced marginality.

Advanced marginality is often concentrated in large isolated areas that are viewed as unattractive. In many of these areas there is a territorial stigmatisation. This is based in a discourse that the area itself is deviant, dangerous, problematic or bad. The dimension of us and them in a spatial form. The aspect of territorial stigmatisation does not only have a spatial and physical view. This also affects the people living in the areas.

The discourse is created and maintained from the inside as well as from the outside. Media, politicians, researchers also contributes and maintains the picture (Wacquant 2007).

Creation of space The term exclusion is not just a term, it is also about politics and it is about creating spaces. For Folkpartiet the term exclusion is a political strategy and to connect with Dikeç, it can be seen as an urban policy, or at least the beginning of an urban policy. By using the term exclusion and creating the map of exclusion and on a detailed level categories areas in Sweden is a way of defining.

Folkpartiet has created descriptive names for spaces, based on categorisations and mapping. Their definitions design space and their practice creates a spatial ordering, a creation of hierarchy between spaces. This is done in two ways. First by the action of ranking areas that are defined as excluded. Södra Rosengård is first and therefore their most excluded, this follows by Östra Bergsjö, Norra Rosengård, Kungsmarken and Husby ... Second, they also create a spatial hierarchy by their formulations. By defining the excluded areas as island that are separated spaces from the rest of society, a ordering between spaces is done.

I argue that the use of the word exclusion plays one part in creating social exclusion and territorial stigmatisation. Folkpartiet has defined the concept of exclusion. They are the ones that decided what should be included in the term and this is done from their perception. Unemployment, low participation in democratic elections and low grades among young children are indicators on exclusion. In Sweden the concept is related to welfare dependency, immigrant and criminality. So, excluded areas is connected with something negative, something that is different from the established Swedish society. Excluded areas are islands that are bad and problematic. Folkpartiet distance themselves from these islands, they are not a part of the map of the exclusion. They are separated from the concept, they are not a part of those areas. Those who are the excluded are the others.

Everyone that does not have an employment, that are depended on subsidies from society are excluded. Everyone without a job becomes excluded.

However I also want to stress that Folkpartiet are not the only one to blame. This has to be seen from a wider context where basic values in society also needs to be considered. For example are aspects as neoliberalism, decrees of social welfare, new political -economic government, racism, unemployment factors that have been a part in creating a certain climate and certain values in society. It is from this Folkpartiets thinking has

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developed and it is therefore to easy to only blame them for creating excluded areas. It is also important to stress that the problem they drew attention to actual exits. There is a problem in the labour market in Sweden and we do have segregated areas.

People do feel powerless. These are serious problems that needs to be solved and that Folkpartiet acknowledges and alerts. But by defining all of these problems under the same concept and creating the map of exclusion they went from problems in space towards problem space.

Still, what can Folkpartiet teach us? The first lesson and the most basic knowledge they gave us is that by talking about excluded areas and the concept of exclusion, they played a part in created it. Second lesson concerns a common problem with politics, from structure to individual. The concept of exclusion started on a structural level. Folkpartiet based their conception on, what they thought, was structural problem in the Swedish labour market, which created a division in the Swedish society. But by making a map and rank areas, municipalities and counties, it went from a question on a structural level towards something concrete. It became a question on a individual level and it became a question about space. Exclusion became connected to certain spaces.

Again, from problems in space towards problem space.

Politics forms space. Exclusion and the map of exclusion is politics. Folkpartiet created a new political concept in Sweden.

It became a way to talk about a structural problem. But it also created an opportunity to talk about, perceive and interpret spaces. Spaces where people live, spaces that are peoples homes. The development of the concept of exclusion can be seen as one example of politics from the outside. A problem that from the beginning was a structural problem in the Swedish labour market became something else. It went from problems in space towards problem space. In this matter, politics from the outside can be more dangerous and problematic than the actual problem itself. Folkpartiet articulated and created. They defined and mapped. They designed and they described. The saw a problem and created a solution. They used their tool, politics, and actively constituted a definition of spaces.

Space is not given, it is something that is produced trough various practices of articulation.

(Dikeç 2007:4)

Nothing is given. Nothing is unaffected. Space is not given.

Space is affected. Politics creates. Politics affect. Space is politics.

Politics of space.

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Map of Exclusion

References Davidsson, T., 2010. “Utanförskapelsen. En diskursanalys av hur begreppet utanförskap artikulerades i den svenska riksdagsdebatten 20032006” in Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift No. 2, pp.

149-169.

Dikeç, M., 2007. Badlands of the republic: Space, politics, and urban policy. Oxford: Blackwell Folkpartiet, 2008. “Utanförskapets karta – Arvet efter Mona Sahlin”. Report.

Folkpartiet, 2005. “Folkpartiets landsmöte 18-21 augusti 2005. Trygghet i förändringens tid.” Program proposal.

Sahlin, I. - Machado, N., 2008. “Diskriminering och exkludering. En introduktion” in Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift no. 3-4, pp. 174-184.

Wacquant, L., 2007. “Territorial Stigamtization in the age of advance marginality” in Thesis Eleven no. 91, pp. 66-77.

Some of Them Live in Shit Marc Rupprecht

Mike Davis talks in his ambitious but upsetting book “Planet of Slums” about an upcoming revolution in settlement history. He predicts a pessimistic worldwide crisis for cities and a somber future for urban inhabitants in slums and based his forecast on the fact that today live more people urban than rural areas.

Davis uses given data to catastrophize his assumption that about one billion people are forced to live in slums amidst trash such as garbage and excrements mountains without proper water supply or sanitary installations.

The vast number of examples of terribly, sweeping and inhumane living conditions is, unfortunately, the only message, Davis communicates. His threatening language emphasizes the negative and gloomy impressions, which especially forecasts dark predictions in slums of the Third World that are negative flagships of an unequal, fatal urban and globalized world.

The strong connection between urbanization and industrialization such as the economic rise broke apart and the book shows the tremendous movement to an informal economy in slum areas and wonders why the new urban proletariat has never anyone envisaged before. By ignoring the cruel and vicious circumstances slum inhabitants have to deal with every day, this informal working class represents a theoretically unpredictable development with the result that the urban world will end in misery. Unfortunately, gloomster Davis has no suggested solution, which leads to the fact that partition and prevention is destroyed irrevocably.

Marc Rupprecht has been learning a lot about European cities and their urban planning problems and challenges during my urban planning studies in th last years. He has chosen “Planet of Slum” because he felt the need to be concerned with topics and challenges that are outside the box.

Radical and apocalytical insights According to an UN report of 2001, 1950 existed 86 cities with a number of more than one million inhabitants. Davis’ predicts a dramatically rise of towns with over a million inhabitants until 2015. His forecast augurs a worldwide increase to at least 550 of these cities. The sharpest repercussions will be in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In other words: 3.2 billion inhabitants will live in these “more-than-one-million-cities”. Exactly the same amount of people were living on earth when John F. Kennedy became USpresident (1961) . Furthermore, cities like Mexico City have more inhabitants today than in times of the French Revolution on the whole planet.

US-American author Mike Davis opens his book “Planet of Slums” with these kind of demonstrations and invites the selective reader to a gathering of many facts, knowledge and investigations. The book is based on the study “The Challenge of Slums” which was published in 2003 by the “Habitat” program of UN database. Social critic Davis who have collated data and speculations about the present and the future of the urban slums all over the world – and predicts a somber forecast about the future of urban life.

For the first time in humanity, Davis reports a change from rural to urban population. The accretion of many cities especially in Asia, South America and Africa cannot be compared to the classical European and North American metropolises of the 19th and 20th century anymore: Between 1800 and 1910, London was growing by the sevenfold, while in the substantially smaller period of 1950 till today cities like Dhaka (Bangladesh), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Lagos (Nigeria) have grown about 40 times their sizes. But, investigating the development meanwhile shows that in comparison to other cities, London is rather small today: “Planet of Slums” also focus on cities which will increase the next decades into gigantic urban shapes like Indian Mumbai/ Bombay (33 million inhabitants) or Mexico City (50 millions) and the problems they will face.

The poor part of humanity is on the way to form the majority of mankind and will - unintentionally - return back to the beginnings of urban constructions about 9,000 years ago. Living in botchy shacks is, the dwelling for a massive part of urban inhabitants.

But one have to take into consideration that it is not always the people that move into the cities. Often the rapid explosion of cities and new urban networks lead to the extension of the slums in surrounding towns and villages. These extensions can be found as corridors and disseminate metropolitan regions with the result of an urban and regional fusion. Davis argues that former rural inhabitants with professions in agriculture like farmers or fishers will live soon in urban slums without sea and country and without an economical basis and no future.

Davis also says that rich people who can afford to pay for better land and they do so. He argues about social injustices and 65

Johnson (2005), www.wikimedia.org

inequalities between poor and rich. In Nairobi e.g., more than 50 percent of the population reside on about 18 percent of Nairobi’s city area. This shows the enormous disparity in the density of Nairobi’s population. These inequalities are expressively illustrated by focusing Karen and Kibera - two neighboring districts. About 360 inhabitants live in the suburb of Karen per square meter, whereas in the slum of Kibera reside about 80.000(!) people in the same sized area. People have to live in the slums or squatting on abandoned land and usually do not have any chance to get out.

Davis states that, consequently, geological indicators are strongly connected to slum areas. The land is mostly virulent, precarious and venomous. Unstable soil such as highly combustible shacks and open fires make a slum completely vulnerable to perils like large fires and floods. In small areas with few square kilometers live up to a million people.

Small huts strung very closely together. Close enough to perceive smallest detail from neighbors life. Huts with a few square meter, put together with metal, wooden leftovers, plastic rubbish as well as mud. Davis argues about that politicians and the upper middle class and scrutinize their behavior and intensions. 75 percent of Nairobi’s slum shacks is owned by them, purposing to take the money from the poorest of the poor while renting the shacks which is, because of corrupt political structures an illegal execution.

Chapter 6, “Slum Ecology” is hard-hitting and shocking overview and shows how slum inhabitants have to live their everyday life.

The startling living conditions are the main content of this chapter and Davis underlines them steadily with examples. Health 66

problems and the absence of social amenities is the aftermath of the slum life. “Luxuries” like sanitary installations and garbage bins are absent or exist sparely. Throwing garbage on the streets or nearby pathways is often the easiest solution. Sewage flows through the garbage into narrow, open and self-dug ditches between the habitations. Toilets and other sanitary installations have to be paid, which is not affordable for many dwellers. In 1998, Nairobi’s slums Laini Saba and Mathare 4A had ten pit latrines and two toilets for public use for about 70.000 people.

The consequences of this more unbearable conditions is the use of plastic bags as the only possibility. This waste and rubbish is not kept in the house - ordinarily it is thrown on the roofs of the neighbors. This way of waste management is called “flying toilets” or “scud missiles”. Furthermore, children use these bags to threaten passing commuters to throw balls with excrements on their cars if they do not pay.

Moreover, slums have a huge water problem. Proper drinking water is hardly existent or too expensive for average slum residents. Some lucky inhabitants that live next to water taps with potable water, sell the precious “items”. Water is brought to the houses in huge cans up to 20 liters. Tragically, inhabitants suffering physically and financially in the slums. They are forced to procure water from close rivers and lakes. These bodies of water are strongly contaminated with industrial sewage, human excrements and every kind of refuse. These circumstances contain a number of challenges for slums. Diseases are linked to water supply, waste management such as garbage and kill people. Furthermore, deficient sanitary installations such as pollution of drinking water come to deadly sicknesses like fevers

Some of Them Live in Shit

McIntosh (2004), www.wikimedia.org

and gastro-intestinal diseases. Slum inhabitants inhale the smell of excrements, urine and vegetated waste every day. In addition to this, the conterminous water in the sewage pipes is spread all over the slums and provide the hotbed for parasite infestations.

One cannot forget that proper cleaning of food is almost impossible in slums like Kibera with no real water supply. The countermined water is nonviable but has to be used. Cholera and other contagious diseases are the results.

An documentary and article of communicology student Matthias Scheffelmeier underlines Davis’ perceptions while investigating Kibera with a documentary filmmaker from Canada. Scheffelmeier mentions the smell of trash and feces while trying to count a vast number of shacks that are strung together. The streets are full with rubbish and debris and the ditches are used for trash, as waste water system or toilet. Visiting a local in his 15 square meter hut which is shared with six other persons, one cannot find water supply or electricity, but one can find malaria mosquitoes and get the information that about 2000 people live on the size as big as a soccer pitch. (Scheffelmeier, 2008) It’s not the end of the world To write an critique about Planet of Slums, one cannot neglect Davis’ origin and political background. The video “Mike Davis: Planet der Slums” (2007) gives quite a good and informative overview about previous works and his intensions. The American, Marxist urbanist Mike Davis, generally writes about segregation, racism, social immiserization and the disappearance of public space. Born and raised in St. Diego, next to Mexico’s

border, Anarchist, Socialists and Communist were coining his childhood on the other side of the border. Mike Davis is known for his historical and social annotations. “Planet of Slums” is dealing with the radical and apocalyptical consequences of industrialization on societies and especially the change of the urban and rural landscape. (Kulturzeit, 2007) The book with its nine chapters misses, unfortunately, a proper structure. A systematic description of each heading is missing as well. Davis was mainly inspired by the UN report „The Challenge of slums – Worldwide report on Humanly Settlements“, which was published by more than 100 scientists in 2003. This study has mainly the use to underline his research, findings and acknowledgements to the increasing number of slumifications in the world. The abundance of sources is huge and extensive.

Davis really wants these sources to emphasize his basic assumption that slums areas which are congested, miserable or informal whereabouts without proper access to drinking water and sanitary facilities such as not assured power of control over land. He believes that the rapid urban growth is a trustworthy and reliable indicator for the enormous production of slums in the context of structural adjustments, currency depreciation and state saving strategies. In this context, European cities are only examined in a scientific-historical way. Davis only focuses on the dynamics of the Third World urbanization with its terrifying dimension in mass production and degrading living and working conditions.

A substantial amount of scientific literature and shocking numbers of certain data, statistics and tables and statements like the following are widely spread all over the book: There are about 67

200,000 slums on the earth; mostly in the Third World, but they are fast-growing. Davis mentions several cities, which has the side effect that one becomes an earth-expert by looking up cities like Varanasu, Surat, Cochabamba or Lumumbashi. Furthermore, he jumps from city to city and so, automatically from continent to continent and one get the impression that he uses this technique to enhance his apocalyptic description of the Third World. It feels from time to time Davis sees the slum inhabitants as a (fringe) group without caring about individual statements and movements. Dealing with the situation of exploitation, Davis always bothers about illegal criminal activities and prostitution while ignoring to mention constitutional ways and possibilities slum inhabitants use, to make their lives more livable. One should scrutinize the analytical complexity of his method and get the feeling that his case studies serve the purpose to show the grievances and social injustices. Davis shows a somber prediction of our future. Instead of living in joyful and light cities of the 21st century, one will live with an excessive amount of environmental pollution, excrements and rubbish. Potential Nairobi tourist will think twice about their next vacation after reading the chapter „Living in Shit“. They have to be attentive to “flying toilets” or “scud missiles”. It is a real pity that Davis refuse to accept that aid agencies have been trying to help slums and slum inhabitants in a policing and financial way. Agencies as amnesty, Aid for Africa and the Red Cross have been enhancing the grievances in slums all over the world with donations, volunteers and developmental works.

the fact that the metropolitan area of Düsseldorf is ranked on place 46 of the biggest cities in the world, let the reader to be attentive with the accuracy of the given data.

Unfortunately Davis ignores moreover to mention how aid agencies support slum areas with first efforts to provide better living circumstances in the future. One cannot find any hinds of new installations of proper wastewater pipes like in Andong Village slum. Aid agency “Chibodia” fights for clean, drinking water in the slum. Andong Village slum is the biggest of its kind in Cambodia with about 9000 people. The number of people is obviously smaller, indeed, but the idea of the “Clean Drinking Water Project” to build a water treatment plant in an often flooded area might be a first step to achieve proper and affordable drinking water without illegal or corrupt systems. (Chibodia, 2011)

According to Davis opinion, in the next years slums will grow bigger and the he predicts a horrible forecast; not only for urban districts, but rather for slums and their inhabitants in the Third World. Fortunately “Map Kibera” refutes Davis prediction. Map Kibera (www.mapkibera.org) gives an complete overview of the slum area with its streets, water holes and public toilets.

Kibera was a blank spot on Nairobi’s map. One could not find any information or facts, only rumors. Urban planning could not be operated and aid agencies had hard times to distribute their goods without knowing streets and orienting oneself. Finally, even the Kibera inhabitants provide trustworthy information.

Davis researched that Kibera is the home for about 800.000 people. Luckily, the new map with its information shows a maximal amount of 300.000 inhabitants, which is still much. The ongoing process will be hard work to achieve more information about the Kibera slum is conducted by the inhabitants. Map Kibera was awarded in 2010 as Digital Community at Prix Ars Electronica 2010 an can be seen as a milestone in improving slum areas. (Otto, 2010)

“Stinky mountain of shit” is the language how Davis calls megacities like Nairobi and Bombay. One might think, the chapter headings like “Living in Shit” or “Baby Killers” were chosen because of rhetoric interests and to exaggerate the coming content. One would not find headings like “Hope for Kibera”. His dramatic language and his exaggerations combined with his used sources let him naysay the future in an objective way. Davis loves to ignore proposed solutions and never finds at least one gray area in his findings or assumptions. One have to question why he mostly uses the UN-report to underline his findings. It seems like that Davis never visited one of the slums he talks about. This fact is underlined in the previous vide, where it is explicitly mentioned that he has never visited any slums at all (Kulturzeit, 2007). One cannot find any independent primary sources at all. Furthermore, 68

Davis uses the term explosion for the increasing number of people, but at the same time how bombs explode in war territories. He uses words like human encumberments and the reader get the feeling that a slum is much more worse than it actually is. Davis dramatizes the situation in slums much more while using negative superlatives. E.g. slums, mega-slums, mega slumlords, mega earthquakes and mega fires are used words combined with a vast number of data and statistic seem at times artificially mixed to underline Davis previous statements.

His parlance often overshadows his statements and the reader might get the feeling that statements are not completely right, which is hard to proof. On might get the feeling that there is only black or white, good or bad prediction for the urban future. The gray area is missing and the constant use of gloomy and somber impression make the reader depressing. But, using all these metaphors and synonyms for his exaggerations, one have to say that the diseases and consequent widespread deaths that are related to a proper water supply could be prevented by a different political systems and a change in the shift in the world order. But, Davis had easily the chance to build a bridge to existing or arising inter-site and cross-cutting projects where slum inhabitants were helped and supported by the government, organizations and/or private people.

All in all, one have to say that “Planet of slums” is an informative book with lots of data which shows the grievances in slums all over the world. It is dramatically depicted how the world will change in the next 30-40 years. But one cannot abandon the thought, Davis accelerate his subjective assumption while using his capturing style, language and his interpretations of data. It is

Some of Them Live in Shit

still, his point of view and the reader has to accept that. But it is getting quite obvious that it has the purpose of an systematical accompaniment of his apocalyptic description. Planet of slums is worth reading, but at the same time the reader has to screen his gloomy and dark predictions and forecast considering his general attitude to inequalities, imbalances and power relations.

References Clean Drinking Water: Sauberes Trinkwasser Projekt im Andong Village Slum (2011). Retrieved November 26, 2013 from http://www.chibodia.org/projekte/ sauberes-trinkwasser-projekt/ Davis, Mike (2006) Planet of slums, Fairfield, Verso Kulturzeit, 2007, Mike Davis - Planet der Slums [video online] Available at: <http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FeyhZX3nl6U> [Accessed 22 November 2013] Otto, S. (2010, December 30). Wie ein Slum in Nairobi aus dem Schatten tritt. Die Zeit. Retrieved from http://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2010-12/kiberaopenstreetmap/seite-1 Scheffelmeier, M. (2008, December 31). Reportage 端ber Kibera. slideshare.net. Retrieved from http:// de.slideshare.net/Slidematt/reportage-ber-kiberapresentation-881873 Images McIntosh (2004) Jakarta Slumhome 2. Available at: <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/6/61/Jakarta_slumhome_2.jpg > [Accessed 26 December 2013] Johnson (2005) Children and open sewer in Kibera.

