Everyday Life in the Segmented City (Research in Urban Sociology)

RESEARCH IN URBAN SOCIOLOGY VOLUME 11

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE SEGMENTED CITY EDITED BY

CAMILLA PERRONE University of Florence, Italy

GABRIELE MANELLA University of Bologna, Italy

LORENZO TRIPODI Tesserae Urban Social Research, Berlin, Germany

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

RESEARCH IN URBAN SOCIOLOGY Series Editor: Ray Hutchison Recent Volumes: Volume 1:

Race, Class and Urban Change, 1989

Volume 2:

Gentrification and Urban Change, 1992

Volume 3:

Urban Sociology in Transition, 1993

Volume 4:

New Directions of Urban Sociology, 1997

Volume 5:

Constructions of Urban Space, 2000

Volume 6:

Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment, 2001

Volume 7:

Race and Ethnicity in New York City, 2004

Volume 8:

Ethnic Landscapes in an Urban World, 2006

Volume 9:

Gender in an Urban World, 2008

Volume 10: Suburbanization in Global Society, 2010

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE SEGMENTED CITY

PREFACE

In 2008 Simone Giometti, Secretary General of the Fondazione Romualdo Del Bianco in Florence, asked if I would organize a conference on The New Urban Sociology (the title taken from the third edition of the textbook coauthored with Mark Gottdiener). Later that year I organized three sessions for a symposium on The Tourist City as part of the Florence Expo celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Foundation (November 14–18, 2008). At the conclusion of the Florence Expo, a group of scholars associated with the Del Bianco Foundation, faculty from the University of Florence, and members of INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action) met to plan a conference on Henri Lefebvre and the New Urban Sociology – the working title for the conference. After two days of discussion held at the library of the National Institute of Renaissance Studies in the Palazzo Strozzi, it was decided that the conference should be titled Everyday Life in the Segmented City, reflecting very well the breadth of study and wealth of ideas that one finds in Henri Lefebvre’s many contributions to urban sociology. The final program committee included Ray Hutchison (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), Gabriele Manella (Universita` di Bologna), Circe Monteiro (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco), Camilla Perrone (Universita` di Firenze), Milan Prodanovic (University of Novi Sad, Serbia), Lorenzo Tripodi (INURA, Florence), and Richard Wolff (INURA, Zurich). This group reviewed abstracts submitted for the conference and selected papers to be presented in thematic session organized under the headings of appropriations of urban space, cinematic urbanism, governance and planning, right to the city, and suburbanization and the post-urban city. The conference was held in Florence, July 22–24, 2010 with more than 70 participants from some two dozen countries spanning four continents. The opening plenary session with our keynote speaker, Peter Marcuse (Professor Emeritus, Columbia University) was held in the Altana di Palazzo Strozzi and featured presentations by Gabriele Manella, Camilla Perrone, Lorenzo Tripodi, and Richard Wolff. Following the conference participants were invited to submit revised versions of their conference papers for possible publication in this volume xi

xii

PREFACE

of Research in Urban Sociology. The selection and editing of the final papers was done by Gabriele Manella, Camilla Perrone, and Lorenzo Tripodi. We would like to thank Simone Giometti for his dedicated work and unwavering support of the conference. I would like to dedicate this volume of Research in Urban Sociology is to Paolo del Bianco for his longstanding support of initiatives that bring together persons from around the world through the many programs sponsored by the Fondazione Romualdo Del Bianco. Ray Hutchison Series Editor

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE SEGMENTED CITY: AN INTRODUCTION Lorenzo Tripodi This volume of Research in Urban Sociology derives from the conference ‘Everyday life in the segmented city’ held in July 2010 in Florence, and is composed of a selection of papers originally presented on this occasion. Starting from the epochal assumption that for the first time in human history the majority of the world’s population lives in urban environment, the conference gathered a set of presentations dealing with issues of global urbanization, showing a multiplicity of approaches and points of view which we tried to preserve within the limits of this publication. Urbanization is a phenomenon inscribed into globalization process with enormous consequences in the transformation of urban space and the everyday life of citizens: a dynamics which is reflected also in a flourishing analytical discourse that increasingly transcends the boundaries of established urban disciplines. The progressive extension of the urban domain beyond the limits of the city, and across diverse scales, has its corollary in the progressive segmentation of the urban dimension along multiple lines of material, social, economic, cultural and ethnic nature. Here we have chosen the perspective of the everyday to analyse how practices and policy can overcome the spin towards fragmentation and anomy and reinforce social cohesion for a more just and liveable city, endorsing the ‘right to the city’ as postulated by the seminal work of Henri Lefebvre. Although not specifically focused on his work, this collection clearly reveals the fundamental influence of the French philosopher over the knowledge and critique of late modern spatial production (Lefebvre, 1991b), and the net of Lefebvre’s concept which connect different papers constitutes an evident subtext to this volume of Research in Urban Sociology. The original structure of the conference foresaw five distinct thematic sections, entitled ‘Right to the city’, xiii

xiv

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE SEGMENTED CITY: AN INTRODUCTION

‘Cinematic urbanism’, ‘Governance and planning’, ‘Re-appropriation of urban spaces,’ and ‘Suburbanization and post urban cities’. Ultimately, in composing this volume we decided not to adopt those thematic areas as distinct sections, as many papers demonstrated the interdependence of these topics, escaping a strong separation of the arguments. On the contrary, the five topics recur all along this volume as transversal issues connecting almost all contributions. In the Introduction we aim at retracing those connections, starting from the dialectic evocated by the title between ‘everyday life’ practices of the inhabitants and what has been named here ‘segmented city’ as an epitome of the contemporary city in the age of globalization. The perspective of the everyday has been constantly advocated in the critical discourse about modernity, starting from the contributions of the Russian avant-gardes to the revolutionary cause in the 1920s, with their aspirations to create the ‘new (socialist) man’ through the reform of the everyday life (in Russian, byt) (Buchli, 2000; Trotzky, 1973). Lefebvre pays central attention to this theme all along his work with the three volumes of The Critique of Everyday Life (1991a, 2002, 2008), until his posthumously published Elements of Rythmanalysis (2004), ideally the fourth volume of the series. But it is more in general in the French intellectual forge (Ross, 1996), throughout the post war and post colonial occurrences, that thinkers like DeCerteau (1984), the Situationists (Debord, 2000; Vane`igem, 1994), Bourdieu (1977), etc. settle the fundaments for a new ‘theory of practice’, outlining the centrality of mass culture in the economic production and the molecular character of forces shaping the social order in dialectical opposition with the centralized and rational planning action of institutional powers. A general paradigm that is reflected in a ‘everyday urbanism’ (Chase, Crawford, & Kaliski, 1999) calling for the necessary attention to individual and spontaneous practices of appropriation as the essential engine of urban transformation, which paradoxically manifest both in the creative and supportive energies revitalizing neighbourhoods in the North, and in the dramatic growth of informal settlement and the ‘slumification’ responding to the overcrowding of the metropolises of the South (Davis, 2006). If the re-conceptualization of these molecular forces has accompanied urban movements and revolutions all along the last century, the postmodern turn into the information age has definitely brought to the recognition of the need for new political subjects to overcome the State/market dichotomy in ruling the social transformation: an effort common to the antiglobalist/ altermondialist movements, finely conceptualized by Hardt and Negri as the ‘multitude’ producing ‘commonwealth’ (Hardt & Negri, 2010). On one hand, this heritage of revolutionary struggle and the relative set of

Everyday Life in the Segmented City: An Introduction

xv

conceptual tools has been gradually incorporated in the mainstream discourse of urbanism, and the issues of participation, social inclusion, tolerance and multi-culturalism, have gained a recognized role in the planning practice, notwithstanding the rhetorical and often instrumental use of such values in the mainstream discourse. On the other, the technological shift towards the network society, notwithstanding the many biased aspects connected to issues of ownership, access, privacy, control and intellectual property, has made possible new horizontal and interactive forms of coordination and communication among individuals and communities, creating the actual ground on which the efforts to develop a participated, inclusive, tolerant and multi-cultural society can be build up beyond the limits of mere utopian visioning. This emerging capacity of bottom-up organization, coordination and construction brought by everyday life practices acts as a fundamental connective tissue against the fragmentation affecting the city of today. The parable of modernity culminating in the globalization era has in fact radically transformed the concept of ‘city’, which has lost his singularity. The city cannot be defined anymore following the traditional parameters of the classical sociology, from Max Weber to the Chicago school, while the ‘urban’ condition marks the majority of territorial processes. A plurality of conflicting aspects, cultures, languages, powers and interests reconstitutes an urbanity defining itself more as a process than as an object, interweaving global and local determinants, thus requiring new descriptive tools and political projects. Echoing the many characterizations proposed by the recent critical discourse on cities qualified with terms as layered, quartered, partitioned (Marcuse, 2002), divided, splintered (Graham & Marvin, 2001), edge (Garreau, 1992), mongrel (Sandercock, 2003), Segmented City is the term that we adopt in the title of this volume to grasp the plural character of the contemporary manifestations of urban phenomena: a fragmented, polyphonic, contradictory and conflictive one. If until the dawn of modernity with ‘city’ we have identified an entity definitely separated by physical or administrative borders from surrounding territories, although typically dominating and governing them, borders today run throughout the whole city, deploying sets of separations extremely heterogenic by nature and consistency. As Marcuse (2002) observes, the understanding of the ‘quartered city’, a city ‘horizontally’ divided along class lines must be necessarily integrated into a ‘layered’ city, in which spatial transformation responds to multiple scale processes and stratifications of meanings. On one side, the material formation of the city is frantically affected by physical segmentations, tracing a ryzomatic geography of separation made

xvi

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE SEGMENTED CITY: AN INTRODUCTION

of walls and fences, exclusionary zones and norms, control devices (dispositifs) and mobility infrastructures. Those physical artefacts and the resulting discrete spatial configurations reflect the social polarization, conflict, ethnicization and segregation characterizing the late capitalist urban society, and feed the theoretical stream of critical geography. Capitalism in this approach is recognized as a factory of fragmentation, as David Harvey put it (2001, p. 121), where the production of difference is a necessary mean to dominate space for the sake of ‘making money from money’. On the other side, while segmenting and folding upon itself, the city of today extends beyond the administrative limits of its institutions, through multiple scales and in the wake of increasingly global flows, reinforcing its nature of node in a network system. The increased disconnection of territories from their surroundings reflects their reconnection into new global and partial geographies (Graham & Marvin, 2001, p. 13). Proximity loses its hegemony in determining communities and social networks, challenging contemporary sociology in rethinking the concept of community itself. The local capacity of molecular forces to transform their territories is connected to the global determinants to which they react, and to the infrastructure which allows them to reconfigure into new, glocal communities and movements. The increasing mediated complexity of discursive processes endorsing the spatial formation of urban territories engenders a related field of analysis based on cultural studies, drawing on the processes of representation constantly reconstituting the urban configuration and providing the means to grasp its increasing characterization as a geography of (immaterial) flows and symbolic production. In this view, global capitalism is increasingly characterized by the central role of knowledge and the rise of the cognitive dimensions of labour (Vercellone, 2005). Nevertheless, the apparent separation of the material production system – outsourced to the almost invisible, undemocratic and de-unionized global peripheries – from the symbolic forms of production and consumption which increasingly constitute the new creative and dynamic urban economies must be in fact understood as two undistinguishable aspects of the same phenomena. This intricate coexistence of separations and conjunctures, of segregation and connectivity, represents the nature itself of the segmented city at the beginning of the 21st century, and will be the subject of very different analysis and case studies composing this volume. The first two chapters, deriving from introductory presentations to the panel sessions of the conference, have a more general character of orientation towards the issues of the contemporary segmented city, while the second part gathers specific

Everyday Life in the Segmented City: An Introduction

xvii

case studies from a range of European, Middle Eastern and South American contexts. In the first chapter, Camilla Perrone introduces the concept of DiverCity as a necessary vision to overcome the segmentation of postmodern cities dealing with new sets of problems like the multiplication of new citizens, the complicated mosaic of differences, the spread of voluntary communities, and the requests for recognition in a socially diverse and multiple society. Her attention is essentially focused on the renewed challenges to planning and policy making required to deal with the segmented city. In the second chapter, Marco Castrignano` and Gabriele Manella focus on suburbanization as a major trend transforming contemporary cities, looking for sustainable ways to counteract the urban sprawl. They analyse in particular the redefinition of the concept of community as more and more disconnected to a particular space or place. On the other hand, they stress the importance in urban studies of reviving the neighbourhood dimension, which has been freed from the ‘community rhetoric’ of strong ties, stressing instead the organizational and ecological aspects. Their perspective is aimed at giving substance to the idea of a dense city made of a mosaic/network of neighbourhoods, a city where social mixite` is a binding element. In the third chapter, Lorenzo Tripodi introduces the concept of cinematic urbanism as a way to understand the postmodern incarnation of the city, a city where image production processes have a dominant role in determining urban economies, strongly influencing the way as urban (public) space is conceived and experienced by citizens. Analysing the role of symbolic economies in redefining the urban, he adopts the case of Florence not only as a typical example of a historical centre turned into a productive leisure district dedicated to image consumption, but also as an archetype of the cinematic urban form prefiguring since the Renaissance the characteristics of modern urban economies capitalizing a consolidated prestigious image. The focus of the previous chapter three on the importance of image production process in the contemporary ‘segmented city’ is also incidentally underlined in chapter four by Kallus. Focusing on daily negotiation of ethno-national differences which occurs in everyday life, her contribution considers the nuances of urban politics and the use and meaning of the urban space, that is the micro-politics of the social dynamic of placemaking, and their role in the struggle for urban citizenship in an ethnonationally mixed city. Discourse analysis and ethnographic encounters define the annual Holiday of Holidays festival in the Israeli-Palestinian neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas as integral to Haifa’s strategy for promoting itself as a site of coexistence.

xviii EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE SEGMENTED CITY: AN INTRODUCTION

The necessary intertwining of material and discursive approaches to urban studies is further discussed in chapter five by Julia Edthofer, who confronts critical approaches of urban theory and movement research focussing on the question of urban social movements and their impact as collective political actors. The author considers overlapping, disjunctures and gaps between the Marxist-informed critical urban theory, which reflects a material point of view, and the discursive or cultural studies’ perspective on social movements, introduced by scholars working on radical democracy. The chapter adopts the case of Vienna’s anti-racist movements, outlining the difference of conditions and rights affecting ‘white’ and ‘black’ activists. In the sixth chapter, it is again the cinematic perspective that is adopted by Micah Trippe, which uses A propos de Nice, filmed by Jean Vigo and Boris Kaufman in February and March 1930, as a case study to illustrate how city films created segmented views of quotidian urban life in both form and content. In terms of form, short clips are juxtaposed in a rapid montage to form a segmented portrait of the city. In terms of content, the segments in Vigo’s film, and the city film genre as a whole, are essentially build capturing everyday events. The portrait of Nice that emerges within the film, then, is one of quotidian segmentation. This chapter conducts a visual analysis of the film as it progresses, situating it within the history of Nice, cinematic conceptions of the city prior to its production, the city film genre and the French avant-garde. In the seventh chapter, Mauro Normando Maceˆdo Barros Filho and Circe Maria Gama Monteiro discuss the segmented city in the less developed world, focusing on its informal settlements. Their main assumption is that the walls of informal settlements change from rigid to fuzzy ones, as they are analysed using finer scales. They analyse the changes in two models of urban structure: the segregated city model and the segmented city model. Describing changes in governmental interventions for informal settlements in Latin America, they emphasize the experience of Recife, Brazil. In order to show the gaps between the official cartographic representations and the reality of informal settlements, the last section of this chapter analyses in more depth the informal settlement called Brası´ lia Teimosa. The aim of chapter eight by Magdalena Zmudzinska-Nowak is to focus on place and its identity in view of global changes. In her arguments we are witnessing a rapid destruction of the existing urban forms, leading to fading legibility of the city structure, destroying the state of subtle balance between space and place and shaking the sense of identity of city inhabitants. The values of identity, legibility and a traditional network of meanings and symbols are fading away. The space of flows supplants the space of places,

Everyday Life in the Segmented City: An Introduction

xix

evoking essential changes in the functional structure of cities. Posing the question of how it is possible to preserve the tradition and identity of place under globalization conditions, she presents the case of the city of Gliwice in Poland. In the ninth chapter, Grete Swensen, Sveinung Krokann Berg and Johanne Sognnæs analyse the case of the multiethnic neighbourhood of Strømsø in Drammen in Norway, a town which has undergone major renewal processes during the last decade and has been presented as a successful example of urban development both nationally and internationally. In the chapter they look at what spaces and qualities are underlined as significant in this neighbourhood by the examined appropriators of public space, and how their views relate to the qualities stated in planning documents for the area. Florian J. Huber in chapter ten analyses the case of Karmeliterviertel in Vienna, which underwent a significant revitalization and renewal, examining the question of whether processes transforming this neighbourhood in the context of Vienna’s overall ‘Soft Urban Renewal’ strategy can be defined as ‘gentrification’. As gentrification results in homogeneity, the main challenge for a city is to maintain spaces of different milieus and thus to preserve authentic places, characterized by heterogeneity and urbanity. In the eleventh chapter, drawing on the data collected during an empirical survey regarding people’s perception of the Navigli area of Milan, Stefano Forbici and Davide Diamantini focus on people’s perception of an urban place and how this perception may interact with the symbolic dimension underlying both place identity and its consumption. Such a dimension is not strictly connected to the practical utility of the goods but to their ability to produce values and symbols for the establishment of personal identity. Jordi Nofre in chapter twelve analyses the case of Barcelona where youth policies carried out by local administration during the last three decades have intended to reinforce social sanitation through the re-catalanization of its suburbs and by marginalizing social and cultural practices of the young suburban working classes. Focusing on the Catalan capital, this chapter explores how a suburban otherness is mainly built up through the (re)production of highly politicized suburban nightscapes which are largely related to the claiming of a Spanished ‘suburban’ identity, clashing with the Catalan official one. In the thirteenth chapter, Mark Clapson tackles social change and social capital in a suburban council estate in Reading, South East England. In his opinion, the marginalization of council housing in Britain since the Housing Act of 1980 threatens to obscure some of the very valuable lessons to be learned from almost a century of mass public housing provision. This

xx

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE SEGMENTED CITY: AN INTRODUCTION

chapter demonstrates that despite considerable economic problems, and in the face of social change since 1980, a relatively poor council estate remained a site of social capital, and that women were particularly prominent in working with local agencies to solve problems. In the final chapter Chiara Durante looks at the increasing interest in the cohousing phenomenon in Italy within civil society, public institutions and academia, suggesting that a certain ‘ambiguity’ present in the common use of the term is playing, to a certain extent, a positive role, creating a common ground where different traditions, institutions and social practices can meet and approach each other.

REFERENCES Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buchli, V. (2000). An archeology of socialism. Oxford: Berg. Chase, J., Crawford, M., & Kaliski, J. (Eds). (1999). Everyday urbanism. New York: The Monacelli Press. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. London: Verso. Debord, G. (2000). The society of spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red. DeCerteau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Garreau, J. (1992). Edge city: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Anchor Books. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism. London: Routledge. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2011). Commonwealth, Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. (2001). Spaces of capital. Towards a critical geography. London, New York: Routledge. Lefebvre, H. (1991a). The production of space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (1991b). The critique of everyday life. London: Verso. Lefebvre, H. (2002). Critique of everyday life: Foundations for a sociology of the everyday. London: Verso. Lefebvre, H. (2008). Critique of everyday life: From modernity to modernism (towards a metaphilosophy of daily life). London: Verso. Marcuse, P. (2002). The layered city. In: P. Madsen & R. Plunz (Eds), The urban lifeworld: Formation, perception, representation. London, New York: Routledge. Ross, K. (1996). Fast cars, clean bodies: Decolonization and the reordering of French culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sandercock, L. (2003). Cosmopolis II. Mongrel cities of the 21st century. London, New York: Continuum. Trotzky, L. (1973). Problems of everyday life. New York: Pathfinder. Vane`igem, R. (1994). The revolution of everyday life. St. Louis, MO: Left Bank Books. Vercellone, C. (2005). The hypothesis of cognitive capitalism. London: Birkbeck College and SOAS.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Mauro Normando Maceˆdo Barros Filho

Unidade Acadeˆmica de Engenharia Civil, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Campina Grande, Brazil

Sveinung Krokann Berg

Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Oslo, Norway

Marco Castrignano`

Dipartimento di Sociologia Achille Ardigo`, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Mark Clapson

University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom

Davide Diamantini

Centro QUA_SI, University of Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy

Chiara Durante

Dipartimento di Urbanistica e Pianificazione del Territorio, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy

Julia Edthofer

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Stefano Forbici

Centro QUA_SI, University of Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy

Florian J. Huber

Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Rachel Kallus

Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

Gabriele Manella

Dipartimento di Sociologia Achille Ardigo`, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Circe Maria Gama Monteiro

Departamento de Arquitetura e Urbanismo/MDU, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil ix

x

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Jordi Nofre

Faculdade de Ciencias Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa – Cesnova, Lisboa, Portugal

Camilla Perrone

Dipartimento di Urbanistica e Pianificazione del Territorio, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy

Johanne Sognnæs

Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Oslo, Norway

Grete Swensen

Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Oslo, Norway

Lorenzo Tripodi

Tesserae Urban Social Research, Berlin, Germany

Micah Trippe

Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Magdalena Zmudzinska-Nowak

Faculty of Architecture, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

CHAPTER 1 WHAT WOULD A ‘DIVERCITY’ BE LIKE? SPECULATION ON DIFFERENCE-SENSITIVE PLANNING AND LIVING PRACTICES$ Camilla Perrone ABSTRACT The contemporary city is a field with a myriad of problems that require deep reflection and the questioning of habitual ways of thinking and acting. This chapter examines some of these, while seeking a path – or perhaps a way out – in order to deal with the difficulties linked to the most pressing emergent phenomena: the multiplication of new citizens, the complicated mosaic of differences, the spread of voluntary communities and the requests for recognition in a socially diverse and multiple society. $

The title of this chapter indirectly quotes the title of a seminal article by Dolores Hayden entitled ‘What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like?’ published in C. Stimpson et al. (1980) (Ed.). Women and the American city. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (and in many other places over time). By making this quotation, I want to pay homage to the author, but also to consciously evoke the many forms of diversity making up the city which, 30 years later, have now been recognised.

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 1–25 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011004

1

2

CAMILLA PERRONE

The reflections brought together in this chapter leave behind mundane literary routines, imprisoned in the cliche´s of the discourse on postmodernity, to single out a ‘field of practices’ that is enigmatic but at the same time constitutes and generates a new idea of urbanity. DiverCity (Perrone, 2010) is the literary and evocative figuration that recounts this set of practices. The figuration uses a ‘play on words’ between diversity and city, in which the two concepts are understood as entities with a oneto-one correspondence, an ontological interconnection. DiverCity is the outcome of a process to produce and exchange multiple, plural, interactive (built up during the action), expert and experiential knowledge. Keywords: Multicultural planning; practice turn; cities of differences

INTRODUCTION The contemporary city is a field with a myriad of problems that require deep reflection and the questioning of habitual ways of thinking and acting. This chapter examines some of these, while seeking a path – or perhaps a way out – in order to deal with the difficulties linked to the most pressing emergent phenomena: the multiplication of new citizens, the complicated mosaic of differences, the spread of voluntary communities and the requests for recognition in a socially diverse and multiple society. The reflections brought together in this chapter leave behind mundane literary routines, imprisoned in the cliche´s of the discourse on postmodernity, to single out an enigmatic ‘field of practices’ that is enigmatic but at the same time constitutes and generates a new idea of urbanity. DiverCity (Perrone, 2010) is the literary and evocative figuration that recounts this set of practices. The figuration uses a ‘play on words’ between diversity and city, in which these two concepts are understood as entities with a one-toone correspondence, an ontological interconnection. DiverCity is the outcome of a process to produce and exchange multiple, plural, interactive (built up during the action), expert and experiential knowledge. Before I continue, in these introductory notes it may be useful to dwell a little on the meaning given to the concept of diversity. I will also try to explain why DiverCity – the sum of the values and meanings of diversity and city – can be seen as the framework of the ‘new epoch of everyday life’ and why the

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

3

concepts, practices and issues dealt with in the essays gathered in this chapter seem to be situated in this same new domain. We can say that the word ‘diversity’ sums up a particular attention to the potentialities that difference holds for planning if the logic of contrast and defence connected to the identity/difference pairing (defending identity, fear of difference) are overcome. Diversity has become a constitutive and positive category of post-modern planning and, as Bhikhu Parekh (2000) claims, it is fundamental for recognising the interculturally constituted aspects of a local society. As such, it is closely connected to the discourse on the epistemology of multiplicity proposed by Leonie Sandercock (1998a, 1998b) as the cognitive method underpinning the planning of multicultural cities. Accordingly, we could also say that what makes up the main ingredients of the concept of diversity are precisely the modes of knowledge (meant as the exchange of knowledge) and the forms of interaction and transaction (Bentley & Dewey, 1946; Friedmann, 1973, 1987) between the communities and cultures correlated to these modes of knowledge. In this outline, diversity also alludes to differentiated forms of rationality, including experiential, intuitive and local knowledge, based on practices of dialogue, listening, observation, contemplation and the sharing of knowledge expressed in an iconographic way and in other symbolic, ritual and artistic manners (Bridge, 2005). A few words are not enough to get across the complexity of this concept, but they may perhaps help to build the framework to place the topics dealt with below. Therefore, to pick up where we left off, DiverCity is at the same time the bedrock of (transformative and proactive) ‘difference-sensitive’ planning and the (highly imaginative) frontier of the difficult route to deal with those enigmas (of multicultural planning) which – if recognised and valued – could open the doors to new planning potentialities. My line of reasoning is set out in four stages. In the first, I gather some short considerations from a planning viewpoint on the image of the segmented city, meant as one of the outcomes of post-modernity. These considerations are put forward as the antithesis to a new and emerging image of, again post-modern, urbanity. It is an urbanity expressed from a different perspective: that of DiverCity meant as the follow-up to the concept of the city of differences, the place for experimenting a new epistemology of multiplicity and praxis. The second topic tackled in the chapter starts from this latter concept and tries to explain how attention towards urban living practices and interaction (as a tool of knowledge and therefore of planning) has been reflected in a real and proper epistemological turn in planning (the practice turn).

4

CAMILLA PERRONE

Anticipating the multiplicity turn, it is the milestone in ‘difference-sensitive’ planning. The third stage tries to focus on some enigmatic aspects of multicultural (or ‘difference-sensitive’) planning and proposes them as the terrain to challenge practices. I make a sort of list – at times evocative, at times suggestive, at times normative – of the problems, resources, practices and possible projects which make up DiverCity’s domain of reference. The final part of the chapter is devoted to rebuilding the images and perspectives that literature has attributed to the post-modern city and multicultural planning, respectively. They all come together to outline a new scenario that has only just been discovered and is yet to be defined: that of DiverCity. It is fuelled by the hope that there can be a new imagination in the field of planning and that this can lead towards models of knowledge and action that are made richer, fairer and more effective by resources of creativity, and the people and (new) communities’ emotions and desires. I round off the chapter with some final notes which open up new roads of research. The reflections gathered in the chapter tread along the boundary between disciplines in the search for new tools for post-modern planning; I make comparisons with the literature and international practices while trying to suggest routes for action and to build new research questions. In sum, this chapter gives a portrait (one of many) of the contemporary city through images from the literature. It rebuilds figurations and visions of postmodernity and thus outlines the stages along the route to reconciliation between rational and interactive knowledge. Dilemmas and paradigms alternate in what appears as a virtuous game between different or opposing realities.

FROM SEGMENTED CITY TO DIVERCITY The post-modern city comprises an abundant set of interactions among individuals, groups, ages, genders, cultures, religions and rules for using places and things. It is a complex setting which hosts opposing and contradictory landscapes described by two dominating and negative images of post-modern urbanity. The first is that of a city in which fear of the other induces defence mechanisms and activates devices of social control and selective distribution of resources. The second, also negative, is that of a city that hosts conflicts on the use of the land and practices to expel diversity. The two together produce, in turn, the suffocated image of a post-modern urbanity whose pixels remain fragments that are put together according to

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

5

introverted and self-referential logics (Segmented City). At times they are leftover spaces, the outcome of defensive strategies (which in general correspond to pieces of the ‘poor people’ city); at times intentionally closed spaces, to defend against poverty, insecurity, the unknown (which in general correspond to pieces of the ‘rich people’ city);1 at times they are pieces of historical cities, isolated from the urban body to which they belong, in which consolidated and new citizenships seek an extremely laborious dialogue, to no avail. Then pieces of gated, secure cities are interspersed with pieces confined to the sidelines of the urban area and society: segments of rich and poor cities alternate; images of an urbanism are given to us by the literature in expressions such as private cities (Glasze, Webster, & Frantz, 2006) and gated communities (Akinson & Blandy, 2006). However, there is also another image of the post-modern city – an image that is often neglected. It is that of a potential (changing) city, which desires a different outlook, needs difference-sensitive planning and is able to recognise the potentialities and enzymes of a new post-modern urbanity – this time positive (Amin, 2002; Fainstein, 2000; Friedmann, 2002; Sandercock, 2003; Sennett, 1994;) – in everyday practices (de Certeau, 1990). This image is also a social construct produced by the mesh of unique, at times sacred and even erotic relations (in the sense in which Iris Marion Young defines the bodies’ relationships with the aesthetic appearance of the urban matter and its vibrant interactive rhythms) (1990). This image represents that very type of space that de Certeau defines as the domain of organisational practices (1990), in which the concept of everyday life can be exercised to generate new urbanity. Imagined in this way, the new dimension of the post-modern city takes on the characteristics of a ‘low’ space – once again to use the words of de Certeau – as opposed to the panoptic and distant high city, the city of pretence and visibility, which homogenises and cleans up the imperfections of daily life. It is constituted as a space perceived and built by bodies; as a real, dynamic, changing city, the domain of the everyday, of all those practices outside the geometric space of theoretical constructions. Above all this ‘other image of the post-modern city is expressed in practice, rather than through its concept (or its project). It is revealed through multiple and diverse dynamics that act and exist together, and is given substance by the cultural complications and power relations generated by the cultural and economic effects of globalisation. In the end, we can define it with its new name: DiverCity, a name that expresses a new, concrete and this time practicable horizon of Cosmopolis, the post-modern utopia devised by Leonie Sandercock (the forerunner of multicultural planning) (1998a).

6

CAMILLA PERRONE

DiverCity is a city of differences, full of opportunities and cognitive, interactive and planning potentialities. At the same time it is made of ‘thousands of plural bodies [y] in their diversity and wealth of genders, ages, lifestyles and consumer styles, sexual preferences, religions and spirituality, geographical and cultural origins, conditions of physical and mental health, levels of income and social position’ (Paba, 2010, pp. 11–12, own translation), and Others to Man: ‘gods, machines, animals, monsters, creepy crawlies, women, servants and slaves, and noncitizens in general’ (Haraway, 2008, p. 10).

LIVING PRACTICES AND INTERACTIONS The attention towards living practices as tools of sense-place building and diversity domain design causes us to ask ourselves about their very nature and the role that they play in building DiverCity. If we can uphold that DiverCity is made up of interactions, cognitive exchanges, human and non-human bodies, inter-acting and self-acting things, pro-activity and potentialities (and many more things besides), then we should perhaps imagine that the practices (through which each of the things listed above becomes a social action) are ontologically constitutive of DiverCity. Coming to our aid in this direction is the epistemological practice turn (Schatzki, Cetina, & von Savigny, 2001), which, following the debate around other significant turns in post-positivist epistemology,2 opens new perspectives on the topic of city making through practice, or the city as a practice. In this case, it is the city of differences and the impetus needed to understand that it comes from another gnoseological approach: the epistemology of multiplicity (Holston, 1998; Sandercock, 1998a). This epistemology is rooted in the recognition of differences and settled factors in the domain of a particular type of practice, which Holston and Sandercock, respectively, define as ‘spaces of insurgent citizenship’ (pp. 37–56) and ‘insurgent planning practices’ (pp. 129–159) (minute practices, self-promoted by the inhabitants and new citizenships in the interstices of power). Therefore, at this point it can be deemed consolidated that practices (in the city of differences) play a primary role in cognitive processes. However, we must also ask ourselves how these practices can be recognized, dealt with, enhanced, investigated and also oriented in the best way. In this sense, the planning perspective seems to be the most suited, above all if we take into account a certain approach that tends to consider planning as a field of practices in which the protagonists of the planning action (all the inhabitants

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

7

of DiverCity) assume a new responsibility in recognising the city as a common asset, a plural dimension of action (Crosta, 1998). In this perspective, planning incorporates differences as resources of the relation between community and places. It sums up an interactive dimension and separates forms of communicative, transactional and proactive rationality which interpret the urban traces of diversity: customs that interweave and overlap in the same place; deferred forms of belonging; the new citizenships’ trajectories; the multiple and non-situated incidence of bodies that cross territories and draw plural geographies there. Planning practices are, therefore, also practices of difference and can become landscapes of multiplicity as well as accumulations of social capital. They are not the result of the play of individual actors, but the outcome of multiple interactions that can transform living spaces into common assets. The gradient of diversity incorporated into each of them merely corresponds to the enigmatic, uncertain and changing dimension of DiverCity. This awareness is perhaps the most important passage towards defining a difference-sensitive (democratic, multicultural, ‘just’) and radical planning approach.