Available at: <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/4/40/Children_and_open_sewer_in_Kibera. jpg > [Accessed 26 December 2013]

The Regulation of Public Spaces A Review of the Case of São Paulo Arthur Lauxen Luiz

This article discusses the issue of loss of “publicness” in public spaces. The loss is due to the regulation of space through over-surveillance and “disneyfication”, as a consequence of privatization processes. The city of São Paulo is analyzed here as a vivid example that illustrates these processes in present time. Also discussed are the different manners of claiming the right to the city brought by Jeffrey Hou.

The regulation of public spaces has been happening in many different forms and scales in different cities around the world, thus representing an important issue to be discussed. Processes as privatization, over-security, “disneyfication” and other manners of controlling the space (sometimes disguised) seem to make public life scenarios disappear. Some of these public life spots were established in the past as places where many people would go by knowing about its public character. The democratic and diverse environment guaranteed the attendance of the population not only in special occasions, but also in the daily life. What are these places like and what happened to them?

The places that have been affected by the cited contemporary symptoms are either public places or POPOS1 - privately owned public open spaces, ranging from streets to parks to enclosed halls in corporate buildings. “In western tradition, public space has had a positive connotation that evokes the practice of democracy, openness, and publicity of debate since the Greek agora” (Hou, 2010), but this configuration of space has been changing with the dynamics of modern societies. Analyzing the changes that occurred in the public life, we can assume that it is moving back, going to a less developed stage. In earlier times, the public spaces were used as places where the political power of the medieval monarchies, for instance, could be demonstrated, but as societies grew and the power shifted to the people (Hou 2010), they became more democratic. Following the logic, we could expect that such places would keep on gaining a sense of democracy and public space, but this is not how things have been happening.

The city of São Paulo is a good example to illustrate these facts, because besides being one of the most important economic centers and growing cities in the world, it contains situations that fit perfectly the process of the loss of “publicness”.

“The growing privatization of public space has become a common pattern and experience in many parts of the world where downtown districts as well as suburban lands are transformed into themed malls and so-called festival marketplaces” (Hou 2010), and in São Paulo it is not different.

The shopping malls in general and some streets, but specially Oscar Freire, through the injection of strong private security, fight against the intrusion of the “undesirables”2.

Arthur Lauxen Luiz is a student of Architecture and Urban Planning at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil and currently an exchange student of the master’s program SUPD, at KTH – Royal Institute of Technology, in Sweden. Major areas of interest are architectural project and how the forms of the masses influence the urban voids as well as how urban design can shape the flows of people in contemporary society.

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The street Oscar Feire is located at Jardins, a glamorous area of São Paulo and although its almost three kilometers of length, it is in the crossing point with Augusta, another important street of the city, that Oscar Freire concentrates a huge number of luxury stores. A study made by Excellence Mystery Shopping International3, an organization that reunites the market research institutes in different countries, identified the ten fanciest commercial streets in the world, and Oscar Freire occupies the eighth position on the list. Nowadays the street is not supported by public transportation in its surrounding blocks, and this may The Regulation of Public Spaces

Illustration by Arthur Lauxen Luiz.

not be a coincidence, given that, in Brazil, public transportation is mostly used by low income people, who cannot afford to own a car.

With the increasing elitist character of this street, as have been happening in many others, what is intended is to select exactly the kind of person that will experience such space. The whole atmosphere is created to be experienced by a certain type of person, dressing in a certain way, having a certain amount of money in the savings account and living a certain life style. It is definitely not for everyone that simply wants to and should have the right to be there, since it is a street, and thus a public space.

“Even in recent Western history, some have argued that despite the rhetoric of publicity and accessibility, the official public sphere rests on a number of significant exclusions, based on gender, class and race”4 as well as in social class.

The privatization of the public spaces and the huge amount of private security that can be found in fancy commercial streets or shopping malls lead to the “disneyfication” of this places, which means that nothing unpredictable happens. The private organizations have the control in their hands, they decide which are the rules of the game and who are the players. “Public space means simultaneously: open to all, well known by all and acknowledged by all… It stands in opposition to private space of special interests” (Henaff and Strong, 2001)5, which is exactly what happens in Oscar Freire, where the interests of few affect a huge amount of the population that have their organic and spontaneous city stolen.

Hou says that in Asian cities the public places are synonyms of places observed and controlled by the state and that the more vibrant urban life occurs in smaller streets, in the inner parts of the blocks, away from the places labeled as official domains. This control by the state does not happen in Brazil, however, the same pattern where the vibrant urban life (with unpredictable events)

takes place in distant unofficial places is repeated here. The element that repeals the natural flow of the events instead is the regulation and privatization of spaces. But it has not been like this since the beginning of the history of Oscar Freire, for instance.

Spontaneous activities that used to happen when the street had a more residential and inner city character needed to move to other regions of the city, as a consequence of privatization, the invasion of commerce and a regulated life style.

From these kind of circumstances emerge a will of change, citizens start realizing that they cannot loose their cities for the private sector or for the political power, and that they can, through hard struggles, try to make a change in the present scenario.

Jeffrey Hou brings a compilation of different examples on how engaged people claim for their right to the city. “In cities around the world, acts such as the Pig installation in Fremont represent small yet persistent challenges against the increasingly regulated, privatized and diminishing forms of public space” (Hou, 2010).

Grassroots initiatives, in the sense of sparking from the community, are still not very common in Brazil as in North America, Europe or Asia, where, as Hou mentions, residual sites and abandoned industrial lands have been occupied and introduced to new functions, converted into new uses. “From Seattle to Shanghai, citizen actions ranging from gardening to dancing have permanently and temporarily taken over existing urban sites and injected them with new functions and meanings” (Hou 2010). Examples of urban spaces that are recreated by the locals provide a new sense of collectiveness, which is very healthy in order to maintain the public life and public interactions in a society that is so much focused on personal interests.

The chapter four of Hou’s book Insurgent Public Space is called Taking Place, and it tells us about some actions taken by Rebar, an interdisciplinary studio based in San Francisco working at the intersection of art, design and ecology. “Niche spaces are undervalued, or valued inappropriately for the range of potential 71

Illustration by Arthur Lauxen Luiz.

activities within them. We believe that such niches – once identified – can be opened up to revaluation through creative acts”. Rebar have developed a project called Park(ing), which is an attempt to recreate urban life in a very unpretentious way. The idea of the project is to “claim a parking space using materials that are symbolically associated with parks: trees, lawn and benches” (Hou 2010). This kind of initiative could be perfectly applied to São Paulo reality, for instance. In a growing city where drivers fight (literally) for a free parking space, starting this campaign would be a way (with a sense of humor) of promoting less car use and more socialization, hence enhancing the public life.

After going through this general framework, what can be reinforced is that the struggles for a better living place cannot stop, population have to keep on claiming for their rights, for the right that they have to appropriate the streets, the parks and whichever other public space they feel like. In this sense the politics should also shift in order to avoid that privatization takes place all around and try to provide people with good quality living environments, with places less regulated and controlled, where the events can flow naturally (in the sense of being less predictable and framed) and the democracy of “publicness” can prevail.

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Endnotes 1. POPOS: expression used by Blaine Merker in chapter 4, page 51 in the book Insurgent Public Space by Jeffrey Hou. 2. Whyte (1980) cited by Hou in Insurgent Public Space, page 6.

3. http://veja.abril.com.br/140905/p_102.html, retrieved in 02/12/2013.

4. Fraser (1990: 95) cited by Hou in Isurgent Public Space, page 3.

5. Cited by Hou in Insurgent Public Space, page 2.

References Hou, J. 2010: Insurgent Public Space Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities.

Rebar Group (2012)Parkingday Manifesto Booklet Retrieved 1 December 2013 from http://parkingday.org/src/Parking_Day_ Manifesto_Booklet.pdf http://veja.abril.com.br/140905/p_102.html [Retrieved 02/12/2013].

Rolnik Raquel (2013, December 2) Message posted to bloghttp:// raquelrolnik.wordpress.com [Retrieved 02/12/2013].

The Regulation of Public Spaces

Neglected Right to the City Issues of Poverty and Segregation in Bogotá, Colombia Martin Phillips

Bogotá is a very segregated city. Poor people live in the south and outskirts of the city with generally bad conditions of housing, transport and services. This article relates some issues of housing and public space with some ideas exposed by David Harvey in his book Rebel Cities, mainly about the right to the city. It will go through some different housing offer for the poorest part of the population in the city, from the informal housing market to the formal social housing and also go through some aspects of the public space in the city center.

It will problematize the way people are not able to participate in the creation of the city where they live and how this generates even more segregation and social sickness.

Introduction Bogotá is the capital city of Colombia. With more than seven and a half million inhabitants it is a very segregated city. Despite many efforts from the city administration and planning department to make it a polycentric city, Bogotá is still a monocentric metropolis with huge problems of mobility and social integration. Poor people live in the south and outskirts of the city or in deteriorated parts of the city center and wealthier people live in the north of the city or in what we call the extended city center. Some parts of the city are relatively well connected to the center but by very congested streets and avenues. Public transport is very inefficient, despite the introduction in 2001 of the BRT (bus rapid transit) system, Transmilenio.

Due to the violent conflict in some parts of the country with the drug dealing mafias and the guerrillas, there is a big rural population that is expelled from their land. This population migrates to the cities in need of a place to live and work. This is of course an important issue that needs to be solved in the national context and these people should not be displaced in the first place, but once they are in the city they become immigrants that are in need of housing, income and basic services to survive.

The issue of housing for these people and for the urban poor is of course very relevant, and it is subject of populist political discourses and private speculation.

According to Harvey, the right to the city should give to the people grater “democratic control over the deployment of the surpluses through urbanization” (Harvey 2012, p.22-23), and this is something that in my opinion is not happening in Bogotá at any level. In this article I will relate some of these issues regarding the right to the city with the housing and urban living conditions of the most vulnerable part of society in Bogotá. I will go through some of the different origins of poor housing in the city and explain how poor people are deprived from any possibility to access their right to the city. In the last part of the article I will also talk about the public space in the city center and pose some questions about who’s having the right to the city in these areas.

Martin Phillips studied architecture in Santiago de Chile and Bogotá, Colombia. He was interested throughout his studies in urban issues of these two cities where he learned from the reality of highly segregated and unequal societies. He is finishing his master studies in urban planning and design at KTH, Stockholm.

It all starts at home One could say that the basic ingredient of the recipe for a city is the house. From this basic ingredient, the city can start taking shape when adding streets, squares, parks, churches, shops, schools, hospitals and all the other functions and services that exist in a modern city. We build our cities with all the ingredients that we have, need or want; and this is directly linked with the kind of people we want to be (Harvey 2012, p.4). This means that we are supposed to be able transfer to our built and social environment, what we think of ourselves as persons. But, what happens when you were born in a certain part of the city or in a certain poor family that unfairly defines who you are, and doesn’t allow you to be the person you want to be? This ideally shouldn’t happen, but the fact is that it does. The place in the city where you live can define who you are, where you will work and what 73

Kids playing on the streets of Ciudad Bolívar in Bogotá.

(Wolfgang Sterneck on Flickr. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7004/6606748149_40a41464fc_b.jpg)

kind of job you will do. In Bogotá, most of the people living in the the south of the city are working for the wealthier people in the north – constructing their buildings, maintaining their parks and streets but also driving their cars, cleaning their houses, cooking their food and taking care of their children. For these people to go to work they have some times to take up to three different modes of transportation and spend more than three hours per day in the public transport. With all this time spent in transportation and with long working days, how can people find time to think about the city their hearts’ desire that Harvey talks about?

I will focus for a moment on the issue of housing for low-income families in Bogotá. The housing market in the poor areas of the city can have two different origins, formal and informal. Both of them have problems and both of them give little possibilities to their inhabitants to take part in the thinking and creation of the city they need and want.

Most of the informal settlements in Bogotá have their origins in what we call pirate urbanization. This is when a person – the pirate developer – who owns or takes possession of a piece of land sells it in smaller plots. They earn on the fact that land “is a fictitious form of capital that derives from expectations of future rents” (Harvey 2012, p.28). The pirate developer generally divides the land, leaving just the necessary space for streets but without providing any service like aqueduct, sewage or electricity neither leaving any space for parks, green areas, sports facilities or other type of public services. This is of course done without the required authorizations or with some of them obtained through corruption or as payment for political favors.

Some of these urbanizations are located in areas with high risk or flooding or landslides, and should have never been built. One of the problems for the city administration is that when people have already built their houses (thing that they do very quick, considering their urgent need for a shelter) they have to be 74

integrated and start a legalization and formalization process of their land. This is not only very difficult for the people but also very expensive for the city administration that sometimes has to do big infrastructure investments in order to protect these areas.

In some cases the city has chosen to relocate people when the risk is very high or the investment to expensive, but they try not to do it because they don’t want to break the social links and networks that are very quickly created in this kind of settlements.

According to a report from 2005 by the Contraloría de Bogotá (City’s accountability office), in 2002 there was a 26% of the total land built for housing in the city that had its origins in this kind of illegal developments. People choose this option over the formal social housing offer because of many different reasons. First it is cheaper to get only the land at the beginning. Second, it gives them the possibility to auto construct their houses according to their needs and economical possibilities. Third because they don’t trust the bank system, they don’t have the financial stability to get a mortgage loan and they prefer to come to an economical agreement with someone that they feel closer to them, in this case the pirate developer.

The formal social housing on the other hand is of course working within the law and it is in the hands of private construction companies that are doing it in order to get some profit from it.

These construction companies are owned and managed by what Harvey would call the capitalist class. Only a few companies, directed and owned by the people with bigger economic power, control urbanization in Bogotá. If we look into the projects of social housing, not only in Bogotá but in the rest of the country, the big majority are just the result of very conscious studies of what is the most efficient way of satisfy all the minimal requirements of the size of spaces, in the interior of the houses as well as in the urban design. Also we can see in the way they sell these projects that the designers are trying to mimic their way of living, trying to make it fit in a minimal space. They

Neglected Right to the City

View of an informal settlement in Bogotá and the financial center in the back.

(Wolfgang Sterneck on Flickr. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7026/6606704263_df76f13ff9_b.jpg)

transfer their social values and ideas to people who might not share them.

This (the urbanization of capital by the capitalist class) implies capitalist class domination not only over state apparatuses (…), but also over whole populations – their lifestyles as well as their labor power, their cultural and political values as well as their mental conceptions of the world (Harvey, 2012, p.66)

Social housing projects are typically row houses with narrow pedestrian streets and small backyards that sometimes don’t even get sunlight. The law demands for a portion of each project to be public space to the city, but this can be in form of a park, of a green natural area or simple leftover spaces that sometimes are even hard to use.

From home to the right to the city Both of the options of housing that I explained above make it impossible, or at least very hard, for people to participate in the construction of their city. Going back to one of the first definitions that Harvey gives for the right to the city where he sais it is one of “the most precious yet more neglected of our human rights” (Harvey 2012 p.4), we can ask ourselves to what extent the population of Bogotá is being deprived from this right, and how is this happening. People are definitely not having any collective power or democratic control over the urbanization processes.

One might think that the informal settlements actually give people the chance to change and reinvent the city, but I wouldn’t say so. It is true that they have the possibility to gradually build their homes, and to give them the composition and shape that they need or want: typically with a work space or business on the ground floor, then a first floor for living and sometimes a second or even third floor for some relatives or to rent out and gain some

extra income. But when it comes to the creation of the city they don’t have any chance to participate. The city usually comes with standard solutions for streets and public spaces, putting in these areas whatever standard solution they are using allover the city, without taking into consideration the specific real needs or desires of the people. These solutions have very often a very populist intention. Politicians use their names and faces to gain votes and popularity with infrastructure and public space works that can be seen by everyone, and then they don’t take care of the real necessities of people or solve some of their essential social problems. What I see as a problem, and Harvey states this also in his book, is that the city is not rebuilding and recreating itself in a way that it eradicates poverty and social inequality (Harvey 2012 p.138). I firmly believe that one key aspect to achieve this is real participation of the people in the decisionmaking and the creation of the city.

Now, if we look at the formal social housing projects in Bogotá we will see a completely different situation from the one exposed previously about the informal settlements. These are typically closed group of row houses or small building, with fences or walls around them that kill the public space of the street, and only help to segregate even more the communities. The capitalist class is transmitting their paranoia and obsession with security to areas of the city that might not even need it in the first place, but that from the moment that gated communities are created social discontent and inequalities appear. The kind of public space that people want or need is not necessarily the one they will find inside these gated communities. Yes, there are parks and green areas that the project have to have by law, but is it this the kind of public space that people need and want? Sometimes these parks and green areas are put in one end of the land, where it is more convenient for the project to be more efficient. Where it is more convenient for the developer because he can fit more houses in the terrain. Instead of making it the core of the community, they make it inaccessible and out of reach for parts of the community.

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Later some get vandalized and are taken over by small drug dealers and neighborhood gangs. Is this the only common that these communities have? I don’t believe so; I believe that the form of the built environment that has been forced upon them is not coming from the people’s needs and desires, but imposed by the laws of capitalist market that want to take the biggest profit.

One other aspect of this type of housing that poses a problem for the people living in it is the impossibility to make their houses a source of income. Most of these families have an unstable income given that they work in the informal sector and even if they have a formal job, they don’t have the certainty that they will be able to keep it, because of the fragile economy of the city and the country. Like I mentioned before, in the informal housing areas some houses have workspaces or shops in the ground floor. This is not possible to have in the formal housing communities because of the inflexibility of the physical aspect of the houses and because they are inside gated areas where they wouldn’t be able to get enough flow of people to maintain their business.

Finally but not least, is the fact that most of the people get mortgage loans to finance the buy of their houses. This forces them to make monthly payments for many years and end up paying a lot of interests to the banks and financial institutions. In Bogotá, like in the rest of the capitalist world “a political economy of mass dispossession of predatory practices” (Harvey 2012 p.156) has become the norm, and people don’t see that there are other ways. They grew up knowing only the inequalities and injustices that they were destined to live.

her own. Some recently renovated areas that were ‘cleaned’ of drug addicts and prostitution, have been retaken by the original users who reclaim the informal market of illegal substances and activities. Are illegality and informality wining a battle for the right to the city? The fact is that their market exists, they have a demand and they have made their way through the city to find a place to make it work. What I think is happening here is not that informality and illegality has won the right to the city, but that this is a symptom of a bigger problem that has no simple solution and that is clearly not solved by renovating streets and squares, making then look nice and clean. The right to the city is much more than that.

Conclusions The conclusions for this article show unfortunately a negative aspect of the city. This is because today the most vulnerable and poor population of Bogotá is not having any access to the right to create their city. There is no democratic, collective control over the use of the economic surplus and instead a few actors from the capitalist class control it. Participation in the construction of the city is very low, and even where there are instances for it, people don’t really believe that their voices will be heard.

Segregation is every day bigger and injustice is part of every day’s living of the inhabitants of Bogotá. The worst part is that most of them think it is normal, and that they just have to live with it. To know what we want we first have to know what are our options.

The right to the city center Like I wrote earlier, Bogotá is a monocentric city. This means that it has one strong center where most of the economic and sociocultural activities take place. The city center and its expansion to the north (where most of the financial institutions have migrated), attract every day millions of workers. The city center could be the city for everyone, where all the sectors of society are included and a place for social mixture and socialization. And in some aspects it is. In the central square of Bogotá, the Plaza de Bolívar, is where all the political and social demonstrations happen, in front of the four main powers of the city: the parliament building, the cathedral, the city administration building and the palace of justice. The plaza and parts of the historical center are the main touristic attraction of the city, and therefore it is well taken care of and it is securitized, so locals and tourists can feel safe in it.