MULTICULTURAL PLANNING ENIGMAS AS DIVERCITY DOMAINS Of course there is much ‘wicked terrain’ where one might get caught in multicultural planning, without recognising that routines can be overturned or a creative solution tried out. And perhaps it would not be a real help to list them all and build a catalogue of warnings or hypothetical solutions in order to make up for the level of uncertainty in contemporary planning. Nevertheless, we can still make an attempt, and it is useful to do so. And it is precisely by following up this intention that below I propose and describe at least some of this ‘enigmatic terrain (DiverCity domains), which while on one hand may frighten and contain the field of action of planning, on the other may instead offer opportunities for planning practices in multicultural cities. Handling Multiple Knowledges The first enigma of multicultural planning concerns the question of the intrinsic plurality of knowledge: knowledge cannot only be the domain of experts, whether they be scientists or planners;3 on the contrary, it belongs

8

CAMILLA PERRONE

to the array of actors and settings that characterise post-modernity. ‘Handling multiple knowledges’ (Rydin, 2007, p. 55) is the first watchword that should be incorporated in planning for multicultural cities in the awareness that knowledge can assume a range of forms that are almost always coexistent – at times exercised according to contradictory energies – and never overruling. Therefore, planning can be at the same time local and non-local, experimental and contextual, scientific, objective and generalised. Above all (it should be) interactive, if with Rydin (and her new planning orthodoxy – 2007), we accept the idea that interactive and cognitive devices are put into play at the heart of planning, between planners and stakeholders, oriented towards building consensus.4 Many scholars agree that the main task of planning that is sensitive to (multicultural) differences should be to bear comparison with the multiple dimension of knowledge and, in this sense, Leonie Sandercock’s theory of the epistemology of multiplicity (1998) offers convincing answers. However, the enigmatic point concerns the ways in which the different forms of knowledge can be involved and connected to each other in order to produce an effective change in the decision-making process. The answer in the literature suggests placing trust in the decision-making and collaborative approaches that are based on exploring the local communities’ values and the relations of trust between the parties. Nevertheless, there are some good arguments for calling this orientation into question, which therefore anticipate new dilemmas in planning practices. The fundamental issue that Rydin underlines (right after the lines of argument in favour of decision-making approaches) concerns the difference between involving many voices and involving multiple knowledges. Following the author’s reasoning at least, there is a substantive difference between the two different operations; while the collaborative approach allows the first type of comparison to be made, it does not guarantee that the second will be too. ‘Handling multiple knowledge’ implies a more complex process than making a comparison between different actors in contexts oriented towards mutual learning, for the simple reason that shared knowledge is often rooted in very different life experiences. What is more, these different experiences cannot be communicated completely through a consensus-building process or by reaching an agreement.5 The ‘knowledge claims’, as Rydin defines them (2007, p. 56), should become a constitutive element of (multicultural) planning and be singled out and differentiated from the other kinds of requests or needs that the actors express. The planning activity’s specific task would therefore consist of – again according to Rydin’s (convincing) proposal – dealing with two constitutive

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

9

operations: ‘opening-up’, namely giving a voice to the different requests at the beginning of a communicative planning process, and ‘closing-down’ (Rydin, 2007, p. 58), namely recognising the ‘knowledge claims’ in the phase in which the action plan is carried out. While there are numerous theoretical lines of argument on the first operation, including argumentative and radical approaches, many issues regarding the second remain open, which are not defined well even by the author. Indeed, in an attempt to work on the concept of testing the knowledges, the author builds a complex definition of cognitive categories (empirical, processual, prophetic and prescriptive: Rydin, 2007, pp. 63–66), which are definitely interesting but could still perhaps be considered very enigmatic. A response in this direction comes from the epistemological model proposed by Hardin based on ordinary people’s knowledge. The author likes to define this model as ‘street-level epistemology’ (Hardin, 2003, p. 214), and opposes this knowledge to that of the ‘super-knower’ in search of the scientific truth. Hardin starts from the assumption that most of ordinary people’s knowledge is not structured in a decoded manner and is rarely compatible with the traditional epistemological criteria. In fact, street-level epistemology concerns the subjective and personal dimension of knowledge and refers to the usefulness rather than the justification of a truth. When traced back to this new picture, the concept of ‘knowledge claims’ proposed by Rydin acquires greater relevancy and becomes really crucial if referred to the pragmatic dimension of epistemology and above all to its sphere of existence, that is, a social context greatly conditioned by differences.

Useable Creativity The second enigma of multicultural planning refers to creativity as a guide to change (Albrechts, 2005). Although on one hand it seems evident that planning needs creativity in order to deal with and imagine the future, on the other it is still difficult to understand how creativity can actually be used in multicultural planning. If we continue to consider planning a purely regulatory undertaking or a problem-solving practice, it is very probable that we will risk neglecting its creative potentialities which are instead the prerequisite for every planning practice wishing to be defined as transformative. On the other hand, in absence of a specific meaning of creativity, it seems to be risky to anchor the planning process to its hypothetical creative qualities. This is why Albrechts attempts to grasp the essence of the concept of creativity while suggesting its specific definition for planning. He considers

10

CAMILLA PERRONE

creativity a prevalently social process that stimulates the ability to see problems, situations and changes in a different way and invents and develops futures imagined as the response to these problems. He asks himself about the relationship between planning and creativity; about the forms of reciprocal usefulness; about which culture of governance can motivate creativity’s entry into planning; about what the planners’ skills and attitudes should be; and about the techniques for prompting structural changes and determining desirable futures. The kind of creativity that Albrechts proposes refuses to accept that the current way of doing things is necessarily the best, and it frees itself from the concepts, structures and ideas that are nothing but a process of continuity. In fact, it is precisely the concept of discontinuity that guarantees that the barriers of ‘reasonableness’ will be broken down to leave room for the rule of a creativity that can imagine the future as something radically and structurally different from the present reality or from its continuation, something that transcends feasibility and derives from ‘desirability’. This inclination towards creativity, in Albrechts’ notion fuelled through the ‘collective action of scenario building’ (Albrechts, 2005, pp. 260–261),6 fundamentally requires a new ‘mind-set’ (Albrechts, 2005, p. 262) inspired by the desire to explore new concepts and new alternatives meant as different, multiple futures rather than variations on the same theme. All of this is based on three fundamental preconditions: that planning is not an abstract and analytical concept, but a concrete practice, an inseparable part of the social reality; that a long-term perspective and short-term actions come together to form a virtuous combination; and that the institutions and technicians consolidate their trust in the creativity of the new citizenships and in the practice of hybrid formulas of democracy.

Spirituality in Planning The third enigma of multicultural planning, or, as defined by Leonie Sandercock (2006), ‘The Paradox at the Heart of Planning’, is spirituality. It is the quality that should be given priority in any form of planning that aspires to deal with diversity. The practitioners’ spiritual qualities should have some main characteristics: extraordinary openness and the willingness to take part in millions of conversations; the ability to be fully present in each of them; a mental sensitivity that relies on the emotions and opposes the bureaucratic professional attitude of listening; the perception of interdependence on each

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

11

other and perception of the importance of relationships and compassion; a genuine sense of magic and sacredness and the awareness that in order to enhance the best qualities in each one of us we need to use celebratory forms – rituals and arts – namely the set of tools that distinguishes the various forms of ‘artistry of mind’. Therefore, one could almost deduce that spirituality in planning is akin to a way of being in the world: fully involved and aware of the things around us. Fundamentally, it configures the way in which we interact with each other in a relationship- and connection-building process and sums up a balanced and holistic approach to knowledge and perception of the world. In Anhorn’s view (2006), spirituality in planning practice concerns two dominating spheres: ‘self-nourishment’ and building connections. The first alludes to three fundamental qualities, which are self-awareness, the ability to get fully involved and intuition. Instead, the second refers to mutuality, rituals, listening, mythology and stories, to the ability to build relationships and bridge differences, to the possibility to express oneself in a comfortable and welcoming space and the ability to work with potential, or rather with what is not yet here and is a horizon towards which to mobilise one’s own spiritual qualities. Within such a broad and to some extent utopian perimeter, the enigmatic and inescapable nature of spirituality as a planning quality seems to be indisputable. So how it can be included in planning practices remains the exclusive domain of a particular style (of planning) meant as communicative action that enables exchange among ‘a thousand tiny learnings’. Therefore, while on one hand any recipe about the meaning of spirituality or the ways of putting it into practice would rid it of its dilemmatic nature, on the other it would annul its generative ability. More than anything spirituality is a challenge for those planners who act in the context of differences: simply being aware of its necessity is a first and irreplaceable learning for planning.

Design that Enables Diversity The last enigma in multicultural planning (at least among those selected in this chapter) concerns the design dimension of DiverCity. To date, speaking of difference has meant dealing with a series of complex problems in the urban discourse. These have touched on policy theory, the social sciences, and many other fields of knowledge, in the search for those cognitive energies needed for the setting of difference: planning stories and voices, models, forms of citizenship, images of a mongrel city, insurgent

12

CAMILLA PERRONE

practices, the multicultural perspective, the epistemology of multiplicity and many more things. And in all these fields, no real response has ever really been given in difference-sensitive planning practice except in terms of orientations, facts, testimonies, cultural approaches, dilemmas, appeals to change the system of values (such as Watson’s appeal for a pluralistic understanding of society – 2006) and appeals to reformulate the paradigms of planning (such as Burayidi’s proactive multicultural planning-2003). Within the literature on the relationship between urban planning and cultural diversity (Burayidi, 2000; Fenster, 2004; Forester, 2009; Jacobs & Fincher, 1998; Low, Taplin, & Scheld, 2005; Paba, 2010; Parekh, 2000; Pestieau & Wallace 2003; Qadeer, 1997; Sandercock, 1998a, 1998b, 2003), it is really hard to trace actual suggestions as to how to transfer the theoretical issue arising from difference to concrete planning practices. Nor does a glance at urban design theories give any more satisfaction, however small. In the same way as planners, urban designers (the new urbanists, the supporters of smart growth, sustainability theorists) consider diversity a planning goal and sometimes even the only way of counterbalancing the tendency towards segregation. Others dwell rhetorically on the words ‘diversity’ and ‘mixed-use’ (these days, as Talen upholds, as overworked and over-investigated because their effective complexity is neglected – 2006a), while adopting them as the guidelines for their projects. Nevertheless, their responses, albeit apparently more concrete than the responses given by planning and hooked up to recognisable ‘urban individuals’, continue to be shaky, limited to small segments of the problem and fundamentally not suitable for the complexity of the challenge. An interesting (although enigmatic) approach instead seems to be the slant focussed on by Emily Talen. The author upholds that it is the planners, designers and urbanists’ task to create the conditions in order for difference to be able to express itself in its multiple forms. Design that enables diversity is the expression that sums up this approach and is also the title of one of the most effective articles written on these topics (Talen, 2006a). It is no coincidence that Talen comes to this conclusion after analysing a selection of case studies (urban districts) in which the causation (dictated by the social sciences and mixed-land use theories) between the form of district, social organisation and location of the diversity is systematically contradicted by the reality or instead only occasionally and randomly confirmed (Talen, 2006b). From her study, the author derives a fundamental indication (and also a definition of the limits of urban design’s efficacy): it is not possible to design places that create diversity because this would imply retroactive knowledge (and therefore limitation) of the forms of diversity to

13

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

be designed for; instead it is necessary to design places that permit the expression of multiple and often unforeseeable forms of diversity, and thereby create the conditions for the development of endless potentialities (including cognitive potentialities). Design that enables diversity is a design that does not offer models but relationships, which does not impose rules but suggests the multiplication of practices by exposing itself to the creativity of difference; which does not respond to the rules of a formal code, but to the standards of a social statute written through individual and collective practices of cooperation. In this framework, DiverCity therefore becomes the outcome of planning practices inspired by the idea of building hospitable, flexible places that are adaptable to the different requirements, and that, above all, guarantee the reproducibility of what we could consider the most important urban resource: diversity.

DIFFERENCE-SENSITIVE PLANNING: IMAGES AND PERSPECTIVES Images The literature has suggested many images of post-modern urbanity to the collective imagination. And it is precisely some of these that, to different degrees of emphasis, contribute to underlining some of the aspects constituting DiverCity. It is interesting to try to list them, however briefly, in order to understand the breadth of the cues that this terrain of action/ research gives to the route towards a new planning imagination. A new, highly imaginative dimension of planning sees multiculturalism, the concept of social justice and multiple publics as its constitutive elements (Sandercock, 1998a, 2003a). A planning in which forms of rationality, comprehensiveness and scientific objectivity are replaced by forms of experimental, intuitive and local knowledge, based on the practice of listening and dialogue, and expressed through symbolic, ritual and visual methods. What the theory proposes are fundamentally ‘images’ of a creative sensitivity in planning. Images built in the sphere of the imagination where many things can become real, beyond our everyday experience, where the ability to imagine a radically different future from the known order of things breaks the barriers of convention: in other words, the sphere of utopia.

14

CAMILLA PERRONE

Utopian thought in planning has a tradition that starts from far off. However, some of its most interesting exponents are contemporary authors. If we are to start, as we indeed should, from Owen and Fourier, Proudhon and Morris, Kropotkin, Howard (and many more), and, for some aspects at least, Mumford and Wright, it is possible to arrive, as John Friedmann (2002) also upholds for example, at two other generations of utopian thinkers: the generation of Jacobs, Lynch, Schumacher, Illich and Bookchin and the most recent generation represented by Dolores Hayden and Leonie Sandercock. What makes the utopia of these authors attractive resides above all in its constructive rather than in its critical dimension. One could say that the first has absolute prevalence over the second, in the intent to design a ‘realisable utopia’ outside the consolidated limits of planning and alternatively to the indeterminacy of the future. The attempt to interpret the world and give it some ‘useable’ images has often moved on the boundary between utopia and planning. In the era of post-modernity, this attempt also has to face up to the new challenge of multiplicity. And in the effort to seize upon this challenge, portraits and visions have been produced that head towards revealing the trends, depth and development of this multiplicity. Some of these – prevalently those drawn up by the more audacious expounders of post-modern thought – have become stimuli for trying out a new planning practice, while others have worked as a bridge between one theoretical approach and another, and others still have simply remained as exercises of visioning on the future. In the text entitled Towards Cosmopolis. Planning for Multicultural Cities, Cosmopolis is the image of post-modernity through which Leonie Sandercock (1998a) describes her utopia for the new millennium. As the author herself defines it, Cosmopolis is a place of building the mind. Here planning language is extended to define the outlines of an emerging (insurgent) paradigm, and room is found for a creative multiplicity of topics and horizons: social justice, politics of difference, multiple and insurgent citizenships, heterogeneous publics (such as realising a form of plural civic culture – Young, 1990), and finally also multiple community ideals (meant as resistance communities based on the rejection of homogeneity and the search for a coalition policy – Hooks, 1990). Mongrel City is the metaphor that the same author of Cosmopolis (Sandercock, 2003b) uses to define and symbolise a new urban condition, in which difference, alterity, fragmentation, splintering, multiplicity, heterogeneity, diversity and plurality prevail over other images. It is akin to the sphere of action of multiculturalism policies. In the text entitled Mongrel Cities in the 21st Century, the author reflects on the elements making up her

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

15

multicultural project for the twenty-first century. She sums them under two different, complementary aspects: thought inspired by the dialectical category of identity/difference and a multicultural perspective as the device for dealing with the constitutive ‘culturality’ of human beings. And she dwells on this latter aspect in particular, owing to the heightened multiculturality of society and the consequent emergence of the topic of multiculturalism. In substance, she presents the ‘multicultural perspective’ as an attempt to interpret post-modernity. It inspires her thought towards a proactive approach to the dialectical pairing of identity/difference.7 ‘Togetherness in difference’ is the image used by Richard Sennett (1994) to express his desire (while jumping onto the back of a trend that was already underway) for a civic culture based on intercultural interaction in addition to the tolerant indifference of an apparent togetherness. Togetherness in difference puts across the image of post-modernity in which the dominant effect produced by the intercultural encounter between different systems is to expand the intellectual and moral horizons of each culture (which on their own could only interpret a limited range of human capacities and emotions). ‘Politics of local liveability’ is the expression used by Amin to propose an image of intercultural togetherness, enriched by his emphasis on local negotiations of difference, managed in the ‘city’s micro-publics of banal multicultures’ (Amin, 2002, p.13). He starts from the assumption that immigration phenomena and the manifestation of ethnicity are what make up globalisation and are what, at present, are reshaping the spaces of social relations in many ways. The image of peaceful togetherness has to take note of this phenomenon and encourage social, multicultural and multi-ethnic mixing, beyond the limits of globalised localities (communities without community) (Amin, 2002, p. 16), and extend the language of policies to alternative modes that include culturally diversified systems of meaning. ‘The Good City’8 is the image of utopia recounted by John Friedmann (2002) in his text entitled The Prospect of Cities. In the book the author shifts from the concept of citizenship to the concept of a multiplicity of citizenships, from the expansion of spaces of democracy to insurgent practices, from analysing the effects of places and power relations to the fights against what he defines – borrowing the words from Held (1995) – as ‘nautonomy’ (the opposite of autonomy). The Good City is the citizens’ city, and it is up to the citizens to decide among themselves how a common good can be pursued, and through which process, so long as it is open and not imposed or declared while ignoring the voices of dissent. The central point of Friedmann’s line of argument (and

16

CAMILLA PERRONE

The Good City) concerns the citizens’ political and natural relationship with their city in a context of a political practice that contributes to the realisation of each citizen and their fundamental right to human flourishing. Among the many images that are useful in understanding the concept of plurality running through positivist epistemology, some more than others contain what we could define as the radical power of a vision, or its capacity to anticipate transformative actions. ‘The Just City’ is one of these. With this image, its inventor, Susan Fainstein (2000, 2010), proposes a radical vision of interaction (also meant as managing conflict in order to claim rights) as the element constituting the city of differences, in the awareness that progressive social change derives from power exercised by those who have been deprived of it. The Just City theory is based on the concept of extending participation to ‘disempowered groups’, and on the concept of equity between differences of gender, race and sexual inclination. The persuasive dimension of The Just City rests on an idea of an enterprising state that not only sponsors welfare practices but prevalently creates the conditions for the production of wealth. It is a state that sponsors a project for the future which promotes the empowerment of the poor and the cheated through the involvement of the middle classes. These ideas are particularly fertile if referred to contemporary societies which are defined by the contribution of cultures and peoples in search of their own dimension of life, survival strategies and forms of selfdetermination. The Just City therefore interprets a new stage in planning. Alongside the principles of equity and well-being, it incorporates diversity and participation as tools to improve the quality of life in the context of a global and capitalist economic policy.

Perspectives If there is such a wealth of highly imaginative suggestions in the literature, this should ring some alarm bells: new perspectives are needed that are sensitive to the language of everyday life. Besides, one of the aspects constituting the epistemology of multiplicity concerns the nature of the cultural perspectives that underlie professional practice and orient theoretical research. They correspond to the capacity to take plural views, while making conceptual reformulations and trying out contextual strategies. Planning stories give us at least three of these views, which seem to effectively interpret the need for a speculative turn with respect to the cognitive trajectories of modernity: the multicultural perspective (Parekh,

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

17

2000; Sandercock, 2003a); the transactional perspective (Bridge, 2005); and the gender perspective (Fainstein & Servon, 2005). How to use them in a complementary and effective manner is perhaps another big enigma. However, they are unavoidable ‘tools’ to build DiverCity. The multicultural perspective drawn up by Parekh and Sandercock works on the ways in which to structure a political life in accordance with the reality and desirability of cultural diversity. Hence, it works on a defined sense of belonging, not on the basis of shared ethnic or cultural characteristics, but in relation to a political goal agreed by the community. It is proposed as an attempt to interpret post-modernity – a sort of inspired thought oriented towards a proactive approach towards the dialectical identity/difference pairing. The proposal by Parekh (2000),9 the ‘inventor’ of this speculative device, interprets multiculturalism as a cultural and political opportunity, as well as a progressive necessity and fact of post-modern society called to the attention of policies and planning. As appears evident, the question revolves around the political bearing and public/collective recognition that societies choose to give to cultural diversity and the deriving social practices, both in terms of rights and in terms of participatory potentialities. In his investigation of the concept of multiculturalism and consideration of its social implications on community practices, Bhikhu Parekh (2000) outlines a scenario in which two parallel processes encounter and fuel each other: the multiculturalisation of existing traditions and the emergence of a tradition or a multiculturally constituted culture. In a multicultural society, cultures continually come into comparison with each other, both formally and informally, both in the public and the private domains. Guided by curiosity, comprehension and even incomprehension, they enrich and transform each other. Even when their interaction is limited, sensitivity towards other traditions becomes awareness of their single specific aspects. Over time these cultures tend to make up a composite culture, in which their structural characteristics are all separately redefined. Like all cultures, the culture created from intercultural exchange (interculturally created) and constituted by a multiplicity of cultural contributions (multiculturally constituted) develops in an unpredictable manner. It is defined by broad and not universally shared contents; it is the product of the intercultural dialogue needed for the survival of any culture; it has an enormous potential. The interpretation suggested by Parekh lays down the bases for defining the outlines of a multicultural governance that is as absent as it is necessary

18

CAMILLA PERRONE

for planning practices and policies. In this sense, the assumption of a multicultural perspective is the turn needed in order to pursue a model of multicultural ‘good governance’. It is a turn that inevitably has to be supported by three issues: the premise according to which human beings live in a culturally structured world; the awareness that it is impossible to lead a culturally self-contained life in contemporary social contexts; and the assertion of the plurality intrinsic to every culture, even primitive ones. A second reference to the necessity to adopt differentiated perspectives on the multiple urban manifestations comes from the transactional rationality theory drawn up by Gary Bridge (2005). If post-modernity puts aside rationality and its limits, at least those that are perceived and decoded, to leave room for the manifestations of an apparent ‘irrationality’, thought beyond the post-modern will seek a new dimension of rationality that enables the manifestation of differences and is able to establish a proactive dialogue with them. The very idea of reason, ‘attacked’ on many fronts and in particular called into question by the turn of difference and its manifestations in the domains of the body, language, culture and the unconscious, regains central importance in the dimensions of the relationship between city and difference, going beyond the threat of the exclusivity (on one hand) and homogenisation (on the other) exercised by positivist rationality. The chapter by Bridge slots into the reflections on the limits of a certain conception of post-modernity that interprets the city as an endless place that cannot be mapped, a post-human environment and an assembly of emerging elements. Contrary to those who propose urban orders based on stability and identity; capital, power and surveillance logics; and rational planning to deal with these effects, Bridge outlines a conception of urban space (urban space after the post-modern) which reflects the distribution of difference and the consequent pluralisation of power. To do so, he leans on philosophical pragmatism and its recent developments centred on two themes of postmodern thought: (1) recognising differences and (2) the meanings of communication and discourse after the communicative turn in philosophy. He shows how, by reading pragmatism in a certain way, it is possible to derive an interpretation of rationality that can live with difference and is related to the nature of the urban space that hosts it. It is a rationality that overcomes the dichotomy between communicative and instrumental, abstract and lived (Lefebvre), strategic and tactical (de Certeau), disciplinary space and heterotopy (Foucault), system and lifeworld (Habermas), the public and private domains and space of flows and everyday life (Castells). Instead, of all these entities, this rationality interprets the relations and situational

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

19

interactions in a both discursive and non-discursive space of communication. Therefore, beyond irrationality’s post-modern stigma, Bridge builds and legitimises a performative rationality whose primary essence is expressed by its capacity to connect and interpret the diversity between the times and spaces of communication and action, in other words, a transactional rationality. The third perspective seen as a distinctive feature in an epistemology of multiplicity is the gender perspective (Fainstein & Servon, 2005). It is marked both by the contribution given by the voices of Judith Butler, Mary Parker Follet and Jane Addams, and by the texts of an immense amount of critical literature, which it appears dutiful to recall.10 It intervenes creatively in the disciplinary gaps and thus influences the practical approaches and theoretical reflections of many contemporary scholars. This perspective brings about many scientific enigmas and brings some of the most important claims of post-modernity to planning. Indeed, it explicitly contaminates the relations between knowledge and planning and invades the disciplines of spatial planning, urbanism and some of the topics explored more widely in the sector literature (public space, housing, economic development, transport, etc.). The gender perspective (plus, to an equal extent, the multicultural and transactional perspectives) belongs to the set of attempts to renew the image and usefulness of planning in dialogue with the progressive and post-modern claims. In substance, there are two stages along the way to crediting the gender approach in planning: (1) defining the gender perspective and its epistemological potentialities in relation to gender diversity (in addition to the exclusively female dimension) and (2) incorporating the new gender epistemology into planning theory (Jacobs & Fincher, 1998; Sandercock, 1998a, 1998b; Wekerle, 1999; Young, 1990). The first aspect is oriented towards recognising the multiple dimension of gender and both the intrinsic and the socially constructed transactional diversity of the genders. Attention to gender also comes to include manifestations of a trans-gender and in-gender kind. It is no longer a matter of paying attention to selective gazes: the gazes of women, minorities, blacks, immigrants and so on, but also, and above all, to the gazes that include all these contemporary and multiple dimensions of experience. It is a sort of ‘transactional gendering’ as the dimension constituting ‘transactional bodying’. The second aspect instead concerns the role of the new epistemic authority of gender and its possible declensions for planning. Many essays that can be ascribed to this second aspect reason around the active and radical role of the epistemic trajectories of gender, while highlighting the necessity to expand the epistemologies at the basis of practices and

20

CAMILLA PERRONE

reassessing the local knowledge and gender experience. Among the ‘loudest’ voices I must mention those of: Leonie Sandercock (1998a) with her alternative story of planning and epistemological recognition of insurgent practices; Tovi Fenster (2004) with her specific attention towards gender spaces and the constitutive role of cognitive gender practices; Iris Marion Young (1990) with her reflections on distributive justice and the politics of difference; Jane Jacobs (Jacobs & Fincher, 1998) with her explorations of the transformative dimension of difference applied to the life practices of women, foreigners and children; Gerda Wekerle (1999) with her reflections on the relationship between gender planning, local knowledge and insurgent citizenship practices; and Susan Fainstein and Lisa Servon (2005) with their gendered survey on gender, oriented towards finding new domains and directions in planning theory by rereading the relationship between feminist philosophies and planning practices.

FINAL REMARKS Although the road followed thus far has been long and perhaps also boring, there is no actual reward for the reader. The impression is that the initial question of ‘what would a DiverCity be like?’ has remained substantially unanswered. In part this is true of course, in part it is not. On one hand, DiverCity is the terrain that still needs exploring: this is the assumption that accompanies the reason for this chapter’s existence, and just a few paragraphs are by no means enough to describe such a complex ‘subject’. On the other hand, DiverCity can be the positive frontier for everyday living practices: it is the bedrock of planning in multicultural cities and therefore in some way a recognised and desired scenario, at least in the practices and generous literature that belong to this domain. Through this long line of reasoning, what I have tried to do is to fill in the gap between these two extreme points, while trying to dwell on the methodological sticking points, epistemological leaps, perspectives and visions that in more than half a century have built the foundations of DiverCity, brick after brick. It will be those same living practices, practices of place appropriation, participation and claims that will complete this collective work of art. However, in the future it would be important to try to reflect on one question, starting from a fundamental characteristic of DiverCity, namely

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

21

the fact that it is the visualisation of an idea (a scenario) designed by and implemented through interactive proactivity. While it may be true that the social dimension of everyday life is perhaps the constitutive element of DiverCity, it is also true that, as with every project, the DiverCity project needs its tools of expression and representation. While remaining anchored to a sociological perspective, according to which plans, policies and designs have no meaning unless they are used by people and integrated into their frames of life, it nevertheless becomes strategic to try to reflect on the power of visualisation that designs and maps can exercise in building DiverCity. In a recent paper, Terry van Dijk (2011) dwells precisely on analysing the power of designs as catalysts of interest, agents of transformation and storytellers. By reusing the storytelling method introduced to planning by Throgmorton (2005), Dijk tries to build a bridge between planning and design while acknowledging the capacity of designs to contain, recount and themselves be stories and therefore also be builders or expounders (before planning and before decision-making) of social planning. In fact designs (again in Dijk’s idea) visualise possible futures without saying which one should be chosen. They help communities to define the spatial reality in which they live and to become aware of places. Above all they mobilise the emotions, which are also what guide people in building a future scenario, rather than a rational and objective resolution. Dijk says, ‘my first contribution to existing rhetorical planning thought is the idea that design deserves to be understood as a particularly powerful form of storytelling because it is central to devising and sharing credible and appealing stories about regional futures’ (Dijk, 2011, p. 126). But the most important thing of all, he concludes while underlining the importance of interactive design construction of a tool for pre-visualising and building the future: ‘Rather than merely serving a formal procedure that produces decisions, they may be a form of social learning that induces chains of anticipative action. After people have seen these designs, they can no longer see the region as they did before. Making and sharing plans is a sense-making process through which expectations and anticipatory behaviour are created’ (Dijk, 2011, p. 141). DiverCity therefore needs its interactive designs in order to come into being. They could perhaps be precisely the ‘design that enables diversity’ that is as desired by Emily Talen as it is still invisible. All this takes my reasoning towards other fields of work (community mapping theory and practice) which, albeit very popular and containing a wealth of experiences and methods, are nevertheless still not ready to effectively support the challenges opened up by diversity.

22

CAMILLA PERRONE

NOTES 1. I use the expressions ‘poor people city’ (the city of the disempowered, the excluded) and ‘rich people city’ in a purely evocative and not a scientific manner. 2. The response of planning to the concrete, multiple and interactive dimension of ‘making the city’ is condensed into what the literature [in some of its seminal authors such as Friedmann (1987), Holston (1998), Forester (1989), Healey (1997), Scho¨n (1983, 1990); Fischer & Forester (1993), Sandercock (1998b)] defines as epistemological turns, differentiating them using different names according to the period, planning approach or emphasis given to one cognitive attitude rather than another: the argumentative turn, reflective turn and communicative turn. An addition to this path of reflection on the epistemology of planning is the essay on the practice turn written by Schatzki et al. in 2001. 3. In the context of policies, we can find some restricted networks (bounded networks as well as epistemic communities and communities of practice) which operate with the intent of building knowledge through processes that involve scientific experts and practitioners (Haas, 2001; Wenger, 1998; Rydin, 2007). 4. In her article, Rydin sums up the three main forms theorised for building consensus: negotiation and mediation among interests (Innes, 2004); communication among stakeholders (collaborative planning) (Healey, 1997); and empowerment of the weakest subjects (radical planning), which does not necessarily mean consensus at all costs (Sandercock, 1998a, 1998b). 5. In this connection, Innes underlines how consensus-building does not necessarily have to result from the ‘strength of the best argument’, but from a process of collective storytelling (Innes, 2004). 6. Scenario building is one of the innovative techniques that Albrechts proposes to guarantee a new domain of creativity in planning. He interprets the scenario as a narrative description of a possible state of development. He identifies two types: ‘the exploratory scenario’ that leads to a desired future starting from past and present trends and ‘the normative scenario’ that builds the bases for a desired future (Albrechts, 2005, pp. 255–256). He considers the scenario-building technique particularly suited both to representing images that set out the hopes and shared desires for a place and to stimulating networks between sectors, organisations and groups that can collaborate in building a common future. 7. See next paragraph. 8. ‘The Good City’ is, in turn, defined by other images: ‘the Good City 1: Theoretical Consideration’; ‘the Good City 2: Human Flourishing as a Fundamental Human Right’; ‘the Good City 3: Multiply/city as a Primary Good’, ‘the Good City 4: Good Governance’ (Friedmann, 2002, pp. 103–118). 9. The concept of the multicultural perspective was subsequently taken up again by Sandercock (2003) and divided into 10 points. Here are the most important ones, in the author of this chapter’s opinion at least: ‘My multicultural perspective for the 21st century is composed of the following premises: – The culture embeddedness of humans is inescapable. We grow up in a culturally structured world, are deeply shaped by it, and necessarily view the world from within a specific culture [y].

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

23

– ‘Culture’ cannot be understood as static, eternally given, essentialist. It is always evolving, dynamic and hybrid of necessity [y]. – Cultural diversity as a positive and intercultural dialogue is a necessary element of culturally diverse society. No culture is perfect or can be perfected, but all cultures have something to learn from and contribute to others [y]. – At the core of multiculturalism as a daily political practice are two rights: the right to difference and the right to the city [y]. – A sense of belonging to a multicultural society cannot be based on race, religion or ethnicity but needs to be based on a shared commitment to political community. Such a commitment requires an empowered citizenry [y] (Sandercock, 2003, pp. 103–103). 10. Of the immense amount of literature on the topic, I consider it useful to quote some texts that are particularly ‘compromising’ for the study of a new epistemology of planning: Bridge (2005), Butler (1990, 1993, 1997), Duden (1994), Fraser (1992), Follet (1965), Golderger, Tarule, Clinchy, and Belenky (1986, 1996); Nussbaum (2000, 2001), and many more.