But there are other parts of the center that are highly deteriorated and neglected. Many administrations have been doing a big effort to revitalize these parts of the city center and make people care about them, but these actions have been focused mainly on the physical aspects of the city. Renovated streets and plazas are not enough to make people understand that this is their city and that it is up to them to take care of it and build it with their good actions and behavior. Nobody feels the city center as his or 76

Neglected Right to the City

References Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso.

Echanove, M. (2004). Bogotá at the Edge: Planning the Barrios. Retrieved November 28, 2013, from: http://www.bogotalab.com/articles/bogota_edge.html Camargo Sierra, A. P., & Hurtado Tarazona, A. (2013). Urbanización informal en Bogotá: agentes y lógicas de producción del espacio urbano. Revista INVI, 28(78), 77-107. Retrieved November 28, 2013, from: http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S071883582013000200003&script=sci_arttext Contraloría de Bogotá, Dirección de Recursos Naturales y Medio Ambiente (2005). Technical Report: Desarrollo Urbanistico Ilegal en Bogotá y su Afectación a la Estructura Ecológica Principal. Bogotá.

The Conflicting Transformation of Insurgent Public Space Xiaodan Li

Public space is an important part of people’s daily life but in this text I would like to express my understanding of insurgent public space after reading the book ‘Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla urbanism and the remaking of contemporary cities’ edited by Jeffery Hou. I would illustrate my opinion of insurgent public space that it is a place that used or created by the people spontaneously for their public activities or even everyday life rather the generally public space that are planned or designed by the city planners with the cases that I have experienced in my own life in my hometown Chongqing, China which are special that both two cases are related to the characteristics of the city and they are part of the local residents’ life.

Xiaodan Li is major in urban planning and now studying in the college of Urban and Environmental Sciences in Peking University. She loves dancing, traveling and enjoy every moment of my life. She’s very interested in the reconstruction of old town and she has done a case study of Wudaoying Hutong in Beijing in the interaction mechanics between historic blocks preservation and cultural-commercial development. She chooses the book “Insurgent Public Space ” edited by Jeffery Hou as the reading material because she have witnessed a lot of phenomenons in China and feeling it needs more attention on the insurgent public space now.

Public space and Insurgent Public Space Places such as squares, markets, parks, streets are the traditional way of understanding of the concept of public space. Public space as Jeffery Hou mentioned in the book is a place for stands for democracy, exclusion and political control. It is a place for social learning that evokes the practice of democracy, openness to every one of us have the right to go regardless of gender o, class, race (Hou, 2010). People engaged in the public through different kinds of media for example conversation, the space it occupied and the debates it engendered among neighbors and citizens. Public space provides opportunities for gathering , socializing, recreation as well as protests and demonstrations.

(Hou, 2010) Some of them provide relief for the busy urban life while others are of important historical meaning both officially or unofficially. It is not only a physical boundary and material setting but a space for social relationships.

However with the worldwide economic development more and more public space are taken place by the private space. There is less space for the public to enjoy their daily life which leads to the arise of the insurgent public space. Different from the traditional concept of public space, insurgent public space is mainly a spontaneous phenomenon that conduct by the people themselves. Take the Chinese people dancing in the vacant island for instance(Hou, 2010), these ‘loose spaces’ are not intentionally designed or planned as the city planners planning the city but rather a spontaneous improvising by the local people. In order to protect their rights to enjoy the space and the environment that are possessed by the private and other strong power people have to find their own way to the break the physical boundaries.

In the edited book by How we can find many examples of insurgent public space such as the night market in Taipei and the back alley in Seoul. I’m interested in this topic because in my opinion it embodies the contradiction of the different classes and the people’s will to have their right to live in the world. With this concept I choose the following two cases to explain my understanding of insurgent public space that I have experienced myself and I hope they can bring new thinking to the government and city planners.

A Brief Introduction of Chongqing To start with I would like to briefly introduce the city. Chongqing is the youngest and largest municipality in southwest China which has over 30 million population. It is a city built in the mountain with two rivers – the Yangtze River and Jialing Rivergo across the city. The special geographical location makes it the political, economic, cultural and shipping center of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. It used to be the alternative capital of China during the Anti-Japanese war in 1937 . With the fast economic growth it is the growth pole in the southwest of China together with Chengdu and Wuhan.

In the following parts, I would like to introduce two typical examples of insurgent public space that I found in my daily life in 77

Chongqing. The first one is given by the nature and the second one is originally created by the people during the war time. Both of them are in good use by the creative Chongqing people and the two places becomes a part of the symbol of the city.

The Coral Dam as Insurgent Public Space and it’s Destroy As it is said before that there are two rivers go across the city which create the first insurgent public space –the dam in the river. Every year when the two rivers enter the dry season from October to April the sandbars in the middle of the river would appear which become a wonderful place for the people.

The largest dam is the Coral Dam in the left bank of Yangtze river formed by the alluviation of the river. It is first recorded by the document in the Shu Han Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period which shows the long history of the dam. It was used as the amphibious airport for the Chinese army during the AntiJapanese War. After 1949 with the Coral Dam become an open space for the citizen, people go to the dam during the dry season.

Especially in spring, thousands of people go there for spring excursion. People will having picnic or barbecue in the huge rock by the river. Young kids like throwing cobblestone towards the river to compete who can create more splashing in the water. I still remember when I was young my grandma took my cousins and I to there having barbecue catching tadpoles from the small pool on the hole of the rock. We built our secret base in the bulrush and we had a kite-flying competition with our beautiful traditional Chinese handmade kites.

All of these are the good memories that I have in my childhood and as more and more people go to the dam it turns into an open space for the public. A park was built near the dam and some vendors went to the dam. People can have self-cooked barbecue in the open-air restaurant. Even a hours-riding area were built temporarily which provided the visitors here more choices for entertainment. Young people go there to get close to the nature to be out of the busy city life. Old people often go there for walk.

Overall it provide good experience and becomes one of the most popular site in spring.

The dam is given by the nature that arouse people’s willing to use it as an insurgent public space and enjoy the wonderful time on it. It becomes part of their daily life which becomes a landmark for local residents. However, problem appeared as more and more people and commercial activities in the dam. People have less conscious about the environment that there are too much waste on the dam for example the white waste-used plastic bags or fast-food packages-which are hard to be degraded or decomposed leading to bad pollution to the environment.

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In order to solve this problem and with the accomplishment of the Three Gorges Dam in the downstream, the government decided to transform the Coral Dam in to a Wetland Park in 2006.

The plan is to use ecological method to build an environmental friendly park with different plants that can conserve water and soil in both dry season and flood season while people can enjoy walking or other entertainment activities on the dam and also a monument together with a service center are on the plan. The horse riding area will be destroyed and the commercial activities will be strictly limited to reduce the pollution. But the situation doesn’t work as the planners want. The problem still exists or even become more serious. Every year when the polluted water rises it destroy the wetland park. It takes a lot of time and money to rebuilt the park that can be used by the citizens. People are disappointed about lost of the dam and in my opinion the best way to protect it is to not plan or not designed at all but change the management of the commercial activities on the dam. On the one hand, the government can limit the number and space of the vendors and set strict rules on using plastic materials.

On the other hand, they should improve people’s awareness of protecting environment by education and strict fine rules of pollution which can encourage people to protect their memorial dam by themselves Man-made Old Bomb Shelter as Insurgent Public Space In this part I would like to talk about an important insurgent public space for the local residents which is transformed from the manmade bomb shelters at the war time.

During the Anti-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945,Chongqing as the alternative capital suffered thousands of air raids from Japanese army almost half of the city was destroyed. In order to protect the citizens, the Kuomintang government decided to build more civil air defense facilities which is the greatest city air defense works at that time. Hundreds of bomb shelters were built spreading in every corner of the city. There are mainly four types of bomb shelters in the city. The first one is directly transferred from the old cave and cliff for example Hongya Cave which is now a famous tourist attractions for its traditional Chongqing wooden houses and folk street. The second type is built by the citizen for temporary shelter in case of emergency.

The third one is built by the government. Those bomb shelters were built in the flat terrain in the center of the old town to provide shelter for the large population there. The most famous one is the Eighteen –stairs tunnel, in the 5th June 1941, the Japanese army had a large scale of air raid and thousands of people died in the tunnel for the lack of fresh air. The government also built different kinds of shelters during the municipal

The Conflicting Transformation of Insurgent Public Space

People in the “Eighteen Stairs Bomb Shelter”.

With the improvement of the facilities there are more and more people going to the bomb shelters to having a rest or chat to each other. Some of them even dancing in the shelter which similar to what Hou mentioned in the book. It becomes a huge living room for the local residents and become part of their daily life.

Source: www.cqwb.com.cn

engineering process. The last one is mainly the old city gate. The large and solid stone gate provide good shelter for thousands of the people for example Tongyuan Gate and Linjiang Gate.

The bomb shelters protected Chongqing people during the war time but their function has not vanished with the end of the war.

Many of them are still be in used nowadays and people create their new functions in the time of peace. These man-made shelters are almost everywhere in the city and according to the statistics by the local government than 1.000.000m2 space can be used in the shelters. Many of them are transformed into underground passages with small shops, restaurants, warehouse or manufacturing base which create large income for the government and employment opportunities for the local people.

The bomb shelters have already been a part of the citizen’s life.

As a shelter for the hot summer: Chongqing is one of the four hottest cities in China. In summer the temperature can easily reach over 40°C. The bomb shelter however becomes a good public space for the people to keep cool or having a rest in the hot midday. It is open to all and people are free to go. The temperature in the bomb shelter is much lower than the outside which attract people to go there to escape from the hot summer instead of just sitting at home with the air conditioner on the whole day playing computer or watching TV. At first in order to get away from the hot weather people go there with some chairs and hand fan just for a short rest. Gradually some of them even bring a large bamboo mat or table to be more comfortable. People start to gathering inside or near the entrance of the cool bomb shelter during the day and at night. It becomes one of the most important public spaces for Chongqing people which likes a common living room for them to be together and communication.

When I was young I always went to the bomb shelter to play with other kids while my grandma playing Majiang with her friends.

Different age groups of people love going to the bomb shelters not only because it is cool in the summer but also they can meet and doing Longmenzhen (chatting) with their friends or strangers.

The bomb shelters provide both free open space and good atmosphere for people. With more and more people going to the shelter, vendors start to sell ice tea, food and fan or other things in the shelter. Even some small restaurants appear in some small bomb shelters which provide fast food or famous Chongqing Hot Pot. People make good use of the space in them and really enjoy that.

Nowadays as the city developed the bomb shelters are transferred into different usages. The bomb shelters in the upper town commercial area are reused mainly for commercial activities they are transformed into underground space with shops and passages. Those are in the area between upper town and river are mainly transformed into summer shelters for the large density of population there. The most famous must be the ‘Eighteen Stairs’bomb shelter near the old street which connect the commercial area in the upper town to the old down town near the Yangtze River. It is one of the largest bomb shelter which provide a wonderful cooling space for people. In 2006 the government rebuilt 41of the bomb shelters and equipped them with new facilities such as lights, desks, chairs, televisions, medical services and drinking water in the shelter with some staff working in the shelter to insure the safety of the citizen.

People are really happy with the improvement of the facilities in the shelters that they can do more activities in the boom shelter which works as a large living room for them to spend their time there.As for those small cave bomb shelters along the river, most of them are exposed to the street and be surrounded by the greenbelts as some historical sites that remains the history of the city.

Some of them are directly transformed to tunnels for cars and subway. Because the temperature is cold in summer and warm in winter it becomes perfect public space for the local people some of which even dancing or exercising in the tunnels (or shelters) after dinner, young children having fun skating around.

They are not just cold stone cave that protect people from the air raid they are now more than a physical space but rather a symbol of the city’s history which remain people of the sadness of the war but also the treasure memory of their childhood and daily life in the city. They also create large business space and working opportunities for this mountain city and the local people which contribute to the economic growth by renting them for commercial or entertainment use.Different from the first example, the dam is destroyed due to too much planning while the bomb shelter works in a different way that they provide various functions to the city life. The planners only improve the infrastructure in the shelter to maintain its functions as insurgent public space for people and they make good use of the small shelters for commercial usages which contribute to the economic growth. I think it’s a good way to both protect and reuse the shelter that planners only do the basic protection to provide better condition when people use it as an insurgent public place.

This maintains the original meaning of the shelter as an insurgent public space and expand its function in modern society.

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Conclusion The two examples show the different types of the insurgent public space in Chongqing. Both of them are used as insurgent public space by the local people who regard them as parts of their life that these places provide communication, recreation and open spaces for them and they represents the history and symbol of the city. However, with the gentrification of the city the government and the planes have changed the development of their usage. The bomb shelter as a good example of the combination of the spontaneous activities by the local people with the good changes in the function and infrastructure by the planners create more practical and humanized function for the public. On the other hand, the dam which used to be a good insurgent public space is destroyed with the over design and protection against the nature. But in both cases we can draw the conclusion that insurgent public space plays an important role in people’s daily life. They are not only physical places they show the people’s willingness to have their rights to enjoy public and free life to be away from the fast rhythm of urban life. People created the insurgent public space spontaneously in the ideal places for communication and living that are ignored by the planners. Meanwhile these places represent the connotation of the insurgent public space that those ‘loosen space’ are of importance to remain fresh and unpredictable for the city. From my point of view, if we want to create more insurgent public space instead of setting a boundary to make some place a public space, planners should reduce intentionally designed for public space which could lead to a disaster that the public space are ruined like the Coral Dam. Just give the space back to the people and they will spontaneously create what they want in the space which meet their own needs.

References Jeffrey Hou. (2010) Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla urbanism and the remaking of contemporary cities.

Oxon: Routledge.

Tao, H & Ying, H. (2006 August 20) the firing Chongqing: thousands of people going to the bomb shelter to enjoy the cool. Retrieved from http://news. qq.com Hui Zhou.(2001, December 27) The usage of the Chongqing bomb shelter during the peace time.

People Daily Retrieved from www.people.com.cn.

History –lover. (2012, May 28) Chongqing bomb shelter; The largest city air defense system in the world. Retrieved from ilishi.blog.sohu.com.

Xiaoxian Long.(2013, July 9) The past and present of the bomb shelter. Retrieved from http://bbs.cqnews. net.

The community cultural landscape in the Chongqing bomb shelter. Retrieved from wenku.baidu.com Coral Dam. In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 28, 2013 from zh.wikipedia.org Bangyun Liu.(2008, April 30) The rebuilding of the Coral Dam wetland park. Chongqing Evening News.

Retrieved from cq.qq.com Chongqing Evening News. (2007, September 17) the Coral Dam become a horse ranch.& the Coral Dam Wetland Park- Retrieved fromnews.qq.com Gillad Rosen & Jill Grant (2011). Reproducing difference: gated communities in Canada and Israel.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Volume 35.4, 778-93.

Grant, J. and L. Mittelsteadt (2004). Types of gated communities. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 31.6, 913–30.

Marcuse, P. (1997) The ghetto of exclusion and the fortified enclave: new patterns in the United States.

The American Behavioral Scientist 41.3, 311–26.

Picture of La Zona: http://racines.canalblog.com/ archives/2008/04/06/8559469.html 2013.11.29 Richard Sennett (2008). The uses of disorder: personal identity and city life. London: Yale University Press.

Rodrigo Plá (director). (2007). La Zona. [Motion Picture]. Mexico. Memento Movies Stephen Shaver. (2013, July 19). In China, a wide gap between rich and poor. [Web log message].

Retrieved from: http://www.upi.com/Business_ News/2013/07/19/In-China-a-wide-gap-between-richand-poor/UPI-11571374248981/ 2013.11.29 Wu,F. & K.Webber (2004). The rise of ‘foreign gated communities’ in Beijing: between economic globalization and local institutions. Cities 21.3, 203-13.

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The Conflicting Transformation of Insurgent Public Space

Informal Settlements in Kibera Caroline Ovaska

Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, is one of the world’s largest informal settlements. It is extremely densely populated and lacks basic amenities such as water, sanitation, and adequate health and education facilities. This article is intended to demonstrate the lives of living in an informal settlement and how they are excluded to participate in the social, economic and cultural spheres of the city. Mike Davis reveals in the book Planet of slums that the current substandard living conditions of informal settlements are severely detrimental to the capabilities of slum inhabitants. Despite the inadequate housing and basic services is slum dwellers survivor’s, using and reusing the available resources in an innovative way that I think we can learn more from.

I remember when I first visited my aunt and cousins in Kibera.

I was 12 years old and ever since then I’ve spent time in Kibera whenever I am in Nairobi. To my uncles resentment. Uncle David warned me to be careful and look out for thieves. Although I was excited to meet my family in Kibera but another side of me was morbidly curious to see the poverty I had heard so much about. I took the minibus to the edge of Kibera and my aunt stood at the bus stop waiting, excited to show me around in her neighborhood. Sande, my aunt led me down a cramped ally that made up one of the many entrances to the slum. We turned a corner, and she extended her arm outward like she was presenting a painting. “Here it is, we are home”, she said. Kibera stretched out in front of us, like this massive sprawling quilt. It was a sweeping valley of rusting corrugated iron, unlike anything I had ever seen.

From above it looked peaceful, quiet and uninhabited. We crossed dribbling brown stream to enter the slum and all of a sudden everything came to life. Kids were running down the rocky, dirty streets at full speed, laughing between food markets, stalls and dogs. Music soared out of a set of speakers at a record store, women sat in front of hair salons and got their hair braided.

I remember I was surprised by all the businesses. It hadn’t occurred to me that Kibera would be a thriving economic hub.

There wasn’t a square of street front property unoccupied by activity: pharmacies, butchers, restaurants, grocery stores and DVD shops down the streets. That order was the thing I first noted about Kibera. What appears to be chaotic to an outsider like me is anything but. Everything is part of a system, defined and redefined over generations. The streets, the businesses, the rents, the economy, the toilets and water supply are all part of a complicated but carefully planned structure.

We entered a narrow compound of overlapping houses. ”Caroline is here, at home” my cousin shouted as we approached the house. I ducked into a doorway formed by mud and packed walls. As my eyes adjusted, darkness gave way to a room filled with activity. My cousin Shamim and her oldest daughter were preparing ugali and beef stew for lunch. My other cousins emerged from behind a curtain that made a partition behind which my aunt and her husband slept. Three other people that I’d never meet greeted and welcomed me home. I paused at the doorway taking it all in. The warmth and hospitality they gave is something I always will remember.

Caroline Ovaska’s interest in urban planning was founded in early childhood, spending time with her family in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest informal settlement. The experience made it obvious for her the immediate connection between societal structures, power, health and urban planning. Her diverse academc background in political science and international relations has created interesting synergies within the field of urban and regional planning at KTH.

Plates clattered at the table as Sande and Shamim set a steaming bowl of stew, ugali and chapati at the center of the table.

“Shamim wants to be a journalist when she grows up” Sunday told me. Shamim looked at me with bright eyes and a smile on her face. “She’s at the top of her class in elementary school in Kibera”.

Sunday is telling me about the difficulties of life in slum. Kibera has no formal government services so the residents can’t access 81

Children standing outside a school in Makina, a village in Kibera informal settlements. Source: Ovaska. C (2009).

clean water, sanitation, electricity or health care the way rest of city does.

It’s easy to think of slums as places of poverty filled with victims of circumstances waiting for outside intervention. But slum dwellers are survivors and innovators, constantly manipulating their surroundings to creatively addressing the problems their communities are facing (Davis, 2006).

Sande wishes she made enough money to move them into a safer part of Kibera. But the money she earns is to save for Shamims college tuition. ”Kibera has its problems, but it’s a good place to live and people are friendly. Sunday told me slicing into the thick pile of ugali. At least here you can get a little bit to get by. Back at home it’s really hard to survive”. Home for Sunday is Bukwa, a rural village in the neighboring country of Uganda where Sunday and my father grew up. Sunday is one of 24 sisters and brothers and didn’t have opportunity to get higher education (women rarely did in the 60s) so she farmed land instead. But the effects of modernization and global warming made the agrarian lifestyle more and more difficult everywhere in Uganda and in Bukwa, so she decided to pack her things and move to the capital of Kenya, Nairobi, in search for a better life in getting employment and earn money.

Like many that move from the country side to the city almost everyone ends up in informal settlements like Kibera, because its the cheapest places to live and for many the only affordable option (Davis, 2006).

On the whole, is Nairobi a highly developed modern city, just some 20 minutes from Kibera is there luxury apartments and shopping malls with restaurants you can find I any city in the west.

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Sande is telling me that she struggled when she first moved to Nairobi, but she was fortunate that family members helped her out so she could start her own business outside of Kibera, selling women’s clothing and shoes.

After lunch, we walked through the neighborhood, I could see that Sande was proud when she introduced me to her neighbors. When I entered the minibus taking me back to my uncles home, an upper class neighborhood in the Westlands. It felt like I was on my way to a total different world.

I remember I watched Kibera pass outside the windows. It was early evening and the crowds streamed in from their jobs from the rest of the city. Men in business suits picked their way through the streets, grabbing in last-minute items before settling home for the night. It was peaceful even beautiful. As I watched, I thought about why slums makes us so anxious. Why westerners, is so fascinated by documenting their tragedy’s and trying to solve their problems. The way we talk about slums - the sewage, the gripping poverty - is a way to distance ourselves from a reality that hits to close to home. Slums or informal settlements are the living, breathing results of an overstretched planet. They are the direct reality of the pollution, the overpopulation, the massive amounts of waste, inequalities and the urbanization – that may be one of the biggest problems facing the 21st century. For the first time in history, more people in the world live in cities than in rural areas and a third of those live in slums. Whether we like it or not, they may be the future of our planet, as Mike Davis (2006) says in the book Planet of Slums.

Nairobi, Kenya Nairobi is in many ways typical of today’s African cities when the city is characterized by a strong urbanization combined with deteriorating economic and health conditions. Nairobi is one of Africa’s fastest growing cities, and is growing about 7 procent per year, without any signs of stopping in the next 20 years. The

Informal Settlements in Kibera

Houses and the inadequate provision of waste management in Markina, a village in the informal settlements of Kibera. Source: Ovaska. C (2009).

city’s population has increased six-times since the 1960s, while approximately 60 procent of Nairobi’s population live in informal settlements which together occupy only 5 procent of the city areas. Kibera is Nairobis largest slum. Population statistics vary significantly and the population is estimated to be from 500 000 up to 700 000 (UN HABITAT, 2012). The density in slums is comparable to Tokyo and New York’s urban centers despite that the buildings in Kibera consist exclusively of low-rise houses, instead of skyscrapers (Davis, 2006:92).

What is a slum?

“Slum” or informal settlement is a broad concept applied to different types of poor urban areas characterized by poorly constructed houses, overcrowding and generally low living conditions. Within the definition of slum are areas that are run-down and that got lower status over time and informal settlements is often illegally built with more or less permanent structures. However, it is important to note that this isn’t an inherent characteristic of all slums, but that a low income can both be a cause of slum origins and also a consequence of living in the area. To rate a slum can make use of four factors; insecurity of tenure, poor or informal housing, overcrowding, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation (Davis, 2006:23). The worst slum areas are those that have serious deficiencies in all four aspects. Nairobi’s slums can therefore be said to belong to the worst category, as they are characterized by insecure tenure despite high rents, extremely inadequate infrastructure, low housing standards in terms of both construction materials and space, and extremely densely populated residential areas with few public spaces and facilities (Gulyani & Talukdar, 2006:7-8).

Why does slums like Kibera exists and what are the solutions?

Slums in Nairobi has existed since colonialization and has sprawled with rapid urbanization and the impact of the World

Bank/IMF-led structural adjustment programs. Mike Davis (2006) argues that the strong urbanization without concomitant growth that has taken place in developing countries is a result of the widespread debt crisis in the late 70s and the IMF –led Structural adjustment programs that followed of the 1980s and 1990s. IMF and the World Bank pushed through deregulation of the agricultural sector, which generated a labor migration to urban areas. Small and medium sized farmers found it difficult to compete in the newly opened market. Those who became unemployed often looked for jobs in the cities. The fact that urbanization continued in an unbroken pace despite falling real wages, rising prices and widespread urban unemployment goes against all economic models that would explain urbanization as a result of and measures of economic development (Davis, 2006:14).

Structural adjustment requirements also meant that the Kenyan government was forced to cut back their public spending by reducing subsidies for basic social services as education and health care that increased the hardship for the already poor and Nairobi slum areas increased dramatically.

The self-regulated market within international institutions such as IMF dictated weaker and indebted states by commanding their economic policies and forced them to open up their borders to foreign investment. As Massey (2005) argues is the understanding of the world as a future global trading place that legitimizes various measures as for example the imposition of Structural adjustment programs in the south. The geopolitical perspective critizes the unequal trade relations between the south and north that institutions and globalist players have cemented and deepened them in many cases.

The predicted benefits didn’t happen instead the levels of poverty increased and Kenya’s economy deteriorated. The Structural adjustment programs may therefore be said to have affected 83

Kibera in two developments; Kenyan population, especially those already poor got it worse which led to more people moving to Nairobi’s slums. Meanwhile did the situation worsen for the people already living in the informal settlements through price rices and removed subsidies that lowered people’s wages (Davies, 2006).

Slums is also a consequence of the failure of public authorities that have ignored their existence. To improve the lives of slum dwellers, the public authority need to identify slum dwellers among the urban population, eliminate the widespread corruption, distributing resources more equitably, increasing subsidies to the poorest and most vulnerable groups and intervening in housing markets to ensure that housing is made more affordable, especially for the poorest groups (Davis, 2006).

There is no doubt that foreign interventions in Africa on the part of foreign multinationals, Structural adjustment programs and foreign governments have had a negative impact on the continent’s ability to feed itself and is resulting in the displacement of thousands of people from their land.

Slum upgrading projects, as envisioned by UN-HABITAT and Kenyan government, have failed to incorporate the views and expertise of the people most affected by these projects (Huchermeyer, 2006). An example of this is the Kenya slumupgrading project (KENSUP) launched in 2001 by the Kenyan Ministry of Housing with the support of UN HABITAT and several other donor organizations. It was an opportunity for people to move out of Kiberas substandard housing. The apartments were heavily subsidized and provided the basic services that slums lacked like water, sanitation and electricity (KENSUP, 2008).

But from the launch of the project, it was problems. Firstly, did the Nairobi middleclass move in, searching for affordable housing in a city with skyrocketing rents. Many secured apartments in the new buildings through the informal system of bribery that dictates a great deal of life in Kenya. Secondly, saw Kibera resident’s business opportunities, who were given the apartments through the program, rented their apartment’s instead to middle class tenants for more than the subsidized rate. Then they moved back to the slum with extra money in their pockets (Huchermeyer, 2006). The plan had good intentions and could have changed the lifestyles of Kibera residents but it didn’t. UN Habitat has been critized for it’s lacking of citizens participation that doesn’t meet the residents needs.

There are a lot of projects in Kibera that probably is helping people. There are also a lot that are probably damaging community structures, creating dependence and fueling corruption or simply doing nothing. It’s hard to say what the solution is when it comes to tackle informal settlements but it is in these areas where mass flocking will occur in the next decades (Davis, 2006). And it is in these environments that planners must turn their attention to best serve the expanding urban and global population. Maybe are the residents living in informal settlements the ones that know how to address big global problems like urban density, technology access and waste disposal? Necessity breads innovation. And that necessity might be what slum dwellers well equipped to take on a crowded resource strapped future.

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Informal Settlements in Kibera

References Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. Fairfield: Verso Gulyani, S., & Talukdar, D. (2006). Slum real estate: the low-quality high-price puzzle in Nairobi’s slum rental markets and its implications. New York, Columbia University Huchzermeyer, M. (2006). Slum upgrading initiatives in Kenya within the basic services and wider housing markets: a housing rights concern. Geneve: Kenya housing rights project, COHRE Africa programme, Centre on housing rights and evictions Massey, D. (2005). Aspatial Globalisation, For Space.

London: SAGE UN-HABITAT (2012) Integrated Water Sanitation and Waste Management in Kibera. Available at: http://www.unhabitat.org/content. asp?cid=3220&catid=206&typeid=13 (accessed November 20, 2013) Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (KENSUP) Available at: http://nairobiplanninginnovations.com/projects/ (accessed November 22, 2013) UN-HABITAT and The Kenya upgrading programe strategy document may 2008. Available at: http://www.google.com/

Consumerism and Alternative Practices of Sustainable Societies Investigating the current order of increased consumption in the urban realm worldwide and the potential for change

What Goes Around Comes Around New ways of consumption by adapting alternative economies in urban planning Karl von Schmalensee

The aim of this article is to address the problem that we as a society are simply consuming too much. Due to that, we have modified an economic system that tends to define modernity and development as a linear process. A system in which consumption have a profound importance. However, the authors behind the book “Take back the economy: an ethical guide of transforming our communities” claims that we can change the whole concept of what the economy is, by bringing in several examples of how this transformation is possible and how we can reduce consumption by adapting alternative economies.

The solution cannot be to place shops in the bottom floor Urban planners should acquire the ability of looking into the future. Global and upcoming trends are necessary to understand, due to the fact that, the urban context can better be handled and to a certain extent formed with a wider perception. At the same time, it is crucial to always understand present spatial conditions and the cultural heritage. Furthermore, the overall goal should be to improve quality of life by dealing with the built environment. Regardless if, planners might acquire positive motives of change, the result can have negative consequences, that later affect people’s lifestyles. As for example, Hammarby Sjöstad is often being branded as a sunshine example of a sustainable urban area, leading the way for its inhabitants to live a sustainable urban lifestyle. This is possible, due to the dense and compact urban form, which automatically is to result in less cardependency, better public transport and more interaction among people. On the other hand, the individual ecological footprint of people living in Hammarby Sjöstad is high, for the reason that, the lifestyle consists of high consumption. The result is rather that the problem is being pushed in a different direction, leaving somebody else responsible of cleaning up the mess.

In other words, new forms of economic activities are occurring as for example sharing items with each other, swapping apartments and creating new types of labor based on local currencies. What these programs all have in common is that they highlight the benefits of having collective access of goods and services instead of the economic market model that emphasizes private ownership. If we are trying to design sustainable cities and if we seek to reduce consumption, adapting alternative economies in urban planning might then be part of that solution.

There seem to exist a discourse among Swedish planners that urbanity or “stadsmässighet” is something that exist mainly within the traditional city, but not in the suburbs. The traditional city is to prefer since it offers a bustling sense brought by a dense urban form and small shops, it is often being addressed as the “good city” (Tunström, 2009). In other words, as long as certain guidelines are being followed or by setting up design criteria’s, it is often argued that it will result in urbanity. Furthermore, as long as people have access to consumption spaces in the bottom floor or a place to do their shopping without the necessity of owning a car, urbanity (“stadsmässighet” and the good city) will most likely appear (Tunström, 2009). This cannot simply be the answer of designing urban areas; even if it is a common ingredient in contemporary urban design. As a reaction to this, we should turn the perspective of shopping as a method of creating urbanity and try to emphasize lifestyles with less consumption and still be able to form meeting places and improve quality of life without the same economic prosperity. The impact and findings on how we can change consumption habits should be one of our key concerns if cities are to be defined as truly sustainable.

Karl von Schmalensee is currently a student enrolled in the Sustainable Urban Planning and Design master’s programme at KTH. Prior present studies in Urban Design, he has studied Political- and Communication Science at the University of Uppsala, Town Planning in Newcastle, UK and has a bachelor’s degree in Spatial Planning from BTH.

Consumption has always been an issue of trust Zukin (1998) renders a comprehensive picture (a scenario that is adaptable in many Western cites) about how consumption spaces have progressed thru the 19th century until present. In the early 19th century commercial functions, such as, restaurants, hotels and department stores, was mainly placed around some significant public spaces. To a large extent the shopping took place within gallerias and alongside shopping arcades. The shift started around 1945, when the rapid suburbanization changed the urban landscape. With suburbanization followed the shopping centre, “a multipurpose, Greenfields development that maximizes 87

Illustration by author.

rentable retail space in large clusters of stores surrounded by fairly homogenous residential communities” (Zukin 1998:828).

During the late 70’s, a shift started to occur from the cultural package of the suburban family lifestyle. Towards a situation where young and single people moved back into cites, seeking a mixed-use environment of shopping, offices and entertainment (Zukin, 1998).

Even if the spatial conditions and urban lifestyles have changed throughout history, there is one element that these consumptions spaces all have in common and dealt with, namely trust. Zukin (1998) raises a fundamental question about this notion: “How can cities encourage trust among strangers”. She then continues by saying that “the private and marked-oriented private sector seeks the answer in many forms of aesthetic design, security, surveillance and themed entertainment.

On the other hand, in the ethnical and diversified neighborhood, trust is created thru interdependency and neighborhood solidarity, and this is what urban lifestyles is all about” (Zukin 1998:836).

Simultaneously, and what happens in our present society is that the integrated technology are now commonly used elements in our life. Where social media has fostered a situation where trust once again has found a new form. Maybe this notion of trust linked with our possibilities of technological interventions will determine on whether our ability to change this road of endless consumption will occur or not.

The problem; Business as usual Understanding how consumption operates in cities and what impact it has on the urban fabric is one key component regarding on how certain lifestyles are being constructed. Miles and Paddison (1998) argues that the need for individuals to consume is always a present condition in cites, since “In the modern metropolis, the individual is constantly exposed to an infinite variety of changing situations and sensations, which are 88

expressed in the form of an inner sense of loneliness” (Miles & Paddison 1998:615).

The phenomenon of consumption is deeply linked with the idea of modernity and economic development, which is addressed as a linear process. Massey (2005) addresses that globalization and market economy as we define it today only has one form. This form is a fixed idea of development, where export of products are superior the prioritization of localized production of consumption.

She continues by arguing that, globalization is equal with capitalist globalization. And as result, we are struggling with our ability to transform the image of modernity that “is this discourse of, this particular form of, globalization in other words which is an important component in the continuing legitimization of the view that there is one particular model of ‘development on path to one form of modernization” (Massey 2005:83-84).

Urban planning has a part of shaping this development of modernity. Since it becomes visible in the built environment and furthermore “This can be explained initially by the fact that though consumption has always had some role to play in the development of modernity, it is only recently that the role appears to have become fundamental” (Miles & Paddison 1998:81 So what if this could change?

Is it possible to change the whole idea and definition on how to manage our economic assets? According to Graham et al (2013) it is, even if there is no such thing as an easy solution.

They have made a contribution by arguing that it is possible that we as a community and as individuals can transform and take action of our economic activities. Their book take back the economy: an ethical guide for transforming our communities is written almost as a handbook on how we encounter and enhance the community of shaping economic matters in new forms (Graham et al, 2013). Their critique is obvious, which is that we have to recognize that we are facing a huge dilemma. That is,

What Goes Around Comes Around

Illustration by author.

if we are to continue with the path of our present situation or if we are to design new alternatives to our economic system.

It does not necessarily imply an end to our individual choice of freedom. Rather, they address a more in-depth understanding that our choices always have an impact on others (Graham et al, 2013). In total it is about adding on an ethical approach when dealing with economy, something that a market economy has been neglected due to that, the goal is always to seek profit.

The idea of modernity and economic prosperity put emphasis on mainly this model, this one form of a linear development and according to the writers “Here we see in microcosm one of the biggest challenges of our times – how to take back the economy for people and the planet without resorting to a onesize-fits-all approach” (Graham et al 2013:7). We can actually start to question the so called the rational economic arguments with the importance of consumption, by bringing in an alternative discussion based on an ethical approach. One direction towards a more ethical and just idea about consumption could be a social economy where profits could be spent as a way of investing the surplus back into the community instead (Seyfang, 2011).

Consequently, urban planning is often discussed from a growthoriented perspective; it is argued that economic prosperity will result in increased possibilities of transforming the built environment. However, Graham et al (2013) argues that this cannot longer be our main goal since “we need to question the definition of growth that is attached to any measures of returns. The mainstream principle of investing is that individuals, corporations, and nations should maximize their returns in a short time frame as possible. The desire for short-term returns commits us to following a path of continuous economic growth” (Graham et al 2013:174).

New forms of consumption There is several of uprising discourses on new forms of consumption that do not consist of the classic idea of buying,

using and throwing away. There are many names, such as alternative economies, sharing economy, collaborative consumption and community economy. What they all have in common is that we have to start look at the things we own as dead assets. In other words, there are simply too much stuff and resources in our society that consequently is not being used to its full potential. For example, we can easily rent out our apartment when we are not there, and we do not need to own our personal car we could share it with others. We have reached a situation where ownership has become more convenient than simply having access. However, this idea of sharing, swapping, renting, repairing, taking collaborative action is nothing new, individuals have always been doing this sort of economic activities. The difference is rather on what global scale and the numbers of users that could take part in this transformation over how we think about our consumption habits. Due to that, we are now better interlinked with technological platforms brought to us by websites and smartphones.

Botsman and Rogers (2011) have also emphasized one truly exciting aspect of this new and uprising discourse (Collaborative consumption) which is that it allows the expectations on both socialist and capitalist to be fulfilled on sharing collective assets, since at the same time people can earn money. Although “there are, of course limits to the system, specifically situations were people simply won’t and can’t give up on individual ownership or doing things by themselves. But this rigidity, too, could shift” (Botsman & Rogers 2011:2).

No need for transformation, it has already started One example is the notion of how alternative markets could operate. Markets determine prices, which is translated into the language of money. But money is nothing else than values based on trust. We trust that the money has a certain value and that gives us a situation where we can trade with each other.

However, there can exist several currencies based on trust. For 89

instance, time is a resource that everybody spends differently.

A time-bank is a system that can handle surplus or shortage of time. People can trade with each other using time as a local currency. As for example, in Portland low income members have managed to take control over their health situation by people earning time-credits of working. The labor and services that people conduct are paid by other individuals that are also enrolled in the time-bank system. People can later choose to buy other services using their time or buying treatment at the health-care center. In other words, it is possible to pay with time as an accepted currency and “as part of the reciprocal relationship, the value of members time has been negotiated and agreed. In Hour exchange program Portland all labor is given the same value” (Graham et al 2013:107).

alternative economies in urban planning) will become a reality this is likely to have an impact on how we design our cities. Planners and urban designers will then possess truly interesting programs and tools to work with in upcoming urban development projects.

Consequently, conducting urban design by simply adding shopping spaces at the bottom of residential buildings as the solution of establishing a sense of urbanity by consumption might then have reached an end.

Another example is simply sharing land or rent out spaces for others to utilize during different times of the day. For instance private green spaces are not utilized enough by homeowners.

Instead others are allowed for a small fee to use the space for food production, or they can pay back by the crops they harvest.

Similar to fallen fruit which is a common resource since the fruit is often reachable, hanging over streets and therefore it is automatically a public resource. An initiative called Fallen Fruit in Los Angeles used technology to map out and giving access by sharing information on where to find fruit for free.

Moreover, Collective Copies is a business that has transformed from being a capitalist company into a company defined as a worker-ownership model. It has resulted in bringing in an ethical awareness of for example democratic ownership and wage setting. The company outlines two key differences to a traditional company. First, the highest paid worker cannot earn more than twice as much as the lowest paid worker. Second, the wage-setting should be high enough so that workers are able o buy themselves a place to live in the area. Also, ten percent of the surplus is going back into the community by investing into community groups. In total the company operates in a way that it can create a scene for citizens to take control over the economy that is both beneficial for the individual as well for the company and the community (Graham et al, 2013). These examples are some out of many that demonstrates that in every sector of society implementation and new forms of managing the economy occurs.