REFERENCES Akinson, R., & Blandy, S. (2006). Gated communities. London: Routledge. Albrechts, A. (2005). Creativity as a drive for change. Planning Theory, 4(3), 247–269. Amin, A. (2002). Ethnicity and the multicultural city. Living with diversity. Report for the department of transport, local government and the regions. Durham: University of Durham. Anhorn, M. H. (2006). Spirituality and planning in a diverse world. Planning Theory & Practice, 1(7), 65–97. Bentley, F., & Dewey, J. (1946). Knowing and the known. Boston: The Beacon Press. Bridge, G. (2005). Reason in the city of difference. Pragmatism, communicative action and contemporary urbanism. London: Routledge. Burayidi, M. A. (2000). Urban planning in a multicultural society. Westport, CT: Praeger. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York, NY: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter. London: Routledge. Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech: A politic of performative. London: Routledge. Crosta, P. L. (1998). Politiche. Quale conoscenza per l’azione territoriale. Milano: FrancoAngeli. de Certeau, M. (1990). L’invention du quotidien. 1. Arts de faire (First ed. Paris: Uge, 1980). Paris: Gallimard. van Dijk, T. (2011). Imagining future places: How designs co-constitute what is, and thus influence what will be. Planning Theory, 10(2), 124–143. Duden, B. (1994). Der Frauenleib als o¨ffentlicher. Mu¨nchen: Ort. Vom Missbrauch des Begriffs Leben, dtv. Fainstein, S. (2000). New direction in planning theory. Urban Affairs Review, 35(4), 451–478. Fainstein, S. (2010). The just city. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

24

CAMILLA PERRONE

Fainstein, S., & Servon, L. J. (Eds.). (2005). Gender planning. A reader. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Fenster, T. (2004). The global city and the holy city: Narratives on planning, knowledge and diversity. London: Pearson. Fischer, F., & Forester, J. (1993). The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning. Durham: Duke University Press Books. Follet, M. P. (1965). The new state: Group organization the solution of popular government. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith. Forester, J. (1989). Planning in the face of power. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Forester, J. (2009). Dealing with differences. Dramas of mediating public disputes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the public sphere. A contribution, to the critique of actually existing democracy. In: C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 69–98). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Friedmann, J. (1973). Retracking America. New York, NY: Doubleday Anchor. Friedmann, J. (1987). Planning in the public domain. From knowledge to action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Friedmann, J. (2002). The prospect of cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Glasze, G., Webster, C., & Frantz, K. (2006). Private cities: Global and local perspectives. London: Routledge. Golderger, N., Tarule, J., Clinchy, B., & Belenky, M. (Eds.). (1996). Knowledge, difference and power. New York, NY: Basic Books. Golderger, N., Tarule, J., Clinchy, B., & Belenky, M. (Eds.). (1996). Women’s ways of knowing. New York, NY: Basic Books. Haas, P. (2001). Epistemic communities and policy knowledge. In: International encyclopedia of social and behavioural sciences (pp. 1157–1186). New York, NY: Elsevier. Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press. Hardin, R. (2003). Street-level epistemology and democratic participation. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 10(2), 212–239. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning, shaping place in a fragmented society. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Held, D. (1995). Democracy and the global order: From the modern state to cosmopolitan democracy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Holston, J. (1998). Spaces of insurgent citizenship. In: L. Sandercock (Ed.), Making the invisible visible. A multicultural planning history (pp. 37–56). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hooks, B. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press. Innes, J. (2004). Consensus building: Clarification for the critics. Planning Theory, 3(1), 5–20. Jacobs, J., & Fincher, R. (1998). Cities of difference. New York: Guilford University Press. Low, S., Taplin, D., & Scheld, S. (2005). Rethinking urban parks. Public space and cultural diversity. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2000). Women and human development. The capability approach. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2001). Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paba, G. (2010). Corpi urbani. Differenze, interazioni, politiche. Milano: FrancoAngeli.

What would a ‘DiverCity’ be like?

25

Parekh, B. (2000). Rethinking multiculturalism, cultural diversity and political theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parekh, B. C. (2000). Rethinking multiculturalism. Cultural diversity and political theory. Great Britain: Macmillan Press Ltd. Perrone, C. (2010). DiverCity. Conoscenza, pianificazione, citta` delle differenze. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Pestieau, K., & Wallace, M. (2003). Challenges and opportunities for planning in the ethnoculturally diverse city: A collection of papers. Planning Theory & Practice, 4(3), 253–258. Qadeer, M. (1997). Pluralistic planning for multicultural cities: Canadian practice. Journal of the American Planning Association, 63(4), 481–494. Rydin, Y. (2007). Re-examining the role of knowledge within planning theory. Planning Theory, 6(1), 52–68. Sandercock, L. (1998a). Towards cosmopolis: Planning for multicultural cities. New York, NY: Chichester. Sandercock, L. (1998b). Making the invisible visible. A multicultural planning history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Sandercock, L. (2003). Cosmopolis II. Mongrel cities of the 21st century. London: Continuum. Sandercock, L. (2006). Spirituality and the urban professions: The paradox at the heart of planning. Planning Theory & Practice, 7(1), 65–97. Schatzki, T., Cetina, K. K., & von Savigny, E. (2001). The practice turn in contemporary theory. London: Routledge. Scho¨n, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York, NY: Basic Books. Scho¨n, D. A. (1990). The reflective turn. Case studies in and on educational practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sennett, R. (1994). Flesh and stone: The body and the city in western civilization. New York, NY: Norton. Talen, E. (2006a). Design that enable diversity: The complications of a planning ideal. Journal of Planning Literature, 20(3), 233–249. Talen, E. (2006b). Design for diversity: Evaluating the context of socially mixed neighbourhoods. Journal of Urban Design, 11(1), 1–32. Throgmorton, J. (2005). Planning as persuasive storytelling in the context of the network society. In: L. Albrechts & S. Mandelbaum (Eds.), The network society: A new context for planning. London: Routledge. Watson, V. (2006). Deep difference: Diversity, planning and ethics. Planning Theory, 5(1), 31–50. Wekerle, G. (1999). Gender planning as insurgent citizenship: Stories from Toronto. Plurimondi, 2, 105–126. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, identity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 2 FROM URBAN SPRAWL TO SUSTAINABLE CITIES: A NEIGHBORHOOD PERSPECTIVE IN URBAN STUDIES Marco Castrignano` and Gabriele Manella ABSTRACT In this chapter, we suggest a neighborhood perspective as a possible way to ‘react’ to some suburban trends that characterize the city today. We mention some of these trends and focus on their social and environmental impact. Our aim is to ecologically pose the centrality of sociospatial organization in the city; such organization, indeed, is fundamental to think to more sustainable forms as a countertrend to urban sprawl. On one side, we consider the works of Barry Wellman in order to show that community is more and more disconnected to a particular space or place. On the other side, we consider the contribution of Robert Sampson to stress the centrality of the concept of neighborhood, which has been made free from the ‘community rhetoric’ of strong ties in urban studies. Sampson gives a particular importance to collective efficacy, which he suggests as the tool through which a high quality of life can be pursued in urban neighborhoods. So, these studies stress the organizational and ecological aspects instead of the ones connected to strong local ties. In the

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 27–40 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011005

27

28

MARCO CASTRIGNANO` AND GABRIELE MANELLA

final part, we suggest that our perspective is also very useful in order to give substance to the idea of a dense city as a mosaic/network of neighborhoods, a city where social mixite` is a binding element. Keywords: Neighborhood; community; sustainability; collective efficacy; ecological approach; urban sprawl There is ongoing debate about the international character of the contemporary city. Words as ‘global,’ ‘international,’ ‘transnational,’ are very frequently used to describe what is happening. Recent data from the United Nations and other sources clearly show that the most of the world population live in urban areas, but what does this mean? What is a city today? Our chapter was included in the session ‘Suburbanization and posturban city,’ where many persons questioned even the basic aspects of city. If we consider density, for example, which was so important in Wirth (1938) and Weber’s (1958) definitions of the city and urban life, this is something more and more difficult to find in the current urban landscape; often we have new suburban developments that are dozens of miles away from the core of the city! This is more than a trend, this is something structural; US Census Bureau data show that while 90 percent of the American population live in metropolitan regions, most of them live in suburban areas. And as Gottdiener and Hutchison (2010, p. 2) note, ‘Even the cities that lost population – such as Philadelphia and Detroit – are in fact part of expanding metropolitan regions.’ Similar trends are found outside United States: for example, the State of European Cities Report (European Union, 2008) confirms that continued suburban growth is occurring for nearly all the 250 cities. Increased sprawl, more and more commuting, more and more time of our life spent in the cars or in other forms of mobility: ‘Today the city has exploded. No longer is there any focus or ‘downtown’, as there was in the past. People live and work in widely separated realms’ (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2010, p. 3). The environmental impact of urban sprawl can be seen in increased pollution, waste of resources, and many other aspects, but the social impact is as strong as the environmental one. It affects not only the suburbs but also the central areas. If we consider historical city centers and public spaces, for example, they are more and more connected to consumption (Castrignano`, 2008; Ingersoll, 2004; Mazzette & Sgroi, 2007). The center may still represent the image of a city, but the center has become a commodity to attract as many people as possible; these people are more and more tourists or users, and less and less residents; in other

From Urban Sprawl to Sustainable Cities

29

words, they are more and more consumers and less and less citizens. The city center is represented as a ‘postcard,’ and public space is just a ‘stage,’ a ‘vanity fair’ to be used to demonstrate commercialized models of consumption and lifestyle (Ingersoll, 2004, p. 34). Social cohesion, identity, housing function, and participation are more and more difficult to be found there; consumption, mobility, and communication are taking their place (Mazzette & Sgroi, 2007, p. 55). We remember Robert E. Park’s image of the city as a ‘mosaic of little communities, many of them strikingly different one from another, but all more or less typical’ (1952, p. 146); in other words, the city was a place of heterogeneity and differentiation. All of the trends that we observe in the contemporary city seem to be a clear contradiction of such image. Where does this lead us? Is our destiny to be that of the characters in the movie Crash (1994), where everybody is running alone, almost every contact is just an accident, and everybody around is perceived as a stranger or an enemy? Is there any room for a sense of community or place attachment in the city today or we are relentlessly going to a ‘quartered city’ (Marcuse, 1989)? We suggest that the social and environmental costs of urban sprawl require further reflection on the city, and we think that such reflection should recover the central role of density and the Robert Park’s idea of the city as a mosaic of communities as described above (1952, p. 1946). In this chapter, we consider the centrality of sociospatial organization again, in order to highlight more sustainable forms as a countertrend to urban sprawl. We also think that some remarks about the concept of community can be relevant here. Although the concept of community is considered ‘one of the most elusive and vague in sociology’ (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 1984, p. 71), Azarya splits the debate between territorial and nonterritorial approaches (1994, pp. 114–115): the former are generally connected to the Chicago School (Hawley, 1950; Park & Burgess, 1929), while the latter focus more on personal ties and a common history, shared values, and interests. Several sociological studies stressed the persistence of community aspects in the urban context (some of the most mentioned ones: Gans, 1962; Jacobs, 1961; Suttles, 1968; Whyte, 1943). However, during the 1960s, the crisis of community in its spatial meaning began to emerge (Stein, 1960); Webber, for example, spoke about a ‘community without propinquity’ (1964). From the 1970s onward, the decline in importance of delocalization in the concept of community has been emphasized further by many authors among which Harvey (1973) and Castells (1977). Anderson’s works on imagined community (1983, 1988) stressed that technology today enables the creation of affective ties

30

MARCO CASTRIGNANO` AND GABRIELE MANELLA

that are typical of community, bypassing any connection to a particular space. Such ‘de-spatial’ trend is very well represented by Barry Wellman who proposed the concept of community liberated, where the heuristic value is no longer connected to space: ‘By the 1970s, some scholars had realized that while some neighbourhoods remained vibrant, the proliferation of widespread networks of cheap and efficient transportation and communications had allowed contact to be maintained with greater ease and over longer distance. This led to viewing community ‘liberated’ from neighbourhood-centric thinking: functionally as networks of social relationships rather than spatially as localities’ (2001, p. 2). A number of studies on cyber communities and social networks have reinforced this discussion (Wellman et al., 1996). Wellman believes that overlapping neighborhood and community is no longer possible, and the following factors are particularly important in explaining this: ‘Little public interaction occurs on street corners, pubs, etc. in most North American areas’; ‘Publicly defined neighbourhoods are often more a product of outsiders’ perception than a reality for the residents of the area’; ‘Most local interaction occurs close to home and not throughout the neighbourhood’; ‘Most active interpersonal relationships of North Americans are not with neighbours’; ‘Contemporary transportation and communication facilities, notably the car, plane, phone, fax and Internet, have enabled the easy maintenance of non-local relationships with friends, relatives and workmates’; ‘The growth in size of cities in the twentieth-century, coupled with extensive separation (through zoning) of workplaces and residential areas, means that the community of co-workers no longer lives in the same neighbourhood’; ‘Demographic divisions within neighbourhoods often mean that many neighbours do not interact’; ‘High rates of residential mobility mean that many people do not develop neighbourhood roots’ (Wellman, 2001, pp. 15–16). A further step is required, however; community has to be thought of as starting from the individual point of view as a ‘personal community’ (Wellman, 2001; Wellman & Wortley, 1990). Personal community is ‘a social network of significant, informal ‘community ties’ defined from each person’s standpoint’ (2001, p. 21); ‘such an approach focuses on a small quantity of strong ties’ (Wellman, 1996, 2001). The distinction between social tie (quality) and social interaction (quantity) is very important here because is a further element to disentangle community and neighborhood. The ties that produce the highest number of interactions occur at neighborhood and work level; however, they are not the strongest ones for many people (Wellman, 1996, p. 353).

From Urban Sprawl to Sustainable Cities

31

While Wellman has stressed that community is more and more disconnected to a particular space or place, the contribution of Robert Sampson has been crucial to reasserting the centrality of the concept of neighborhood, which has been made free from the ‘community rhetoric’ of strong ties in urban studies. Moreover, we will try to show how such attention to neighborhood relations can be a good point to pursue a more sustainable city and a more sustainable urban way of life. We suggest the neighborhood as a very important concept in order to give substance to the idea of a dense city as mosaic/network of neighborhoods.

COLLECTIVE EFFICACY AND NEIGHBORHOOD: THE STUDIES OF ROBERT SAMPSON According to Gould, neighborhood implies one or more of the following aspects: ‘a) a small inhabited area; b) the inhabitants of such an area; c) the relations which exist between the inhabitants; d) friendly relations between the inhabitants’ (1964, p. 464). So, a ‘territorial base’ is a necessary condition. Carpenter stresses that speaking about a neighborhood is possible only in little urban areas, with a dense and homogeneous population (1931, pp. 356–357). Greer acknowledges the Chicago School contribution through ‘their emphasis upon natural areas. They were conceived as neighborhoods or residential enclaves marked off by sharp differences in population characteristics or by physical barriers’ (1968, pp. 121–125). Chicago is the most frequent reference point also for the functions attributed to a city neighborhood: ‘Primary relations among neighbors are essential for maintaining the social order, because they create an effective informal control system’ (Carmon, 2001, p. 10491). This concept has been criticized with regard to its heuristic function. Neighborhood is more often considered an administrative unit rather than a combination of social relations. This is due to several causes: urban expansion, increase of mobility, and mass media diffusion (Greer, 1968). Some of the definitions nonetheless stress that neighborhood relations survive, even in areas in which we would not expect to find them: ‘the household remains a major centre for child-rearing, for consumption and for social gatherings and conversation’ (Greer, 1968, p. 121). Some categories are ‘static’ by definition: Abrahamson reminds us of the importance of neighborhood to children, the elderly and migrants, in particular to newcomers (1996).

32

MARCO CASTRIGNANO` AND GABRIELE MANELLA

Despite these recent urban trends, neighborhood seems to be still a good point through which understanding urban structure. The neighborhood effect is often mentioned in the entries as a key variable for many social phenomena: ‘there are geographic ‘hot spots’ for crime and problem-related behaviors and that such hot spots are characterized by the concentration of multiple forms of disadvantage’ (Sampson, Morenoff & Gannon-Rowley, 2002, p. 446). The studies on neighborhood effect discuss some mechanisms through which it acts, individuating important actors or institutions in this process: ‘local teenage peer groups, negative adult role models, local schools and other institutions that fail to provide adequate support to residents’ (Diaz Barriga, 2008). The debate is very vibrant regarding the solutions to mitigate neighborhood effects; mixed-income housing and housing-dispersal policies are the most frequent ones (Bauder, 2008, p. 464). We suggest that the debate about neighborhood effect is a sort of demonstration of the vitality of neighborhood in the United States, and it is particularly evident for urban poverty and segregation (Lewis, 1961; Massey & Denton, 1993; Wilson, 1987). Neighborhood studies1 are increasing, and many variables can be studied at this level: ‘There is considerable social inequality among neighborhoods in terms of socioeconomic and racial segregation (y) a number of social problems tend to come bundled together at the neighborhood level (y) these two sets of clusters are themselves related (y) the ecological concentration of poverty appears to have increased significantly during recent decades’ (Sampson et al., 2002, p. 447). How can neighborhood studies proliferate if community relations are less and less connected to a particular space? Isn’t this a paradox? We do not think that it is, and the contribution of Robert Sampson constitutes a very good example of that. As we will see, his neighborhood studies (and many other ones over the last years) are not so interested in the quality of social ties, they are more focused on an ecological approach: ‘Most sociologists conceptualize neighborhoods in terms of informal relationships or social networks among persons living in a geographic space; thus, when we use the term ‘neighborhood’ we tend to mean ‘community’. But geographic location and social networks are separate and distinct attributes that may have different effects on individuals’ (Small & Newman, 2001, p. 30). Examining Robert Sampson and his approach, we probably could summarize it in a sentence: the individual point of view is less important than neighborhood. He moves away from the concept of community, and underlines that the scientific and nonscientific American debate often looks at this concept as a ‘paradise lost,’ as a panacea, ‘as the modern elixir for

From Urban Sprawl to Sustainable Cities

33

much of what allegedly ails American society’ (2002, p. 213). That is the reason why he considers community as a ‘dangerous’ concept because it is strongly ideological. Sampson, however, is more interested in neighborhood, where many contradictions are concentrated. We live in an era of globalization where attachment to place is more important than the place itself. At the same time, many American neighborhoods are beset by problems: social and economic resources coexist with ethnic and racial segregation. Sampson does not want to deny the importance of individual and affective ties, but he thinks that better understanding can be achieved by looking at the organizational side (2002). Moreover, he is very skeptical of postmodernism and globalization trends in American thought because they ‘have blinded many social scientists to the persistence of local variation, concentration, and place stratification’ (2002, p. 215). In considering attachment to place, neighborhood is still a key variable in the American city debate (Sampson, 2009a; Taub, Garth Taylor & Dunham, 1984; Taub & Wilson, 2006): ‘If you define a neighborhood in terms of primary group relationships – that probably mythic notion of place where people knew their neighbors intimately and had dinner with them regularly – then indeed they have declined over time (y) if you define a neighborhood in terms of the sense of identity and the meanings that people attach to place, which lead to all kinds of self-sorting, then you find that people think of neighborhoods much as they always have’ (Sampson, 2009b, pp. 33–34). We believe therefore that the biggest importance of Sampson’s work is found in the (definitive) disentangling of neighborhood and community, giving the former a spatial perspective; neighborhood has its own heuristic value, and hence the close association with the Chicago School heritage (Sampson et al., 2002, p. 445). The ecological aspect, indeed, is the first step in Sampson’s approach. He defines the basic points of Chicago-style inquiry as ‘(1) a relentless focus on context (especially place); (2) a focus on properties of communities and cities as social systems; (3) a relational concern with variability in forms of social organization as opposed to population attributes (or composition); (4) continual attention to neighborhood change and spatial dynamics (time and space); (5) an eclectic style of data collection that relies on multiple methods but that always connects to some form of observation; (6) a concern for public affairs and the improvement of community life; (7) an integrating theme of theoretically interpretive empirical research’ (Sampson, 2002, p. 217). Sampson also collaborated with Raudenbush on several studies utilizing data from the Chicago Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. This

34

MARCO CASTRIGNANO` AND GABRIELE MANELLA

study is based upon three independent studies: ‘The Community Survey (CS) was a multidimensional assessment by Chicago residents of the structural and cultural organization of their neighborhoods (y) 8782 Chicago residents representing all 343 of city’s neighborhoods were interviewed in their homes. The second was systematic social observation of some 23000 street segments (y) the third method consisted of key informant interviews with 2800 leaders in business, law enforcement community organizations, education, politics, and religion’ (Sampson, 2002, pp. 217–218). These studies suggested to them an econometric approach, a sophisticated technique of quantitative data analysis that they describe in part as: ‘neighborhoods vary widely in social control and cohesion, with those high in collective efficacy experiencing lower rates of violent crime after accounting for a variety of neighborhood characteristics (y) by contrast, the density of local organizations, voluntary associations, and dense social ties turns out to yield weak direct links to violence’ (Sampson, 2002, p. 222). If neighborhood is the unit of analysis, how exactly does it work? How does it affect the population who live there? Sampson is very steady in rejecting the idea that a successful community is based on affective ties: ‘People want to live in environments that they perceive as safe, as cohesive, as having certain kinds of amenities. That is not the same as having a deep, intimate, personal tie with your neighbors’ (Sampson, 2009b, p. 34). In that sense, the ‘success’ of a neighborhood is based on what Sampson calls collective efficacy ‘which refers to social control and the ability to get things done, [which] are important and vary across neighborhoods’ (ibid.). Even if Sampson’s notion of neighborhood has some connection with community, he stresses that ‘in the modern world, a neighborhood can have lots of heterogeneity in its values’ (ibid.), but there are still ‘shared values on certain aspects: safety, for example, and certain qualities of the environment’ (ibid.). Collective efficacy as a social control tool is connected to a concept of social organization that also affects urban space and people who contribute to its design and plan.2 Sampson sees four basic mechanisms through which the potential of neighborhood can be expressed, four topics that have ‘independent validity’: (a) all the ties and interactions connected to social capital, which is ‘generally conceptualized as a resource that is realized through social relationship’ (Sampson et al., 2002, p. 457). The body of research available to us stresses the importance of ‘density of social ties (y) frequency of social interaction among neighbors [and] patterns of neighboring’ (ibid.); (b) norms and collective efficacy, which is strongly connected to ‘mutual

From Urban Sprawl to Sustainable Cities

35

trust and shared expectations among residents, in order to intervene for the public good’ (ibid.). Every neighborhood needs some resources to assure a certain quality of life for its residents in terms of services, safety, and so on. Sampson suggests that these resources are not so connected to the primary group relationship of that area; (c) institutional resources: community services such as schools, child-care centers, libraries, community centers, and health centers. Institutional resources imply both location in a particular area and the opportunity of residents to participate in and use them; (d) routine activities in which the ecological aspect again plays a role; for example, they concern ‘how land use patterns and the ecological distributions of daily routine activities bear on children well-being. The location of schools, the mix of residential with commercial land use (e.g., strips malls, bars), public transportation nodes, and large flows of nighttime visitors, for example, are relevant to organizing how and when children come into contact with peers, adults, and non-resident activity’ (Sampson et al., 2002, p. 458). An additional methodological point is to consider neighborhoods not as independent units but as nodes of a network, in relation to surrounding ones (Sampson et al., 2002, p. 472). So, if Wellman takes individuals as the nodes of a network that is made of other individuals, Sampson takes neighborhood as the node of a network where other spatial units – the adjacent neighborhoods – are included (Sampson, 2004b). Moreover, we suggest considering neighborhood in a dynamic and cross-time perspective. That is, we must focus on those neighborhood characteristics that enable understanding of how neighborhood and its social organization have changed over time (see, e.g., Small, 2004). Sampson’s adoption of an ecological approach, with a combination of spatial and social organization, leads to further methodological consideration: the importance of the Chicago School heritage. As we said before, it is important in the whole work of this author: Sampson stresses that, in a micro urban approach, observation is something that cannot be forgotten. For this reason he gives so much weight to Systematic Social Observation: ‘Another movement in neighborhood research is to collect data that more directly reflect the sights, sounds, and feel of the streets (y) there are physical and social features of neighborhood environments that cannot be reliably captured in surveys but that provide very tangible contexts for child development’ (Sampson et al., 2002, p. 471). If this is the research path, recent technologies (like the geographic information system, GIS) can obviously be used to obtain a much more refined representation of neighborhoods and make observation more powerful.

36

MARCO CASTRIGNANO` AND GABRIELE MANELLA

AN ‘URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD PATHWAY’ TO SUSTAINABLE CITY? We began this chapter by emphasizing that suburban and posturban trends are spreading everywhere. The ‘right to the city’ that was so important in Henri Lefebvre’s theory (1968) is severely threatened by urban sprawl in the suburbs and the erosion of public space in the city center (with regard to that, also Lefebvre stressed the negative impact of space given to streets and cars). Many studies stress that commodification of space merges with the irresistible rise of profit logic. We also emphasized that these trends have important environmental and social consequences. So, other variables than space and place seem to be important in understanding the city today. However, if urban sprawl is a very common concept and a very common trend, we also can see some elements that suggest that something is changing. Just a prominent example: if we consider the Greater Los Angeles region (including not only Los Angeles county but also the counties of Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Ventura), we can find a more and more compact landscape. It is very interesting if we think that Los Angeles is the sprawl city par excellence. Similar patterns of development, according to US Census Bureau, can be found in half of the American metropolitan areas. Increased density is not the only recent countertrend: many local governments and grassroots movements are ‘trying to react’ to those environmental, social, and cultural impacts that constitute a serious risk for the future of the city. City is being perceived as something that must be defended or replanned following different rules, because the limits have been reached and it is definitely time to change (Stern, 2009). In other words, the city is more and more seen as something to be dominated instead of being something that dominates people. Many best urban practices we can find all over the world can be explained also through such awareness: the Transition Towns movement is a good example of that, with a strongly involved local community to reach sustainability and autonomy (energy saving, sustainable housing, organic food, fight against waste, the adoption of the Brixton Pound that can only be used in the local market, etc.). More and more cities are implementing urban regeneration projects and sustainability practices, both in the core of the city and in the outskirts. We can see that not only in the United States but also in Europe: Sutton in the UK, Vauban at Freiburg in Germany, and Va¨stra Hamnen at Malmo¨ in Sweden are three very good examples of sustainable neighborhoods in the core of the city. What is the ‘secret of their success’? We could assume that these areas have strong local community relations, but we have considered the works of

From Urban Sprawl to Sustainable Cities

37

Barry Wellman and Robert Sampson, and we have seen that community and neighborhood are currently disentangled. Community is connected to individuals, their network, and their strong ties; neighborhood is connected to a social and spatial organization and its relation with other neighborhoods. The individual is the fulcrum of the personal community that Wellman talks about, while the neighborhood is the fulcrum of the collective efficacy that Sampson talks about. Strong local ties still exist of course and they can be found in several neighborhoods and urban areas; however, collective efficacy is not based on that, it is based on organizational and ecological variables. So, if we think to all these practices, their ‘success’ could probably be explained through the skill of having a high collective efficacy and a high social control on people who live there. We believe that these results are also in tune with most of the presentations of the conference, where space emerged as being still a key variable and a key resource in the city. Many authors, for example, mentioned use value and exchange value of land to consider everyday urban life dynamics. Moreover, most presentations showed that public space seems to survive though many dangers affect it; streets, squares, buildings, and parks are still tools through which possibilities of encounter and activity can be implemented, something where people can still interact, have conflict; in other words, places through which otherness can be expressed. If neighborhood and place attachment are ‘still alive,’ does this lead to a possible way to sustainable urban development? Increased density and compact residential development are definitely fundamental (Rogers, 2006); however, they are not enough to guarantee such development. Density, for example, is not just a physical matter, but it is also connected to ‘corporeality’ and vitality of city, to a social mixite´ and a rediscovery of attraction of city core (AA.VV., 2006). Richard Burdett stresses that every urban neighborhood could be a combination of home, work, culture, and entertainment (2007); all of that is requested to reach a sustainable city, and urban planning could also include a lot of attention to a decreasing use of cars. So, once more, densification could combine with neighborhood regeneration to pursue a sustainable urban way of life. The repopulation and reutilization of central areas3 are essential; however, giving them a character is also important in order to allow people to go to live there and use those spaces. In other words, we think that a sustainable city urgently needs a promotion of ‘urban mood,’ that mood which has been so severely threatened by sprawl. We have some important examples of that as well. In other words, it is important in order to give them an opportunity of being ‘place attached’ without forgetting or renouncing to their everyday mobility.

38

MARCO CASTRIGNANO` AND GABRIELE MANELLA

The city is not conceivable without density and heterogeneity, and all these elements are fundamental to reach that ‘urban mood’ that is an added value for a sustainable city. A new understanding of urbanism is required, and this urbanism should pass through a rethinking of the concept of neighborhood and recognition of the contributions of neighborhood studies.

NOTES 1. ‘Spurts in the 1960s and 1970s followed by a decline, the mid 1990s to the year 2000 saw more than a doubling of neighborhood studies to the level of about 100 papers per year’ (Sampson et al., 2002, p. 444). 2. ‘Architects would be wise to focus on designing spaces that provide these kinds of opportunities. Simple things, like the design of parks where people can interact in a way that’s safe. It seems like a trivial example, but the town of Brookline has dog parks where in the evening I see lots of people with their dogs (y) These are public spaces. People get to know one another (y) In a way, that’s community, but it’s intersecting with public space. If you layer that through a number of different dimensions of social life, you have a very liveable, very desirable, urban environment’ (Sampson, 2009b, p. 34). 3. The Staples Center, the new arena for the Los Angeles Lakers, has been built in the downtown instead of Inglewood, the suburb where it was before. Moving to London, the Highbury area has been regenerated to build a condominium and a park instead of the old stadium of the football team Arsenal.

REFERENCES AA.VV. (2006). Citta`. Architettura e Societa`. Vol. 1. Venezia: Marsilio. Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., & Turner, B. S. ([1984]2006). The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. London: Penguin Books. Abrahamson, M. (1996). Urban enclaves: Identity and place in America. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. New York, NY: Verso. Anderson, B. (1988). The spectre of comparison. Politics, culture and the nation. London: Verso. Azarya, V. (1994). Community. In: A. Kuper & J. Kuper (Eds.), The social science encyclopedia (pp. 114–115). London: Routledge. Bauder, H. (2008). Neighborhoods: General. In: W. A. Darity (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences (pp. 462–463). Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson-Gale. Burdett, R. (2007). La citta` futura. Repubblica, 14 December. Carmon, N. (2001). Neighborhood: General. In: N. Smelser & P. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 10490–10496). London: Elsevier. Carpenter, N. (1931). Neighborhood. In: E. Seligman & A. Johnson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the social sciences (pp. 356–357). New York, NY: Macmillan.