The beginning of the end Finally, TIME magazine (2011) has listed 10 ideas that will change the world. The concept of transforming our society, defined by individual ownership into a society where we embrace collective access instead, is likely to have great impact on the world as we know it (Walsh, 2011). This concept deals with the problem which is simply that we are consuming too much and that we have to try to think about other solutions. Maybe, the shift towards this scenario will not even be noticeable due to its simplicity. But if a new situation (of collective access by adapting the concept of 90

What Goes Around Comes Around

References Botsman, R & Rogers, R (2011) What’s mine is yours: How collaborative consumption is changing the way we live, Collins, London Gibson-Graham, JK. Cameron, J, & Healy S (2013) Take back the economy: an ethical guide for transforming our communities, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis Massey, D (2005) Aspatial Globalisation, For Space, SAGE, London Miles, S and Paddison, R. (1998) Urban Consumption: An Historiographical Note, Journal of Urban Studies 35: 815 Seyfang, G. (2011)The New Economics of Sustainable Consumption: Seeds of Change. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke. Chapter 4, p.62-82 Tunström, Moa (2009) På spaning efter den goda staden: Om konstruktioner av ideal och problem i svensk stadsbyggnadsdiskussion. Örebro Universitet, Kållered Zukin, S (1998) Urban Lifestyles: Diversity and Standardization in Spaces of Consumption, In: Journal of Urban Studies 1998 35: 825 Walsh, Bryan (2011) 10 ideas that will change the world: Our best shots of tackling our worst problems, from war and disease to unemployment and deficits. Time, 17 march. Retrieved 2013-11-28, from http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2059521_2059717_2059710,00.html

Urban Entrepreneurialist Struggles Nina Lindfors

This article aims to discuss the possible implications of marketing ’successful cities’ or even ’world-class cities’. Thinking about how current neo-liberal politics set the agenda in many cities today, one might also suspect a vision including ’world class inhabitants’ – never sick, never unemployed, always consuming. In the discussion about branding and its implications, David Harvey’s book Rebel cities – from the right to the city to the urban revolution can provide us with some useful thoughts.

The strategies of urban entrepreneurialism, such as city branding and place marketing, have for a long time been phenomenons on a global uprise. These strategies are commonly used today to promote cities, municipalities and regions all over the world, as the competition for companies and labour has become serious business. Using the concept of monopoly rents, this text also discusses the balancing between commodification and uniqueness that comes with branding attempts.

Nina Lindfors has a background in the field of Urban and Regional Planning. She is currently studying at the master program Sustainable Urban Planning and Design at the Royal Institute of Technology and is especially intrigued by the social aspects of planning.

Today’s globalised society has admittedly brought an increased competition between cites, municipalities and regions. When the limits of time and space get increasingly blurred, cities have to fight harder to keep current inhabitants as well as attract future inhabitants, visitors and investors. Success can nowadays be measured in what cities can offer to these different groups.

As part of this development, strategic place marketing and city branding has become an important tool. In Rebel cities - from the right to the city to the urban revolution, urban theorist and marxist thinker David Harvey (2013) discusses this development through using the concept of urban entrepreneurialism.

Often when talking about capitalism and entrepreneurialism, the primary goal is said to be competition. Harvey (2013), on the other hand argues that capitalists often want to avoid competition. Rather they strive for monopoly, searching for unique (and therefore monopolisable) products or assets which make them able to charge more money. From this idea, Harvey discusses the concept of monopoly rents, which is applicable both to specific products and items as well as at a city or regional level when analyzing how these are trying to market themselves.

Monopoly rents emerge when actors can make profit over an extended time, because they have exclusive control over an asset or item with unique qualities - an item that can be both directly or indirectly tradable.

To capture monopoly rents and their advantages, one needs to have something (an item, a cultural product, a city) attractive and unique to offer. In relation to cities and regions, this is where city branding and place marketing comes into the picture. An important strategy of city branding is to emphasise uniqueness, speciality and authenticity to attract the desired capital flows.

Harvey (2013) explains how the culture, history and aesthetical assets of a place become crucial contributors in this mission.

Cultural values and artifacts have in many aspects become commodities; something to capitalize upon. Some cities are lucky to be born with unique cultural assets. Where else than in Rome can you visit the Colosseum? Where else than in France lies the only real champagne region? Where else than in Nashville can one experience the settings of the birth of country music? No other place is able to contest them in these aspects.

An intense battle of words and symbols At the other end of the spectrum, smaller and not so well-known cities and regions have a hard time competing with larger cities and metropols like Paris, New York or Hong Kong whose amount of ’symbolic capital’ seem to be almost magnetic. For smaller cities and municipalities, the struggle to distinct themselves in order to attract capital and generate monopoly advantages is much more intense. In worst case, a depopulation and economic downturn could take place as inhabitants simply can move to places that offer more of what they want.

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Therefore, promoting cultural and historical assets becomes a major component in cities economic processes. Signature buildings is one way of making a distinction from others and inventing yourself. Most cities want their own version of the Sydney opera house or other bold ’starchitect’ manifestations, such as Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. However, there are more cost- and time-effective ways of promoting oneself than building extraordinary architecture. Discourse theory let’s us know that language is not a neutral instrument - rather it contributes to shaping our reality (Bergström & Boréus 2005) and constructing uniqueness through discourse and story-telling is another strong marketing trend. As we know, the way we talk about things often end up having consequences and outcomes, whether we like it or not.

Swedish municipalities are very aware of the potentials of discursive construction. In the fight for monopolistic power, historical narratives and memories are useful to build a symbolic capital for a city or region. Some municipalities use very specific assets to claim their uniqueness through municipal slogans; small but effective discursive attempts. Examples include ”Tibro - the furniture centre of Sweden”, or ”Vaxholm- the capital of the archipelago”. (Ordrum, n.d.) On the other hand, if one does not have a unique enough quality to enhance, it is always possible to come up with something. Why not be honest? Just consider ”Lerum - more than you think” or ”Umeå - wants more”.

Interestingly enough, some municipalities even manage to claim their special qualities while at same remaining honest about their underlying intentions, like ”Uppsala - growth every day since 1286”. Cities and regions are marketed in the same ways as commodities and even in the same places. Their shiny and happy poster images next to clothing campaigns in the subway stresses concepts like ’life quality’ or ’time for living’.

But balancing the contradiction between promoting uniqueness and maintaining a sufficient level of commodification of local assets is not an easy task. An example of the difficulties with this balancing is the phenomenon of redeveloping harbor areas.

The first example may have been unique and exiting, but as every other city develops it’s similar version, the next fails to claim it’s uniqueness. How tired are we not already to see another ’Sjöstad’ as an attempt of improving the image of yet another 92

city? And how interesting are these places when you can visit the same kind of environments in London, Sydney, Baltimore, Hamburg, etcetera, etcetera. In this respect too, cities or district themselves become commodities; reproducible as well as plainly unimaginative. As Harvey (2013) states; the more marketable and commodified an item or city is, the less unique it becomes and the less it gives opportunity for monopoly advantages. The challenge is then to keep cities and their assets just enough unique to maintain monopoly power.

The implications of urban entrepreneurialism So what besides a general lack of variety in urban settings could be the problem with this entrepreneurialism? Harvey (2013) sees the creation of social inequalities as an implication of aiming for monopoly power. What he sees as problematic is that political and economic interests have unthreatened power to shape cities according to their wants and needs. In the age of global competition, these wants are often more about the economical logic of profit making than actually looking out for the needs of inhabitants. Considering this, the branding of a city can be a driving force for gentrification processes and lead to the ignoring or direct exclusion of groups that are seen as less important. On the other hand, in the eyes of many politicians and developers, gentrification is a positive thing.

Old industrial cities which have changed focus to knowledgeintense industries (Norrköping, Barcelona and plenty more) are not seldom stressing their own re-birth when trying to promote themselves. Dalia Mukhtar - Landgren (2012) discusses the discursive preconditions for planning in municipalities in her dissertation. Looking at the process of urban renewal and visionary work in Malmö, she discusses the concept of progress in place marketing. In the case of Malmö, Mukhtar-Landgren means that the post-industrial renewal process has been a lot about replacement, but not only a replacement of the industrial city with the new knowledge and event based city. Also, the place marketing process implied a replacement of the former industrial worker with the new creative and highly educated city dweller. In this aspect the substitution of people, a directly social renewal, can also be a part of the visions that lie behind branding processes.

Urban Entrepreneurialist Struggles

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin.

Source: Wikimedia.

The storytelling that comes with branding often portrays a fairytale of success. This tendency is prominent in Malmö but also in many other municipalities. In Stockholm, politicians have named the capital a ’world class city’, a rhetoric that sends strong signals about the political intentions and ideals about society.

Thinking about the current neo-liberal politics in Stockholm as well as many other cities, one might also suspect a vision including ’world class inhabitants’ - never sick, never unemployed, always consuming. As Harvey (2013:108) writes, there is a risk that ”The successful branding of a city may require the expulsion or eradication of everyone or everything else that does not fit the brand”. And of course, the poor and marginalised are never a part of the image of wealth and prospering. Political failures in the city, like segregation, poverty, or any kind of conflict, are not mentioned because they do not fit into the portrayal of the top-notch, perfect world. Rather, the storytelling is often aimed for external interests; visitors, tourists, investors, possible future dwellers. But as the perfect city does not exist, branding in this aspect functions as a beautifying coulisse that is there to hide all the ugliness that, of course, also constitutes the city.

In the improvement carousel of the world-class city, with it’s cleaning up, building of identical housing areas and shopping facilities for the rich, diversity easily gets lost both in terms of population composition and physical aspects. We risk ending up with a homogenous, uninteresting range of cities. And as discussed above, loosing your characteristics might not even be economically profitable at the end of the journey.

Entrepreneurial errors Here, questions about who has the ’right to the city’ emerges.

According to Harvey (2013), the right to the city is a collective right of its inhabitants, which unfortunately today is a right that can be found the hands of just a few. Apparently, not all groups benefit from urban entrepreneurialism. The branding attempt of cities and municipalities can also be seen as a question of identity. Who is worthy to be considered a target group? On a local district level, the issue of damaged identities can be connected to the many cases of redeveloping and re-branding areas built during the Swedish million dwellings program. Why is there so much effort spent on replacing houses and people, instead of solving issues that may be important to current

inhabitants? A poorly formulated place marketing attempt could result in a lack of confidence of inhabitants, especially if it feels like there is a desperate hunt to attract other groups of people.

Harvey (2013) describes how in the search for monopoly rents, urban commons such as public spaces often get appropriated and commodified by capitalists, tourist trade and developers.

More extremely, sometimes even whole populations are getting their histories and cultures exploited in these processes, as capital ”has ways to appropriate and extract surpluses from local differences, local cultural variations, and aesthetic meanings of no matter what origin.” (Harvey, 2013:109) The treatment of Australia’s native aboriginal population is a sad example of this. At the remote heart of the country lies Uluru (in english Ayer’s Rock) - a sacred site of important spiritual meaning to the Aboriginal population. (Boström 2007) At the same time, the rock is a world heritage site and often mentioned as one of the must-sees for tourists visiting the region. Not only are trips continuously organised here in a large scale (with around 400.000 visitors per year). Even though the Aboriginal population has expressed that they wish for Uluru to not be photographed or climbed by tourists, this is happening frequently. Selling a profitable history is more important than respecting a population that has been discriminated for more than 200 years.

Most of the Aboriginal people in the state of Northern Territory live in torn-down areas at the outskirts of the small town Alice Springs. (Boström 2007) Alice Springs has become the main place through which one has to pass to reach the remotely located Uluru rock. Capitalizing on native traditions has become a means for survival - and hence, Aboriginal art galleries, hotels and restaurants for passing tourists are ways to collect dollars.

The reason that this is so provocative is because much of this money most likely does not go back to the Aboriginal community.

The Aboriginal population in Australia today is characterized by unemployment and exclusion.

Another example of when urban entrepreneurialism takes it a step too far is perhaps the city of Berlin, which unique history is widely shared through museums and guided tours. Sharing the significant historical events is of course important - but when 93

there is a fake beach bar next to the Berlin wall something starts to feel a bit wrong. And when stumbling upon a checkpoint guard in authentic-looking clothes, posing for tourist’s imagination to set off next to an adjacent ’Snack-point Charlie’, one can wonder what group of people is regarded to be worthy of most respect in the city. Considering the amount of people who lost their lives trying to cross sides of the wall, this seems like a sad example of disneyfication - a bisarre disneyfication of tragedies.

But as Harvey (2013:109) put’s it; ”the commodification and commercialization of everything is, after all, one of the hallmarks of our times.”

References Bergström, Göran & Boréus, Kristina (red) (2005) Textens mening och makt: metodbok i samhällsvetenskaplig text- och diskursanalys. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Signs of contestation?

The hunt for monopoly advantages and the branding of cities display the image of one ideal world, at the same time as a lot of what the cities really consist of is left out of the story.

The ideal city is something that is rarely subject to an inclusive or democratic debate - rather it’s visionary making is decided upon behind closed doors. Putting cities ’on the map’ through monopoly attempts can as discussed in worst case lead to a displacement of people and a commodification of their cultural values. So are there any signs of hope for another development?

Harvey (2013) sees that people’s organisation in urban social movements can play an important role in the reclaiming of their collective right to their cities. Urban dwellers have to oppose developments they do not wish for - they have to make an appropriation of their right to reproduce the city; a means of an anti-capitalist struggle for social justice. What a ’successful’ city implies can still be redefined.

Mukhtar - Landgren, Dalia (2012) Planering för framsteg och gemenskap. Om den kommunala utvecklingsplaneringens idémässiga förutsättningar.

Diss. Lund: Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Lunds universitet.

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Boström, Margita (2007) Bakgrund Australien: Aboriginerna kämpa för sin existens. Sveriges radio. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel. aspx?programid=83&artikel=1678746 (Retrieved on 2013-11-15) Harvey, David (2013) Rebel cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution. London: Verso.

Ordrum (n.d.) Kommunslogans. http://www.retorik. com/kommunslogans (Retrieved on 2013-11-25) Image Aepli, Norbert. Available at: http://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Checkpoint_ Charlie_2005_072.JPG (Accessed 2013-12-09).

Who Cares?

About Ethical Actions in Economy Maxie Beetz

As the world is moving further in its search for a sustainable economy, the question remains: who cares to take ethical action? With Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities J.K. GrahamGibson, J. Cameron and S. Healy provide a toolbox of actions for achieving the wellbeing of others as well as ourselves and the environment. The authors see the first step of taking back the economy in a reframing of the concept of economy. However, considering human behavioural patterns, I am questioning whether enough individuals can be convinced to take ethical action with the incentive of sustaining good living conditions for generations ahead. Additionally, I have experienced that, even though I am aiming to live sustainably, my life and everyday environment do not always enable me to. A combination of efforts is needed to encourage humans to change their economical decisionmaking.

Maxie Beetz is a master student in the program of urban planning at the HafenCity University Hamburg.

She has a Bachelor degree in architecture from the University of Applied Sciences Biberach. Maxie Beetz is a vegetarian.

Take Back the Economy by co-authors J.K. Graham-Gibson, J. Cameron and S. Healy provides a toolbox for ethical actions that can help to transform the economic landscape. The aim is to create an economy that cares for the well-being of people and other species in all parts of the world, now and in the future. It suggests many ways how we, as a consumer or producer or anybody in between, can contribute to making the economy a fairer place, avoiding exploitation and providing for future generations. Taking back the economy entails “reframing it as a space of ethical action rather than a machine that must be obeyed” (Graham-Gibson et al. 2013: 189). We need to question the way economy is defined in society, mainly by politicians, economists and the media. The global financial crisis displays how the belief in the free economy, and a market that regulates itself and provides for all was disappointed. The authors of Take Back the Economy question whether growth is the major factor in defining a well-functioning economy. They categorize the economy into the different aspects of work, business, markets, property, and finance, and give examples and future perspectives for each of those. The success of these references is not measured by their monetary profit but by the scale to which an overall well-being of people and the planet is achieved.

Suggestions for taking back the economy In the following I will present some of the good practice examples Take Back the Economy cites. They are encouraging, showing how very few people, who appeared to have little power, changed their lives for the better with, in addition, a very positive effect on their community. There is the FaSinPat (Fabrica Sin Patrón [span.] = Factory without boss) in Argentina, which started out by protesting workers locking themselves inside the factory and their bosses out. Today they manage the factory themselves, with everyone earning the same wage and rotating positions within the factory. They have received support from the Argentinian government and portray an excellent example how democratic decision-making is possible in an enterprise.

The boycott of products from certain companies and countries is also an action mentioned. It has shown some success in the past, but has also made a lot of people suffer on the way.

With increasing awareness and information, I also feel that I am boycotting more and more products. But where are the products I can buy?

Obstacles to ethical action The abundance of good practice examples pointed out in Take Back The Economy made me wonder why we are not further ahead in the process of developing a fair economy. The book points out many ethical actions, which include working together, forming organisations, initiatives and unions, and putting in a lot of time and energy that is most likely not to be paid at that time.

This could be an obstacle to getting started. Also, what is not considered is whether these actions are applicable for everyone.

Not everyone would be thrilled to have their everyday actions be dependent on a community – a lot of people like to own 95

The narrative of a product - the production of a pullover. Illustration by the author, 2013.

their own house, enjoy some privacy and not having to discuss every decision they want to make around their living, working or recreation environment.

Since industrialisation and especially over the past century, an individualisation in society could be observed. The possibility for people to go to the cities and earn their living there, disconnected them from their families and the smaller communities in the countryside where people depended on and supported one another. The relegation of work and home from the country to the cities, leads to, as Wacquant describes, a “loss of a hinterland” (2007). This is further supported by the creation of social welfare states that people rely on to provide for them when things get rough. The need to be a supportive member in a family or other kind of community is being diminished. How do we step back from the expectation that the society and political system as it is, shall provide for our well-being, and instead think about what we can do to create the environment we want to live and work in?

When making economic decisions, people are not generally being rational, but tend to be driven too far by their desire to profit. Research in neuroeconomics has proven that a certain area of the brain is activated when a reward is being expected, whether it’s money, food or the company of an attractive person (Elger 2013). We aim for those decisions that give us a dopamine kick. This is an aspect Take Back The Economy does not take into consideration. It recognises “human ‘selfishness’ remains the sticking point, the supposedly unchanging fact of human condition” (Graham-Gibson et al 2013: 190). At this point, the authors do not elaborate further on the obstacle that is the human psyche. They instead imply that, if the economy were more diverse, everyone would participate in taking ethical action.

“But the very human desire to look good, to feel both different and “in”, feeds an environmentally voracious form of economic growth.” (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013: 5) The authors recognise the greed that inhibits the human race and accounts for a lot of the economic decisions being made worldwide. However, a satisfying solution is not provided. The giving of good practice examples and suggestions for ethical actions do not guarantee the adoption of a more sustainable behaviour. Humans need an immediate reward except for the satisfaction of knowing that they are providing for their, possibly not yet existing, descendants.

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Let us look at the consumption of fashion for example. “The volume of unworn clothes in our wardrobes speaks heaps about our fickleness and disregard for the environmental impact of our actions.” (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013: 5) But where does the need for this amount of clothes, accessories, but also other showable possessions - especially electronic gadgets - come from? Are we all victims of the pressure of society, afraid of discrimination if we don’t fit into the picture the media draws? Do we have the power to change this? In the world of fashion, my answer would be a definite yes. Hardly any other industry is this fast-paced and depends on as well as sets the trends. What is “in” can change within a very short period of time. What if it was suddenly “out” to wear any garments that do not carry an accredited sustainability label?

The narrative of a product With news about climate change and its possible implications increasing, the threat to our natural habitat is becoming more real. Could the fear of a future on a destroyed and polluted planet be an incentive for transforming the economy? In my very personal opinion, I think a change in behaviour that is driven by positive feelings rather than by fear is the more desirable option.

Take Back the Economy raises awareness and gives ideas for actions we can take. It becomes clear how beneficial these actions can be, providing us with work, knowledge, community interaction and a livelihood. But that does not mean everybody sees the fun in building up something in a community. Not everyone desires this kind of lifestyle. Can the media help to promote a sustainable lifestyle, substituting the consumer lifestyle? Miles and Paddison (1998) have pointed out how the act of consuming and the possession of a variety of commodities has become a major part in defining ourselves. If it were “in” to shop sustainably, wouldn’t we all do it?