From Urban Sprawl to Sustainable Cities

39

Castells, M. (1977). The urban question. London: Arnold. Castrignano`, M. (2008). Sostenibilita`, densita` e sviluppo urbano. Sociologia urbana e rurale, 85, 93–103. Diaz Barriga, M. (2008). Neighborhood effect. In: W. A. Darity (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences (pp. 462–463). Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson-Gale. European Union. (2008). State of European cities Report. Strasbourg: European Commission. Gans, H. (1962). The urban villagers: Group and class in the life of Italian-Americans. New York, NY: Glencoe Free Press. Gottdiener, M., & Hutchison, R. (2010). The new urban sociology (4th ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gould, J. (1964). Neighborhood. In: J. Gould & W. Koulb (Eds.), Dictionary of the social sciences (pp. 464–465). New York, NY: Glencoe Free Press. Greer, S. (1968). Neighborhood. In: D. L. Sills (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences (pp. 121–125). New York, NY: Macmillan. Harvey, D. (1973). Social justice and the city. London: Arnold. Hawley, A. (1950). Human ecology: A theory of community structure. New York, NY: Ronald Press. Ingersoll, R. (2004). Sprawltown: Cercando la citta` in periferia. Roma: Meltemi. Jacobs, J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. London: Penguin Books. Lefebvre, H. (1968). Le droit a` la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Lewis, O. (1961). The children of Sanchez. New York, NY: Random House. Marcuse, P. (1989). Dual city: A muddy metaphor for a quartered city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 13(14), 697–708. Massey, D., & Denton, N. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the urban underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mazzette, A., & Sgroi, E. (2007). La metropoli consumata: Antropologie, architetture, politiche, cittadinanze. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Park, R. E. (1952). Human communities. New York, NY: Free Press. Park, R. E., & Burgess, E. W. ([1921]1929). Introduction to the science of sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rogers, R. (2006). Richard Rogers. In: AA.VV., Citta`. Architettura e societa`. Vol. 1. Venezia: Marsilio. Sampson, R. J. (2002). Transcending tradition: New directions in community research, Chicago style. Criminology, 40(2), 213–230. Sampson, R. J. (2004). Networks and neighborhoods. The implications of connectivity for thinking about crime in the modern city. In: H. McCarthy, P. Miller & P. Skidmore (Eds.), Network logic: Who governs in an Interconnected world? (pp. 157–166). London: Demos. Sampson, R. J. (2009a). ‘After-school’ Chicago: Space and the city. Urban Geography, 29(2), 127–137. Sampson, R. J. (2009b). Street smarts: Robert J. Sampson talks with Jeff Stein AIA. ArchitectureBoston, 12, 30–35. Sampson, R. J., Morenoff, J. D., & Gannon-Rowley, T. (2002). Assessing ‘Neighborhood Effects’: Social processes and new directions in research. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 443–478. Small, M. L. (2004). Villa Victoria: The transformation of social capital in a Boston Barrio. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

40

MARCO CASTRIGNANO` AND GABRIELE MANELLA

Small, M. L., & Newman, K. (2001). Urban poverty after The Truly Disadvantaged: The rediscovery of the family, the neighborhood, and culture. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 23–45. Stein, M. (1960). The eclipse of community. An interpretation of American studies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stern, M. (2009). A blueprint for a safer planet. How to manage climate change and create a new era of progress and prosperity. New York, NY: Random House. Suttles, G. (1968). The social order of the slum: Ethnicity and territory in the inner city. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Taub, R., Garth Taylor, D., & Dunham, J. D. (1984). Paths of neighborhood change. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Taub, R., & Wilson, W. J. (2006). There goes the neighborhood. Racial, ethnic, and class tensions in four Chicago neighborhoods and their meaning for America. London: Vintage Books. Weber, M. ([1921]1958). The city. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Webber, M. (1964). Order in diversity: Community without propinquity. In: L. Wingo (Ed.), Cities and space: The future use of urban land (pp. 23–54). Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Wellman, B. (1996). Are personal communities local? A Dumptarian reconsideration. Social Network, 18, 347–354. Wellman, B. (2001). The persistence and transformation of community: From neighborhood groups to social networks. Report to the Law Commission of Canada, October 30. Wellman, B., Salaff, J., Dimitrova, D., Garton, L., Gulia, M., & Haythornthwaite, C. (1996). Computer networks as social networks: Virtual community, computer-supported cooperative work and telework. Annual Review of Sociology, 96, 558–588. Wellman, B., & Wortley, S. (1990). Different strokes from different folks: Community ties and social support. American Journal of Sociology, 96, 558–588. Whyte, W. F. (1943). Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged. The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a way of life. American Journal of Sociology, 44(1), 1–24.

CHAPTER 3 THE PRODUCTIVE GAZE. FLORENCE AS ARCHETYPE OF THE CINEMATIC CITY Lorenzo Tripodi ABSTRACT The aim of this chapter is a discussion of the post-modern shift towards symbolic economies as a substantial factor of transformation of urban public space. It argues that the shift towards a cinematic mode of production, in which production, distribution and consumption of images assume a dominant role in the social organisation, calls for a related cinematic urbanism analysing the prime role of cities as factories in the global system of symbolic production. The city of Florence is assumed as an exemplar case study, examining the way the symbolic productive chain develops towards the real and virtual domains. I argue that Florence represents an archetype of the cinematic city, anticipating since the renaissance the tendency towards global symbolic production as a dominant sector of its urban economy. Keywords: Image production; florence; cinematic urbanism; public space; disneyfication; Lefebvre

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 41–64 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011006

41

42

LORENZO TRIPODI

INTRODUCTION The last 40 years represented a period of crisis and intense transformation of the modern organisational model of the society, a crisis and transformation that is substantially reflected in the urban field. One of the fundamental aspects of the paradigmatic shift towards globalisation in the post-modern era is the emergence of symbolic economy as the driving sector of urban economies. After a short decline in the 1970s and 1980s, dominated by apocalyptic visions of a post-urban world supposedly endorsed by the informational revolution (Graham, 2004) and characterised by degradation of the urban condition, shrinkage and disinvestment, cities and the urban centrality strike back in what has been described as an ‘‘urban renaissance’’ (Urban Task Force, 1999). The appeal of urban centralities has been rediscovered, particularly as sites of cultural production and creative industries, boosted by competitive urban marketing and new strategic visioning. The city, from a site of production, distribution and commercialisation of material goods, becomes the essential node of symbolic exchange (Lash & Urry, 1994). If the Fordist industry represented during the golden age of modernity the model of organisation for society at large, today we participate in a cinematic mode of production, cinema and its succeeding (if still simultaneous), formations, particularly television, video, computers and the internet, are deterritorialized factories in which spectators work, that is, in which we perform value-productive labor (Beller, 2006). The urban location regenerates into the ultimate space of representation, the stage on which image production surfaces and meets consumption. Specifically in late modernity, the processes of spatial production and image production appear strictly imbricated, to such an extent that their dialectical relationship can be read as one of the constitutive aspects of the post-modern condition (Harvey, 1989). Starting from this assumption, my attention is directed at how image production is re-orienting urban cultures towards visual consumption, and determining consequent spatial transformation. The following paragraphs attempt to disentangle how such an interconnected production process takes place in the context of contemporary economies and across the regenerated urban tissues of the post-industrial city. Tackling such a task, a capital reference will be the analysis of spatial production led by Henri Lefebvre in his classic The Production of Space, trying to adapt the conceptual scheme he proposed to decrypt spatial production into the field of image production.

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

43

IMAGE-SPACE DIALECTICS What do we hence mean with image production in the urban? There are three principal ways as we can understand this term today: The first, strictly related with urban professional disciplines, is the production of image(s) set by institutional and economic players in order to increase the market value of specific locations, to attract investors and to direct processes (re)structuring given (local) physical realities. It is an essential means for the strategic development of territories. It is about the construction of profitable scenarios to attract capitals and customers to the city (Ward, 1998). Strategic plans, culture capital programs, festivals, mega-events, ‘‘urban centres’’ and info-boxes, advertising campaigns, tourist public and private agencies, web portals, are all instruments employed in such processes in building and managing an attractive scenario for the economy of flows. From the capacity of these images to attract investors, skilled workers, tourists, buyers, technologies etc., it will follow the possibility to realise planned structures and programs of physical regeneration. Image production, in this sense, is a fundamental aspect of cities’ competition for pre-eminence in global markets: a relevant part of contemporary urban policies concerns building identitarian images in the form of visions, as an effort to foster local specificities in contrast with the fragmentation spin and anomy coming from globalisation processes. A process that shows also paradoxical aspects by the fact of adopting standardised ‘‘global’’ techniques and solutions in the aim of enhancing the specificities and supposedly uniqueness of places necessary to set up profitable conditions of rent monopoly (Harvey, 2002, p. 3). Such a visual production corresponds to certain extent to the conceived space in a Lefebvrian perspective, to the representations of space produced by ‘‘scientists, planners urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers’’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 38). It is the dominant space in any society, tendentially expression of a hierarchical, top-down form of organisation. The second way to conceive image production in the urban context, in a wider sense that includes and consistently extends the former definition, is the production of images as a main sector in the urban economy, increasingly characterised by being an ‘‘economy of signs’’ (Lash & Urry, 1994). No longer the place of material production of goods, and not necessarily the place of concentration of residence, the city becomes the essential place of symbolic exchange. It’s a perspective popularised in recent times by the catchy and reductive notion of creative cities/industries (Peck, 2005). Advertising, media and television, entertainment, visual arts, design, fashion, cultural production

44

LORENZO TRIPODI

in general, not forgetting tourism as a driving sector reshaping urban economy (Urry, 1990): increasingly, urban forms of production turn from material to symbolic, dealing essentially with creating, managing and controlling access to commodified images, or depending on the connected imagery for the distribution and marketing of material goods (Scott, 2000). The urban environment is essential in cultivating, concentrating and draining the creative energies necessary to such a production, a process strictly connected with the control of physical surfaces where such a symbolic production emerges and is managed. Shop windows, showrooms, billboards, digital screens, architectural facades, art galleries, museums, and all sort of white cubes and stages, are the kind of surfaces where this symbolic production is distributed, displayed, exchanged, constituting its architecture of screens (Tripodi, 2009b). Such a complex, overcharged, parametric articulation of surfaces is becoming increasingly relevant in redefining the urban condition in late modernity. The connected spatial production is somehow comparable with the representational spaces as conceptualised by Lefevbre, ‘‘embodying complex symbolisms, sometimes coded, sometimes not, linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life, as also to art’’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 33). The third way to give a meaning to this term is to understand the overall accumulation of everyday-life practices and semantic acts taking place in the urban space as a form of collective image production, interpreting such a multitude of acts and signs as constitutive elements of an inherently processual urban identity. This is a more tautological, fleeting way to think about the image of the city and how it is produced, more difficult to apply to an effective analysis, although challenging y can we consider the crowd flocking to a central shopping district, or the colourful presence of immigrant communities colonising a park as ‘‘production of image’’? Can we understand the stratification of posters and flyers advertising gigs and events in a neighbourhood or graffiti screaming opposition points of view as a form of image production? Or a swarm of tourists congesting an historic citadel? For sure, these acts contribute to constructing the way an urban space is perceived and therefore how its public image is determined. As well as the Lefebvrian category of spatial practice in respect to the conceived space of representations and the perceived representational space, this is a concept that, at the same time, completes and includes the latter two: it is the lived space of citizens and city users. Such an imbricated realm constitutes the contemporary form of production in which image and space definitely represent two inseparable aspects of the same process and not two separate concepts or products. Their interrelation is increasingly essential in determining urban production and economies (Fig. 1).

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

45

Fig. 1. Florence Centre: trompe l’oeil and CCTV. Photo Manuela Conti.

ASSESSING THE CINEMATIC URBAN FORM1 Far from inducing a ‘‘dematerialisation’’ process, the ability to manage symbolic production, creativity and communication determines material consumption, engenders rent revenues, and pilots the increasing capillary implantation of technological and transportation infrastructures (Graham & Marvin, 2001). Although the morphology of the historical and modern city does not seem to be strongly altered, this process brings a subtle but persistent transformation of urban contexts, in particular in the way as public space is conceived, designed and experienced by citizens, while questioning the concepts of public space and citizenship themselves (Mitchell, 1995; Tripodi, 2004a). The resulting cinematic urban form is the product of three deeply intertwined processes affecting global society:  The progressive fluidification and mobilisation of human behaviours in connection to the increased mobility of goods, data and capitals;  The increasing mediation of interpersonal relationships through technological devices and codified protocols; and

46

LORENZO TRIPODI

 The overwhelming production of images (and data) constituting the dominant form of economy in the urban contemporary landscape. These engender what is alternatively analysed as space of flows, mediated space, or space of exposure, which represent the three main spatial dimensions of urban public space:  The inherently horizontal dimension of mobility, producing an interpretation of public space specifically as transport infrastructure, articulated in a system of roads, squares, open spaces, airports and railways, etc.  A networked dimension – that is, the mediated space of information communication technologies. In this perspective, public space becomes essentially interface. It has no inherently spatial nature, but yet is strictly dependent on the material presence and performativity of wires, cables, antennas, chips, encoders and decoders, magnetic supports and data storage devices endorsing the communication process.  The essentially vertical articulation of semantic surfaces, that is the representational space where symbolic productions are displayed, distributed and exposed to the public. This includes shop windows and billboards, signage and architectural facades, but also and increasingly so, screens of computers and televisions. In particular, this last epistemological space, defined as space of exposure, represents the post-modern evolution of civic public space: a functional, structured spatial domain where city users are exposed to the spectacle of goods, entertained, impressed by flows of images, but at the same time they are put to work, as in the post-modern condition production and consumption are conflated and are no longer distinct moments (Harvey, 1989). The term exposure, borrowed from photography practices, underlines the tendency of the urban experience to be re-shaped as a substantially visual one. The time of exposure determines the ontogenesis of urban phenomena: persistence succeeds existence in a global cinematic city rhythmated by events. The citizen becomes a vector in an economy of gaze – where to catch the eye is the imperative. The power to impress, to persist on the retina, becomes a substantial goal of urban planning. Replicating the mechanisms of Internet’s ‘‘attention economy’’, the gaze of the city user becomes a measure of value (Davenport & Beck, 2001; Goldhaber, 1997). This capacity is connected with the progressive colonisation of urban surfaces, expressly for dominating their communication potential: urban design increasingly leans towards a logistics of perception (Virilio, 2000).

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

47

I define this tendency as a vertical urbanism, not referring to trends of highrise buildings and skyscrapers, but rather to the increasing exploitation of urban surfaces for their visibility and perceived meaning (Tripodi, 2008). If in the past the design of the city has been essentially drawing plans from an aerial point of view, distributing functions in a primarily horizontal articulation through the physical space, now we face the prodromes of a planning discipline aimed at organising the visual perception of the citizen in an essentially vertical urban palimpsest made of successions of frames (Fig. 2). Programmed flows of images constitute the core of the urban experience, the screen becoming the key morphological element in the cinematic city. These emerging forms of planning imply a massive use of tools and techniques borrowed from media industry and visual disciplines in order to determine and exploit value from the urban location. Vertical urbanism combines architecture and planning with advertising, graphics, marketing, interaction design, informatics and cinema. Accordingly, media and

Fig. 2. Screening the City. Photo Lorenzo Tripodi.

48

LORENZO TRIPODI

entertainment corporations are becoming principal actors in the global realestate market, due to their extraordinary capacity to influence located transfer of value and consequently rent. Film production stands for a model for spatial production, where the development of fictional narratives is the framework for the realisation and consolidation of actual processes of urban restructuring. Building the ‘‘image of a place’’ is the first step necessary to attract and combine capitals in order to achieve physical transformation. The role of the architect in this urban production process is more spectacularised than ever. The commonly used term ‘‘ArchiStar’’ legitimates the idea that professionals in architecture have a function similar to that of the stars in the entertainment business, enlightening with their fame and charisma every production they take part in with sure success. With entertainment industry and spatial development increasingly sharing similar attitudes, contemporary urban landscape is no longer divisible from the corresponding mediascape. In the following section, I try to apply these theoretical observations to the case of Florence, aiming at understanding this generally represented as an historical monumental city as being in fact an archetype for the late modern formation of the cinematic city.

AN ARCHETYPE OF THE CINEMATIC CITY Florence: the name of this city resonates with images. Few cities have had so much said and written about them. It is the object of uncountable, accurate historical studies; the site of the most consistent patrimony of art pieces concentrated in one single city; a repository of culture, a chest of beauties. Almost every stone, every building, every art piece in the city has been classified, described, commented. The traditional representation, the bestknown picture of this city is related to its historic and monumental incarnation, to the notion of cultural heritage, and to its foundational liaison with the renaissance momentum. Such a perspective is dominant, redundant and at times stereotyped, yet obscuring an objective and projective vision of its present condition, which lacks of sufficient critique of the forefront position of Florence into the global system of symbolic production and of the pitfalls of its collateral effects. Florence today is a successful node in the economy of global flows. A destination visited by millions of tourists, students and scholars from all over the world appealed by its beauty, its prestigious history, its uniqueness. Florence stands for a global representational space. The representation that the city makes of itself through the

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

49

centuries has become the main economic engine and the principium through which its lived space has been structuring. But besides symbols and abstract values, this is a space inhabited by people, stable settlers and transitory citizens, whose everyday experience of the city is increasingly affected by a concrete reality often far from the idyllic aura of the beauty and the sublime. Despite the imaginary that renders it as an ideal place, for many of its inhabitants Florence is a problematic city. Although being relatively small and balanced by dimension and favoured by a unique architectural and cultural patrimony, it is a site of discomfort, injustice, contradictions. Regardless, or, perhaps because of its success in financial terms, of its capacity to engender rent and to attract flows, the city produces unfair environmental conditions and conflict (Paba, 2004). While the land value of its most prestigious zones steadily grows, the municipality consistently loses resident population, expels and segregates its weaker members, produces unsustainable conditions and costs for many of its inhabitants. Even in the questionable statistics about life quality, Florence do not match an excellent national rank, while data regarding pollution, traffic and noise are among the worst in Italy. I would argue that a main factor determining such a condition is its profound, ontological relationship with the processes of image production which gained a hegemonic position in the economy of the city, projecting it in the forefront of global cities struggling for leadership in the age of cinematic production. Its extraordinary success in the symbolic dimension is paradoxically the reason for the failing material conditions of citizens’ everyday life, engendering what I would define with an oxymoron, a catastrophic success.

THE GAZE OF THE OTHER Before tackling directly the subject of image production and consumption, a first aspect to underline is the important role of the ‘‘other’’ in defining historically the identity of the city, and in building its image and success. This reflects a substantially modern concept of urban life, an idea surfacing in the literature and sociology starting from the nineteenth century, from Baudelaire’s excitations about urban crowds (Berman, 1982), to Simmel, R.A. Park and the Chicago school (Hannerz, 1980), up to the contemporary ‘‘mongrel’’ cosmopolitan configurations (Sandercock, 2003). In their eyes and in their pages, the city becomes in primis the place of the stranger, of individuality drifting in a welcoming, reassuring anonymity. Perhaps no one

50

LORENZO TRIPODI

better than Georg Simmel (1971), in his seminal sociology, has rendered such a vision of the city as an organised diversity, depicting in its excursus the stranger as a constitutive figure of modern urbanity. Whatever their incarnation – traveller, merchant, migrant, Jew, refugee or tourist – the perspective of the stranger is the one that most perspicuously captures and forges the essence of the modern city; and this is even more evident while advancing in the late modernity and beyond, towards any possible postmodernity. From this point of view, Florence is extraordinarily modern; it has been modern with large advance, ante litteram, in its ambiguous and indissoluble relationship with the stranger, with the gaze of the other, in designing an urbanity built at once on enclosure and exposure (Tripodi, 1996). For many reasons, Florence has been often identified as a cradle of modernity: for its ancestry on the enlightened knowledge and on a rational humanism, for the advancement of socio-economical culture, for the foundational relationship between arts and capital, for its emancipation from religious and imperial powers and for the development of an early bourgeois republicanism (Hall, 2001). Less frequently is instead underlined the deep modernity of its elusive and phantasmagorical character, its capacity to omen modernity as a form of unbridgeable distance, a fervour of individualities drifting in the metropolitan heterogeneity. Few places like this city can exert fascination, irresistible attraction and at the same time, deny themselves or result more ungraspable and elusive. However, beyond images and words, Florence is first of all a city of walls. Its character is inscribed and described in stone, in its rejecting rustications, in the haughty facades circumscribing and obstructing intimate space. It manifests as a closed and impermeable structure, where the opaque and massif diaphragms design a sense of retreat, of giving ground, of defence from the other. The ultimate experience of Florence is the perception of detachment. Beautiful, but of a beauty that chills, imposing distance. The identity of the city develops from such a distinctive feature of a distance provoking attraction, a libidinal pulse kept steadily alive by elusiveness, evasiveness. It’s being unattainable and unapproachable is thus a fundamental component of its myth and appeal, and of its inherent symbolic substance. As well as every metropolitan identity–although in the perpetually in nuce form of a town never completely turning into a metropolis–Florence is for big part the product of a synthesis of exogenous cultures and local conditions. Local identity, from this point of view, is more than ever a product of imagination, mediation, displacement: it is a diasporic identity, in Appadurai’s terms (1996). The construction of Florentine identity is a dialectical process confronting traditional indigenous values with the gaze and the imaginative

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

51

action triggered during the centuries by foreign travellers and adoptive citizens. As a matter of fact, its history is also the history of a benevolent colonisation of foreign admirers and new citizens; not only romantic poets, art historians, antiquarian and bohemians artists but also entrepreneurs, exiled and political refugees (Fantoni, 2000). It is the history of the progressive formation of a supra-local and supra-national public looking at its cultural heritage as an heritage of the whole human society. It is usual to consider this city as the product of a proud local culture, fairly chauvinist, self-centred and strongly defensive; as a communal archetype, a town ideally enclosed by walls even when walls crumbled down; a city reluctant to contaminate, bravely defending its specificity. In the character of its inhabitants, in the language, in style, colour, architecture, in taste and in traditions, it exists a proudly lived and exhibited florentinity. All this being undisputable, it represents nevertheless only one side of the coin. The flipside is the fundamental contribution coming from the consideration, awe, concern and desire surrounding the city from outside, in determining its history, its form and, what we focus on in particular, its image, as the symbolic capital at the core of its economy and present identity. In this sense, Florence’s identity slips easily into the post-modern paradigm, as an urban entity whose success and economy is steadily geared to the necessity to produce and control a perfectly shaped image. It is exactly the capacity to develop an imagery at global level the main factor originating the success of Florence in its golden age: let’s think at the capacity of Florentine merchants in the fourteenth century to build an image of trust, allowing them to become favoured intermediaries of international trades, and the local money, the Fiorino to establish as the main currency of the times; let’s think of the alliance of the arts with the capital, the mecenatism, as a driving force of the urban development (Hall, 2001); let’s think about the development of the perspective as a way to dominate representation and urban spaces. And let’s consider as well the early development of tourism since the eighteenth century as a main form of exploitation of the urban image and a driving force of Florentine urban economy (Fig. 3).

A GLOBAL SPACE OF REPRESENTATION The capacity to capitalise image production through the centuries determines the continuity of Florence’s success up to now, projected in the global landscape as a place perfectly connected within the networked symbolic production system which principles and logics are deeply rooted in

52

LORENZO TRIPODI

Fig. 3.

The Urban Spectator. Photo Manuela Conti.

this city since the dawn of the renaissance: that renaissance which will be forged here, and therefore consecrated as the cradle of modern liberal capitalism (Fantoni, 2000). If the shift from the fixed production of material goods to a fluid production of services and symbols has represented a traumatic rupture, if not a real catastrophe, for many Western urban realities, originating economic crises, disinvestment, shrinkage and various aporias, that constituted for Florence a fluid transition, which is the full realisation of a nature of capital of symbolic production somehow inscribed in its genetic code. Nevertheless, today the city is affected in a dramatic way by the collateral effects of such a domination of image production processes, conflicting with the lived space of the inhabitants, oppressing everyday practices, questioning their right to the city (Paba, 2002). This happens in the background of a general phenomenon; that is, the impressive loss of population which affected the city of Florence during the last few years, relocating mostly in the surrounding municipalities of the province. According to last available census data, the resident population of Florence fell by 11.7% from 1991 to 2001, while the flows of temporary

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

53

visitors and daily commuters steadily increased. In recent years we have witnessed to the actualisation of a wide range of long-debated infrastructural and housing projects mainly proposed by powerful partnerships of private actors. Those projects assembled quite passively by local administrations design general strategies for the city and its metropolitan area which leave place to the uncontested dominance of tourism and other forms of exploitation of the rent monopole of the prestigious site, while displacing from the centre most elements of diversity and cultural innovation (Colini, Pecoriello, Tripodi, & Zetti, 2009). Such strategies are more or less publicly expressed, supported or tolerated by strategic priorities of official planning tools, the main of which support  the displacement of numerous public and private functions from the centre of the city to new locations, mostly in new planned or regenerated settlements;  the increasing hegemony in the centre of commercial services and cultural activities related with the exploitation of conspicuous flows generated by tourist attraction;  the reorganisation of mobility infrastructures and transports according to the priority of managing physical flows to and from the historical centre. In particular, this last set of projects, ranging from high-speed train and airport expansion, to new urban tramlines, pedestrianisation of the centre and PPPs to manage new investment in parking lots, show a heavy and heavily debated impact on the social, economic and environmental sustainability of the territory. Florence and its centre are, both at national and metropolitan level, elements of congestion. Therefore, significant investment at all governmental tiers is placed on mobility infrastructure, with the related engagement of powerful conglomerates of construction enterprises, as a fundamental requisite to manage the consistent flows attracted by its cultural polarity. The main effect of such combination of strategies so far has been paradoxically to endorse and accelerate a process of citadelisation (Marcuse, 2000; Tripodi, 2004b), that is, of separation and alienation of the historical centre from the whole metropolitan tissue. It’s a process of specialisation and differentiation, asserting the inner city as a leisure district deeply connected with a network of globally valuable prestige location and tourist flows, while developing a metropolitan area unable to express an identity conforming to the extraordinary qualities of its historical centre. A phenomenon which can be summarised with Graham and

54

LORENZO TRIPODI

Marvin’s networked paradox: ‘‘global connections and local (dis)connections’’ (2001, p. 13). Recapitulating the characteristics of what I have defined cinematic city, it is evident that Florence strongly responds to the above-mentioned triplicity of global dynamics: mobility, mediation, exposure. In the following text, I examine how these transformations affect the spatial production of the city, focusing in particular on the structuring of a global space of exposure in the (re)walled historical citadel. Given the limited space of this piece, I overlook the aspect of mobility politics, which is extremely relevant and worth itself of a specific analysis, concentrating on the articulation of the space of exposure with the mediated space; that is, the intersection of the two domains where images surface in the lived space of people.

TRACING THE VISITOR’S EYE Recently, a team of researchers at Senseable City Lab at MIT developed a technique to drain data from the pictures of visited places uploaded by tourists on the Internet. Significantly, among the first locations where the team tested their technique have been Florence and its province. In this case, metadata have been collected from Flikr, the most successful social web platform for sharing images. The researchers collected a huge amount of images shot in Florence’s main tourist locations, uploaded by the visitors after or during their trip, which constitute an incredibly redundant archive of pictures of the same objects, taken from similar angles and showing repetitive situations. And presumably they represent only a minimum percentage of the total amount of pictures which have been shot in those locations, which nevertheless have been coded and stored somewhere. ‘‘Nowadays every click or every move of every user who interacts with any software may be gathered in a database and submitted to a seconddegree data-mining operation’’ (Girardin, Dal Fiore, Ratti, & Blata, 2008). With the project Tracing the Visitor’s Eye the researchers propose an analysis of archives of people-generated spatiotemporal data, from which high-level valuable human-behaviour information can be derived. Images carry log data which tell about time and geo-location, anchoring them to physical space. This information can be easily transformed into a map, designing the intensity of photographic exposure of specific places, tracing the trajectories of visitors, and revealing the parallel structuring of a spacerelated meta-architecture of data: that is, a significant exemplification of the cinematic urban structuring process, coupling incessantly human

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

55

behaviour and movements with a stratification of digital traces contributing to the construction of the perceived image of a place, and establishing and visualising its value in the mediated sphere in current ‘‘attention economy’’ terms (Fig. 4). The quantity of feedback daily received from the physical world matters in building, measuring and engendering value. It is the reiteration, the redundancy of data which determines the persistence of a certain (urban) image as a reflex of its consistence in economic terms. In collecting and visualising the history of the physical presence of tourists from the digital footprints they publicly made available on the world wide web, the aim of the research team is to support the activity of urban planners, traffic engineers and tourism authorities (Girardin et al., 2008). This perfectly exemplifies, in my opinion, the shifting edges of urban disciplines towards the mediated symbolic production. These studies are drawing on publicly accessible resources of data coming from voluntary work, which by the way are subsumed into a productive chain. Their use-value based on the affective sphere of their authors escapes any economic parameter; nevertheless, they engender value or participate in a definite profit-generating process. Definitely, no experience in

Fig. 4.

Capturing the Urban Image. Photo Manuela Conti.

56

LORENZO TRIPODI

postmodernity can be fully lived if not recorded, validated by the parallel coming into existence of images. This ontology is increasingly completed by the publication into the social web of recordings of comments, reports and tags. Human sociality, apparently part of the private affective relational sphere of the users, tends to increasingly constitute the substance of emerging forms of economies based on the exploitation of the related production of data as a source for targeted advertising, marketing and service providing supply; it is also a relevant factor in measuring the value of a location according to the capacity to attract flows and engender feedback, to its capacity to enhance imaginative production as an economic resource (Gordon, 2010).

SPACE OF EXPOSURE If we cross Florence’s historical centre in a standard day, we will be constantly in the frame of operating cameras. Dense swarms of tourists experience the visit of the city taking pictures and posing themselves in the framework of prestigious monuments. They all clasp digital devices capable to capture images, such as video and photo cameras, smartphones and every kind of PDA.2 Their main concern is to sample the urban experience, recording it on digital memory, ready to be reproduced and consumed. Their spatial practice fully interprets Florence’s public space as a space of exposure dedicated to symbolic production. The city acts as the stage set framing the narrative of their experience. Paradoxically, the overwhelming quantity of existing and accessible images prevent any possible surprise and real discovery in the experience of the city, which consists in finding exactly what one expects, told in innumerable guides, documentaries, fictions and deployed into the media as marketing imagery. Such an imperative identity of the city is reflected in most aspects of urban transformation. Urban public space is steadily re-worked to conform to the stereotyped image of the renaissance capital constructed during centuries by productive visitor’s gazes. The historical centre of the city shows an uninterrupted blossoming of ‘‘traditional’’ restaurants and locales presenting an obsessively reiterated rustic imagery, whose names recall historical figures of famous artists and prominent families, and in fact are for the most newly settled franchises. The intensity of vernacular motives drawn on at the source of traditional historiography is typical of the theme park. The magnificent provision of museums, collections and heritage sites supplied by the city is integrated with commercial quasi-museums showing such exhibition as of Leonardo’s

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

57

flying machines, of medieval tortures, or killers and psychopaths, whose consistence is that of a fairground scenery. It’s a process of saturation of the urban imagery which can be described as disneyfication, showing once again the capacity of the entertainment sector to influence urban transformation and to engender respective feedback with the mediated sphere (Sorkin, 1992). As a matter of fact, visual consumption becomes the hegemonic form of spatial interaction, engenders a feedback with the territory and structures the urban scape according the consumers demand. The process is fairly exemplified in the transformation of the traditional ‘‘belly’’ of Florence, the old San Lorenzo market which from being the place of a smelly, noisy and haptic food distribution activity and of a vibrant social life is progressively transforming into a ordered visual experience, with a great number of stalls turned into ‘‘souvenir food’’ shops, selling alimentary products that look fashionable and typical but not necessarily tasting good, in fact participating in the radical process of reinvention of tradition into stereotyped visual commonplace. The visual commodification of heritage sites is only a very specific manifestation of the urban process of image production, and mass cultural tourism is not the only element of Florence’s economy. If we turn the corner and continue our stroll into the citadel, we can observe how commerce at large is responding to the dictate of vertical urbanism. The streets of the central area are dominated by prestigious shops of important fashion griffes and international franchise chains, establishing a substantially monocultural district dedicated to fashion and Italian lifestyle. The image framed by the shop windows is thoroughly designed by professional art directors and graphic artists, incorporating lighting design, installation arts, multimedia tools and other advanced techniques into the spectacle of commodities. Florence public space provides a profitable and densely crossed space of exposure, able to amplify the exhibition of goods and brands (the corporate image) with its augmented capacity of distribution. For this reason, like in other similar prestige locations, it is of strategic importance for the competitors in the global market to appear in such a spot. Their profit – and the resulting high real-estate rent revenues of the locations – do not result from the quantity of goods traded in situ, rather from their exposure to the global public: in fact, their operating costs are often higher than their direct trade incomes. The showroom succeeds the traditional shop or warehouse in the post-modern urban economy, adopting as main feature the display of goods and brands to the consistent flows of global passers-by, and magnifying the image production component of commerce. This process, on the other hand, favours the dispersion or

58

LORENZO TRIPODI

extinction of a variety of traditional commercial and social activities related to the everyday life of citizens, endorsing the disconnection of the centre from the rest of the city. Other productive sectors of capital importance for Florence’s urban economy are those of exhibitions, fairs3 and international congresses. Accommodation facilities greatly benefit from the prestigious cultural frame provided by the city, as for instance the fortress designed in 1534 by Antonio da Sangallo for the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici redeveloped since the 1960s as exhibition centre. The social life of Florence is increasingly synchronised with a schedule of thematic international events, first of all the Pitti fashion shows, conforming to that festivalisation of public space which has been described as another typical phenomena of post-modern urbanism (Ha¨uXermann & Siebel, 1987; Sennett, 1994). The restructuring of the urban centrality as a transient space optimised for visual consumption influences also other sectors, as the educational. The University of Florence is relocating a significant part of its structures and faculties into newly built polarities, disassembling a traditional model of university which uses urban centre as campus, immersed into the civic life of the city. High investments into newly and debatable structures dispersed into the metropolitan areas are partly subsidised by the sale or concession of historical buildings in the centre. Interestingly enough, the potential as a city campus is not totally dismissed, but a new wave of private educational offer sprouted in Florence during the last few decades, with a variety of international private schools of art, photography, fashion, restoration, cooking and Italian culture, that is mostly visual disciplines and image production activities. A significant number of foreign universities, especially American ones, are settling detached branches with didactic spaces and lodging structures for student in the historical centre. That may be labelled edutainment activities, which combine the appeal of a prestigious cultural site with that of a leisure district. The strategic vision for the city adapts to the ‘‘creative city’’ model, although strongly focused on preservation, heritage and traditional form of symbolic production, in contradiction with the innovative energies of young local creatives, which tend to emigrate escaping the mono-cultural approach of the city, directed to more innovation-oriented polarities. But while the traditional presence of Italian students is becoming increasingly less relevant in the city life, the new wave of creative students populating the city for their abroad semesters is not able to deeply interact with the cultural life of the city and to improve its creativity and innovation, growing rather consumption. They nevertheless participate in the establishment of a global district dedicated to image production.

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

59

CONTROLLING THE IMAGE OF THE CITY From the institutional side, an essential aspect of the heritage politics implemented by local administration and by the Offices for the Preservation of Monuments, which is understandably a powerful actor in the spatial politics of Florence, is the preservation of a coherent image consistent with the marketed image of the city: a puzzling and contradictory task facing the pressure of global market inexorably fostering the commodification process. Interestingly enough, the disneyfication risk is at once taken into account as a pitfall to prevent, and implicitly endorsed by the Plan For the Historical Centre – UNESCO deployed by the municipality of Florence to manage the inner-city area in compliance with the international organisation’s guidelines for the protected site. This is designed to ‘‘guarantee the site’s identification, safeguarding, conservation, development and transmission to future generations’’ of the whole urban district as an integral and unique piece of art (Comune di Firenze, 2006). Florence is significantly the first case in the history of the adoption of a whole historical centre as a patrimony of the humanities by the UNESCO. Nevertheless, the effort of local and international institutions to preserve the consolidated image of the city and guaranteeing its accessibility through spatial regulation and structural interventions endorses at the same time the progressive restriction at the visual realm of most of the interactions possible into public space, and to a typical impoverishment of the public life of the city centre. Specific rules for the use of public space, police control, urban furniture and deterrence devices as fences and CCTV reinforce the norm of public space as a fluidified space dedicated to visual consumption, redefining in the meanwhile as ‘‘out of the decency’’ or ‘‘degradation’’ of such behaviour as sitting on the stairs of a church, eating in the street or assembling in public space. Basic needs such as as water, rest and comfort are hard to obtain for free: public fountains, benches and toilettes almost disappeared from the city centre, while simply sitting down in this area has become a commodity imposing a price on the customer (Tripodi, 2004b). Justified as preservation policy, it is the extensive commodification of the right to the city. The idealistic view of the civic public space as a place for social life, and as a discursive space of confrontation and exchange, is declining, despite the idyllic model that a romanticised Italian public space provided to the rhetoric of new urbanism. Ironically, the very attraction of such an idealistic conception of the piazza contributes to the negation of the particular qualities of the actual places by the means of an overwhelming swarm of transients paying tribute to such specificities. The highly suggestive, poetic experience that past travellers

60

LORENZO TRIPODI

Fig. 5.

Tourists Are Decay. Photo Manuela Conti.

found in its streets and ‘‘rooms with a view’’ is no longer possible. The peculiarity of its daily experience has been erased and substituted by a standardised supply of images. The process of museification of the civic space of Florence is affecting the social diversity and the civic use of space, which opened up as well a season of conflicts and public-space activism, although at the current stage visibly fading against the apparent inescapability of the process (Paba 2002). The right to the city is here strongly questioned, in favour of policies aimed at optimising the time of exposure of the consumers (Fig. 5).

CONCLUSION In accompanying the reader in this ‘‘stroll’’ through Florence’s historical citadel, my aim has been to enlighten upon the many forms of image production taking place in and transforming public space in contemporary Florence. The described phenomena show the particular conditions of a prestigious historical district characterised by a unique cultural heritage as perfectly inscribed into the general framework of late-modern cognitive

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

61

capitalism (Vercellone 2005), and coherent with the dynamics of the global symbolic production chain. I have tried to show how image production proceeds in parallel, ontologically interconnected, with spatial production processes, employing the famous Lefebvrian triad of representations of space, representational spaces and spatial practice, as a conceptual grid to which the observed phenomena trace back (Lefebvre, 1991). We have detected forms of image production developing as representations of space, which can be understood as the conceived space proposed by politicians, planners and economic stakeholders like, for example, strategic visions and preservation plans for the city. Therefore, we have observed the many forms in which the perceived space of Florence is produced and reproduced by image professionals, such as in the visual communication essential to commerce, in tourism marketing and entertainment sector, up to the point that the whole historical centre can be equated to a representational space dedicated to cultural and creative industries and education. Thirdly, we have noticed that the spatial practice, namely the sum of uncountable everyday life acts and significations played by city users – like the tourists consuming and reproducing the symbolic potential of the urban space, the students interpreting this space as a cultural entertainment district, as well the fading resistance of residents and minorities – contributes to the overall formation of a public image of the city and to the establishment of a parallel meta-city of data and images feeding and unceasingly transforming the global identity of Florence. As I have argued, all those dynamics converge in redesigning public space as a visual space of consumption, multiplying in the meantime the mediated interaction of city users. If this process on one side consolidates the high-ranking position of Florence as a prestige location in the global network of cultural capitals, on the other it impoverishes its public life, favours the general commodification of spatial practice and increases the internal disconnection among its globalised centre and the localised and specialised newly planned polarities. Despite the identity of Florence marked as cultural heritage being reflected in apparent processes of museification and sclerotisation of its historical image, the city is in fact subject to dramatic transformative processes regarding social relations, public policy and innovation, at the point that it could be equated to one real epitome of post-modern urban transformation, perfectly representing the typical features of the emerging cinematic city. The transformation of its historical centre from a recognised and politically significant model of civic space into a global space of exposure dedicated to visual consumption raises more general concerns about the corresponding transformation of urban public space into a new privatised sphere dominated by global players,

62

LORENZO TRIPODI

which deploy an awkward capacity to influence the structuring of the perceived landscape of citizens through what I defined as a vertical urbanism. This new form of urban policy focussing on the exploitation of the semantic capacity of urban territories and their mediated extensions raises evident issues about a real democratic governance of local communities. As a matter of fact, private actors, and in particular corporate identities, represent the main force shaping such a planning dimension. The traditional horizontal modern organisation of urbanism has to deal with the territory as a cultural determination of natural assets and productive labour, and with such notions as locality, place, community, identity, boundary, which is implicitly the realm of political representation. The essentially public character of the concept of territory with its environmental issues and its explicit nature of common resource has always been recognised as a basis for planning. On the contrary, the vertical post-modern urbanism is rooted in a technological reproductive capacity connected to neo-liberal economy. The whole technological infrastructure supporting the mediated social space is privately developed and owned, as well as deeply geared to an implicitly entrepreneurial military industrial capacity, expressing the less trustworthy incarnation of state powers. The development of the urban palimpsest is almost left over the entrepreneurial capacity of aggressive conglomerates of media powers: it is a phenomenon particularly debated in the context of new mediated spaces of Web 2.0, for instance, but appears increasingly relevant in urban street life and in the hyperreality of new public/private spaces. The sociability created through such a concatenation of information technologies and spaces is subsumed into a production/consumption chain, and put at work as a productive process commoditising every form of social interaction, substantially extending to urban life the pay-per-view concept.

NOTES 1. The term cinematic urbanism generally denotes an approach analysing modern city through film studies, as in AlSayyad (2006) and Clark (1997). Although the parallel evolution of cinematic language and modern spaces is implicit in such studies, in my approach the attention is rather on the specular phenomena, that is, how cinematic devices at large, including television, new media and the Internet, endorse the structural transformation of the urban environment in the information age (see also Tripodi, 2009a). 2. The new generation of electronic devices defined as Personal Digital Assistant (iPods, smart phones, tablets) collect a variety of functions, the main of which are to provide constant wireless connection to the internet together with a screen able to

The Productive Gaze. Florence as Archetype of the Cinematic City

63

produce and manage a wide range of iconic operations: mobile, networked and visualising, it is the ultimate cinematic urban device. 3. Significantly, one of the most innovative offer is the BTO – Buy Tourism Online Fair.

REFERENCES AlSayyad, N. (Ed.) (2006). Cinematic urbanism: A history of the modern from reel to real. New York, NY: Routledge. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Beller, J. (2006). The cinematic mode of production. London: University Press of New England. Berman, M. (1982). All that is solid melts into air. New York, NY: Simon and Shuster. Clark, D. (Ed.) (1997). The cinematic city. London: Routledge. Colini, L., Pecoriello, A. L., Tripodi, L., & Zetti, I. (2009). Museumization and transformation in Florence. In: L. Porter & K. Shaw (Eds.), Whose urban renaissance? An international comparison of urban regeneration strategies. London: Routledge. Comune di Firenze (2006). Piano di gestione del Centro Storico 2006–2008. Retrieved from http://www.comune.firenze.it/unesco/INGLESE/piano_gestione_en.html. Accessed on 10 October 2010. Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Fantoni, M. (2000). Renaissance republics and principalities in Anglo-American historiography. In: M. Fantoni (Ed.), Gli anglo-americani a Firenze. Idea e costruzione del Rinascimento. Roma: Bulzoni Firenze. Girardin, F., Dal Fiore, F., Ratti, C., & Blata, J. (2008). Leveraging explicitly disclosed location information to understand tourist dynamics: A case study. Journal of Location Based Services, 2(1), 41–56. Goldhaber, M. (1997). The attention economy and the net. First Monday, 2, 4–7 April. Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/519/440. Gordon, E. (2010). The urban spectator. Lebanon: University Press of New England. Graham, S. (2004). The cybercities reader. London: Routledge. Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism. London: Routledge. Hall, P. G. (2001). Cities in civilization. New York, NY: Fromm. Hannerz, U. (1980). Exploring the city. Inquiries toward an urban anthropology. New York, NY: Columbia. University Press. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2002). The art of rent. Globalisation, monopoly and the commodification of culture. The Socialist Register, 38. Ha¨uXermann, H., & Siebel, W. (1987). Neue urbanita¨t. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Lash, S., & Urry, J. (1994). Economies of sign and space. London: Sage. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Marcuse, P. (2000). The layered city. In: P. Madsen & R. Plunz (Eds.), The urban lifeworld. Formation, perception, representation. London: Routledge.

64

LORENZO TRIPODI

Mitchell, D. (1995). The end of public space. Annals of the Associations of American geographers, 85(1). Paba, G. (Ed.) (2002). Insurgent city. Racconti e geografie di un’altra Firenze. Livorno: Media Print. Paba, G. (2004). Contested places: Stories and geographies from another Florence. In: INURA (Ed.), The contested metropolis: Six cities at the beginning of 21st century (pp. 114–121). Basel: Birkhauser. Peck, J. (2005). Struggling with the creative class. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(4), 740–770. Sandercock, L. (2003). Cosmopolis II. Mongrel cities of the 21st century. London: Continuum. Scott, J. A. (2000). The cultural economy of cities: Essays on the geography of image-producing industries. London: Sage. Sennett, R. (1994). Flesh and stone. New York, NY: Norton. Simmel, G. (1971). The Stranger. In: D. N. Levine & G. Simmel (Eds.), On individuality and social forms (pp. 143–150). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sorkin, M. (1992). Variations on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space. New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Tripodi, L. (1996). Lo spazio negato: La stazione e lo straniero. Firenze: Pontecorboli. Tripodi, L. (2004a). L’invenzione dello spazio pubblico. Pratiche di resistenza all’erosione della sfera pubblica della citta` nell’era della globalizzazione. Doctoral Thesis, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Florence. Tripodi, L. (2004b). The abrogated city. In: INURA (Ed.), The contested metropolis: Six cities at the beginning of 21st Century (pp. 122–129). Basel: Birkhauser. Tripodi, L. (2008). Space of exposure: Notes for a vertical urbanism. In: J. Gleiter, N. Korrek & G. Zimmermann (Eds.), Die Realita¨t des Imagina¨ren. Weimar: Verlag des BauhausUniversita¨t. Tripodi, L. (2009a). Cinematic urbanism. In: R. Hutchinson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of urban studies. Sage. Tripodi, L. (2009b). Towards a vertical urbanism. Space of exposure as a new paradigm for public space. In: A. M. Brighenti (Ed.), The wall and the city. Trento: Professionaldreamers. Urban Task Force. (1999). Towards an urban renaissance. London: Taylor & Francis. Urry, J. (1990). The tourist gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary societies. London: Sage. Vercellone, C. (2005). The hypothesis of cognitive capitalism. London: Birkbeck College and SOAS. Virilio, P. (2000). Information bomb. London: Sage. Ward, S. V. (1998). Selling places: The marketing and promotion of towns and cities 1850–2000. New York, NY: Routledge.

CHAPTER 4 THE POLITICS OF SPACE IN AN ETHNO-NATIONALLY CONTESTED CITY: STRATEGIES AND EVERYDAY PRACTICES Rachel Kallus ABSTRACT What are the consequences of urban life in an ethno-nationally contested city? How do everyday practices confront municipal strategies that attempt to control such urban situations? Focusing on urban life in which daily negotiation of ethno-national differences occurs, this chapter considers the nuances of urban politics and the use and meaning of the urban space, i.e., the micro-politics and the social dynamic of place-making, and their role in the struggle for urban citizenship in an ethno-nationally mixed city. Discourse analysis and ethnographic encounters define the annual Holiday of Holidays festival in the Israeli–Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas as integral to Haifa’s strategy for promoting itself as a site of coexistence. The neighborhood serves the entire city in that its ‘‘Arab’’ urban space has become the emblem of that coexistence. This manipulation by the municipality is, however, not reinforced by urban regeneration and heritage management of the local Palestinian community. Nonetheless coexistence discourse is also employed by the residents themselves, suggesting a more nuanced understanding of the role of urban Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 65–94 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011007

65

66

RACHEL KALLUS

space in promoting the city, as well as of concepts of local identity and citizenship. Keywords: Urban life; urban planning; urban strategies; urban politics; ethno-national conflict; everyday life; Haifa

INTRODUCTION As an attribute of ‘‘coexistence,’’ Haifa Municipality has, for the past decade, promoted a festival in Wadi Nisnas, the city’s central Palestinian1 neighborhood. The Holiday of Holidays festival is celebrated in December, simultaneously celebrating Christmas, Ramadan,2 and Hanukah. During the festival the low-income, densely populated neighborhood becomes an outdoor art gallery, the venue for exhibiting works created specifically for the event. Thousands of visitors from all over Israel come to Haifa for the festival, bringing commercial prosperity and mixing with the ‘‘other’’ (see Fig. 1). A review of the festival events within the context of Haifa’s historical, social, and cultural geopolitics indicates that the urban space is used by the municipality to market the city as a site of coexistence. The chapter examines how this usage shapes the claims and practices of citizenship of the Palestinian minority in the city. The tensions and relationships of an ethnonationally mixed city are explored to see how the urban context mediates the national nexus, how ethnicity gives meaning to the urban space, and how this meaning conflicts with municipal and national claims. The chapter focuses on urban life, in which daily negotiation of ethnonational differences occurs, rather than on national political life countrywide. It considers the nuances of urban politics, and the use and meaning of the urban space, i.e., the micro-politics of the social dynamic of placemaking, and their role in the struggle for urban citizenship in an ethnonationally mixed city. It is based on a longitudinal study of the Holiday of Holidays festival in Wadi Nisnas over time. Research material includes observation, interviews with residents, city officials and bureaucrats, material from local and national newspapers and the Internet, and documentation such as plans, reports, protocols, memos, and correspondence.

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

Fig. 1.

67

Wadi Nisnas during the Holiday of Holidays Festival (Source: Beit HaGefen).

BACKGROUND: THE POLITICS OF URBAN SPACE Urban space is an organizational construct that represents the contemporary metropolis (Carr, Francis, Rivlin, & Stone, 1993; Gottdiener, 1994; Madanipour, 1996). It has become the focus of research by scholars in cultural geography, urban studies, and critical theory about what cities are in terms of social and political thinking, but not necessarily concerned with the physical attributes of the urban space. Apart from a tendency to dematerialize the city, they consider its sociocultural and political meaning (e.g., Soja, 1989) as well as its poetic expression in literary, cinematographic, and other visual representations (e.g., Abbas, 1998; Alsayyad, 2006). Their concern is mainly with the publicness of the urban space. Public space, by definition, is urban space (Smith & Low, 2006). It is differentiated from private space in terms of access, the sources, and nature of control over entry, individual and collective behavior, and use. At the

68

RACHEL KALLUS

heart of the discussion, the urban space is understood as a place accessible or visible to the public (Sennett, 1977). Philosophic discourses on private and public spheres by Arendt (1958) and Habermas (1962) contend that during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, bourgeois values were constructed on the assumption of separate spheres. For Hannah Arendt, the city is a place where people are ideally equal because they are strangers to one another with no social ties.3 Since their actual identity is unknown, it does not give rise to inequalities in the public realm.4 For Ju¨rgen Habermas (1989), the public realm is constituted by how people reason about their social and economic status, i.e., private people who, together, form a ‘‘public.’’ Habermas’ idealization of the bourgeois public sphere as a space of rational discussion and consensus has been sharply criticized (Fraser, 1993; McKeon, 2004). Alternative scenarios that critically engage with the idea of the public sphere argue that there is no such element as a single, uniform public sphere. The concept of plural, multiple, and overlapping public spheres is more appropriate. The core of this debate is a challenge to the notion of a homogeneous public and universally accessible space (Mitchell, 2003). Different understandings of the distinction between public and private highlight its political implications (Benhabib, 1998; Weintraub, 1995). The urban space is, by definition, a physical entity with concrete meaning and daily implications for its inhabitants. The spatiality of the public sphere, closely associated with the idea of the public space, assumes a territory accessible to everyone, without fear of exclusion. This, however, is not always the case. Contrary to the notion of its neutrality, a public space is a contested terrain of power relations (Berman, 1986; Smith & Low, 2006). It is composed of places where differences are not always tolerated and access is often controlled or limited (Mitchell, 1995). Implicit limitations of accessibility make many public places, such as streets, parks, and playgrounds, de facto private (Hayden, 1995; Valentine, 1996), and many spaces officially open to the public are privately owned, managed, and regulated (Loukaitou-Sideris, 1993). How a space is organized reflects power relations within cities and between different social groups, and the use of that space contests, confronts, and compromises these power relations (Smith, 1996; Zukin, 2011). Thus, urban space is not merely an abstract arena where things happen, but a nexus of dynamic political relations (Keith & Pile, 1993; Smith & Low, 2006). Space as a social product implies imagined places, but also the material manifestation of these designs in the built environment, with symbolic values invested in them by users and their actual practices

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

69

(Lefebvre, 1992). The different ways in which people use and interact in the public space make it the locus of their individual and communal identities alike. The right to the city means the potential use of the city as a source of identity. It is ‘‘not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire’’ argues Harvey (2003, p. 939). If, as suggested by Lefebvre (1996), the city is an ‘‘oeuvre’’ – a work of human creation rather than an economic product – its use value must override its exchange value. The use of the city by its citizens is a valid end in itself, the right to make full use of and participate in its creation – being of the city and not merely in the city (Mitchell, 2003). This focus on city-making as ‘‘written from below’’ underlines the intricacies of how urban spaces are shaped and reshaped through daily practices. It also suggests a clash between urban regulation in the name of order, security and comfort, and the rights of a democratic citizenry. In point of fact, the public urban space is an arena where a network of laws, policing, and municipal government aimed at building stability for economic growth often clash with the freedom of speech and assembly endemic to democracy (Keller, 2009). So which public does the public space serve, promote, and represent? This question is particularly apposite in the context of an ethno-nationally diverse city. How does the public space affect, and how is it affected by the power geometry of such a city? The traditional urban vision of ‘‘the public,’’ in particular the urban public space as a place of emancipation and liberty, is scrutinized in this chapter. The discussion of Wadi Nisnas, however, does not attempt to negate the power of the urban space and its centrality to urban life. Rather, it is an opportunity to evaluate the potential of the urban space to negotiate ethno-national differences. Wadi Nisnas, caught between localism, nationalism, and globalization, sheds light on the politics of the urban space. In the context of an ethno-nationally contested city, the Wadi opens up new considerations of urban conflict, presenting an opportunity for public discourse and negotiation between local citizenship, the municipality, and (hopefully) the state.

URBAN SPACE IN AN ETHNO-NATIONALLY CONTESTED CITY Planning in divided, ‘‘mixed,’’ or ethnically fractured cities is typified by negotiation between conflicting aspirations of different groups and the

70

RACHEL KALLUS

powerful, often explosive, links between the drive for ethnic control and a conflicted reality (Boal, 1996; Bollens, 1998). Focusing on the politics of place – the struggles and political relations concerning the material and symbolic aspects of particular communities and neighborhoods – helps to crystallize the notion of urban citizenship and how it is formed in practice. As Holston (2008) insists, it is often within the politics of place that the various claims of citizenship are articulated, emphasizing how the public urban space constructs forms of subjectivity and orientation through spatial framings of urban life. Contested cities can be platforms for projects through which aspects of citizenship evolve beyond a national political system. The importance of an ethnic locality lies in the place of the community as an entity that survives a codex of multiple histories, and as a locus of possible withdrawal and resistance (Cupers, 2005). Appadurai and Holston (1999) argue that ‘‘without prior formative attachment and commitments to family, culture, ethnicity, religion, and the like, people cannot achieve the sense of moral depth and personhood that the liberal compact requires’’ (p. 193). It is within the city that ethnic identities are formed, through urban memories and everyday experiences (Boyer, 1996). The urban space comprises layers of conflicted meanings struggling to expose repressed and misrepresented stories (Hayden, 1995). Urban forms and the spatial practices endemic to them are important aspects of power in terms of authority, but also as means of resistance to it (Dovey, 2001). The public space is a political realm where different identities meet and confront each other, thus creating opportunities for negotiating collective action (Eder, 2003). Negotiating the identity of urban communities in relation to the urban space is therefore essential for developing effective urban governance and cultural strategies. The ethnicization of urban space production within geopolitical Israel/ Palestine has been shaped by ‘‘urban ethnocracy’’ (Yiftachel & Yacobi, 2003). It is largely governed by ethnic control, predicated by the radical division of urban space between the affluent and politically dominant Jewish settlers and the ongoing vitiation of the Palestinian community, systematically barred from access to land reserves, economic resources, and policymaking. In Monterescu and Rabinowitz’s analysis (2007), grounded in postcolonial theory, ethnic segregation does not pull out cohabitation. Dialectics of oppression and resistance are often intertwined, resonating with imageries of mimicry, unconscious infatuation, and cross-references between unevenly powered ethnic groups. Reconfiguring mixed cities or towns, they and other scholars (e.g., Falah, Hoy, & Sarker, 2000), agree that in the case of contemporary Israel it would be unwise to treat these places as

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

71

a single monolithic unit. As in the rest of the country, habitation of mixed cities and towns is determined by the logic of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Their ethno-histories have given rise to complex trajectories that cannot instigate or sustain a stable regime of complete ethnic separation. As these cities and towns maintain differentiated socio-spatial patterns each one of them becomes a unique case.

COEXISTENCE IN THE MIXED CITY In his introduction to the book Tea on the Casino Balcony: coexistence in Haifa during the British Mandate, 1920–1948 (Sharfman & Nachmias, 2007), Yona Yahav, Haifa’s current mayor, lauds the achievements of his city and what he calls the ‘‘Haifa model’’ for coexistence. However, a recent study has revealed that political leadership in the form of mayoral charisma exists mostly in the symbolic and discursive spheres (Leibovitz, 2007). Haifa as a model of coexistence allegedly different from the rest of Israel is evident in official statements rather than in concrete policy initiatives. In reviewing Sharfman and Nachmias’ book, the Israeli–Palestinian historian Mahmud Yazbak (2007) notes that both Yahav and the book’s editors ignore the events that changed the face of Haifa and established its asymmetrical power geometry. As Yazbak asserts, Sharfman, one of the editors, in her use of the term ‘‘liberation’’ when discussing the 1948 war, clearly sides with the Jews and disregards the tragedy of the military confrontation for the Palestinian population, which sees the Israeli victory as its Nakba.5 As to whether Haifa, with 30,000 Arab residents, just under 10% of the city’s total population (the rest being mostly Jewish), is in fact a mixed city, is open to question.6 Since Palestinian and Jewish Israelis usually live in separate settlements and towns, the only Israeli cities considered as ‘‘mixed’’ towns – Haifa, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Lydda, Ramla, Acre, Upper Nazareth, and Jerusalem (which should probably be treated as a category in its own right) – attract attention. Although accounting for only 9% of the total Arab population in Israel, these cities are the only shared Arab–Jewish spaces in Israel/Palestine (Falah, 1997; Falah et al., 2000). Yacobi (2009) argues that since their communities are segregated, these cities are not really mixed. However, Monterescu and Rabinowitz (2007) maintain that mixed cities represent a socio-demographic reality as well as proximity in which individuals and groups on both sides share elements of identity, symbolic traits, and cultural markers.

72

RACHEL KALLUS

Jews and Arabs lived in Haifa under the same municipality prior to 1948. As Goren (2008) indicates, the term ‘‘mixed city’’ was coined during the British Mandate in Palestine. Post-1948, the term has been widely used to denote situations in which Jewish and Arab communities are under the same urban jurisdiction. But, according to Yiftachel and Yacobi (2003), beneath such terminology, the ‘‘mixed’’ urban spaces where Jews and Arabs live in the same city tend to be exceptional and involuntary. Leibovitz (2007) agrees, preferring such expressions as ‘‘ethnically fractured’’ or ‘‘contested’’ cities. As he and other researchers note, divided, ‘‘mixed,’’ or ethnically fractured Haifa is the result of a process of Judaization (Kolodney & Kallus, 2008). The Palestinian community remaining in the city after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 has become a marginalized minority (Segev, 1984). Conversely, for many of Haifa’s Palestinian residents, the history of the city is a lived daily experience, an important aspect of their identity (Habibi, 1993; Kanafani, 2001). The results of a study examining perceptions of Arab and Jewish coexistence in five ‘‘mixed cities’’ in Israel, including Haifa, suggest that the evolution of Arab–Jewish relations – especially in urban settings – strongly influences perceptions of coexistence (Falah et al., 2000). Asking how people feel about coexistence within their specific cities of residence, as opposed to within the State of Israel, the study found that Arabs and Jews alike perceive coexistence as positive, based on the sharing of urban space, neighborhoods, services, and cultural values. The ranking for positive perceptions of coexistence among Arab respondents was highest in Haifa (and second for Jewish respondents). The fact that Arab respondents are more concerned about issues relating to coexistence within cities than within the state is telling, suggesting a need to focus on the micro-political level (Leibovitz, 2007; Yiftachel & Yacobi, 2003). Social interaction between Jews and Arabs is influenced by economic, socio-political, and cultural factors that are, at least to some extent, dissociated from the evolution of the mixed cities. As Falah et al. (2000) stress, the provision of municipal services is particularly important, due to the fact that Arabs, as a result of historical events, tend to live in the older sections of these cities. Arabs feel that their rights, in particular their property rights, have strong bearing on their acceptance of coexistence (ibid.). To challenge the discourse of ‘‘coexistence in Haifa,’’ radical Palestinian activists have combined their strategies, in particular the struggle over space, with imaginary/visionary counter-discourses. The struggle concerning quality of life and opportunities, combined with demands for collective identity and rights, and with elements of cultural and nationalist

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

73

memory is, to some extent, the result of identifying ‘‘cracks’’ in local politics and shifts in Palestinian–Israelis’ attitudes to the state (Leibovitz, 2007). The coexistence discourse has thus become an opportunity for reimaging Haifa as the Palestinian city, the center of the cultural, national, and social identity that was lost in 1948 (Hasan, 2008). This discourse also offers a means of restructuring a shared urban space, and of overcoming historical injustice and prejudice (Jabareen, 2008). In spite of considerable efforts to reimage Haifa as a shared city,7 there is still no institutional recognition of the role of the politics of symbolic place in preserving Haifa’s Palestinian past, and local government’s acknowledgment of ethnic, religious, national, and cultural diversity has been negligible.

URBAN SPACE IN A MIXED CITY Wadi Nisnas is the only Palestinian neighborhood in Haifa in which buildings and infrastructures were not destroyed during or after the 1948 war. Despite population changes due to abandonment and/or transfer, the physical fabric of the neighborhood has remained fairly intact, representing a quasi-authentic Palestinian urbanism. The area was developed at the end of the nineteenth century as a Christian Arab neighborhood outside the walls of Haifa. Development of neighborhoods according to religious affiliations was encouraged by the Ottoman rulers of Palestine and by the British Mandate that followed (Goren, 2006). This created a sociogeographic pattern in which the Christian neighborhoods were to the west of the Old City, Muslims to the east, and the newly established Jewish community on the lower slopes of Mount Carmel to the south. The population of Wadi Nisnas in 1945 was estimated at about 2,000, 100 of whom were Jews and the rest Arabs, mostly Christians (Goren, 1996; Yazbak, 2003). Immediately before and during the 1948 war some 65,000 Arabs left Haifa. The remaining 5,000 Arabs, Christians and Muslims alike, were concentrated by the Israeli authorities in Wadi Nisnas and its immediate surroundings (Morris, 2000, p. 107). The order issued on July 1, 1948, allowed five days for completing the transfer of all Arabs from the Carmel and other mixed neighborhoods to houses abandoned by refugees in Wadi Nisnas (Segev, 1984, pp. 69–70). After the war, the Wadi was designated as the permanent location for the transferred population by the Committee for Housing Arabs, which was responsible for arranging longterm housing for Arabs who had been relocated during the war (Goren, 1996).8 Wadi Nisnas thus became the center of Haifa’s Palestinian

74

RACHEL KALLUS

community,9 providing the community (including those living in other parts of the town) with education, religious, and other civic and cultural services. The current census estimates Wadi Nisnas’s population at 3,490, of whom 66% are Christians, 31.5% are Muslims, and the rest are Jews10. The neighborhood is characterized by mixed land use with a rich diversity of businesses and commerce, including a lively market. The many public buildings include schools, kindergartens, clubs, and churches. Public societies and NGOs are active in the area, as well as iconic cultural landmarks such as the Al-Midan Theater and the Arab newspaper Al Ittihad, published since 1944. Wadi Nisnas also has an Arab–Jewish center called Beit HaGefen,11 established in 1963 ‘‘for the purpose of bringing together Arabs and Jews, and educating toward coexistence, neighborliness, and tolerance by means of cultural and artistic activities, festivals, meetings, and community activities’’ (Beit HaGefen Internet site). However, local residents, Arabs and Jews alike, see Beit HaGefen as ‘‘an anachronistic colonial institute’’ (Assad, 2005) or, as the local historian Mansur calls it, ‘‘an institute for the castration of Arab culture’’ (Nir & Glili, 2000).12 The layout and physical attributes of the Wadi distinguish it from its surroundings. It is densely built, its urban morphology characterized by narrow winding streets and steps descending the sloping terrain (see Fig. 2). The topography offers views from and into the neighborhood and a fairly clear definition of its perimeters. This concentration of a Palestinian population in a clearly defined area within the urban fabric has consolidated a community that is intimate and multigenerational, not only because of its traditional modus vivendi, but also because the Palestinian population of Haifa has had few opportunities of expanding beyond the boundaries of the area (ASP, 2006).13 Overpopulation and the resultant congestion, neglect and deterioration of the infrastructure, and lack of new development have caused the neighborhood to decline. A survey made in 1995 indicated that the buildings are in poor condition, and there is a chronic shortage of public spaces, those that do exist being well below the standard criteria (Amidar, 1995). The results of the 1995 national census ranked Wadi Nisnas in cluster 6, an indication of its poor socioeconomic condition and standard of living.14 Over the years, there has been little private investment in the neighborhood due to lack of land and a low owner rate. More than half of the buildings in the Wadi are ‘‘abandoned properties,’’ i.e., they belong to Palestinian refugees who did not reclaim them after the 1948 war. Hence, they officially belong to the Israel Land Authority, and are managed by the government housing company, Amidar.15

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

Fig. 2.

75

The Urban Fabric of Wadi Nisnas (Source: Ziva Kolodney).