In Stockholm, the capital of a country that is conceived as being very modern and a fashion forward nation indicating the latest trends, second-hand shops have settled in comfortably between branches of large retailer chains. Young fashion-conscious citizens can be observed appreciating these shops and the opportunity they give to buy garments that are affordable, unique and free of a bad conscience. The new wave of hipsterism, that entails the visit of flea markets and second-hand shops as a way to dress

Who Cares?

A label for more transparency – rating the overall sustainability of a product.

Illustration by the author, 2013.

oneself fashionably individually, inspired me to look into the hidden corners of the my mum’s garderobe. Now more and more of her over decades preserved garments are making their way into my wardrobe. I value them because they are telling a story.

My mother remembers where she bought each and every one of them. One jumper was knitted by a friend and another purchased on a hiking trip in Norway. The story of a piece of clothing can be one of its exciting characteristics – what makes us love it, other than its looks or its use.

Can this be the way to transforming our consumerism culture into one where possessing quality becomes more important than possessing quantity? From the culture of consumption to a culture of how we consume. With the possibility of identification with a product’s production chain and the awareness that I as the buyer am responsible for the lifecycle of the product, comes a more conscious process of consumption. The story of a product can help to tell the narrative of globalisation. If my product tells a good story, I am happy. If it does not, I am suspicious. This could be a new norm we are aiming for.

A combination of efforts But, considering that many alternative economy initiatives date back to the 1970s and 1980s, why is the process not moving faster, why is it not more widely supported yet? I feel that within my surroundings I am amongst a lot of people who are aware of the issues, a lot of them also trying to make better choices and contribute to a ‘community economy’. However, you do not always find the product or service you want and can buy with a good conscience. And, as the book points out too, time is an important factor. You do not always have the time to look for information on every item you are interested in buying. As a member of the Greenpeace youth group in Hamburg, I was once handing out grocery shopping guides to help people decide which products they can choose without risking to support the fishing of endangered fish populations or genetically modified foods. Many people were not even aware that these guides existed. So a big task is bringing the information to the people.

The media – advertisement, TV, films, books – could help to draw the image of the sustainable lifestyle and make it more attractive and desirable. But on the other hand, governments can also

support this process with policies. Regulations could be made stricter on the production conditions of products that are being imported. Cities could change the land-use plans for their central business districts to give non-profit initiatives the opportunity of being a more visible feature of the economy. What does it mean for space? Is space only the city we live in or is it something more? The variety of products we are using and their multiple origins are creating a not immediately visible interdependence between different places, regions and countries. The good we are using does not tell us much about its path of production.

Only the country where it is produced or assembled is stated on the product. Who else is involved in the process of production remains a mystery at first. Is the World Wide Web, the virtual space, which more and more people are using every day, the new space where we will find more information? It has definitely made the research for product information a lot easier. But can it be more? Can our smartphone be the convenient consumer guide that provides us with all the information necessary to judge for ourselves if a product is ethically produced?

But helpful can only be a combination of actions. If labelling is going to become more informative and provide more transparency about the production chain of a commodity, consumers won’t automatically choose the product that entails less harm on other beings and the environment, especially when these are more expensive. But awareness is rising and shoppers are putting more pressure on retailers, asking for products they can buy with a good conscience. In 2011, well-known companies have formed the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which aims to put more information on their garment’s labels resulting in giving each item a sustainability score (Zeller 2013). As the supply chains in the fashion industry are very long and complicated, the development of an accurate and readable rating system is still under way. The coalition is currently working with The Higg Index, a tool for self-assessment, but no sustainability scores can be seen on labels yet.

Governments could help to speed up this process by making more informative labelling obligatory. As a second step, when the sustainability of a firm can be determined, those firms can be given certain advantages, e.g. tax reductions or subsidies.

Governments could provide businesses that have the higher 97

sustainability rating the better locations in the inner cities or possibly grant them lower rents. This would include the need for more state or collectively owned buildings where these decisions could be made. Governments, in general, are responsible for providing a platform or a framework that helps people to find the knowledge and support they need to start a community economy or manage a commons.

Every little step counts. It has an effect. Whether it is the fair traded coffee you buy that supports the coffee bean farmers, the talk you have with your friends about how you are saving plastic rubbish or the garden tools you share with your neighbour.

We have to make sure that the urgency is clear and understood by the world community and especially by the most powerful people, those that make the most influential decisions. While writing this, I am drinking my favourite organic green chai tea; on the package it says: “All our organic products are grown in a way that preserves the natural balance of the environment and will help sustain people, wildlife and the land for the future.” (Clipper) I hope that one day, this does not even have to be mentioned, but will be a given.

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Who Cares?

References Elger, C. (2013). In: Luschmann, E. (2013, June 20) Die Gier sitzt im Gehirn. [The Greed is in the Brain] Focus-Online. Retrieved from http://www.focus.de/ wissen/mensch/neurowissenschaft/tid-30997/die-giersitzt-im-gehirn-warum-der-umgang-mit-geld-so-schwierig-ist_aid_979648.html (26/11/2013) Gibson-Graham, J.K., Cameron, J. & Healy, S. (2013).

Take Back The Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Miles, S. and Paddison, R. (1998). Urban Consumption: An Historiographical Note, Journal of Urban Studies, 35:815.

Sustainable Apparel Coalition (2012). The Higg Index.

San Francisco. Retrieved from http://www.apparelcoalition.org/higgindex/ (28/11/2013) Wacquant, L. (2007). Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality. Thesis Eleven, 2007(91), 66-77.

Zeller, T. Jr. (2013, March 1). Clothes Makers Join to Set ‘Green Score’. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/business/01apparel.html?_r=1& (26/11/2013)

The Simultaneous Growth and Rupture of Consumer Society Maria Springman Kjell

Consumption is highly present in today’s society where we are exposed to it on a daily basis. We consume a lot, perhaps even too much. In this article Maria Springman Kjell is highlighting some of what David B. Clarke is bringing up in his book ‘The Consumer Society and the Postmodern City’ (2003). She points out the importance of consumption to our economy but also its inequities in society.

Consumption is in the article compared with compulsive eating. The main focus is to show how consumption has become a paradox where we are dependent on it at the same time it is rupturing our society.

We all consume. We consume in our daily life as there was nothing else we could do. We consume the essential goods such as food, drinks, hygiene products and cloths to keep us warm. We consume heat, water and electricity in our homes. We consume the service to pick up our trash, the dentist to fix our teeth and the daycare center to take care of our children while we are at work earning the money to support all the above. We all consume.

Urging consumption The inevitable action to consume in a society where everything is consumed (Baudrillard 1998, cited in Clarke, 2003, p.159) serves as a general mean towards the growth of wealth. But what are the side effects? There are also parts of consumption that are not supporting our wellbeing or the equalities of society. The dual effect of consumption is described by Clarke as ’Consumption is always destructive and creative; entropic and negentropic; a process of ‘creative destruction’ and ’destructive creation’’ (Clarke 2003, p.24).

The system of consumption has its foundation in the insatiable capitalism. As the ’desire to consume was eagerly met by the producers’ (Bauman 1983, cited in Clarke 2003, p.145), there are no foreseeable end to it. The ever continuos production of consumer goods, generates an even higher need where the consumer is being tied into a network of dependencies. The production of commodities that assist us, i.e when doing chores, ultimately becomes completely necessary in our daily life (Haug 1986 cited in Clarke, 2003, p.109). We cannot clean our house without that vacuum cleaner or that miraculous detergent that removes stains and filth within a second. The latest products makes our lives convenient and comfortable and they keep on coming. The market produce goods that we just got to have.

Maria Springman Kjell is a masters student at KTH Royal Institute of technology in Stockholm. Her masters focuses on urban and regional planning but she also has a background in Architecture, visualization and communication- a bachelor program at Malmö University where she graduated in 2012. Her interests lay in urban planning, sustainable planning and social equity.

Do we have a tangible need of the developed product or is it the product itself that creates the need? Marx believed that the production of commodities produce the need of it. No product, no need (Baudrillard 1981, cited in Clarke 2003, p.19). Bauman (1987) cited in Clarke (2003, p.109), seem to think that this is not a matter of manipulation into buying things, neither does he think they are ‘false’ or ’artificial’ needs that are generated. He rather finds it to be the capacity of the market where the commodities find their own necessity and need. The misconception of ‘false‘ needs relies, according to Baudrillard (1998, cited in Clarke 2003, p.55), on the shortcomings in the assumption that the consumer is taken advantage of in the system. Baudrillard (ibid. p.57) claims that consumption has nothing to do with needs as such, but with sign value disguised as use value. Thus we buy things that 99

Words of consumption (Springman Kjell, 2013-11-28)

we say are to be useful when they more likely are commodities signifying our status and standpoint.

We can see how society has changed to adjust to consumption.

The physical environment and public space is part of that adjustment and it is nowadays crowded with commercial activities. Initially the commerce was centrally located in the city at a market place and later on in department stores (Bergman 2013). In more recent days it has stared to allocate in more adjacent areas of the city where the big shopping malls are located. A ’satellized’ city of consumption as Baudrillard would say (1994, cited in Clarke 2003, p.95) is perhaps most evident in the US. We can however see examples of it it in Sweden in commerce areas such as Kungens Kurva and Barkarby, or shopping malls as Kista Galleria and Nacka Forum which are located in proximity to Stockholm and not in the central parts of the city. Often these centers offer generous open hours to make it easier to pursue shopping after office hours (see for example Nacka forum 2013, and Kista Galleria 2013, especially during December with extended opening hours until 10pm to make shopping accessible longer before Christmas). By allocating commerce and shopping areas in the suburbs, often most easily accessed by car, the range of customers are somewhat limited as it is not easily accessed by all. The extended opening hours are on the other hand more democratically generous as it allows more different working hours. The generous opening hours could however be seen as a way for the retailer to maximize their profit as the costumers have more time to spend in the store. In Kista Galleria for example, 33% of the turn-over is made during the hours between 6pm and 9pm (Svensk handel 2012, p.5). The late hours clearly generates money and favors the proportion of consumption.

The constant consumption has created a continuos chase after something more, enough is not enough. Appleby (1993, cited in Clarke 2003, p.150) mean that people now ‘indulge themselves, seeking gratification immediately’ (ibid.). Producers need to have a continuos production to be able to remain on the market 100

whereas the consumers cannot be fulfilled buying, e.g just any cellphone. Relating this to the previously mentioned network of dependencies, the cellphone ’has’ to be a smartphone that serves as your instant calendar, wallet, newspaper, entertainment and search tool etc. Once you have had a smartphone, you cannot (or don’t want to) go back to the more simple model.

The producers make sure there is an even more recent model waiting for you with even more spectacular appliances in it that will make you life even more convenient than it already is. There is also a ‘get it whilst you can’-mentalism within the consumer society (Clarke 1998, cited by himself in Clarke 2003, p.151) that encourage the consumer to consume fast, perhaps before thinking it through thoroughly. This unveil an escalating reproduction that continues to produce commodities to the seemingly insatiable free market.

The increased value of spending The ‘freedom of choice’ is a term that echoes within the free market in the consumer society. The term implies that the consumer has a free right to choose whatever she/he likes within the market. It is however a necessity to choose whatsoever; we need to choose something. As Giddens (1994, cited in Clarke 2003, p.145) describes it: ’The consumer society is a society in which ’we have no choice but to choose’’. Perhaps we do not have an option to not consume any longer? The twentieth and twenty-first century has shown an increasing dependence on our pattern to consume. During World War II, there was a time of rationing and people were urged to minimize their consumption.

Instead was the production extremely important. As a century went by, the economical prerequisites changed and when the September 11 attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon came about, the citizens were encouraged to consume to sustain the economy and the ’health’ of the countries. Tony Blair said: ‘Britain ”needs you to shop”’ (Jones and Smith 2001, cited in Clarke 2003, p.1) as a clear plead to the British people to go out and consume to prevent the economy from going into recession.

The Simultaneous Growth and Rupture of Consumer Society

Shopping mall (Chakzon, 2010-07-17)

More recently in 2009, the Australian government decided to hand out $900 bonus payments to citizens earning less than $100.000 a year, and $950 to families with school-age children.

The reason appeared to be the prevailing economical crisis, where the government thereof wanted to support and boost businesses in the country. Citizens receiving the money were encouraged to spend them in a local business to maintain the employments in the firms (Malkin 2009). Another example during the crisis in 2011, are the consumption of luxury commodities that increased with 10% in Europe (Global Blue, cited in Svensk Handel 2012, p.8). This shows that the wealthy are devoted to shop even more in bad times, they are moreover probably the only ones who can afford to do it as the margins for the less wealthy becomes smaller during a crisis. It is evident that the consumption economy, or capitalist economy, is built upon and served by the people who can afford to shop and consume goods. The freedom of choice is not much of a freedom if you cannot afford the choice you want. The constant chase after the latest cellphone or fashionable clothes encourage and urge for an expensive lifestyle which is not available no all. Still, the twentyfirst century society is all about consumption, but not all can afford to be a part of it.

In the industrial time, the workers were highly valuable to the society because of their labor force. Today the consumers has taken over this valuable roll, simply just because they consume.

Bauman describes it from the perspective: ’yesterday’s underdogs were non-producers, while today’s underdogs are non-consumers’ (Bauman 1995, cited in Clarke 2003, p.92). As the importance of consumers as a contributor to society has increased, those who cannot contribute to consumption do no longer have a granted place in society - ’The poor counts less and less’. (Bauman 1987, cited in Clarke 2003, p.112). Consequently, you have to earn and spend money in turn to get full access to society. In the last three decades, Harvey (2008, p.32) mean that this neoliberal or capitalistic turn has ‘restored class power to

rich elites. [...] at the same time as the incomes of he poor had either stagnated or diminished’. The system of consumption and capitalism subsequently works the best for the already wealthy.

Unfortunately, consumption has for many gone out of control.

Shopping disorders has become much more common where kleptomania (compulsive stealing), compulsive shoppers (buying things to distract and numb feelings), bargain shoppers (buying things just because it is a good deal), bulimic shoppers (buying things and then return them over and over again) and collector shoppers (buying things to have a complete set of colors or type of clothing) are just a range of behavior that is caused by shopping (Shopaholic Anonymous 2013 and Mayo Clinic 2013). It is due to the ‘freedom of choice’ that it has become much easier to get into this type of addictive and compulsory behavior. (Giddens 1994, cited in Clarke 2003, p.154-155) Giddens (ibid.) finds addiction to be the inevitable consequence of the consumption system that ‘demands the kind of constant renewal implicit in the notion of choice’. This compulsory shopping unfortunately supports the capitalistic system and the retailer whom is dependent on people coming and buy their goods. The system would most probably not work if all people bought only just what they needed and nothing else. Is it then capitalism that has created these disorders?

The paradox Consumption comply with the capitalistic system and it does it successfully. It generates economical growth and wealth in society and are increasingly vital for the survival of capitalism and our current economy (Clarke 2003, p.9). Consumption is what makes our world function. It is in this world a necessity to provide ourselves with goods that help us to sustain ourselves.

We need food, clothing and hygiene products. We need shelter with heating, electricity and water. This is what we need. We do however consume more than this, market manipulated or not.

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Consumption has consequently become a society problem where people buy more things than they need in a compulsory behavior supporting the capitalism economy at the risk of ruining one’s personal economy or health. The ability to consume in the speed of the market becomes a difficulty for those who don’t have the money for it. It is a fine line between what is functioning consumption and the consumption that ruptures our society.

Can we find a balance and stay there or does that go against the capitalistic system that demands growth? Is it possible to create a society not based on consumption? Compulsive eating disorder could be seen as an analogy to the problem of consumption.

People with alcohol problems are obliged to stay away from all alcohol to get well which is a possible mean. There is no essential or vital need to drink alcohol. Compulsive eating however is a disorder where the part of problem also is something vital. The compulsive eaters cannot just stop eating at all and get well, they need to find the balance for what is good for them. The same problem goes with consumption. We are not given the option not to consume as there are some essentialities in the society that we live in today that require us to consume. It is, just as with compulsive eating, easy to consume too much while we are at it, but it might not be good for us or the society. Therefor, we also need to find the balance between what we really need and what is good for us, and not to over-consume. Consumption has become a paradox where it is both our future growth, but also how it might be our future fall.

References Bergman, Bosse, 2013. How changes is consumerism changes our cities. [Lecture], KTH, 2013-10-30.

Clarke, David B., 2003. The Consumer Society and the Postmodern City. New York: Routledge.

Harvey, David, 2008. The right to the city. New left review 53, September October 2008, pp. 23-40.

Kista Galleria, 2013. Öppettider. [Internet] Available at: http://www.kistagalleria.se/index.htm?gclid=CKOtsPi_ ibsCFYmN3godMy0ACg. [Accessed: 27 November 2013].

Malkin, Bonnie, 2009. Australians get $900 cheques from government to boost spending. The Telegraph, May 18 2009. Available at: http://www.telegraph. co.uk/finance/recession/5341306/Australians-get-900cheques-from-government-to-boost-spending.html.

[Accessed: 27 November 2013].

Mayo Clinic, 2013. Kleptomania. [Internet] (Updated 13 July 2013). Available at: http://www.mayoclinic. com/health/kleptomania/DS01034. [Accessed: 29 November 2013].

Nacka Forum, 2013. Öppettider Nacka Forum.

[Internet] Available at: http://www.nackaforum.se/W/ do/centre/oppettider. [Accessed: 27 November 2013].

Shopaholic Anonymous, 2013. What is compulsive shopping? [Internet] Available at: http://www. shopaholicsanonymous.org. [Accessed: 29 November 2013].

Svensk Handel, 2012. Trendrapport 2012 - iFramtiden.

Stockholm: Svensk Handel Also available at: http://www.svenskhandel.se/Fakta-rapporter/Rapporter/Trendrapport-/. [Accessed: 29 November 2013].

Images 1. Springman Kjell, Maria (Author), 2013-11-28. Words of consumption.

2. Chakzon, 2010-07-17, 1000s of Shopping, [Internet] Available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File%3A1000s_of_Shopping.JPG, [Accessed: 9 December 2013].

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The Simultaneous Growth and Rupture of Consumer Society

Liquid Modernity: A Tale of Consumption, Insecurity and Public Space Andrei-Florin Magureanu

Zygmunt Bauman’s book contains precious clues to how consumption, society and public space interact with each other within what he refers to as “liquid modernity”. A brief historic context of the evolution of this relational triangle is briefly analyzed below before attempting to determine its possible evolution.

A comparison will also be made between how the urban setting looked like and functioned within the age of “solid modernity“ with the liquified version we experience today. Each of the three individual concepts: consumption, society and public space are individually discussed and related to one another within the three main sections of the text.Based on Bauman’s iconic book, we evaluate how the contemporary situation still overlaps with what he described close to 15 years ago. Decaying and amplified trends are being sketched while attempting to issue a brief scenario for how the liquefaction of modernity will evolve within the coming future.

Andrei-Florin Magureanu is a masters student within the Sustainable Urban Planning and Design program at KTH Stockholm. Coming from an architectural background, his interests lie in architecture and urban design and how they can accommodate for the ever-growing complexity of the contemporary world.

Melting the Solids More than 10 years have passed since Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity was first published. We have seen many things happen since, but the overall truths of Bauman’s predicaments still rule over the world we inhabit today. At the time Bauman was writing his book, the Internet was still in an incipient phase, the world’s population was predominantly rural and mobile phones were still novelty. However the liquefaction of modernity has all but ceased during this past decade, with all the significant landmarks that have each passed one by one. Has the way we look at and design our cities adapted to these principles that seem to shape our world?

One of the prime factors “melting the solids”, as Bauman calls it, is globalization. This wide spread phenomenon seems to be at full speed, irreversibly altering our world. Solid borders, be it on commercial, cultural, or social levels are being melted one by one, to the point where there’s only a hint of their former existence, if their presence is to be visible at all. Our cities reflect the power of this phenomenon.