In 1976, Wadi Nisnas was designated for rehabilitation by the Ministry of Housing and Construction and was included in the national Renewal Project. The intention was to initiate social and economic changes in selected neighborhoods through improvement of housing and the urban infrastructure, as well as through investment in programs for education, health, and employment (Elazar & Marom, 1992). The neighborhoods were selected according to distress indicators: low income levels, high unemployment, dysfunctional families, high rate of school dropouts and poor education, high crime rate, alienation and apathy, dilapidation of housing stock, lack of public institutions, facilities, services, and physical infrastructure; a negative image among inhabitants and other residents of the city, and lack of political representation inside the establishment. Most of the neighborhoods selected for the project were government housing estates originally built for Jewish immigrants, low-standard dwellings for socially disadvantaged populations. Wadi Nisnas was an exception. Beyond recognition of the neighborhood’s condition, the choice was intended to demonstrate equality in distribution of government funds. This was

76

RACHEL KALLUS

followed by the Municipality’s positive action of allowing extensive repairs to the infrastructure: sewers, drainage, and road systems. There was also considerable investment in education. No funds were made available for improving personal standards of living.16

NEGOTIATING THE URBAN SPACE As the center of Palestinian life in Haifa, Wadi Nisnas was recognized by the local municipality as presenting a multicultural image as early as 1963, even before military rule restricting the movement and rights of Israeli– Palestinians ended17. Abba Khoushy, then mayor of Haifa, inaugurated Beit HaGefen as a forum for mutual cultural activities, the intention being to harness the activities for political goals and to secure Beit HaGefen as an electoral power base. Khoushy instituted an annual ‘‘week of friendship and brotherhood’’ in which he met with representatives of the Arab community and with delegates from the city’s other denominations. By the end of the 1980s, this indoor event had become a week-long outdoor fair known as ‘‘Shuk-Run.’’18 The Rehabilitation Corporation, a joint government– municipal company operating in Wadi Nisnas under the Ministry of Housing and Construction’s Project Renewal, used the fair to promote its rehabilitation programs. In 1994, the Holiday of Holidays festival officially became an annual event. In official publications it is presented as ‘‘days of friendship and brotherhood’’ and a ‘‘feast’’ to which the public is invited to celebrate the ‘‘togetherness’’ of Jews and Arabs. The event was based on art fair, food market, and educational activities in Beit HaGefen. In 1995, the event became the ‘‘Wadi Nisnas Festival’’ under the slogan ‘‘new versus old.’’ Emphasizing neighborhood authenticity, it celebrated less the human side of the neighborhood (e.g., its Arab-ness) and more its physical appearance, presenting it as a ‘‘Mediterranean neighborhood’’ (Peled-Bartal, 2001). With Haifa’s Old City leveled by the Israeli army in 1948,19 the acknowledgement of Wadi Nisnas as the ‘‘old city’’ marks a recognition of the economic potential of architectural authenticity. It also marks the ongoing tensions between the social and commercial goals of the event as it develops over the years. To achieve a wider acceptance by the residents of the Wadi, Muslims have been encouraged to participate in the event. Since 1996, it has been called the Holiday of Holidays festival, turning an Arab–Jewish friendship celebration into religious festival. It occurs each December, coinciding with the Jewish Hanukka, the Muslim Ramadan, and Christmas religious

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

77

festivals. Emphasis on religious aspects indicates commercialization, and the staged events are presented as a ‘‘cultural mosaic’’ dissociated from their ethno-national and class contexts (Peled-Bartal, 2001). The festival reinforces Arab Christianity and Arab Islam as two discrete identities, and infers the ‘‘westernism’’ of the Christian population, presumably less threatening for the Jewish establishment.20 Thus, although all three denominations are officially included, Christmas is mainly apparent during the festival, a reminder of the neighborhood’s place in a commercialized world (see Fig. 3). The urban space becomes the locus of the event. During the festival, the Wadi becomes an outdoor art gallery, with streets, building facades, and rooftops as settings for sculptures, murals, installations, and performances (see Figs. 4 and 5). The event attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over Israel (see Fig. 6). Today, there is an official Internet site as well as

Fig. 3.

Shop Window Decoration in Wadi Nisnas during the Holiday of Holidays Festival (Source: Ziva Kolodney).

78

RACHEL KALLUS

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Artwork in Wadi Nisnas: Toni Ashkar, ‘‘Childhood Memory,’’ 2004 (Source: Beit HaGefen).

Artwork in Wadi Nisnas: Manar Sahala, ‘‘Fans’’ (Depicting Fans of the Bnei Sakhnin Football Team), 2004 (Source: Beit HaGefen).

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

Fig. 6.

79

Wadi Nisnas during the Holiday of Holidays Festival (Source: Beit HaGefen).

regular media coverage that openly attempts to depict Haifa as an oasis of sanity amid the rigors of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Especially since the second Palestinian Intifada,21 the Holiday of Holidays has become a ‘‘barometer of coexistence’’ (Kolodney, 2004). In his opening remarks at the 2008 festival, Mayor Yahav said: ‘‘In light of the recent troubles, it is even more important to demonstrate Haifa’s way of life, a different attitude which highlights our ability to live in friendship with our neighbors and uphold mutual respect.’’22 The festival’s potential for positive propaganda has also been exploited by government offices, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education. Official foreign guests are brought to the Wadi to experience at first hand this affirmation of Arab– Jewish coexistence. Apart from the political agenda, the festival has made Wadi Nisnas a popular tourist attraction throughout the year. It is now featured among

80

RACHEL KALLUS

other urban sites, such as the Bahai Gardens, the Panorama Promenade, and the German Colony.23 The site offers an unmediated encounter with the putative ‘‘Arab-village culture.’’24 Visitors wander between old stone buildings among colorful artworks on the walls of picturesque structures and the market, mingling with the local Arab residents – a unique opportunity to experience the ‘‘other’’ through an ‘‘authentic’’ encounter. Specifically designated trails marked with painted yellow footprints form a ‘‘coexistence route’’ (see Fig. 7), so that the entire space is transformed into an arena of coexistence. In 2000, the Holiday of Holidays festival was expanded and headlined as ‘‘Completion 2000,’’25 sustained by declarations of hopes for peace. In the euphoria following the Oslo Accords, Haifa was proclaimed by Amram Mitzna, Mayor that time, as a ‘‘hallmark model of shared [Arab–Jewish] life’’ (Haifa Municipality, 2000). However, early in October 2000, during the Israeli Palestinians’ solidarity riots with those in the Occupied Territories,26 the Holiday of Holidays project was jeopardized. Wadi Nisnas became an arena of confrontation. Tzionut Avenue,27 the main access road to the neighborhood, was blocked. Stones were thrown and tires were burned. The

Fig. 7.

Coexistence Walk (from a Brochure by Beit HaGefen).

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

81

mayor arrived when the riots began and physically placed himself between a group of Arab–Palestinian demonstrators and the security forces, persuading both sides to calm down. At 24 hours’ notice, the heads of all the denominations in Haifa were summoned to Beit HaGefen in order ‘‘to make all efforts to resolve everyday problems, to bring about peace and friendship, and to prove that this is possible’’ (Perry, 2006). Mitzna consequently received overwhelming local electoral support by the ArabPalestinians. However, Jewish residents of Haifa who enjoyed shopping in Wadi Nisnas, especially on Saturday when most other stores in the city are closed, began to avoid the neighborhood. A month later, before the Holiday of Holidays began, the Wadi’s main street was again declared a coexistence site by the festival organizers. Arabs and Jews sat together around tables in the street, with food and drinks provided by the residents and Beit HaGefen (see Fig. 8). Supported by government ministers, Knesset members, artists, and celebrities, the event became a demonstration of how urban public space can actually be used to promote coexistence. However, one might ask how public is the urban space (Smith & Low, 2006), and what is the true nature of an ‘‘emancipated’’ city (Lees, 2004).

Fig. 8.

Public Gathering on Wadi Nisnas’ Main Street, 14 October 2000 (Source: Beit HaGefen).

82

RACHEL KALLUS

STRATEGIES AND EVERYDAY PRACTICES The discourse around the Holiday of Holidays exposes differences in meanings, claims, and practices of the urban space. Many of the proponents, Arabs and Jews alike, are either associated with the municipality or derive commercial benefits from the event. Maher Elmadi, former chairman of the Beit HaGefen committee, sees it as ‘‘an excellent opportunity to develop intercultural relationships among different communities, nations and religions.’’ In his opinion, ‘‘the continuity of Christmas-Ramadan-Hanukka represents the differences and pluralities of the ‘human mosaic’ that characterizes Haifa. Art works in the street are expressions of beauty uniting people’’ (Haifa Municipality, 2005). Rivka Bialik, former director and producer of the event on behalf of Beit HaGefen, declares that ‘‘the project was born out of love for Haifa and its ‘human mosaic’ (y) and for the unique neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas, its alleyways, the style of its houses and the beauty and hospitality of its residents, symbolic of tolerance and hope’’ (Bialik, 2005). In unofficial discussions with merchants in the Wadi, most of them nonresidents, it is evident that they see the Holiday of Holidays as an opportunity to market their products along with the neighborhood, i.e., ethnicity is ‘‘good for business.’’ All these views support the municipality’s official literature, in which Wadi Nisnas’s ethnicity is its main feature. Unofficially, there is another approach to the events that emphasizes the unbalanced utilization of the Wadi’s public space. Imam Naches and Hanna Shams, young local ‘‘standup’’ comedians focus on the asymmetrical power that underlies marketing the space as a coexistence site. In a newspaper interview they said: ‘‘In a skit we perform during the Holiday of Holidays we take village children to tour Denya [a Jewish upper class neighborhood on the summit of Mount Carmel] with cameras. If there is to be real coexistence, let it exist for both sides. As things are at present, there seems to be only one side. The Holiday of Holidays is a human zoo: ‘Come and see an Arab display!’’’ (Yediot Haifa, 2004). Maher Immadi, a resident of nearby Abbas Street says: ‘‘The Holiday of Holidays does not represent Arab culture. It is not arranged in cooperation with the residents, and it makes the neighborhood an anthropological pilgrimage site to be kept and preserved in its entirety.’’ As he claims, ‘‘the triple equation of Arab þ Humus þ Turkish coffee ¼ crumbling stone houses that will be preserved forever, because it is clear that no tourist will come if pizza corners or sushi bars replace the falafel stands, or if the residents start using dryers instead of hanging their laundry outdoors’’ (Immadi, 2006). Denis Assad, who lives in the nearby German Colony, sums up the uneasiness with which the Holiday of Holidays

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

83

is viewed by local residents. It ‘‘is another institutionalized attempt to cover the Wadi’s wretchedness and neglect under a few more coats of paint’’ (Assad, 2005). A different strategy associated with Wadi Nisnas’s open space revolves around the plan to expand Tzionut Avenue. Published by Haifa Municipality in 2000, it was intended to ease traffic between Carmel Center and the downtown area (see Fig. 9).28 The plan included a ‘‘main urban thoroughfare, turning a section of the road into a pedestrian precinct (y) maintaining buildings designated for conservation (marked in brown on the plan) and arranging for public parking.’’29 Implementing the plan necessitated demolition of 54 residential and business constructions (yellow on the plan). Although compensation was secured for all owners through the legal requirements of the Israel Planning Regulations (1965), the plan aroused great antagonism because it was seen to give preference to the city’s needs over those of the local inhabitants. Some 36 legal objections were lodged by members of the public. Most of them cite infringement of private

Fig. 9. Detail of Proposed Tzionut Street Expansion Plan: in lighter grey properties designated for demolition and in darker grey for preservation (Source: ASP, 2006).

84

RACHEL KALLUS

property, as well as deprivation of the public space vital to the neighborhood’s existence as a discrete unit (Totri-Jubran, 2005). There were demonstrations by residents, environmental activists, and other involved NGOs, including attempts to block entry to the neighborhood and create public disturbances, especially during the Holiday of Holidays. On Saturday, December 18, 2004, the opening date of the festival, a seminar was held at the Al-Midan Theater under the auspices of the Association for Social Progress, an organization working with the Arab population to provide social services and promote empowerment. The seminar was intended to inform a wider audience about the Tzionut Avenue expansion plan and to arouse public opinion against it. The event attracted about 100 residents, environmental activists, NGO representatives, and other Haifa-ites. The speakers – academics, planners, and activists – reiterated the general consensus that the Municipality is not sensitive to the residents’ needs, jeopardizes their rights, and deprives them of the only milieu where a meaningful and integrated Arab community has been developing since 1948. The seminar was shunned by municipal representatives although invitations were sent to various officials, including the mayor and his deputy, who had openly opposed the plan when running for office. Strangely enough, coexistence is a theme also used by opponents of the plan. A report of the seminar states that the declared aim was ‘‘to reinforce mutual existence and communication between Arabs and Jews’’ (ASP, 2006). In a public hearing, the opponents’ lawyer declared that ‘‘this is a historical neighborhood that symbolizes ‘the coexistence path’. How can demolition coexist with coexistence?’’ (ASP, 2006). Thus, although completely opposed to the municipality and its policies, the call for Arab–Jewish coexistence is also a leading theme of the Palestinian community. In a survey conducted by the ASP to ascertain the level of involvement of the Palestinian population in Haifa’s city life, when asked whether coexistence exists, about 90% of those interviewed replied in the affirmative. When asked about ‘‘real coexistence’’ only 71.4% agreed (ASP, 2004). This supports other findings, showing that despite ongoing tension between perceptions and officially supported narratives of coexistence, as well as the realities of social, economic, and geographic inequality, Haifa can be considered as an example of Arab– Jewish coexistence (Falah et al., 2000; Leibovitz, 2007). However, this is evident mainly in the symbolic and discursive spheres that, as our findings indicate, hardly correspond with the realities of everyday life in the urban space. Apart from slogans about coexistence, the municipality has done little to advance or develop the neighborhood to a standard that would allow it to emerge from its backwardness.

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

85

Preserving the area’s ‘‘Arabism’’ is a strategy that emphasizes the uniqueness of Haifa as a ‘‘mixed city.’’ This endows Haifa with a relative advantage in the conflicted Israeli space. Its ‘‘normality’’ as a mixed city is emphasized against the homogeneously ‘‘white’’ city of Tel Aviv, and the ostensibly ‘‘united,’’ but actually painfully divided, city of Jerusalem. It is intended to attract tourists to a city that, as compared to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, has been omitted from the Israeli tourism map. In light of the perceived risks of an ethno-nationally mixed city, a visit to the Wadi offers a safe encounter with what Jabareen (2008) calls an ‘‘ethno-place of trust.’’ The municipal strategy, however, also suggests a dilemma that exists elsewhere in relying on ‘‘otherness’’ as a tourist attraction: how to develop an area while at the same time maintaining its ‘‘authenticity?’’ The uniqueness of Wadi Nisnas derives from its symbolic, concrete, and ongoing existence in the midst of an ethno-national conflict. The decision to retain the Wadi as an Arab site, including its physical structure, infrastructure, and its inhabitants, is in strong contrast, for example, with the Wadi Salib. In the latter, the residents were ousted, and attempts were made to market an uninhabited Arab space. However, since Wadi Nisnas is a place in which the physical infrastructure is used as the main attraction, the identity of its community in relation to the urban space must also be negotiated. Leaving an Arab conurbation in all its ‘‘Arab-ness’’ has been a State strategy over time for reinforcing the traditional foundations of Palestinian society, maintaining the traditional values that support the community elders against social transformations that could undermine their authority (Lustick, 1980; Rosenfeld, 1969). It has also played a major role in subjugating the Palestinian population of Israel, helping to render it unfit for serious dialogue with a modern Western state (Kimmerling, 2008). The Palestinians themselves tend to romanticize their past by setting it mainly within a framework of traditional village life (Hasan, 2005; Tamari, 2007). What is interesting in the case of Wadi Nisnas is that preserving it as an ‘‘Arab-village’’ neighborhood is an urban marketing strategy – Haifa as a mixed city in which a Palestinian population maintains its traditional way of life – reinforcing the image of the city as a site of Arab–Jewish coexistence. In other words, the intention is not to preserve Arab tradition or to maintain backwardness, but to present Haifa as more progressive than other Israeli cities, i.e., as a city of coexistence. It is also interesting to note how the inhabitants of the quarter employ coexistence discourse for their own advantage. They are not mere passive statistics, but active participants in the coexistence discourse’s embodiment in their urban space.30

86

RACHEL KALLUS

Thus, even if there is no absolute coexistence, and discrimination still exists in regard to Arab citizens, the dispute over how urban spaces can be marshaled for coexistence has become a negotiation between the residents and the municipality. As this discourse continues and becomes more factual it will permit both sides to define their targets and, hopefully, to work together to achieve them. Both sides will have to realize that they must cooperate in order to achieve their goals, and must decide together about developing and/or preserving the status quo for the benefit of all concerned. The question of preservation versus development of Wadi Nisnas is only one such issue. In the context of an ethno-nationally contested city, it represents probably the most complex cultural meaning of the urban space. The Arabness of Wadi Nisnas is not only a marketing device for the city. It is also a source of livelihood and identity for its residents. The urban space of Wadi Nisnas is an ethnic community connected to its locale by necessity, but also through memory and tradition.

CONCLUSION Urban public space in an ethno-nationally mixed city offers opportunities and challenges for urban growth that derive from the potential for collective enhancement of local identity against processes that acknowledge plurality and differences. Shared meanings of the urban space may help to attract investment, and to re-envisage and market the city, but can also give rise to problems if they do not contribute to the inhabitants’ well-being. Employing unilateral strategies can restrict growth and development. Conflicts are primarily the result of disregarding needs and aspirations at the local level, contrary to the city’s desire to operate at national or supranational levels. The intention of this chapter is to highlight the tensions and potential complementarity of public space in an ethno-nationally contested city. Its use and meaning, enhanced through public art and cultural events, are intended to advertise the city and boost its economy by promoting tourism, both internal and external. Nonetheless, such revenues must also be of benefit to the residents. In the case of Wadi Nisnas, revenues currently accrue mainly to the city itself and to local businessman. But the events of the Holiday of Holidays festival reinforce the inhabitants’ identity and their claims to citizenship. As the community realizes its power, it is compelled to rethink its destiny and engage in the coexistence discourse, to relocate itself in the urban arena. Although political interpretations of coexistence generally attempt to

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

87

conceptualize the development of the modern city or, more recently, the impact of global economic restructuring on urban life and public space, they expose the potential of the urban space to unite people around shared goals and aspirations. The urban space is not merely an urban asset. It also represents the connections and differences between supranational, national, regional, and local meanings embedded in space, necessitating better understanding of social relations and cultural practices as sources of identity. In a democratic public arena, conflicts, distribution, and instability are essential components (Deutsche, 1996). Therefore, the public space remains meaningful only when its ‘‘natural’’ exclusions are open to negotiation (De Frantz, 2005), and when mutual understanding of its multiple political expressions becomes a source of collective identity (Healey, 2002), as well as its practice and discourse. The Palestinian citizens of Israel and their collective identity pose major challenges to Israel’s policies, structure, and identity. The urban context is an arena in which conflicts frequently occur, but also where resolution can be found. Referring to examples of towns in Great Britain, Amin (2002) discusses the power of everyday life, through which historical, global, and local processes intersect to give meaning to living with diversity. As the significance of the micro-culture of place is highlighted by the achievements of negotiation in dealing with racism and ethnic diversity, coming to terms with difference is ultimately a matter of everyday practices and strategies, of cultural contacts and exchanges. Coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel is grounded in territoriality and daily experience (Falah et al., 2000; Schnell, 1994). If such experiences are to be effective, lasting, and practiced through everyday contact, then the urban space as a vehicle for coexistence is a shared resource. The implications are not only in terms of use, but mainly in the development of politics of citizenship that evolve around the urban space. The importance of a public space does not necessarily lie in ‘‘allowing strangers to meet,’’ but in a dynamic approach that embodies the need to join forces, to rethink that space together. Wadi Nisnas exemplifies the urban public space as a symbolic site reflecting local identities (Appadurai & Holston, 1999). This further suggests that, instead of regarding political conflicts as unwanted and accidental byproducts of cultural regeneration policies, contested cultural strategies could become purposeful for exposing conflicts and initiating dialogues. In Wadi Nisnas, the city’s officials have imposed an identity that enhances Haifa’s image in the national and global markets. Nonetheless, diverse local identities could be the cornerstone in rethinking a shared city.

88

RACHEL KALLUS

NOTES 1. ‘‘Israeli–Palestinians’’ is the term used to define the Arab population (including Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouins) living in Israel who remained within the borders of the State after its establishment in 1948. In Israeli discourse, they are often called ‘‘Arabs,’’ but according to Rabinowitz (1993), they prefer to be called ‘‘Palestinians.’’ We recognize the impossibility of a neutral term for this group. In order not to reify any specific title and to draw attention to the shifting and contextual character of identity, we alternate between local and external titles (Israeli–Palestinians, Arabs, the Arabs of 1948, etc.). 2. According to the Muslim calendar, the festival may celebrate Eid al-Adha, or Eid al-Fitr. 3. Similar ideas, but without the moral values associated with them, resonate in early urban sociology writings about the modern experience of the city, e.g., Ferdinand Toennies (1887), Georg Simmel (1903), and Lewis Wirth (1938). 4. Arndt inverts Heidegger’s Dasein (existence), arguing that the only true and authentic self is in the public space. 5. The Arabic word Nakba (meaning ‘‘disaster’’ or ‘‘catastrophe’’) is the Palestinians’ term for the1948 Arab–Israeli war. 6. The official estimate of the Arab population of Haifa is 10% (City of Haifa, 2007). Unofficially, the estimate is about 20%, due to residents who retain their official address in their Arab hometowns. 7. ‘‘Haifa as a Shared City’’ is a think-tank initiated by Shatil – Empowerment and Training Center for Social Change, in which local Arab and Jewish activists and academics (including the author of this paper) are outlining a memorandum for shared urban management of Haifa. 8. Haifa Municipality also created a ‘‘Committee for Arabs’’ and a ‘‘Committee for normalization,’’ attempts to relate to Arab residents’ needs following the 1948 war (Segev, 1984, p. 71). 9. Haifa’s Arab population in 1949 was 5,000 – about 4% of Haifa’s total population of 119,000 (Haifa Municipality, 1954). 10. The figures refer to areas defined by the Israeli Bureau of Statistics as Wadi Nisnas, including ‘‘Wadi Nisnas’’ (n. 332) and ‘‘Area 99’’ (n. 331) (Haifa Municipality, 2010). 11. Beit HaGefen is the Hebrew for ‘‘House of the Vine,’’ implying a hope for peace and good relations between Arabs and Jews, and relating to the biblical verse ‘‘And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree’’ (1 Kings, 5: 5). 12. On conflicting approaches to Beit HaGefen, see also Peled-Bartal (2001). 13. Research of what influences residential choice of Arabs in Haifa showed the unit and neighborhood characteristics to be less important due to limited alternatives, which make economic considerations irrelevant (Ben Artzi, 1978). 14. This ranking ranged from 1 (lowest) to 20 (highest). For comparison, Neve David, an immigrants’ neighborhood built in the 1950s, is ranked at the same level as Wadi Nisnas, while Carmelia, on Mount Carmel, is ranked at 19 (Haifa Municipality, 2006).

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

89

15. According to Israeli law, any property left unoccupied after November 29, 1947, became ‘‘abandoned property.’’ The Government Custodian is authorized to develop this property through the Development Authority, a legal body established in 1951 and used by the Israel Land Authority to oversee property abandoned by Arab residents of the British Mandate who left the country during the 1948 war. Abandoned properties were sold to the Development Authority by the Government Custodian to cover ongoing expenses. Accrued funds are to be used after peace is established to cover both the refugees’ needs and compensation for Jewish immigrants who left their properties in Arab countries. 16. Palestinians in Israel were generally left to solve their own housing problems. Official policies have included establishment of purely Jewish settlements and discrimination in housing assistance. It is assumed that Palestinians’ private land use is inefficient, due to preference for low density and rural building patterns. Housing shortages in the Arab sector are also considered the result of lack of private transactions deriving from social mores and political positions about land (Yiftachel, 2000). 17. In 1949, military rule was enforced in areas populated by Arabs, controlling freedom of movement and entitlements of Israeli Palestinians. These regulations were modified in 1963 to allow freedom of movement, and canceled in 1966. However, emergency regulations still apply to all Israeli citizens (the military rule did, however, allow Israeli Palestinians to vote). 18. This is a pun, meaning ‘‘happy market’’ in Hebrew and ‘‘thank you’’ in Arabic. 19. The demolition was carried out by the Israeli defense authorities, according to an order issued by David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister and the minister of defense, mainly between May and July of 1948 (Goren, 1996). For detailed account of colonial and national plans for Haifa’s Old City, see Kolodney and Kallus (2008). 20. On the unique situation of Christian Palestinians in Haifa, see Sa’ar (1998). 21. Intifada, the Arabic term for ‘‘uprising,’’ became common English usage for two recent Palestinian uprisings directed at ending Israeli military occupation. 22. In the official Holiday of Holidays festival website: http://www.haifahag.co.il/ braha.htm (accessed October 12, 2009). 23. See, for example, the Ministry of Tourism’s website: http://www.goisrael.com/ Tourism_Eng/Tourist þ Information/Discover þ Israel/Cities/Haifa.htm 24. For discussion of the ‘‘myth of the Arab village,’’ see Eyal (1993). 25. In this play on words, the Hebrew headline means both ‘‘Completion 2000’’ and ‘‘Innocence 2000.’’ 26. At the beginning of October 2000, large numbers of Palestinian citizens of Israel participated in demonstrations protesting the visit to the compound of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by the then leader of the opposition, Ariel Sharon, on September 28, 2000. The protest that followed in East Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories and the confrontation with Israeli security forces started the second Intifada. Inside Israel, demonstrations and protests lasted for several days. In police attempts to suppress them, 13 Israeli Palestinians were killed. 27. The street name is another indication of Haifa Judaization. Originally named Mountain Road (El-Jabel in Arab), it was changed in 1948, out of respect to the UN

90

RACHEL KALLUS

support in the state of Israel, to The UN Avenue. But, to protest the 3379 UN resolution comparing Zionism to racism, the name was changed again in 1975 to Tzionut Avenue. 28. The master plan was deposited by city subcommittee for planning and construction on January 9, 2001. On January 2003, in light of massive opposition, one month before national election and six months before municipal election the mayor has decided to freeze the plan. 29. Haifa Plan n. 1807, ‘‘Wadi Nisnas – widening Tzionut Avenue’’ (Archive, Office of Haifa City Engineer). 30. This is further supported by Peled-Bartal’s findings rejecting a one-directional oppressive relation of power between the festival organizers and the inhabitants (Peled-Bartal, 2001). The non-dichotomous ways in which power relations appear in the Wadi is supported by further research that focuses on the resistance strategies of the Arab minority in Israel (e.g., Sa’di, 1997).

REFERENCES Abbas, A. (1998). Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. AlSayyad, N. (2006). Cinematic Urbanism: A history of the modern from reel to real. London: Routledge. Amidar (1995). Survey of Wadi Nisnas. Retrieved from Amidar archive. Amin, A. (2002). Ethnicity and the multicultural city: Living with diversity. Report for the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions and the ESRC Cities Initiative. Available at http://www.aulaintercultural.org/IMG/pdf/ash_amin.pdf Appadurai, A., & Holston, J. (1999). Cities and citizenship. Public Culture, 8(2), 187–204. Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition (2nd ed). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ASP Report (2006). Engineering report to Wadi Nisnas: The Tzionut street widening project. The Social Development Committee Team, Haifa: ASP. ASP Report. (2004). A field survey of the socio-economic situation of Haifa’s Arab population. Haifa: ASP. Beit HaGefen Internet site: http://www.beit-hagefen.com Ben Artzi, Y. (1978). How intra-urban migration of Arabs in Haifa influences their residential pattern. Ofakin in Geography, 4, 27–38. Benhabib, S. (1998). Models of public space: Hannah Arendt, the liberal tradition, and Jurgen Habermas. In: J. B. Landes (Ed.), Feminism: The public and the private (pp. 65–99). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berman, M. (1986). Take it to the streets: Conflict and community in public space. Dissent (Fall), 33(4), 476–485. Boal, F. W. (1996). Integration and division: Sharing and segregating in Belfast. Planning Practice and Research, 11(2), 151–158. Bollens, S. A. (1998). Urban planning amidst ethnic conflict: Jerusalem and Johannesburg. Urban Studies, 35(4), 729–750. Boyer, C. (1996). The city of collective memory: Its historical imagery and architectural entertainments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

91

Carr, S., Francis, M., Rivlin, L. G., & Stone, A. M. (Eds.). (1993). Public space. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Cupers, K. (2005). Towards a nomadic geography: Rethinking space and identity for the potentials of progressive politics in the contemporary city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(4), 729–739. Deutsche, R. (1996). Evictions: Art and spatial politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dovey, K. (2001). Memory, democracy and urban space: Bangkok’s ‘‘path to democracy’’. Journal of Urban Design, 6(3), 265–282. Eder, K. (2003). Identity mobilization and democracy: An ambivalent relationship. In: P. Ibarra (Ed.), Social movements and democracy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Elazar, D. J., & Marom, Z. R. (Eds.). (1992). Urban revitalization: Israel’s project renewal and other experiences. Lanham, MD: JCPA and University Press of America. Eyal, G. (1993). Between east and west: Discourse about the Arab village in Israel. Teoria Ve-Bikoret, 3, 39–55. Falah, G. (1997). Ethnic perceptual differences of housing and neighbourhood quality in mixed Arab: Jewish cities in Israel. Environment and Planning A, 29(9), 1663–1674. Falah, G., Hoy, M., & Sarker, R. (2000). Co-existence in selected mixed Arab–Jewish Cities in Israel: By choice or by default? Urban Studies, 37(4), 775–796. De Frantz, M. (2005). From cultural regeneration to discursive governance: Constructing the flagship of the ‘museumsquartier Vienna’ as a plural symbol of change. International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, 29(1), 50–66. Fraser, N. (1993). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In: S. During (Ed.), The cultural reader. London: Routledge. Goren, T. (1996). From dependency to integration: Israeli Administration and the Arabs of Haifa, 1948–1950. A historical and geographical view. Middle Eastern studies (new series), 11. University of Haifa: The Jewish–Arab Center, The Institute for Middle Eastern Studies (in Hebrew). Goren, T. (2006). The fall of Arab Haifa in 1948. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press. Goren, T. (2008). Cooperation in the shadow of confrontation. Ramat-Gan: University of Bar Ilan Press. Gottdiener, M. (1994). The social production of space. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Habermas, J. (1962). The structural transformation of the public sphere: Inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habibi, E. (1993). Sarayah, the Ghoul’s daughter ((in Hebrew)). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad. Haifa Municipality (1954). Haifa year book, Monograph (in Hebrew). Haifa Municipality (2000). Completion: The holiday of holidays catalogue (in Hebrew). Haifa Municipality (2005). Playground: The holiday of holidays catalogue (in Hebrew). Haifa Municipality (2006). Annual statistic report, Monograph (in Hebrew). Haifa Municipality (2010). Neighborhood profile: Haifa by areas. Available at http:// www1.haifa.muni.il/spru/doc/Profile/y2008/Download/profileDL.pdf. Harvey, D. (2003). The right to the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(4), 939–941. Hasan, M. (2005). Desolation of the city and the war against the memory: the winners and the defeated. Teoria Ve-Bikoret (Theory and criticism), 27, 197–207 (in Hebrew).

92

RACHEL KALLUS

Hasan, M. (2008). The forgotten: Women and the Palestinian city, and the struggle for memory. Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv. Hayden, D. (1995). The power of place: Urban landscapes as public history. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Healey, P. (2002). On creating the ‘city’ as a collective resource. Urban Studies, 39(10), 1777–1792. Holston, J. (2008). Insurgent citizenship: Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jabareen, Y. (2008). Urban leisure as a place of trust for an ethnic minority: The case of the German colony in Haifa. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 25(3), 240–253. Kanafani, G. (2001). Returning to Haifa. In: A. Elad-Buskila (Ed.), The other rooms: Three Palestinian novellas. Or Yehudah: Hed Artsi(in Hebrew). Keith, M., & Pile, S. (Eds.). (1993). Place and the politics of identity. London: Routledge. Keller, L. (2009). Triumph of order: Democracy and public space in New York and London. New York: Columbia University Press. Kimmerling, B. (2008). Clash of identities: Explorations in Israeli and Palestinian societies. New York: Columbia University Press. Kolodney, Z. (2004). Six notes on Wadi Nisnas: Art, coexistence and what does it have to do with landscape architecture. Landscape Architecture, 15, 8–10 (in Hebrew). Kolodney, Z., & Kallus, R. (2008). From colonial to national: Landscape producing Haifa’s cityscape. Planning Perspectives, 23(3), 323–348. Lees, L. (2004). The emancipatory city: Urban (re)visions. In: L. Lees (Ed.), The emancipatory city? Paradoxes and possibilities (pp. 3–20). London: Sage. Lefebvre, H. (1992). The production of space. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (1996). In: E. Kofman & E. Lebas (Eds.), Writings on cities. London: WileyBlackwell. Leibovitz, J. (2007). Faultline citizenship: Ethnonational politics, minority mobilisation, and Governance in the Israeli ‘‘Mixed Cities’’ of Haifa and Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Ethnopolitics, 6(2), 235–263. Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (1993). Privatization of public open space: The Los Angeles experience. Town Planning Review, 64(2), 139–167. Lustick, I. (1980). Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s control of a national minority. Austin: University of Texas Press. Madanipour, A. (1996). Design of urban space: An inquiry into a socio-spatial process. London: John Wiley & Sons. McKeon, M. (2004). Parsing Habermas’ ‘‘bourgeois public sphere’’. Criticism, 46(2), 273–277. Mitchell, D. (1995). The end of public space? People’s park, definitions of the public, and democracy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 85(1), 108–133. Mitchell, D. (2003). The right to the city: Social justice and the fight for public space. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Monterescu, D., & Rabinowitz, D. (Eds.). (2007). Mixed towns, trapped communities: Historical narratives, spatial dynamics, gender relations and cultural encounters in Palestinian-Israeli towns. London: Ashgate. Morris, B. (2000). The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem 1947–1949 (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Am Oved publishers. Nir, U., & Glili, N. (2000). The city in which it is different. Haaretz, November 19, 2000.

The Politics of Space in an Ethno-Nationally Contested City

93

Peled-Bartal, A. (2001). Staged reality? Mutual relations between Arabs and Jews during the production of ‘‘Festival of Festivals’’. Master thesis, Haifa University (in Hebrew). Rabinowitz, D. (1993). Oriental nostalgia: How have the Palestinians become Israeli Arabs? Theory and Criticism, 4, 141–151(in Hebrew). Rosenfeld, H. (1969). Change, barriers to change and contradictions in the Arab village family. American Anthropologist, 70(4), 732–752. Sa’ar, A. (1998). Carefully on the margins: Christian-Palestinians in Haifa between nation and state. American Ethnologist, 25(2), 214–239. Sa’di, A. H. (2004). Identity in a context of conflict: The question of Palestinians in Israel. In: A. Kemp, U. Ram, D. Newman & O. Yifachel (Eds.), Identities in conflict (pp. 101–122). Eastbourne: Sussex University Press. Schnell, I. (1994). Perceptions of Israeli Arabs: Territoriality and identity. Aldershot: Avebury. Segev, T. (1984). 1949: The first Israelis (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Domono Press. Sennett, R. (1977). The fall of public man. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Sharfman, D., & Nachmias, E. (Eds.). (2007). Tea on the casino balcony: Coexistence in Haifa during the British mandate, 1920–1948. Haifa: Mishpaton (in Hebrew). Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist city. London: Routledge. Smith, N., & Low, S. (2006). Introduction: The imperative of public space. In: S. Low & N. Smith (Eds.), The politics of public space (pp. 1–16). New York, NY: Routledge. Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London: Verso Press. Tamari, S. (2007). Bourgeois nostalgia and the abandoned city. In: D. Monterescu & D. Rabinowitz (Eds.), Mixed towns, trapped communities: Historical narratives, spatial dynamics, gender relations and cultural encounters in Palestinian-Israeli towns (pp. 35–50). Aldershot: Ashgate. Totri-Jubran, M. (2005). Wadi Nisnas: An examination of participation and resistance patterns in the frame of the planning and the construction law. Master thesis, Tel Aviv University (in Hebrew). Valentine, G. (1996). Renegotiating the ‘heterosexual street’: Lesbian production of space. In: N. Duncan (Ed.), BodySpace: Destabilizing geographies of gender and sexuality (pp. 145–154). London: Routledge. Weintraub, J. (1995). The varieties and vicissitudes of public space. In: P. Kasinitz (Ed.), Metropolis: Center and symbol of our times (pp. 280–319). New York, NY: NYU Press. Yacobi, H. (2009). The Jewish–Arab city: Spatio-politics in a mixed community. London: Routledge. Yazbak, M. (2003). The Arab in Haifa: from majority to minority, process of change (1870– 1948). In: A. Bligh (Ed.), The Israeli Palestinians: An Arab minority in the Jewish State (pp. 123–148). London: Routledge. Yazbak, M. (2007). The city on the hill. Haaretz, May 31, 2007. Retrieved from http:// www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/863255.html. Yediot Haifa, December 3, 2004. Yiftachel, O. (2000). Land, Planning and Inequality: Spatial distribution between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Position paper, Adva Center, Tel Aviv (in Hebrew). Yiftachel, O., & Yacobi, H. (2003). Urban ethnocracy: Ethnicization and the production of space in an Israeli mixed city. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21(6), 673–693.

94

RACHEL KALLUS

Zukin, S. (2011). Naked city: The death and life of authentic urban places. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

INTERVIEWS CITED IN THE TEXT (CONDUCTED BY ZIVA KOLODNEY): Asad, Denis, Arab Resident of Haifa (2005). Bialik, Rivka, Beit HaGefen, Producer Holiday of Holidays (2005). Imaadi, Maher, Arab Resident of Haifa (2006). Perry, Moti, Director of Beit HaGefen (2006).

CHAPTER 5 THIS IS WHAT RADICAL DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE! RECLAIMING URBAN SPACE IN VIENNA Julia Edthofer ABSTRACT Currently, urban social movement studies pay much attention to the emergence of ‘new’ anti-racist and post-colonial transnational urban protest networks and protest formations. Drawing on ethnographic research, I illustrate such developments with reference to autonomous/ anarchist Left-wing urban protest in Vienna during the last decade. I thereby combine (Neo-)Marxist critical urban theory and the discursive and cultural studies’ inspired approach of radical democracy. I argue that this perspective on urban protest allows for an integrated analysis of its material and discursive groundings. Such an approach would point to material/ist, spatial and cultural aspects of urban protest politics and could thus be fruitful for further discussion, political analysis and political action. Keywords: Urban social movements; critical urban theory; radical democracy; autonomous politics; anti-racism; Vienna

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 95–119 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011008

95

96

JULIA EDTHOFER

INTRODUCTION On 1 May 2009, more than 2,000 people gathered together at the ‘Marcus Omofuma’ Memorial stone in the centre of Vienna for a protest march in memory of the Nigerian citizen Marcus Omofuma, who had suffocated during his deportation in May 1999 due to the fact that the police tied him up and covered his mouth with tape. The demonstrators followed a route through the inner city districts, in which they passed by the Austrian parliament to protest against racist immigration laws, as well as a place nearby the Viennese Opera, where in 2004 Nicolae J., a Romanian citizen, got shot by the police. The protest march ended in the Viennese ‘Stadtpark’, where the Mauretanian physicist Seibane Wague was killed in 2003 during a police action. The organisers of the protest march mostly belonged to autonomous migrants’ initiatives and non-migrant autonomous action groups and the demonstration on 1 May 2009 can be denominated as benchmark at the end of a decade of transnational anti-racist urban protest politics in Vienna. In recent years, urban social movement studies have paid much attention to the emergence of transnational urban protest networks and politics. I discuss these developments with reference to Left-wing urban protest in Vienna, focusing on autonomous1 protest politics and its transformations within the last decade. During this period, the ‘glocal’ dimension of urban protest – that is, its local impact and its interconnection with economic, social but also discursive shifts on a global scale – are increasingly in focus of autonomous street politics. On the other hand, the decade also reflects specific struggles within Austrian urban protest, which are debating anti-Semitism and related to the national post-Nazi setting. Starting with a theoretical discussion, I combine critical approaches of urban theory and movement research that focus both on urban social movements and their impact as collective political actors. I refer to the Marxist-informed critical urban theory that reflects a material/ist point of view. This approach is matched with a discursive and cultural studies’ perspective on social movements, introduced by scholars working on radical democracy. Both theoretical approaches are briefly described and right off linked to the autonomous political action scene in Vienna, discussed as radical democratic public with spatial implications. Following the introduction of the two approaches, their intersections are illustrated. This perspective on urban protest aims to bring together its material/ist and discursive groundings and thus points to the intermingling of the material/ist and discursive embedment of urban protest. In a concluding section, the last decade of Viennese protest politics is illustrated from this

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

97

integrated theoretical perspective on urban protest. Thereby, special focus is given to the transforming content of protest, mediated via demonstrations and other public political interventions. It is in such Temporary Autonomous Protest Zones,2 where political protest gets articulated and visible on the street and they thus constitute a ‘lynchpin’ that connects counter-hegemonic political discourse and practice with the broader urban public. The description of changing political topics in such temporary protest zones illustrates how the discursive/symbolic and the material converge in counter-hegemonic spaces formed by a political counter public. Furthermore, illustrating the content of protest I aim to indicate the important role of autonomous urban protest, in pointing to societal antagonisms and reclaiming the Right to the City.

THE RIGHT TO THE PROTEST CITY: RECLAIMING AND PRODUCING COUNTER-HEGEMONIC URBAN SPACE ‘Critical urban theory’ refers to leftist urban theory, which is mostly associated with debates around the Right to the City. It focuses on the ‘politically and ideologically mediated, socially contested (y) character of urban space’, which is analysed as the ‘outcome of historically specific relations of social power’ (Brenner, 2009, p. 198). It is an interventionist approach, which aims to use theoretical analysis as point of origin for criticism and political action, rather than producing urban theory as an end in itself. When theorising counter-politics in the ‘urban fabric’, critical urban theorists refer to Lefebvre, who defines urban space as a node where social transformations and conflicts are condensed and spaces of resistance are constructed. Such transformations of utopia into space and of counter hegemonic political thought into practice correspond to Foucault’s notion of ‘heterotopias’ (Foucault, 1986, p. 25). Lefebvre further conceptualises such counter-hegemonic spaces of resistance as ‘appropriated spaces’; that is, as spaces lying (at least partly) outside capitalist modes of production and reproduction, as spaces which are of ‘use’ rather than of commodified value to the people using and thereby producing them. Because of the incompatibility of ‘use value’ and commodified ‘exchange value’, these spaces are object of constant social conflict (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 356). The autonomous space production of squatted social centres in Northern

98

JULIA EDTHOFER

European cities clearly reflects the distinction between commodification of space and used spaces. Such heterotopian spaces are allocated throughout the Viennese urban fabric and constitute what Deleuze/Guattari (1977) call a ‘rhizome’ of counter-spaces. Since the 1980s, there have been several waves of struggles concerning these autonomous spaces, which make the mentioned social conflicts over space visible. In his thoughts on ‘spaces of hope’, Harvey calls counter-hegemonic and anti-capitalist venues ‘spatiotemporal utopias’ (Harvey, 2000, p. 182ff). Also according to Harvey’s definition, such heterotopias are mostly fixed, but do not necessarily have to be. Being fixed or temporary, it is in these sites where critical urban theory, as formulated by Harvey or by Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer (2009), is translated into political practice and turns into space(s). Reflecting about the meaning and content of critical urban theoretical approaches, Marcuse (2010) and Brenner (2009) refer to the necessary transgression of capitalism and thus to Critical Theory formulated by the Frankfurt School as source of their criticism. Urban movements’ political potential is theorised and emphasis is given to the need to link critical theoretical approaches to direct political action and to ‘illuminate ongoing and emergent socio-political struggles’ (Brenner, 2009, p. 200) via critical research. In this view, urban social movements are analysed to struggle for the appropriation of urban space in order to express criticism and to develop political and economic alternatives that are linked to counter-hegemonic social and cultural everyday practices. The focus on everyday life and its interconnection with politics is one of the principles of autonomous politics and it is intertwined with the named spatial dimension of the rhizomatic network of counter-hegemonic political spaces in Vienna. Albeit embedded in the specific Austrian context, the autonomous scene is also located and acting within a globalised – or to put it in activists’ words – transnational political setting. Critical urban theory addresses this fact when pointing to the ‘glocality’ of new social movements and movement politics. Taking a regulation theoretical stance, Mayer (1998, 2003) analyses changes of movement politics against the background of the shift from Fordist to postFordist urban regimes within highly industrialised Western European countries. In doing that she highlights the increasing precarisation of working conditions and the ongoing transnationalisation of the workforce. Autonomous reactions to these changes are clearly reflected in Viennese urban protest politics, for example, in upcoming topics such as the development of May Day activism since 2005, which seeks to hegemonise a new conceptualisation of the working class as the ‘precariat’.

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

99

Contemporaneously, the focus on anti-racist action and protest against the ‘Fortress Europe’ is rising and currently leading to massive direct actions against deportations. Concerning the discussion of transnational anti-racist protest, the analysis of Sassen provides an interesting theoretical framework. The author regards highly industrialised European cities as nodes, where transnational living and working environments are concentrated and politicised; in her analysis ‘immigrant workforce’ currently appears as new potential political actor (Sassen 2001, p. IV). Mayer critically adds to this assessment that it does not consider two crucial perspectives. First, it does not analyse sufficiently the changing urban policies and the related political opportunity structures, which vary considerably between different cities in the global North. Second, it does not look empirically at the post-colonial struggles themselves and leaves them a kind of ‘black box’ (Mayer, 2003, p. 279). This criticism points to the analytical (and political) potential of a synthesis of critical urban studies and radical democratic movement research. Such an integrated view would allow estimating the political role and impact of urban movements and opening the path for developing political strategies. In my view, this aim constitutes also the main common denominator of the materialist approach of critical urban theory and the radical democratic approach, which is rooted in cultural studies and discourse analysis and provides the possibility to integrate a view on urban movements that focuses explicitly on the locally embedded political culture and the specific content of protest politics.

RADICAL DEMOCRATIC PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL COUNTER PUBLICS The development of radical democratic theory is strongly linked to the European urban movement history of the twentieth century. From the beginning of the century and rapidly increasing since the 1950s, a large number of different urban social movements emerge in Western and Southern European countries, and among Left-wing scholars these urban movements evoke an increasing interest in the analysis of their democratic potentials as collective political actors. Since the autonomous political action scene in Vienna is to be defined as sub-cultural part of Austrian social movements, it is discussed from a radical democratic and from a cultural studies’ perspective. Austrian movement history after the Second World

100

JULIA EDTHOFER

War is rooted in sub-cultural and artistic clamours against the disciplinary society during the 1950s and the 1960s and is transformed into decidedly political protest with the emergence of ecological protests during the 1970s. Contemporaneously, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist protest develops and culminates in the emergence of a vital autonomous subculture in Vienna during the 1980s. The radical democratic notion of a potential ‘movement society’, urging ‘globalization and democratization from below’ (Della Porta, & Diani, 2006, p. 1), labels the debates about the democratic task of urban social movements. Laclau and Mouffe (1985) provide a theoretical framework to classify the phenomenon of social movements from a discursive perspective and develop the concept of ‘radical democracy’ to denominate pluralistic movement politics as collective democratic and political action. Principally, the radical democratic approach focuses on the ‘broadening and deepening’ of democratic practices throughout society via revealing its antagonisms (Demirovic´, 2005, p. 59) and in this view urban social movements perform the task to express such antagonistic positions via their specific radical criticism. They articulate – identity politically shaped – emancipatory alternatives and develop counter-hegemonic cultural and economic practices, in order to transcend capitalism, together with all other -isms. Such movements’ claims are constituted by the fact that a liberal-democratic state would not raise antagonistic political issues and standpoints, because systemic power cannot be (or: is not) directed against itself. Melucci thus stresses that it is urban social movements, which express public demands through collective action in creating a ‘public space of representation’ (1996, p. 220); and it is this notion of a ‘public space of representation’ what could be called a ‘radical democratic public’. A crucial process regarding the development of movements is the ‘articulation’ of a counter-culture, or in other words: the discursive production of political collectives via the hegemonisation of shared values and their condensation in a shared ‘political utopia’. It is again Melucci (1996) who develops a theoretical approach that corresponds to radical democratic theorising but emphasises the understanding of social movements as political and cultural collectives. Such analysis holds perfectly true for the autonomous/anarchist subculture which is – as the term indicates – a culture, that is, a ‘whole way of life’ with identificatory potential, circling around questions of ‘autonomy’ and ‘liberty’ (Mu¨mken, 2005). When the Viennese autonomous scene emerges during the 1980s, it articulates – to a certain extent still existing – anarchist or autonomous subcultural values and orientations. These shared values and convictions currently can be

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

101

denominated as ‘anti-state’, ‘anti-racist’, ‘anti-sexist’, ‘anti-homophobic’, ‘anti-heteronormative’, ‘anti-capitalist’, ‘anti-hierarchical’ and – in parts – ‘anti-anti-Semitic’. The ‘political utopia’ or ‘horizon’ (Laclau, 1990; Marchart, 2004) in the autonomous political action scene at present could be denominated as the idea of a ‘free association’ based on shared ‘autonomous’ convictions and values like the above-mentioned antidefinitions. Empirical data furthermore points to the influence of the postNazi national setting regarding the issues and thus the content of counter politics. Since the 1990s anti-fascist action with a focus on anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and Austrian past politics always plays a role and the antifascist parts of the autonomous scene in Vienna focus on the analysis of anti-Semitism and criticise the Austrian involvement in the Nazi regime as well as post-Nazi continuities (i.e. Lotta Dura, 1994–1999). In this context, an inner-movement struggle concerning the criticism of anti-Semitism within the radical Left has been at stake during the last decade of movement politics and is to be analysed as specific feature of the national postNazi context. Despite its relevance, this special focus of urban protest is mainly addressed from a radical democratic and cultural studies’ perspective (Sternfeld, 2006). Albeit not negating the importance of anti-fascist activism, the empirical focus of this text lies on transnational anti-racist protest formations that emerged during the last decade and are connected to discursive and material shifts on a hegemonic political level. In summary, autonomous activists position themselves with reference to hegemonic and subculture-related political discourses and the subculture can be defined as micro-field of political discourse, where struggles for hegemony, articulation and also identity politics play a role. Furthermore, the autonomous scene is a field of counter-hegemonic political information and practice; or, in other words, a radical democratic field of action. However, the mere discursive radical democratic approach as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe lacks considerations about how such radical democratic practices could and should look like and tends to neglect the content of protest on an empirical level. Approaches that attempt to close this gap combine the notion of radical democracy with a (sub-)cultural studies’ approach and elaborate the notion of a radical democratic representational space further in relating it to the empirical analysis of urban protest politics (Marchart & Weinzierl, 2006). Thereby, the authors draw on Laclau and Mouffe’s hegemonic model when pointing to the democratic potential of new social movements and connect protest politics to the articulation of a possible new (European) democratic culture (see for an elaboration: Marchart, 2004). This perspective mainly emanates from the conclusion

102

JULIA EDTHOFER

that the notion of radical democracy should be combined with the empirical exploration of social movement’s concrete discursive and political practices. Radical democratic approaches emphasise the democratisation potential of urban protest and the necessity to focus its specific content. Besides this, however, the discursive and cultural studies-influenced approach also recognises more and more the importance of the spatial component of radical democratic politics and explores political space appropriation and space production (Gerbaudo, 2009; Hamm, 2002). Indeed Austrian anarchist subculture ‘materialises’ in autonomous political social practices and autonomous spaces and Temporary Autonomous Zones such as demonstrations, parades, public parties, political interventions etc., which are created by autonomous ‘body politics’ (Mu¨ller, 2008). Generally, the mentioned authors – be it critical urban or radical democratic theorists – share the view that urban social movements or urban sub-cultural scenes are political actors with the ability to reveal dissent within society, itself rooted in unequal power relations and social inequalities within capitalist liberal democracies. I argue that there are common interests and theoretical crossing points between the two approaches, which could allow for an approach that integrates material/ist, spatial and cultural aspects of urban protest politics and could be fruitful for further discussion and political action.

TOWARDS INTEGRATED PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN PROTEST: THEORISING INTERSECTIONS OF THE MATERIAL AND THE SYMBOLIC Despite differing views, there is a common political interest in counterhegemonic politics as well as intersecting theoretical and empirical foci of critical urban and radical democratic approaches and these intersections are discussed in the following. As first overlap, it is to be stressed that both approaches work on and relate to urban social movements and build on Gramsci to theorise the role of civil society and movement politics. The Marxist-oriented approach of critical urban theorists uses Gramsci to work on symbolic or discursive influences on movements and protest. Post-Marxist radical democratic approaches synthesise the discursive hegemonic approach with (sub-) cultural studies and questions of identification in movement (identity) politics. This observation leads to the second point of contact, which

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

103

concerns the discussion of identity and identification within protest politics. When critical urban theory addresses how movements bind people emotionally to political aims (or identifications), the mere materialist perspective gets explicitly widened to include cultural studies’ approaches. In developing her analysis of ‘global cities’, Sassen refers to the possibility for new political formations and transnational forms of organising. In doing that she refers to Stuart Hall and his work on the establishment of postcolonial counter-hegemonic political discourses and interconnected collective political identities (Hall, 1991; Sassen, 2001, p. V). The third point of common interest relates to the shared focus on the ‘glocal’ transformations of urban protest politics. Radical democratic and cultural studies’ approaches analyse new transnational protest transformations initiated by anti-globalisation or alter-mondialisation movement(s) from a Gramscian hegemonic perspective. Crucial milestones concerning the development of the ‘Alter-Globalisation Movement’ in this view would date back to the end of the 1990s; above all the Zapatista Movement in the Global South and the ‘Battle of Seattle’ are denominated as discursive triggers for mobilisation processes on a global scale (Marchart, 2004; Marchart & Weinzierl, 2006, p. 7ff). In the Viennese case, the following events in Prague 2000 and Genoa 2001 also had a major impact on urban movement politics. Furthermore, transnational mobilisations are linked to the diffusion of new ‘countercultural practices’ in local protest settings, such as the collective use of new technologies and media tactics like the information platform ‘indymedia’ as well as transnationally transmitted protest tactics like ‘pink and silver’ blocks the ‘Rebel Clown Army’ or ‘Social Forums’. Mayer (1998, 2003) and Harvey (2000) diagnose similar transnational processes, but argue from a materialist or regulation theoretical perspective, studying the correlation between urban protest movements, regional policies and economic postFordist globalisation processes within highly industrialised Western countries. The diagnosis thus is a similar one but the explanation differs. Leontidou (2010) stresses an integrated perspective highlighting the innovative transnational impact of Southern European protest politics and culture like popular squatting, the establishment of autonomous social centres and the development of social forums. The fourth commonality concerns the shared focus on ‘the Right to the City’. Critical urban theory refers to topics such as free housing/squatting and to protest against gentrification, surveillance and racialisation of ‘new dangerous classes’ as constituting important foci of (above all autonomous/anarchist) urban protest (i.e. INURA, 1998; Ronneberger & Lanz, 1999; Stadtrat, 1998). These issues largely correspond to the empirical examples of the radical

104

JULIA EDTHOFER

democratic approach, albeit also with a different focus. Relating to discourse analysis, radical democrats point to the protests’ content and focus on the cultural level. Some approaches also refer to empiricism and thus to autonomous struggles that function according to a specific countercultural grammar and lead to the production of a specific urban protest space (Hamm, 2002; Riedmann, 2006). In this context, it is interesting to note that the two approaches also coincide on a level, which transcends the focus on movements and movement culture to a hegemonic level: In his book on counter-hegemonic spaces of hope, Harvey (2000) relates to a discursive perspective to work out the possible changeability of the ‘capitalist regime’ (of thought). He refers to the Foucauldian ‘dispositif’ when he develops his notion of hegemonic ‘spatiotemporal utopias’, which he characterises as neo-liberal discourse embodied within the national settings of liberal nation-states. Harvey thus focuses on the geographic-social materiality/materialisation of discourse and elaborates how it materialises within hegemonic (i.e. neo-liberal) and could possibly materialise within counter-hegemonic (i.e. communitarian and socialist) utopias. This leads further to the fifth overlapping issue, that is, to the aim of political activism. It is for example no accident that Soja strongly focuses on Foucaults and Lefebvres overlapping notions of spatiality when developing his concept of ‘thirdspace’. (Soja, 1996, p. 146ff). Harvey (2000) stresses the necessity of emancipatory cultural practices in building anti-hegemonic ‘spatiotemporal utopias’, and the introduction of a cultural and discursive approach to politics is also the aim of Laclau/Mouffe and their recipients. Furthermore, Harvey’s description of the cultural level of spatiotemporal utopias would correspond to notions of a radical democratic public. The question of the content of ‘emancipatory cultural practices’ indicates the sixth intersection, where the approaches can be defined as complementary: both refer to theoretical approaches that criticise the capitalist status quo, both refer to the necessity to examine forms of resistance, but both show certain omissions. The one focuses on radical democratic practices and culture without taking much into account the spatial realm and the material/ist component of the ‘glocal’ protest settings. If ‘glocality’ is addressed in radical democratic approaches, it is done from a hegemonic perspective and thus focussed on local reactions to transnational political discourses (Marchart & Weinzierl, 2006). The other focuses on a material spatiotemporal perspective, without really considering what counter-culture and counter-hegemonic practices actually look like and what the counter-hegemonic political discourses encompass (for a critical evaluation see Mayer, 2003). Nonetheless, on an empirical level, both approaches are concerned with an analysis of

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

105

‘spatiotemporal utopianisms’ and both define new social movements as possible materialisations of such utopianisms and stress the necessity to build up and strengthen local counter-hegemonic spaces. According to Brenner and Keil (2003), it is the ‘Right to the City – approach’ within movement research, which draws on the importance of local politics with focus on every-day life and the counter-hegemonic production of space. The radical democratic perspective on the other hand also emphasises the importance of a counter-hegemonic ‘network of knowledge’ for the organisation of protest (Marchart & Weinzierl, 2006). As the named intersections might indicate, an integrated perspective on urban protest would be fruitful. Critical urban theory could contribute a view on autonomous politics as politics of space appropriation and space production in a ‘glocal’ urban environment, albeit always referring to critical theory as underlying signifier. Radical democratic approaches focus on this signifier and integrate a cultural studies’ perspective on movement politics as well as a discussion of the historically shaped meaning and content of radical democratic political discourse. Such an approach would focus on materialist and cultural aspects of urban protest politics as it is reflected when looking at it empirically.

THIS IS WHAT RADICAL DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE! AUTONOMOUS URBAN PROTEST IN VIENNA The route of the anti-racist demonstration on the 1 May 2009 followed an imaginary line consisting of dots, in which racist murders occurred. During the march, these spaces were transformed into politicised spaces of memory, scandalising the deadly consequences of structural racism in Austria. Such transnational anti-racist protest politics and space production have gained importance during the last decade; it demarcates a turning point in Austrian movement politics and is embedded in a set of societal transformations. The period of time is also a period of important political transformations. It starts with the change in government in 1999–2000, when the newly formed coalition between the conservative Austrian People’s Party (O¨VP) and the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPO¨) brought about a strong and lasting reorganisation of the political landscape. Furthermore, the last decade has shown the increasing importance of anti-racist protest politics, itself connected to international ‘no-border campaigns’, which are a response to repressive EU

106

JULIA EDTHOFER

migration and asylum policies and were also triggered by the racist murders addressed on 1 May 2009. Starting the illustration of the last decade of urban protest in Vienna, the national setting and the development of the autonomous movement is briefly described. In the second half of the twentieth century, Austria was an economically very wealthy and politically calm country. Part of the Austrian national identity after the Second World War was the collective suppression of the involvement in the Nazi regime. This was combined with the discursive construction of a ‘victimization myth’, that is, the shared collective belief of having been Nazi-Germany’s first conquest and the importance of a ‘collective national effort’ to regain economical and political stability in the post-war period (Musner & Maderthaner, 2007; Uhl, 2001). After the immediate post-war period, the economic regulatory regime can be denominated as Austro-Keynesianism installed by the government of chancellor Kreisky; the social-democrats enlarged the welfare state significantly and the regulation of production and consumption corresponded to the Fordist model. There was no considerable extraparliamentary opposition in Austria following the events of 1968 and the first vital signs of such oppositional movement politics turned up with ecological protest and the development of an autonomous movement, which was mainly based in Vienna (Mattl, 2007; Penz, 2007). In 1975, the historical inner-city building ‘Amerlinghaus’ and in 1976 the former industrial slaughterhouse ‘ARENA’ were temporarily squatted and subsequently transformed into autonomous cultural centres. In 1978, the first bigger ecological protest movement develops around the protest against the nuclear power plant ‘Zwentendorf’ (Foltin, 2004). In the 1980s, an active autonomous squatting scene emerged and various squats were established throughout the city, of which the bigger ones like WUK (Werksta¨tten und Kulturhaus), ARENA, Amerlinghaus and EKH (Ernst Kirchweger Haus) are still existent. At present, the EKH is the largest autonomous social and cultural centre in Vienna; it was squatted in 1990, soon got precarious user contracts and since then houses more than 20 political initiatives, including migrant organisations and asylum seeker support groups. The 1990s were a period of retreat for movement politics, and this holds especially true for autonomous contexts, which were subjected to a wave of state repression after a bomb attack in April 1995. The attack was directed against an electricity pylon in the lower-Austrian municipal Ebergassing and should

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

107

call attention to the threat of nuclear power (TATblatt þ 164, April 1995). At the end of the decade, however, protest rose again with the mentioned racist murders and the change of government. Since its emergence in the second half of the twentieth century, Austrian autonomous urban politics addresses what is denominated as the Right to the City: It focuses on the ‘right to inhabit on the one hand and the right to use and occupy urban space, to gather and to protest’ on the other (Leontidou, 2010, p. 1181). As focal point of Austrian urban protest, Vienna contains a counterhegemonic network of autonomous political spaces, which provide the necessary spatial precondition for organising politically. The Viennese counter-hegemonic rhizome consists of a network of different infrastructures like autonomous women’s centres, mixed squats, trailer parks (Wagenpla¨tze), free shops, autonomous counselling organisations for asylum-seekers, selforganised political clubs and bars, public libraries (Volxbibliotheken) etc. This network of infrastructures houses a heterogeneity of political action groups and networks working on special issues like anti-racist action groups, anti-sexist action groups, the anti-capitalist May Day network, the information network indymedia etc. Although not negating the importance of such spatial political infrastructure, I focus on temporary appropriations of urban space, because they can be regarded as ‘lynchpin’ between autonomous heterotopias and mainstream society and reflect the changing topics and issues of protest.

TRANSFORMING URBAN PROTEST: FROM FORDISM TO NEO-LIBERALISM Autonomous protest politics traditionally demands the Right to the City and addresses topics such as free housing and law and order politics (Birke & Holmsted Larsen, 2007). But activists also refer to prevailing political developments; they react to ‘glocal’ political changes and integrate issues such as racism and ethnic profiling, gentrification and increasing surveillance in their protest. All the addressed political issues correspond to material, i.e. structural and economic, changes as well as to transnational hegemonic and counter-hegemonic political discourses and are linked to the transition from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regulation system. Mayer (2003) distinguishes three major trends of change with regard to their impact on urban protest politics, namely the change from city ‘government’ to ‘governance’, the new role of cities as competitors in a global city ranking

108

JULIA EDTHOFER

and the precarisation and transnationalisation of the workforce in major European cities. In the following, transformations of urban protest in Vienna are illustrated with recourse to her approach.

CO-OPTION AS AN OPTION The first trend regards formal political structures and points to the neoliberal shift from ‘state government’ to ‘local governance’, introducing a ‘deliberative’ and ‘inclusive’ form of city governance (Mayer, 2003, p. 286). Concerning urban movement politics, this change in the urban regime implies a paradoxical – or dialectical – process of co-opting certain initiatives and/or counter-hegemonic spaces on the one hand and criminalising others, mostly the more radical ones on the other hand (Mayer, 1998). This leads to ambivalent effects for protest milieus, as protest can get neutralised when heterotopian protest spaces are co-opted. This happened to various Viennese cultural projects and the outcome is indeed ambivalent, because such co-opted spaces can still be important nodes of protest within the city. An example would be the WUK, which started off as autonomous project in the beginning of the 1980s and turned into a highly subsidised cultural centre. On the one hand the WUK clearly lost its autonomous political impact during this process, but on the other hand it provides space for numerous political initiatives and events and houses one of Vienna’s oldest and largest autonomous feminist centres, the FZ (Frauenzentrum). This centre is not part of the WUK structure but exists independently within the building complex. The FZ is not subsidised by the city of Vienna, but it can still benefit from money given to WUK and from the WUK infrastructure. Strategies of governing and co-opting dissent are accompanied, however, by a shift in political discourse concerning non-cooptable protest. This development is also stressed by Della Porta in her analysis of the protest against the G8 summit in Genoa 2001 and afterwards. The author observes that the public perception of new social movements and the state reaction regarding the policing of protest reveal a shift from acceptance to an accentuation of a movement radicalisation and its dangers for society (Della Porta, 2006, p. 195). In Vienna, the last decade also shows various waves of repressive state action concerning movement politics. In 1999–2000, a clear crashing of the newly arising transnational anti-racist mobilisation took place and was exclusively directed against Black people (GEMMI, 2005). Furthermore, state repression was also directed against animal rights activists in 2008 and 2010. Currently, drastic policing methods

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

109

are observable during anti-racist protests against deportations, above all when attempts are made to prevent an ongoing deportation (http:// austria.indymedia.org/node/18490). Also on the local municipal scale, the divide between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ protest is emphasised and ‘localised’ (Foltin, 2004). In Vienna, the ‘battle of the EKH’ is one case where such a demonisation of protest and concrete heterotopian spaces played a crucial role. The already mentioned EKH is the largest autonomous social and cultural centre in Vienna. In 2004, the owner of the house – the Communist Party of Austria – sold it to a publicly known right-wing security company and the activists were threatened with eviction. After a long public struggle encompassing demonstrations, public interventions, press conferences etc., a company with close contacts to the municipality of Vienna bought the building in July 2005, and the threat of eviction seems to have passed for now. The struggle to maintain the centre was supported by many Austrian Left-wing artists and politicians, but more public attention was paid to a considerable anti-EKH campaign in the media during 2004. Being located close to a giant urban renewal project centred on the reconstruction of the Viennese Main Station (the former Su¨dbahnhof), the EKH currently could be once again endangered by the ongoing urban renewal process. This observation leads to the second shift focused on by Mayer with a major impact on urban protest, namely gentrification processes and the political protest against them.

RESISTING NEO-LIBERAL CITY-FACE-LIFTING An important feature of the economic transition to post-Fordism is the new role of cities as competitive headquarters in a global city ranking (Mayer, 1998, 2003; Sassen, 1998a, 1998b). Contrary to political discourses during the period of Keynesian welfare-state interventionism that focussed on social issues, urban renewal is now to be ‘achieved via place-bound and spatially targeted redevelopment schemes’ (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, & Rodriguez, 2002, p. 216). As the city itself became a sort of global player, its image plays an increasingly important role. Major cultural and sporting events satisfy its ‘spectacular needs’ and are linked with an increasing trend towards ‘spectacleoriented’ urban renewal, which is in turn connected to gentrification processes as well as to ‘law and order’ and ‘zero-tolerance politics’ (Dangschat, 2001; Debord, 1970; Ronneberger & Lanz, 1999; Zinganel, 2003).