The mechanics of consumption The way we experience consumption today is increasingly different from what it has been since time immemorial. Our so called needs become an ever smaller component of the reason behind our shopping. As Bauman mentions, the need was characteristic of the 19 century consumption mechanism. It is associated with modernity in its solid state. The need however was gradually upgraded to desire, through the rise of mass production and the increase in choice. We desire things we don’t really need, in order to express our true selves. Modernity in itself was becoming more fluid and this is just another transition that amplifies and contributes to the greater tendency. The concept of desire fuelling the masses is what consumerism fed on and exploited up to present day. The end state of individual desire can never be achieved (as Bauman notes, the finish line of the consumption race seem to be moving faster than the fastest of racers). However, it is this never-ending struggle towards an unreachable goal that creates addiction towards shopping and towards consumption in general. The very term “shopping” was invented to more accurately portray this age of desire. In early to mid-19th century, when consumption was still governed by need, the term shopping did not exist. There was no “experience” attached to the process of attaining one’s everyday means of survival. This was only developed and came into relevance as the compulsion towards desire and expanding consumption grew.

Bauman notes that in present time, the desire concept itself became obsolete and in need to be replaced. With mass production running at full speed, and the global market as accessible and dominant as ever, the consumer demand is gradually falling behind the offer. The desire is no longer capable of generating the expected consumption. It is thus time for a new term to fuel this new level of anticipated consumption. The wish 103

The current state of consumerism captured within contemporary art. Photo by: Alexandre Dulaunoy.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adulau/

is the upgrade meant for the concept of desire. It constitutes the full expression of the immediate and ethereal pleasure if the individual, often ignoring longer term development or consequences. As Bauman underlines by quoting Fergusson: […] where the facilitation of desire was founded upon comparison, vanity, envy and the ‘need’ for self-approbation, nothing underlies the immediacy of the wish. The purchase is casual, unexpected and spontaneous. It has a dream quality of both expressing and fulfilling a wish, and like all wishes, is insincere and childish.

(Bauman 2000:76)

An underlying theme towards which this newly developed thirst for consumption points to is the identity and the individuality of every person. There is a subconscious need, an unformulated desire for each individual to be different, unique, and to express that to the world. In the age of mass production, where thousands upon thousands of the same products are all that’s available for choice, this can be a daunting task. How can one express himself as unique in the age of mass production, where thousands if not millions of people use the same phone, same T-shirts, same shoes? Consumption seems to have created a dilemma for which itself ultimately shines through as the savior.

While the products themselves are far from unique, the only way to achieve uniqueness, the unique identity that each individual strides towards in today’s ever-growing society, is through consumption patterns. Even if for one product choice in today’s consumer society there’s a million others identical, through a combination of choices one can eventually come to achieve this goal. And the greater the number of choices made, the greater the chance for the chosen combination to be unique.

The Mechanism of Control One of the underlining benefits of urbanization and urban density is the ease to consume. Our cities have slowly transitioned from the boosting production efficiency to facilitating and encouraging consumption. The service economy has long since expulsed the areas dedicated to production to the outside of cities, in remote areas which feature lower costs with often unreseached or undisclosed consequences. Places that globalization has readily made available, and are far enough not to directly impact the final destination of the goods. The city is now a machine for consumption similar to how Corbusier looked at the building as a machine for living. Urbanization and urban density has numerous apparent benefits, from efficient transport, infrastructure and variety of service and culture. However, it also facilitates control 104

over the masses, and drastically reduces the cost of surveillance.

With today’s technology and urban setting it has never been easier to control and manipulate the masses, and it has never been harder to resist or even realize such outcomes in a society where democracy and freedom are supposedly at their highest.

The old mechanism of control are obsolete, too rudimentary to perform in today’s society in which keywords such as “freedom”, “free-will”, “free speech” are put on a pedestal. Bauman illustrates this well by discussing the Foucault’s Panopticon and Synopticon models. The Panopticon model, in which the controlled masses are trapped within cells surrounding a central control tower is no longer efficient. It has simultaneously evolved into and been replaced by a new model, a model that takes advantage of these new phrases to achieve exactly the same goal, but in today’s liquified modernity. The Synopticon model, is a metaphor on how the roles and functions of the old system have been manipulated and reformed. The masses around the tower are no longer trapped, at least they don’t perceive themselves to be. The feared and ever-present surveyor at the top of the tower has been replaced by a spectacle presenting itself to everyone.

The role of the central tower remains the same, preserving undisrupted visibility between the center and the cells, but it is no longer about surveillance. It is no longer that the tower watches the cells, but it is the cells who no longer can avert their sights from what is being projected by the tower. The direction of visibility has been inversed.

The tower still controls the masses, it portrays ideals, fuels the desires and wishes that we previously linked to consumption.

It controls not by enforcing certain standards and behaviors but by seduction of the masses into having such goals as their own, all while preserving the illusion of freedom and free will. The spectacle is omnipresent, it cannot be avoided and through the hypnotic mechanism it employs further accentuates the disparity between multitude and scarcity of choice; between the rich and the poor. As Bauman explains: In a synoptical society of shopping/watching addicts, the poor cannot avert their eyes; there is nowhere they could avert their eyes to. The greater the freedom on the screen and the more seductive the temptations beckoning from the shopping-mall displays, the deeper the sense of impoverished reality, the more overwhelming becomes the desire to taste, if only for a fleeting moment, the bliss of choosing.

Liquid Modernity

(Bauman 2000:88)

Ironic Reflection of the cultural and unique context of a local site in a generic glass curtain wall of a McDonalds, the exponent of globalization. Photo by: Paleontour (flickr).

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paleontour

Public/Private Colonization of Space Unlike the era of solid modernity, where the threat was perceived to be from the public side, invading and colonizing the private, in today’s world the opposite takes place. While in the past the state had increased power and responsibility regarding the needs of its people, today with the privatization of so many services and increased power of private corporations related to the state, people are left to fend for their selves. Today’s social mechanism has people looking for examples on how to deal with their own private issues, rather than leaders that fight for a common cause.

It seems like the individual has finally outgrown the citizen.

Bauman himself points out the contrast and adversity between the two notions: the citizen is genuinely focused on the common cause and the common good, above his own troubles and issues; the individual’s hierarchic structure is just the opposite, he is mostly concerned with his private wellbeing, and is only attached to public issues or the common cause if it partially overlaps with the first.

The balance is thus reversed: today it is no longer that we fear the public colonizing the private, once could even go so far to say that we even desire it. As Bauman himself notes, we seem to be mistaken private problems of public figures as public problems.

He continues to explain that although these private problems were brought onto the public stage, they do not cease to remain private. Through this chain of events, the true public problems, the ones concerning the well-being of the many, are being pushed aside by the issues of the few that are being artificially put under the spotlight, thus becoming part of the spectacle at the heart of the Synopticon model we have mentioned above. It comes without saying that most of these problems that draw so much focus, are problems that the poorer class, ever-increasing in numbers, cannot relate to in any way and cannot afford to have.

Public space is not immune to this trend. While the past threat of public side stemmed from the increased power and influence of the state in front of the public factor, in some cases manifesting itself through totalitarian regimes, todays state seems powerless to the sphere of private interests represented by global corporations. When detaching one’s self from the reality he’s being immersed in everyday, there’s no denying the magnitude of the impact that capitalist globalization and world-wide Disneyfication has had on our cities. The spaces of consumption, as they are commonly named by professional literature, are ever increasing in the proportion of public space available within the urban form. The classic meaning of public space is being challenged, molded into something that is slowly becoming the

norm. The classic public space was mainly a space of human interaction, socialization and exploration.

Commercial activity was viewed as a necessity, rather than a pass time. It is impossible to imagine this scenario unfolding in today’s city-scapes all over the world. Even in cities that maintained their historic build structure at their core, this task seems incredibly difficult. While the built structure remains more or less the same, the degree in which it has been commercialized and transformed to accommodate the contemporary ideals of the tourists they rely upon leaves little if any hints of what life there would have been like as little as 50 to 100 years ago. The quality that Bauman refers to as civil, used to be synonymous, built-in, public space. Yet today, the alienation between the members of society has gone so far as to reduce social interaction to a minimum, threatening the very meaning of society itself.

Simulating Communities The function that was attributed to public space has now been transferred to such places of consumption. The illusion of community is stronger than it seems at first glance. An effective exercise to test how powerful this truly is, is to visit a foreign city where cultural differences encountered would overcome the average European. Cities as Capetown, Bogota, Cairo would likely be no place for a European to find a community he feels related to. The cultural differences would be overwhelming, making him lost, unable to find his way within the total strangeness of his new surroundings. But once you put him in front of a shopping mall, there’s and aerie feeling of familiarity that kicks in, a testament to the extent and power of Disneyfication and globalized values. Differences in culture, ethnicity, religion once unalienable from one’s person suddenly become irrelevant in the uniform spaces of mass consumption. Suddenly once found inside the shopping mall, you’d suddenly know where to go, what to do. Both standardized geometric configurations and the illusion of community striding towards a common goal would make you lose track of your actual whereabouts. As Bauman points out himself, no matter how crowded the corridors are, there is no collective activity in these spaces of collective consumption. You are in fact alone. Civil values are gone, although the simulation of public within the private seems to be successful.

Public but not civil places can be found littering the 21st century cityscapes. The obvious goal of every individual is finding a place of social action, a feeling of belonging, ultimately a community.

And with answers to such ideals few and far between in today’s society, spaces that simulate these traits without actually delivering are becoming more and more popular. When taking 105

a closer look at such spaces that although public have no civil attributes one can even notice typologies in which such spaces begin to develop. Bauman mentions Claus Lewis Strauss as one of the leading anthropologists of our time and promotes his classification of strategies of generating a sense of community.

The two methods identified, anthropoemic and anthropophagic each provide a different approach to deal with “the otherness of others” and generating a sense of community.

The anthropoemic approach is based on the exclusion of those believed to be too different and strange to be assimilated to the community. The incarnation of this strategy when it comes to public space is provided by the urban ghettos or spaces of spatial segregation or limited accessibility, for example La Defense square in Paris.

The anthropophagic approach relies not on the alienation and expulsion of individuals in particular, but of their attributes that make them unlike the community. This strategy is more reliant on integration rather than rejection, but still puts all the pressure on the external additions rather than altering the community itself.

As Bauman himself describes it: “If the first strategy was aimed at the exile or annihilation of the others, the second was aimed at the suspension or annihilation of their otherness”. Consumer spaces like shopping malls and other monuments to globalization are exponents of this approach reflected at an urban level. Such spaces render differences irrelevant in front of a single clear and easily identifiable criterion on which the community is based, in this case, the desire to express oneself as individual, unique through means of additive-choice consumption. Topics that are up for heated debate and conflict outside such spaces, such as race, ethnicity, religion etc. are suddenly overlooked by the power of consumerist economy.

The Liquid Future In today’s world, liquid modernity is as advanced as ever. The age of mobility and speed finally replaced the one of size and stability.

The control and dominance of our consumer lifestyles has had its influence on how we interact and perceive community, even society. Physical space could not remain indifferent to this metamorphosis. The privatization of public space is an ongoing threat that echoes through modern-day cities. What’s even more worrying is that although we perceive this threat, public space is still being fought for by society, we are today unable to utilize public space at its true value, the way we have before. With civil interaction moving to other media, the public space is unable to inspire the civil interactions that community was based on in the past, while this task is increasingly hijacked by lower quality spaces with detrimental effects, which in term are able to simulate the sense of community and belonging which we desperately seek. How long can we sustain this trend? No one can say for sure, but the sooner we move to a more sustainable alternative to this dependency on consumption, the smoother the impact of the crash of consumerism will be on our own lifestyles and society in general.

But when it comes to public space, Bauman identifies a third typology that fits neither of the clear two categories portrayed above but is rather a combination of the two: the so called “non-place”, unofficial, unknown, hidden by the lack of publicity, accessibility or awareness.

Non-place ‘is a space devoid of the symbolic expressions of identity, relations and history: examples include airports, motorways, anonymous hotel rooms, public transport . . . Never before in the history of the world have non-places occupied so much space.

Miles, Steven and Paddison, Ronan (1998) – Urban Consumption: An Historiographical Note, Urban Studies May 1998 35: 815-823,

(Bauman 2000:102)

Such spaces have no set rules of interaction, everything being simplified to a few natural precepts that everyone shares.

Differences are dealt with by any means possible, combining the two methods that were detailed above. Such spaces are informally occupied and can spread to nearby surroundings, propagating their attributes and their rules.

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References Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) – Liquid Modernity, Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Liquid Modernity

Zukin, Sharon (1998) – Urban Lifestyles: Diversity and Standardisation in Spaces of Consumption, Urban Studies May 1998 35: 825-839 Brighenti, Andrea Mudi (2012) – The new spaces of consumption Retrieved 27/11/2013, from http://www. metropolitiques.eu/The-new-spaces-of-consumption. html The Economist - The third industrial revolution Retrieved 25/11/2013, from http://www.economist. com/node/

Traveling Without Dimensions Hedvig Edholm

This article aims to examine how different ways of traveling and different types of tourism can be seen as expressions as well as rejections of the current time-space relation, which according to Bauman is described as the era of ‘Liquid modernity’. The foundations of the unequal distribution of mobility and thereby access to space was created during the era of early modernism but still persists today. Current expressions of this situation can for example be seen reflected in global outsourcing of businesses and downsizing of companies but also in the process of tourism and traveling which inhabits unequal mechanisms. In relation to regular tourism based on possibilities of fast movement, concepts advocating for slower pace and non-mobility that are emerging is going to be analyzed. The transition can be carried out voluntarily, acting as an opposition to modernity which is shown with the ‘slow travel movement’. But can also indicate a partly unintended transition towards immobility, due to aspects such as economical constraints in our time as will be exemplified with the concept of ‘staycation’.

Hedvig Edholm is a second year student of the Master program of USPD. She has a Bachelor in Spatial Planning from Blekinge institute of technology and has also studied urban planning during one term in Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Barcelona.

Changed time-space relationship During the latest centuries the relationship between space and time has increasingly changed, making distances between, as well as time spent to reach destinations, shorter. In accordance with Bauman, the changing conditions between space and time, constitutes the essential origin of modernity. Space and time initially where closely interlinked and dependent of each other, but are now separated and free to function and act almost independently. In order to define the character of the current society, Bauman uses the metaphors of liquidity and fluidity, which can be defined as the opposite of pre-modern time’s solidity (Bauman, 2000). Bauman expresses the complexly changed relationship between space and time: ‘While solid have a clear spatial dimension and through this downgrades the significance of time, liquidity do not keep any shape for long, which increase the importance of time and reduces the importance of space, since the spatial forms are changing often, space is only filled for a moment’ (Bauman 2000, p.2). The process of melting solids, has affected the society both what concerns overall systems, the society as well as life-politics, transforming their characteristics into becoming more fast, light, flexible and mobile. This has brought profound changes to human conditions, for example concerning concepts such as power, control, freedom, consumption, production economy and identity.

Some of these aspects will be further examined below.

Mobility as a question of equity The modern era, defined by a changed relationship between space and time, was also the era of control and conquest of space. During the pre-modern era the possibilities of transportation and movement was more or less stagnant since distances was transgressed with the power of humans, animals or with the use of natural resources in form of for example wind or water. The accessibilities of time and possibilities to reach spaces could therefore be defined as more or less equal, since no one could travel in much greater speed that no one else could.

During the era of modernity, time, or in this context, mobility and velocity, became a way to control and conquest space, and therefore a force of domination and power, putting equity in this sense to an end. The start of this era is by Bauman defined as the era of ‘Heavy Modernity’, characterized both by emerging colonialism and capitalism as a consequence of the changed relationship between space and time, where the time more and more started to function as a tool to create capital (Bauman, 2000).

Due to the increased strive to reach goals and increase income, new techniques where developed. With this, time became more formable and easier to manipulate and expanded its possibilities to hold more capacity of each unit. As the time-space relation accelerated, it reached the point where space could be traversed in almost no time at all, which is expressed by Bauman with the definition of instantaneity and in this state ‘There are only moments, point without dimensions’ (Bauman, 2000 p.118). As 107

The increased possibilities to reach tourist destinations is a part of the era of liquid modernity. Picture by author.

a consequence of this space became more and more irrelevant and Bauman refers to Simmel when he states that: ‘The value of something is determined by the obstacles which need to be negotiated in order to obtain them’ (Bauman, 2000 p.117).

Meaning that if no time is needed to be spent or sacrificed in order to reach a place, the value of the place is decreased or lost.

The unequal access to instantaneity is a factor that creates social divisions. Bauman states that domination is linked to uncertainty and that those who can move and act as well as escape faster, and thereby keep their actions unbound and unpredictable are the ones that rules. The ones that cannot move as quickly or cannot move at all are the ones who are being ruled. Bauman especially puts the discussion about domination and inequity in relation to labor and capital and how increased possibilities of movement have led to consequences such as downsizing of enterprises and global outsourcing, stating that this have become one of the principal factor of social division of today (Bauman, 2000).

The changed time-space relation and the inequity that it was a part of creating, was initiated during the era of heavy modernity, but still persists today during the era of liquid modernity. In accordance with Lefebvre’s statement that ‘Neocapitalism and neo-imperialism share hegemony over a subordinated space split into two kinds of regions: regions exploited for the purpose of and by means of production (of consumer goods), and regions exploited for the purpose of and by means of the consumption of space’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p 353), I further below will examine how the questions of unequal distribution of movement is expressed in the form of personal travels and tourism. Bauman states that tourism and traveling as a process inhabits mechanisms of both exclusion and inclusion, enabling an increased possibility of traveling for a part of the world’s population, whilst the other part is being watched (Bauman 2000).

Identity and travel Traveling, can be seen as an expression and as a part of creating identity in the postmodern society. Questions about how to live has gone from being normatively regulated into becoming an individual task. In today’s individualistic and globalised world, people are forced to create their own identities, not only in relation to local reference points but also to global ones. In the transition between societies organized around production to societies organized around consumption, former limits and meanings as well as reference points have become dissolved. In the current society the task of creating meaning and context is primarily seen as a responsibility of the individual (Bauman, 2000). Expressed by Bauman as ‘the liquidizing forces have descended from the macro to the micro level of social 108

cohabitation’ (Bauman, 2000, p.7). As a part of the creation of identity consumption plays a significant role, not only when it comes to consumption of commodities but also regarding consumption of space.

Tourism as ’consumption of space’ The production and consumption of space can be seen as a consequence of the development of economic relations, among which tourism represents one of several ‘spaces of consumption’.

The place representing a tourist destination often acquires a strong identity to which tourists are drawn and where they consume experiences of the place in form of for example cuisine, costume, architecture and natural experiences as well as new knowledge. The experienced ‘identity’ of the tourist destination functions as a brand in the international tourist market, indirectly generating income, but also creating polarization within the city due to for example property speculation and gentrification (Goodman, Goodman, Redclift 2010).

According to Lefebvre, people demand a qualitative space during vacation, perceiving tourist cities and destinations as nostalgic places dedicated to leisure, even though this might stand in contradiction to the real situation and everyday life of people resided at the place (Lefebvre, 1991). The tourist destinations roles as ‘spaces of consumption’ gets especially evident in an exemplified case where an travel agency had to pay economical compensation to their customers since the bad weather conditions of the occasion did not fulfill the visitors expectations, referring to the law of package tours, stating that:’If a traveler does not get what he or she has a right to expect under the agreement, various kinds of sanctions can be considered, including compensation arrangements or price reduction’ (Aftonbladet, 2008). This places the travel destination in comparison with other kinds of consumption commodities that can be changed or compensated in order to fulfill the buyer’s requirements.

Since the phenomena of tourism started to increase during the 1900’s different type of tourist destinations and experiences or ‘places of consumption’, inhabiting different characters, has been developed. Some of the destinations can be defined as particular kind of places, characterized as places of security, where access to entertainment and pleasure is available but also as places where only limited contact to the local population is encouraged, in order to protect the tourists from ‘unpredictable, unfamiliar cultures’. This raises the question of the relationship between physical space and cultural assimilation (Goodman, Goodman, Redclift 2010).

Traveling Without Dimensions

As an expression and as a contrast of modern homogenization of place constructed by increased globalization and consumption, which might be experienced as simulated, a distinct kind of tourism has emerged where the tourists desire to experience authentic and genuine places. The identification of these types of travels can be related to explorers and adventures of earlier times, implying a reworking of the narrative of the explorer who was first to arrive at the place (Goodman, Goodman, Redclift 2010). The image of these places as authentic has, however, been questioned as fetishes of the supposedly ‘real world’, resulting in that symbols are consumed instead of authenticity (Mansvelt, 2005). The destination and its concepts is often a result of colonial imaginations and stereotypes which has been superimposed on top of previous meanings. Post colonial structures that exist within the tourism industry often contribute to a reinforcement of global inequalities since a large number of poor countries are dependent on the income that tourism is bringing in (Goodman, Goodman, Redclift 2010).

Travel Slow and Staycation In contrast to fast ways of traveling, movements and concepts based on slow ways of traveling have been created, among which two of them are: ‘Slow Travel’ and ‘Staycation’, which will be presented further below. In her article Representing pace in tourism mobilities: staycations, Slow Travel and The Amazing Race, Molz states that mobility is one of the main characteristics of modernity, among which the tourists are one of the most representative figures. This means that these new concepts of traveling characterized by non-mobility or slow travel, stands in the opposition to how tourism and tourists in general are being portrayed. As earlier stated, speed and mobility are often related to characteristics of modernism such as rationalization, consumption and flexibility. In this context movements advocating for pace and slowness can be seen as a resistance against modernity and the representations of it.

But expressions of low speed mobility might not only be an expression of free choice based on ideologies and opinions, it might also be the consequence of new preconditions to which we need to conform. Just as the existence of the current tourism was made possible by high- speed mobility and access to longdistance destinations, its continued existence depends on the further availability of these assets. Aspects such as demands of lowering carbon emissions, economical constraints as well as declining access of cheap oil might create significant challenges for tourism as we know it today.

‘Slow travel’ is a grass – roots movement which encourages travel locally by slow means of transportation such as walking, cycling and slow types of public transport in favor for high-speed, carbon emitting transport such as automobiles and airplanes.

‘Slow travel’ is in many ways related, and share values with other forms of ‘slow movements’ such as ‘cittaslow’ and ‘slow food’, which are encouraging a slower pace in many societal aspects.

According to the author of the ‘slow travel manifesto’, slow travel is about making ‘conscious choices’, not only by lowering carbon emissions but the movement also encourages engagement and respect to destinations and communities that are being visited, for example by taking part of local habits, routines and culture (Gardner, 2012). In this way ‘slow travel’ philosophy aims to foster slowness as a more ethical encounter with places, cultures and people (Molz, 2009).

Besides that slow traveling is described as a way of creating more profound and deep relations to the visited area, it also encourages a greater appreciation to the journey itself. This is expressed in one of the ‘guiding principles’ of slow travel movement: ‘You may eagerly look forward to the arrival at your chosen destination, but don’t let that anticipation eclipse the pleasure of the journey’ (Gardner, 2012). Members of the slow travel movement expresses that by moving slow through a landscape, not just over it or by it, makes you becoming a part of the surroundings and not just an mere observer of it (Molz, 2009).

The perception that the traveler gets more interlinked to the site as well as to the route of destination if the travel is carried out at lower speed, can be linked to Bauman’s statement that attachment and value of a place is related to the speed and time spent in order to reach a destination.

Another aspect that the slow travel movement brings up is the relationship between mobility and equity. The paradox highlighted with the movement is that not only low access to mobility and speed can reflect an undesirable life situation emerging from unequal relations. Also do the possibility to by own choice slow down and move in pace inhabit questions of inequity, since a slower speed requires more time, and time often is associated with money (Bauman, 2000). This implies that the possibility to move or to perform other activities in pace can be seen regarded as a luxury not accessible for everyone.

The concept of ‘staycation’ refers to the activity of ‘vacationing at home’ and thus do not require mobility in any high extent.

The concept started to get attention especially in America during the summer of 2008 due to high gas prizes and unstable economy. By this ‘the democratic freedom of mobility’ that 109

America was used to was denied (Sharma, 2009). Since many people lacked the economical possibilities to place the vacation on a distant destination, media recommended different kind of leisure activities that could be taking place in the backyard or immediate vicinity. By this people would behave like tourists in their own hometowns, maximizing and making the most out of the ‘staycation’ and thereby legitimizing it as an alternative to ‘normal’ vacation. According to Molz, the concept of ‘staycation’ was partly received with skepticism, since many people relate vacation with an escape to a distant destination and therefore sees the concept of ‘staycation’ as conflicting. This highlight the way in which we understand vacation in general: as a way to escape the stressful everyday-life of modernity characterized by speed and mobility, by transfer ourselves to other destinations and thus demanding even more mobility, a fact which can be seen as contradicting (Molz 2009). According to Sharma, the concept of ‘staycation’, which is implying stillness instead of mobility, was not launched as a resistance against modernity or as a way to lower carbon emissions, which was the case with ‘Travel Slow’. Instead it was a way to revive the local economy in bad financial times, by mobilizing citizens to consume in the local area (Sharma, 2009).

References Bauman, Z (2000) Liquid modernity, Cambridge: Polity.

In summary it can be stated that low access of mobility and slow travel both can be seen as a conscious statement as well as ‘luxury’ in opposition to the modern world’s rush and stress. On the other hand immobility can, when not obtained by own choice; be perceived as a threat towards economical growth, exemplified with the concept of ‘staycation’. However, several factors, among which peak oil and needs of lowering carbon emissions can be named as examples, implies that actors and individuals used to high speed mobility needs to make a necessary conformation in accordance to new circumstances, of which ‘staycation’ and ‘slow travel’ might be seen as future indicators when it comes to tourism.

Strandberg, S. (2008) Får skadestånd för dåligt väder, Aftonbladet, 05-28 http://www.aftonbladet.se/resa/ article2563405.ab (2013-11-28).

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Goodman, M. K., Goodman, D and Redclift, M. eds. (2010) Consuming Space Placing Consumption in Perspective. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. E- book Lefebvre, Henri (1991). The production of space.

Oxford: Basil Blackwell Mansvelt, Juliana. (2005). Geographies of consumption. London: SAGE. E- book Molz, Germann, J (2009) Representing pace in tourism mobilities: staycations, Slow Travel and The Amazing Race , Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 7:4, 270-286, DOI: 10.1080/14766820903464242 .

Sharma, S. (2009). The great American staycation and the risk of Stillness. Retrieved March 25, 2009, from M/C Journal, 12, http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ index.php/mcjournal/article/view/122 (2013-11-28) Gardner, Nicky (2012) Amanifesto of slow travel, Hidden Europe http://www.hiddeneurope.co.uk/amanifesto-for-slow-travel (2013-11-28)

A Day in the Zad The Uses of Disorder Diane Robert

In 1970, Richard Sennett published a book, The Uses of Disorder, where he argued that a level of disorder should be maintained in cities in order for individuals to reach the stage of adulthood. He claimed that ordered purified communities nurture narrow lives and withdrawal in adolescent behaviours.

Today the issues that he raised are still acute and the urban landscape has evolved toward even more control and sterility in the inner city. Now spaces of social diversity that provide richness of human contact seem to be located outside city centres.

These changes are illustrated by the depiction of two characters: Anna, who lives in the ZAD of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes, the biggest squat in Europe, and her sister Isabelle, who has settled down in Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm. We follow Anna, the narrator, during one day, when she draws parallels between Sennett’s book, her life and her sister’s.

Diane Robert was born in the West of France in 1991. She was dissatisfied with the green-growthcorporatist discourse of her engineering school. She found refuge in the Urban Planning section of KTH in Stockholm. In her free time, she enjoys hitchhiking, reading novels and drinking wine in good company.

Anna and Isabelle are sisters. They grew up in France in small towns. After they finished high school, Isabelle entered an engineering school; she had various internships abroad and eventually she settled down in Stockholm in the neighbourhood of Hammarby Sjöstad. On the other hand, Anna registered at the faculty of law but dropped out after one year and started travelling in South America. When she came back, she studied sociology and joined alter-globalization movements, going from squats to other struggles. Now she is sharing the life of 300 opponents to an airport project in the ZAD (Zone to Defend) of Notre-Damedes-Landes, which is the biggest squat in Europe. She brought a book, The Uses of Disorder, by Richard Sennett (1970), that she reads when she is not building huts and farming with the other opponents. Isabelle and Anna are fictitious characters but the places where they live are real. We are now in Anna’s head for one day.

Morning – Waking up in a vivid countryside I wake up this morning in a landscape of hedged fields and forests. The birds have already been celebrating the rise of the sun for some time but the grass is still covered by the morning dew. The scenery is quite different from the dense disorganized cities praised by Sennett in his book. However I can see an echo there with his ideas concerning survival communities. This place can be described as an anarchist territory. As a matter of facts, the police haven’t entered for more than six months. French law doesn’t apply here. Bureaucracy seems to be totally absent.

In this micro-society tensions have to be expressed through direct conflict. The tensions are indeed numerous because many different people are organizing a common struggle and sharing the same space.

In the distance, I can see Gérard, the fifty-year-old farmer, whose fields are located on the future landing runway, talking with Max, a young man who defines himself as an anarcho-punk. Both are frowning and it’s easy to understand that they are not likely to be best friends. Gérard opposes the project in the name of protecting the nourishing soil and those who work the land. He is attached to the values of order and work. Max views the struggle as a symbolic means to fight capitalism and authority and he’s not reluctant to use violence against the police when it is required.

Therefore they are suspicious about each other.

There are many sources of hostility in the ZAD: various levels of education, various political movements, various eating practices; there are also concerns about feminism, stigmatization, integration… This diversity, although difficult to deal with, reminds me of Marcuse’s dream to unify the alienated and the oppressed for the right to the city (Marcuse, 2012). Here you’ll find youth and artists who are deeply unsatisfied with the promoted lifestyles of capitalist society – I’m probably one of them, and homeless people for whom the police are not only a symbol of control but a daily threat. We are all opposing the same project and we have to strengthen relationships between each other in 111

La ZAD in Notre-Dame-Des-Landes – A vigorous countryside with multiple contact points: Opponents to the airport project are building huts during a big event. A farmer’s tractor can be seen in the background. Source: Wikimedia.

Hammarby Sjöstad – a dull homogenised dense area of the inner-city where you don’t have to talk to your neighbours (anyway they are just like you!). Source: Wikimedia.

order for the struggle to have a chance to succeed. From what I have observed, this has generated lots of discussion and reflexive thinking. This struggle and this space are an arena that makes you understand better different parts of society. It is an enriching experience for individuals, as Sennett (2008:138) claims: “the critical need is for men to have to deal with the dissimilarities”.

Here people need each other’s help to fulfil their basic needs and organise the struggle.

I think that it is one of the most enriching aspects of my experience here. I have had lots of opportunities to question myself and my relations to others. It has acted like a mirror, reflecting a image of me different from the one I had in mind. My old preconceptions about the world and my identity have been cracking. What I am has become uncertain to me. Once again I have found myself unable to constitute a stable, settled image of the world: only fleeting reflections following one another. It is like suffering from vertigo; at the same time I can also feel something growing, a sort of confidence in limbo.

I’ve walked through the forest immersed in my thoughts. The path is made of wood logs placed next to each other to make circulation easier when the ground is muddy. Now I’m at Roka’s place. He’s on the doorstep of his caravan, smoking, his thin figure against the sun. He greets me with a smile that spreads out the wrinkles around his eyes. Roka is around sixty, halfPolish half-Berber. He has been living here for four years now.

We spend some time chatting and he offers me a spade. I come here regularly to help out with farming. In exchange I receive part of the harvest in vegetables. Here it is vital to be in contact with many different people and have something to give them if you want food and shelter. It is also the way that you get to know them. It makes you think. I spend the morning working in the garden and at midday Roka invites me to lunch.

Midday – Everybody is a planner Lucie, a forty-year-old teacher who left her job to join the struggle, is there too, wearing a blue coverall stained with many colours. She is repairing a hut in the back of the field, which was damaged by the last rain. While eating, we are discussing the last big meeting, when we took some decisions about the spatial organization of the ZAD. 112

“It’s good that we decided on a place where to accommodate the newcomers and the visitors”, says Roka.

“Yes. They are so many now, as if it was the new cool place to go. It has been very exhausting to deal with them while carrying on having our daily life, work, meetings and so on”, Lucie adds.

“But it’s still great that they are so many to come. We can’t forget that the struggle and the maintenance of our activities depend on people outside the site talking about us. It’s important that visitors can spread the word and give an account on what’s going on here”, I say.

Roka approves: “You’re right. And you were like them when you arrived, both of you. Personally I like to welcome new people. The base for newcomers will be very close, on the other side of the road. So I will take care of them. It will be better for everyone.

The others can continue their work without being disturbed, and the newcomers will have a rather comfortable place where they will feel better.”

Lucie smiles: “you’re definitely like a father, Roka! By the way we will have to explain them the new decisions for garbage and logistics.”

“You mean the new collecting points?” I enquire.

“Yes. And the fact that they should take away some garbage bags when they leave. And sort the waste correctly, not leave any dump anywhere, and so on”, she replies.

Roka says formally: “I will also pass on the notice no to install new huts in the forest. It has been enough damaged and we agreed on new possible sites in the Eastern fields.”

The discussion continues for some time. Roka tells some stories from his life, and then we go back to work. In the evening I set off back.

Evening – Leaving adolescence The sun begins to decline behind the tops of the trees. The forest is nearly quiet. I listen to the sounds coming: some

A Day in the Zad

birds babbling, a guitar and a voice singing a melancholic song, outbursts of laughing. Everything is coloured with soft shades of orange and purple. This low angle light reminds me of Scandinavia, when I was visiting my sister Isabelle in Stockholm.

It’s striking how different we’ve become.

Isabelle and I used to be very close, back in the days of our childhood. We stuck together watching wildlife documentaries on colours. My attempts to organize the world in thoughts had fallen to pieces and in a way it was all fine. I felt a confidence I had not felt before: the world and I were now distinct entities; the world was strong and I was strong too. Reading Sennett’s book I realize that this evolution is close to his presentation of the “four-stage process” from adolescence to adulthood. First, adolescents discover their power to establish rules and values to define their identity but lack experience. Second, to resolve this imbalance, they insulate themselves behind coherent identity immune to the world’s disorder. Most people stop at this stage. Third, a few people encounter an obstacle in the precedent mechanism and the ideals of coherence are defeated. Fourth, instead of a passive resignation to the idea that the first dreams were wrong in themselves, it can lead to a regeneration of child’s curiosity and an interest for the “otherness”. (Sennett, R., 2008, pp. 114-115) Night- Memories of a purified city I remember going for a walk with Isabelle and her boyfriend Stig in Hammarby Sjöstad. “Everything works so well here”, she had said. It was true, apparently. The tramway was slipping along the rails carrying streams of people from the subway. The paths for cars, pedestrians and bicycles were well-delimited. Everything, everyone was flowing without any hitch, so efficient. Even the sport centre was called “Funktionell Träning”. She showed me the waste system and explained the vacuum suction, with ill-concealed satisfaction. I nodded and started to feel uneasy.

I remember looking at the area and its manicured lawns with clinical eyes and a knot in the throat, and today these memories resonate with Sennett’s book. It had been well planned according to certain “projective needs”, then filled in with a certain kind of life. Compartmentalised, polished, nothing out of control. Like a machine that produces and reproduces serial lifestyles, serial human products.

I found a brochure stating “It has only taken a few years for Hammarby Sjöstad to become one of the world’s highest profile examples of Sustainable City Development, mentioned in specialist publications worldwide. Hammarby Sjöstad is visited by over 10,000 decision makers and specialists in the field every year, making it one of Stockholm’s most important destinations.” (Hammarby Sjöstad, 2007, p.2) I imagine these visitors succeeding each other, looking at this alleged great green urban fabric with this systems approach to the city, to life. The words of Sennett come to my mind, describing Haussmann’s precepts and the planning ideologues of the post-war period: “It is not what people do or experience in their own lives that counts, but the external relationship of these acts to areas of indirect experience that is the focus.” (Sennett, R., 2008, p. 95) Maybe my uneasiness came from that: my life here would have been framed, planned within a limited range of patterns, where chance would have little role to play. Would it be of any interest to perform this life, then?

The uneasiness followed me on the way to my sister’s home.

She was telling me stories from her work. She was responsible for environmental quality in a consultant group. She depicted how she had raised her colleagues’ awareness. She had convinced a number of them to come to work by bicycle or to use public transportation. She had also put in a better waste sorting system and advocated against having a Nespresso coffee machine with disposable capsules.

Her own fridge was full of organic products, her fruit bowl full of organic bananas and mangos. She bought a lot of things with organic or fair-trade labelling. She simply bought a lot of things.

She was a good cook and received my praise with a slight embarrassment, an acknowledgement of the gap that had formed between us, forcing us to use this tense politeness. She was eager to show me every corner of her life, to prove me that the strategy that she had chosen as a teenager not only made her happy but was effective to change the mind-sets around her and lower the environmental footprint; to demonstrate the purity of her life, its coherence with the preconceived image in which she had draped herself when we were still in high school.

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Few things in her life could endanger this equilibrium. Her friends and her colleagues belonged to the same social environment. So did more or less all the inhabitants of her neighbourhood. There were not many occasions to deal with other Stockholmers who might be different. According to Sennett, I suppose that my sister was stuck at the second stage of the process from adolescence to adulthood. Whether it happened to her to have doubts on her purified worldviews, I could only guess from a crooked smile or a slipping word.

Could it only have been different, given the life that she lived, the place where she lived, the people with whom she lived? It reminds me of an article by David Harvey. Writing about New York, he states that the authorities “militarize rather than liberate its public space. In so doing, power is deployed in support of a middle-class quest for ‘personal insulation, in residential work, consumption and travel environments, from “unsavory” groups and individuals, even crowds in general.” (Harvey, D., 2002, p. 389) This is also happening in European cities. The urban space is increasingly controlled and operations of densification or refurbishment are just another name for freeing it from its undesirable elements. The degree of desirability of an element seems to be established according to the level of its contribution to the economic growth of the city and its non-disturbance of the city order, not to its stimulating potential…

The “repression of deviants” (Sennett, 2008: 43), which occurred in the purified communities that were the sparse American suburbs in the seventies according to Sennett, is now taking place in European city centres and adjacent neighbourhoods of the inner city, which are all the same dense and characterized with mixed use. Actually the disordered, vivid social life praised

by Sennett seems to have more chance to occur in outlying areas today: in Stockholm, alternative experiences increasingly take place in the suburbs rather than in the city centre; the ZAD of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes is located 30 kilometres from the city of Nantes, in the province of France... I fall asleep wondering if Sennett’s scheme has been reversed since the seventies. Instead of boring suburbs and vivid inner city, city centres are increasingly dull, and the periphery is the space left for hope. But then, will the periphery provide the experience of diversity or will different subcultures merely reside in different segregated spaces?

Will the periphery stimulate or hamper the development of its inhabitants to adulthood?

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References Hammarby Sjöstad – a unique environmental project in Stockholm (June 2007). In Hammarby sjöstad, City of Stockholm. Retrieved 29/11/2013, from http://www. hammarbysjostad.se/inenglish/pdf/HS_miljo_bok_ eng_ny.pdf Harvey, D (2002). Social Justice, Postmodernism and the city. In Fainstein and Campbell (Eds.), Readings in Urban Theory (pp. 386-402). Wiley Marcuse, P (2012). Whose right(s) to what city? In Brenner et. Al. (Eds.), Cities for people, not for profit (pp. 24-41). Routledge Sennett, R. (2008[1970]) The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life. New Haven Conn.; London: Yale University Press.

Pictures Wé, L. (2012). Wikimedia. Retrieved 29/11/2013 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:W0128NDdL_ZaD_Preparation_56926.JPG Kylberg, H. (2006). Wikimedia. Retrieved 29/11/2013, from http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Hammarby_ Sjostad.jpg