110

JULIA EDTHOFER

With regard to urban movement politics, these developments have led to an increasing focus on protest against gentrification processes that is mainly acted out by autonomous activists (Mayer, 1998). It is a contested question whether the term ‘gentrification’ can be applied to Vienna, where urban renewal does not lead to massive expulsions of marginalised – or to put it in clearer: subaltern – social groups and has only recently included huge restructuring processes of whole districts. Nonetheless such processes are visible and denominated as gentrification by autonomous activists, who explicitly criticise the accelerating renewal processes, which are concentrated on the two biggest train stations and their surroundings. Currently, it is above all the Viennese trailer park activists (WagenplatzGruppe Treibstoff) and the action group ‘Platz da!?’ who are broaching the issue of gentrification and the endangerment of alternative living projects. Until summer 2009, there was only one Viennese trailer park, located in the city suburbs. Since the local council chairman wanted to get rid of it, the activists bargained with the department for planning permission for an alternative site which they could inhabit temporarily. After six months of bargaining, the city council withdrew its initial offers in July 2009 and as a reaction the activists squatted two urban waste areas for the rest of the summer and had to leave both sites in October 2009. Since then they have been evicted various times and are still looking for a site to stay. The whole process of eviction was accompanied by a quite fruitless media campaign in which the activists pointed to the sustainability of alternative living forms such as a trailer park and criticised gentrification in Vienna, which does not leave sites left for alternative use. Neo-liberal politics of urban renewal are accompanied by a discourse on ‘city-securitization’ and by repressive trends in the policing of marginalised groups such as the homeless, beggars, sex workers, drug users and also the political public. In the last years, racialised3 social groups are depicted as groups that do not fit into the image of a secure and competitive global city. Such groups are discursively constructed as new dangerous classes and ‘enemies of the state’ and are increasingly affected by ethnic profiling (Kravagna, 2005; Oberlechner & Schasiepen, 2010). This development points to the third area of change stressed by Mayer, namely the growth of informal and precarious working sectors, which is linked to an increasing transnationalisation of the workforce, the construction of migration as security risk and the growing importance of anti-racist struggles.

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

111

TRANSNATIONAL PROTEST POLITICS AND THE RIGHT TO THE PROTEST CITY Mayer, along with Sassen (1998a, 2001), links the transnationalisation of the workforce with international migration movements. Both authors analyse that this process leads to a growth in urban protest within cities of the global North that touches on social issues and is linked to post-colonial anti-racist struggles. Both agree in their analysis of ‘global cities’ as venues for the emergence of transnational social conflicts, connected to post-colonial continuities, and Sassen stresses that the neo-liberal ‘new economic regime’ de-evaluates and makes more informal labour and leads to the emergence of ‘new classes of disadvantaged workers’, many of them being ‘women, immigrants and/or people of colour’ (Sassen, 2001, p. IV). Migration movements from the global South to highly industrialised regions and above all the urban centres of the global North reshape cities. On the other hand, exclusive regulation politics and policies and the framing of migration as ‘security risk’ to be managed can be observed on a supra-national and national level as well as regarding local politics and it produces new forms of protest. In this context, Sassen emphasises the political potential regarding the development of a post-colonial, anti-racist counter culture. She introduces the notion of global cities as ‘strategic transnational spaces’ (Sassen, 2001, p. V) to denominate the discursive formation (and the contemporaneous materialisation) of such new, transnational claims to the city, which make use of and hegemonise post-colonial political criticism within urban protest politics. This is exactly what happens in Vienna since the turn of the century, and regarding movement politics this shift indicates an important re-orientation of political interventions launched by autonomous activists. Autonomous urban protest increasingly focuses on the Right to the City of marginalised groups (including political action groups) and its interweaving with anti-racist struggles. In Vienna, there has been autonomous protest after the establishment of so-called ‘Protection Zones’ (Schutzzonen) in 2004. Protection zones impede – often racialised – groups like sex workers, drug users and potential drug dealers to stay in public spaces nearby schools, churches and playschools. In 2004, a right-wing citizens’ action group formed around Vienna’s West Railway Station (Westbahnhof) and launched a campaign against sex work in the district. The citizen’s initiative thereby exclusively concentrated on the necessity to control and prohibit ‘Black female sex work’. The racist focus and the general trend to racialise/ethnicise social issues were addressed by

112

JULIA EDTHOFER

autonomous activists and were subject of various political information events and protest. As mentioned above, these illustrations indicate that autonomous politics has increasingly turned towards transnationalised politics and anti-racist action. The main focus of this protest concerns the European politics of racist exclusion and the development of counter-concepts such as the Freedom of Movement and the Right to Stay. Apart from that, anti-racist protest refers to three racist occurrences that took place in 1999 and 2003. Two already mentioned incidents regard the racist murders of the Nigerian asylum seeker Marcus Omofuma and the Mauritanian physicist Seibane Wague; the third one regards the biggest racist police action in Austrian history. These events had a considerable impact on autonomous protest politics in Vienna. On the one hand, they triggered anti-racist campaigns and new transnational protest networks while on the other hand, they constitute main foci of anti-racist protest since a decade. In the following text, these events and their impacts on protest politics are described chronologically. On 1 May 1999, the Nigerian asylum seeker Marcus Omofuma died during his deportation after the police tied him up and covered his mouth with tape. After his killing, the African community in Vienna started to organise and protest publicly against the murder and racist harassments. In May 1999, for the first time in Austrian movement history a big outreach of Black political resistance got visible on the streets. Contemporaneously, networks between Black and white autonomous political action groups emerged and the anti-racist network ‘For a World Without Racism’ (Fu¨r eine Welt ohne Rassismus) as well as the ‘Austrian no-border network’ were established, both of them located in infrastructures provided by the antiracist wing of the autonomous scene. Initially, the main organisational work was done by activists who belonged to the African community. In May 1999, two large demonstrations and constant solemn vigils were organised and supported by white activists. However, this protest stopped quite soon as a consequence of the so-called ‘Operation Spring’. Operation Spring has been the largest police action in Austria since the foundation of the Second Republic after the Second World War. It was directed exclusively against Black African males, and rounded up 127 people suspected of being drug dealers. The police operation and the arrest of the accused persons were accompanied by a huge media defamation campaign that established the discursive image of the ‘Nigerian drug dealer’, which was also imposed on the murdered Marcus Omofuma (http://no-racism.net/article/521/; http:// no-racism.net/article/848/; Kravagna, 2005; Mo¨Xmer, 2007). Empirical data

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

113

stress that Operation Spring functioned very well as state tool to criminalise and smash the newly formed Black protest movement (http://no-racism.net/ article/2905/; GEMMI, 2005). Indeed, the demonstrations, which were organised by the Black community, stopped almost immediately after Operation Spring, due mainly to the fact that the leading activists were imprisoned. Protest went on, of course, but was mainly organised and led by White anti-racist action groups. The second racist murder with impact on organising structures occurred in 2003 when Seibane Wague, a Mauritanian physicist, was killed during a police operation in which six police officers held him down by standing on his chest. Ambulance men present at the time injected Wague with a strong sedative and did not intervene. Their sentence in November 2005 pointed to the racist consensus within Austrian politics, the judicial and the executive power: from ten accused persons, eight policemen were discharged, the present doctor and one policeman were convicted to eight months of suspended sentence. As the killing of Marcus Omofuma, the murder of Seibane Wague was explained – and thus implicitly legitimated – by officials and in the media with recourse to racist stereotyping of the victims as ‘hyper-aggressive Black men’ who had been endangering the officials during the police interventions. These racist incidents are only two within a long history of racist oppression and endangerment of people with African background and they became the triggering factors for the African community to strengthen political self-organisation. Seibane Wagues death evoked another wave of activism and in October 2003 the Black Women’s Community (Schwarze Frauen Community-SFC) was founded as tool for selfdefence against structural racism. Anti-racist protest in the years following Operation Spring was mainly organised by White anti-racist activists and long discussions about the necessity to protect Black people during demonstrations took place.4 Sassen’s notion of the ‘strategic transnational’ space therefore has to be reformulated regarding two different layers. First, Mayer’s proposal to look empirically on protest and local political opportunity structures is to be stressed. Second, from an intersectional point of view, opportunity structures vary significantly within one urban setting according to the activists’ racialised/ethnicised background and legal status. This observation points to the question of ‘who has the Right to the Heterotopian Protest City’? The possibility to articulate protest in the public is not the same for everybody: people with a migration background and/or a precarious legal status might not face equal opportunities to build up a radical democratic counter-public at demonstrations and if they do, they bear a much higher risk when subjected to state repression. The empirical example from Vienna

114

JULIA EDTHOFER

emphasises this fact in illustrating the repression, which immediately followed the uprising of the Black community in Vienna in 1999. The notion of a post-colonial, transnational counter-culture is important in order to impede a victimisation of people of colour and/or with migration background, but the empirical case shows on the other hand that – on the level of structurally racist state action and hegemonic discourses – African or Black political activists were soon and easily constructed as major enemies of the (Austrian nation) state. Together with the concrete – and very material – state repression, post-colonial and anti-racist struggles were severely endangered and partly destroyed. Concluding, it can be stressed that an empirical look on ‘post-colonial urban struggles’ immediately reveals differing levels of oppression and differing Rights to the Protest City, shaped by cultural and discursive processes of racialisation/ethnicisation and racist stereotyping as well as by the materiality of structural racism, for example, via the category of ‘citizenship’.

CONCLUDING REMARKS Summing up the discussion above it can be stated that autonomous activists formulate criticism and – by using their bodies as instruments – transform urban space in creating radical democratic publics. Such issues are very well addressed by radical democratic theoretical approaches. What these approaches leave out, however, is the importance of material issues concerning activists’ positionalities. The materialist level of analysis can be integrated when intersectional viewpoints and critical urban theory are taken into account. Such views point to the activists’ embedment in staterun ‘axes of inequality’ (Klinger, Knapp & Sauer, 2007) and stress the fact that not everybody has the equal Right to the Protest City. Furthermore, radical democratic theory only recently glimpses at the production of a rhizomatic counter-hegemonic protest space. However, a crucial feature of radical democratic publics is the fact that they politicise and transform the spaces they occupy during demonstrations. In this context, counterhegemonic political niches play an important role in providing space for the ‘protest bodies’ to articulate their critique and in providing spaces for the set-up of solidarity-bound communicative protest networks, which are of crucial importance for political mobilisation processes. This is even more the case, when the protest is a spontaneous and urgent one, where people have to be mobilised within a short period of time. This is what happened at 29 April 2010, when 300–400 people gathered together within a few hours to

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

115

impede the deportation of two Nigerian soccer players, who are active in the anti-racist political soccer club ‘Sans Papiers’ (see http://www.fcsanspapiers.org/; http://no-racism.net/article/3406/; http://at.indymedia.org/node/ 18058). Such spontaneous ‘direct actions’ are on the one hand the product of an infrastructure which makes it possible to spread information in a very short time. To put it differently, it would not have happened without the regular gathering of activists and politically interested people in political venues and their willingness to join local information lists. Also, the spontaneous political intervention would not have happened if there would not be a certain sense of solidarity within the scene and towards the affected ‘Sans Papiers’. Such political interventions are thus possible due to constant political work throughout years, which of course requires heterotopian spaces. The material/ist perspective of critical urban theorists emphasises such spatial aspects of protest. Furthermore, it addresses the ‘glocality’ of protest and points to the relevance of political opportunity structures, which themselves are embedded in national and supra-national economic, legal and social structures. What this approach does not address, however, is the cultural and discursive influence on movement identities and the specific contents and concrete functionality of radical democratic practices. Here, in turn, it is the radical democratic and cultural studies’ perspective with its ethnographic focus that grasps concrete political and social protest practices. Closing the discussion on anti-racist protest within the autonomous political scene in Vienna, its radical democratic impact is re-accentuated. Generally, the political action scene can be described as a ‘white middleclass scene’ with Austrian background. Since the events in 1999–2000, new protest formations emerged and migration, racism and transnational politics are increasingly discussed within the scene. Ever since, racism as well as whiteness5 within the autonomous scene have been and still are points of discussion and point to hegemonic struggles and thus to a radical democratic process of change within the scene. In other words, a transnational political space in which a post-colonial, anti-racist political discourse is developed and put into practice is partly observable. To grasp and synthesise the two mentioned perspectives, namely to look at concrete political discourses, political practices and their transformations, however, it is important to look empirically at social movements. Enforcing ethnographic works on concrete movement settings would help to link theoretical approaches to such politics and to reveal forms and content of urban protest as well as the importance of heterotopian spaces. As the role of autonomous street politics tends to get marginalised and underplayed within mainstream

116

JULIA EDTHOFER

movement research, this seems to be even more important. Because there is autonomous urban protest in Northern European cities, just as there is a vital and active autonomous political action scene in Vienna. This form of urban protest politics importantly contributes to public political discussions in pointing to societal antagonisms and reclaiming the Right to the City, and the formulated criticism is to be strengthened and supported via solidarity analyses and discussions.

NOTES 1. The term autonomous refers to political action groups, which are part of a Leftwing political subculture that is not to be defined as classical Marxist and loosely connected via the use of a shared political infrastructure. Not all of the mentioned action groups and political networks, however, would define themselves as being autonomous and/or anarchist ones. 2. ‘‘Temporary Autonomous Protest Zones’’ are adopted from Beys (1985) notion of ‘‘temporary autonomous zones’’. 3. The term ‘racialised’ (or ‘‘racialization’’) is used reffering to Miles (2004) and points to ‘race’ as social construction that is interlinked with racist stereotyping with regard to ‘biological’ as well as cultural categories. It is used alternating with the term ‘ethnicised’, whereby the choice of words reflects the Austrian discourse, which primarily refers to the term ‘ethnicity’. 4. This information is drawn out of an interview with the white anti-racist activist B. 5. Whiteness is a term borrowed from critical whiteness studies and denominates being ‘white’ as being in a privileged social position.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the interviewed political activists for sharing their experiences and political views as well as the archive for social movements and the ‘‘Bibliothek von unten’’ for providing political periodicals and fanzines. I also thank Milan Prodanovic´ and Lila Leontidou for opening up new perspectives. Particularly, I would like to thank Petra Wa¨chter and Robert Foltin for their useful comments, corrections and for their support.

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

117

REFERENCES Bey, H. (1985). T.A.Z.: The temporary autonomous zone. Ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism. New York, NY: Autonomedia-Anti-copyright. Birke, P., & Holmsted Larsen, C. (2007). Besetze deine stadt! Squat your city! Berlin: Assoziation A. Brenner, N. (2009). What is critical urban theory? City, 13(2-3), 198–207. Brenner, N., & Keil, R. (2003). Globalisierung, Stadt und Politik. In: A. Scharenberg & O. Schmidtke (Eds.), Das Ende der Politik? Globalisierung und Strukturwandel des Politischen (pp. 254–277). Mu¨nster: Westfa¨lisches Dampfboot. Brenner, N., Marcuse, P., & Mayer, M. (2009). Introduction. City, 13(2-3), 176–184. Castells, M. (1983). The city and the grassroots: A cross-cultural theory of urban social movements. London: Arnold. Dangschat, J. (2001). Gentrification – Die Aufwertung innenstadtnaher Wohnstandorte. De´rive-Zeitschrift fu¨r Stadtforschung, 4, 27–31. Della Porta, D., & Diani, M. (2006). Social movements. An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Debord, G. (1970). The society of the spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1977). Rhizom. Berlin: Merve. Della Porta, D., & Diani, M. (2006). Social movements: An introduction. Malden: Blackwell. Demirovic´, A. (2005). Radikale Demokratie und der Verein freier Individuen. In: DemoPunk/ Kritik & Praxis Berlin (Eds.), Indeterminate Kommunismus (pp. 56–68). Mu¨nster: Unrast. Foltin, R. (2004). Und wir bewegen uns doch. Soziale Bewegungen in O¨sterreich. Vienna: Edition Grundrisse. Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics (Spring), 22–27. GEMMI. (2005). 1000 Jahre Haft. Resu¨mee einer antirassistischen Gruppe. Vienna Gerbaudo, P. (2009). Leopard spots and tiger stripes: Fly-posters, demarcation and texture in urban autonomous scenes. Conference paper: Culture, Media: Protest, 3–5 September, Lucerne University, Switzerland. Hall, S. (1991). The local and the global: Globalization and ethnicity. In: A. D. King (Ed.), Culture, globalization and the world-system: Contemporary conditions for the representation of identity. Current debates in art history 3. New York, NY: Department of Art and Art History. Hamm, M. (2002). Reclaim the Streets! Globale Proteste und lokaler Raum. Republicart.net, 5/ 2002. Retrieved from http://www.republicart.net. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Inura. (1998). Possible urban worlds. Urban strategies at the end of the 20th century. Basel: Birkha¨user-Verlag. Klinger, C., Knapp, G., & Sauer, B. (2007). Achsen der Ungleichheit. Zum Verha¨ltnis von Klasse, Geschlecht und Ethnizita¨t. Frankfurt: Campus. Kravagna, S. (2005). Schwarze Stereotype und weiXe Beho¨rden-Afrikaner, Drogenkriminalita¨t und Strafverfolgung durch Polizei und Justiz. SWS-Rundschau, 2, 266–288. Laclau, E. (1990). New reflections on the revolution of our time. London: Verso. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Leontidou, L. (2010). Urban social movements in ‘weak’ civil societies: The right to the city and cosmopolitan activism in Southern Europe. Urban Studies, 47(6), 1179–1203. Marchart, O. (2004). New protest formations and radical democracy. Peace Review, 16(4), 415–420.

118

JULIA EDTHOFER

Marchart, O., & Weinzierl, R. (2006). Radikale Demokratie und neue Protestformen. In: O. Marchart & R. Weinzierl (Eds.), Stand der Bewegung? Protest, Globalisierung, Demokratie – Eine Bestandsaufnahme (pp. 7–16). Mu¨nster: Westfa¨lisches Dampfboot. Marcuse, P. (2010). The need for critical theory in everyday life. Why the tea parties have popular support. City, 14(4), 356–369. Marcuse, P. (2009). From critical urban theory to the right to the city. City, 13(2-3), 195–197. Mattl, S. (2007). Kultur und Kulturpolitik in der A¨ra Kreisky. In: W. Maderthaner, S. Mattl, L. Musner & O. Penz (Eds.), Die A¨ra Kreisky und ihre Folgen. Fordismus und Postfordismus in O¨sterreich (pp. 121–193). Vienna: Lo¨cker. Mayer, M. (1998). The changing scope of action in urban politics: New opportunities for local initiatives and movements. In: INURA (Ed.), Possible urban worlds. Urban strategies at the end of the 20th century (pp. 66–75). Basel: Birkha¨user-Verlag. Mayer, M. (2003). Lokale Politik und Bewegungen im Kontext der Globalisierung. In: A. Scharenberg & O. Schmidtke (Eds.), Das Ende der Politik? Globalisierung und Strukturwandel des Politischen (pp. 277–301). Mu¨nster: Westfa¨lisches Dampfboot. Melucci, A. (1996). Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miles, R. (2004). Racialization. In: E. Cashmore (Ed.), Encyclopedia of race and ethnic studies. London: Routledge. Mo¨Xmer, C. (2007). Ein Vergleich aus ‘Der Standard’ und ‘Die Neue Kronen Zeitung’ anhand der Vorkommnisse in den Fa¨llen Marcus Omofuma und Seibane Wague. Thesis, University of Vienna, Vienna. Mu¨ller, G. (2008). Possen des Performativen. Theater, Aktivismus und queere Politiken. Vienna: Verlag Turia & Kant. Mu¨mken, J. (2005). Anarchismus, Neoliberalismus und die Befreiung de rGesellschaft vom Staat. In: J. Mu¨mken (Ed.), Anarchismus in der Postmoderne. Beitra¨ge zur anarchistischen Theorie und Praxis (pp. 41–53). Frankfurt/Main: Verlag Edition. Musner, L., & Maderthaner, W. (2007). Die A¨ra Kreisky zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne – O¨konomie, Politik und Kultur. In: W. Maderthaner, S. Mattl, O. Lutz & O. Penz (Eds.), Die A¨ra Kreisky und ihre Folgen. Fordismus und Postfordismus in O¨sterreich (pp. 17–55). Vienna: Lo¨cker. Oberlechner, G., & Schasiepen, S. (2010). Schutzzone fu¨r wen? Malmoe 51. Retrieved from http://www.malmoe.org/artikel/regieren/2093. Accessed on 5 May 2011. Penz, O. (2007). Zur o¨konomischen, politischen und sozialen Regulierung der A¨ra Kreisky. In: W. Maderthaner, S. Mattl, L. Musner & O. Penz (Eds.), Die A¨ra Kreisky und ihre Folgen. Fordismus und Postfordismus in O¨sterreich (pp. 55–121). Vienna: Lo¨cker. Riedmann, S. (2006). Lasset und beten! MayDay-Mobilisierung zwischen Kultur und Politik. In: O. Marchart & R. Weinzierl (Eds.), Stand der Bewegung? Protest, Globalisierung, Demokratie – Eine Bestandsaufnahme (pp. 45–61). Mu¨nster: Westfa¨lisches Dampfboot. Ronneberger, K., & Lanz, S. (1999). Die Stadt als Beute. Bonn: Dietz-Verlag. Sassen, S. (1998a). Globalization and its discontents. New York, NY: New Press. Sassen, S. (1998b). Is there still room for a public space? Globalizing cities and the privatization of the public realm. In: INURA (Ed.), Possible urban worlds. Urban strategies at the end of the 20th century (pp. 192–200). Basel: Birkha¨user-Verlag.

This Is What Radical Democracy Looks Like!

119

Sassen, S. (2001). The global city: Strategic site/new frontier. Retrieved from http://www.indiaseminar.com/2001/503/503%20saskia%20sassen.htm. Soja, E. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Stadtrat, E. (1998). Umka¨mpfte Ra¨ume. Sta¨dte&Linke. Berlin: Verlag Liberta¨re Assoziationschwarze risse rote strasse. Sternfeld, N. (2006). Wie steht die Bewegung zum Antisemitismus? In: O. Marchart & R. Weinzierl (Eds.), Stand der Bewegung? Protest, Globalisierung, Demokratie – Eine Bestandsaufnahme (pp. 61–88). Mu¨nster: Westfa¨lisches Dampfboot. Swyngedouw, E., Moulaert, F., & Rodriguez, A. (2002). Neoliberal urbanization in Europe: Large-scale urban development projects and the new urban policy. In: N. Brenner & T. Nik (Eds.), Spaces of neoliberalism. Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe (pp. 195–230). Oxford: Blackwell. Uhl, H. (2001). Das ‘erste Opfer’. Der o¨sterreichische Opfermythos und seine Transformationen in der Zweiten Republik. O¨sterreichische Zeitschrift fu¨r Politikwissenschaft O¨ZP, 30(1), 19–34. Zinganel, M. (2003). Real Crime. Architektur, Stadt & Verbrechen. Zur Produktivkraft des Verbrechens fu¨r die Entwicklung von Sicherheitstechnik, Architektur und Stadtplanung. Vienna: Edition Selene.

POLITICAL PERIODICALS TATblatt Lotta Dura Malmoe

WEBSITES http://at.indymedia.org/ http://fcsanspapiers.org/ http://malmoe.org/ http://mayday.prekaer.at/ http://no-racism.net/ http://noborder.org/without/austria.html http://platzda.blogsport.eu/ http://republicart.net http://treibstoff.wagenplatz.at/ http://austria.indymedia.org/node/18490 http://india-seminar.com/2001/503/503%20saskia%20sassen.htm http://malmoe.org/artikel/regieren/2093 http://nadir.org/nadir/periodika/tatblatt/164ebergassing-doku.htm http://no-racism.net/article/521/ http://no-racism.net/article/848/ http://no-racism.net/article/2905/ http://translate.eipcp.net/strands/03/steyerl-strands02en/?lid¼steyerl-strands02de

CHAPTER 6 THE SEGMENTED QUOTIDIAN MADE VISIBLE: JEAN VIGO’S A PROPOS DE NICE Micah Trippe ABSTRACT This chapter will use A Propos de Nice, filmed by Jean Vigo and Boris Kaufman in February and March 1930, as a case study to illustrate how city films created segmented views of quotidian urban life in both form and content. In terms of form, short clips are juxtaposed in a rapid montage to form a segmented portrait of the city. In terms of content, the segments in Vigo’s film, and the city film genre as a whole, are full of everyday events such as drinking coffee, washing clothes, sunbathing, and playing boules. The portrait of Nice that emerges within the film, then, is one of quotidian segmentation. This chapter will conduct a visual analysis of the film as it progresses, situating it within the history of Nice, cinematic conceptions of the city prior to its production, the city film genre, and the French avant-garde. Keywords: Jean Vigo; Nice; segmented quotidian; city film; visual analysis; French avant-garde Fireworks burst against a black sky. An aerial view of a beach and pier follows. The camera moves inland, over rooftops, to a marina, then Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 121–141 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011009

121

122

MICAH TRIPPE

cross-fades to another view of rooftops, the beach still visible on the extreme left of the frame as the camera moves over the red tile roofs of Nice (Fig. 1). The camera cross-fades again to another view of rooftops, with a motorway running along the beach and the ocean now covering the left third of the screen. Another cross-fade reveals a gambling table as the rake of a croupier scrapes away the chips. A final cross-fade reveals a model train arriving on a miniature track. A palm tree stands beside it. Two figurines, one male, one female, appear in front of the train (Fig. 2). The train, the tree, and the track disappear, before the female and male figurines are raked away.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

The Red Tile Roofs of Nice.

Two Figurines in front of the Train.

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

123

These images form the opening of A Propos de Nice, filmed by Jean Vigo and Boris Kaufman in February and March 1930. The film has since taken its place among the canonical city films of the 1920s and early 1930s (Kracauer, 1997, p. 180). This chapter will use A Propos de Nice as a case study to illustrate how city films created segmented views of quotidian urban life in both form and content. In terms of form, short clips are juxtaposed in a rapid montage (A Propos de Nice has a running time of 1,266 seconds, with 343 shots, for an average shot length of 3.69 seconds) to form a segmented portrait of the city. In terms of content, the segments in Vigo’s film, and the city film genre as a whole, are full of everyday events such as drinking coffee, washing clothes, sunbathing, and playing boules. The portrait of Nice that emerges within the film, then, is one of quotidian segmentation. This chapter will conduct a visual analysis of the film as it progresses, situating it within the history of Nice, cinematic conceptions of the city prior to its production, the city film genre, and the French avant-garde. As the opening shots described above begin to illustrate, Vigo frames a Nice that is segmented between rich and poor, decadent and mundane, tourist and migrant. The city is also divided geographically between the wealthy and touristic segments of the city along the Promenade des Anglais and the poorer sections of the city in Vieux Nice. As Nice only became part of France in 1860, Italian immigrants make up the majority of the population in the old, impoverished quarters of the city, mirroring many similar situations of migrants living in today’s urban centers. Despite the segmentation on view, however, the film presents a coherent whole, just as a city is made up of its various portions. The cinematic portrait can thus be further juxtaposed against the actual city. In creating a cinematic view of Nice, then, Vigo implicitly asks the viewer to contemfigure segmentation within an urban context. A Propos de Nice and city films in general might therefore serve as a blueprint for how cinema can continue to depict the segments of everyday metropolitan life that exist side by side in the twentyfirst century.

THE REAL NICE VERSUS VIGO’S REEL NICE In creating a cinematic depiction of Nice, Vigo and Kaufman confronted a town that had openly declared its intention to beautify itself and make itself into a capital of the rich. According to Paul Caste´la (2002), a historian of Nice, ‘In 1910, the mayor Honore´ Sauvan instigated a Commission des

124

MICAH TRIPPE

beaute´s de la ville. Its purpose was to make the city ‘the most beautiful city in the world.’ [...] Later theorists may argue about the real quality of architects, but they approach an oeuvre exceptional if not unique in Europe [...] Made for the upper echelon of the world’s richest society, like its neighbors stretching from Cannes to Menton, the city possessed a unique and marvelous framework of life’ (p. 342, translation mine). Vigo had a great deal of contempt for the resulting city. If he begins his film with celebratory fireworks and spends a great deal of time along the Promenade des Anglais, highlighting the bourgeoisie and the Belle E´poque architecture such as the Hotel Ruhl, he slowly, during the course of the film, reveals the bifurcated society that characterized Nice, and then dooms it to fire. Behind the beautiful portions of the city, Vieux Nice, which the film displays in the middle portion, is an entirely different story. Upon visiting the city in 1887, the historian Ste´phen Lie´geard wrote of, ‘these crossroads of miserable but colorful aspects, these fast, pressing, steep streets, just split, the day hardly even entering, the sun never entering’ (p. 430, translation mine). There were thus essentially two Nice, one of the bourgeois landowners and the hivernants, who were not permanent residents, and that of the migrant, the laborer and the poor, most of whom stemmed from Italian origins. The fireworks that begin the film serve as the perfect metaphor for the city of Nice, a bastion of wealth and pleasure dedicated to the idle rich. Despite his negative feelings, Vigo had an ambivalent relationship to this decadence. Boris Kaufman commented, upon meeting Vigo to discuss the project, that Vigo ‘seemed to both love and detest this city where for the last two years he (and his wife) have been forced to live for health reasons’ (as quoted in Charde`re, 1961, p. 28). Scholars have thus interpreted A Propos de Nice as a ‘biting social critique’ (Temple, 2005, p. 24), elements of which will be explored below. The images of firework, however, point to the apparent affection Vigo at times felt for Nice. As the camera skims over the roofs of beau Nice, swooping down into the Promenade des Anglais, reveling in the pastimes of the rich, a viewer is tempted to idly absorb the diversions and results of Sauvan’s plan. Vigo’s depiction is more subtle, though. If a third of the film elapses before images of Vieux Nice appear, its presence is always hovering within the film, for laced between the images of leisure and wealth are shots of the workers who labor to make Nice what it is. As Caste´las has pointed out, ‘relations between the hivernants and the people, when they existed, functioned mainly as master to servant’ (2002, p. 345). The waitresses, painters, and street

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

125

sweepers are doubtless residents of Vieux Nice, and here perform their role of servant to the idle rich. The three aerial shots of Nice also invite a viewer to locate themselves within the city. They act as a type of map, locating us within the city of Nice, yet outside it, for as Tom Conley has stated, ‘when a film locates the geography of its narrative, it also tells us that we are not where it says it is taking place’ (Conley, 2007, p. 4). It thus becomes possible to view A Propos de Nice as a new cinematic space alongside the physical space of Nice. In this viewing then, Vigo’s aim to ‘make visible the becoming of a city’ (Salles Gomes, 1988, p. 71) is an aim toward the becoming of a new, cinematic city, and the pleasure seekers arriving by train configure the film as a similar yet alternate journey to that of the tourist. As Jean Mitry has argued, ‘shots are like cells, distinct spaces the succession of which, however, reconstitutes a homogenous space, but a space unlike that from which these elements were subtracted’ (Mitry, 1965, p. 10). A viewer is thus constantly seeking to locate herself within both the real city and the reel city, and to make sense of them vis-a`-vis the other. After viewing the emptied roulette table devoid of tourists, we enter a world removed from them, as the camera fades into an image of the ocean, then another overhead shot of the city, followed by glimpses of palm trees, and finally, images of street cleaners and waiters. Michael Temple has argued that these images establish ‘the broader social and natural context in which the petty human activities of the city will be represented’ (2005, p. 22). In addition, since we have just viewed, mere seconds earlier, the arrival of a train and the alighting of its passengers, followed by their gambling activities that are swiped away by the croupier’s rake, it is possible to view these images in and around Nice as the camera’s own voyage, in the same vein as the aerial shots that open the film. Rather than the tourist’s train voyage that would leave us at the roulette table, Vigo dashes them away and embarks on his own journey on which we are invited to accompany him. Like all city films, this journey will in part assume the temporal scale of a day in the life of a city, for the film next begins to display the morning preparations for a carnival parade that will take place later that day (although the film does not attempt a complete twenty-four hour cycle in the vein of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City). In addition, as this chapter argues, the juxtapositions that Vigo employs make explicit the various segments that exist alongside one another in Nice. We next view a man painting the nose of a giant parade face. The camera cuts to a waiter, filmed from the shoulder down as he cleans a cafe´ table. Another man attends to a life-size papier-maˆche´ figure, viewed from beneath

126

MICAH TRIPPE

his workstation so that we see his body, but his face is hard to make out. Throughout the film, the human body is seen in segmented fashion, only a portion of it visible, and the ways in which the body is broken up in Kuleshov-like sequences mirror the ways in which the city is divided spatially and temporally. We then see a waiter placing an umbrella over a cafe´ table. He is bent over, his back to the camera. Other waiters are visible in the background, their backs to us as well. We see another carnival figure as a man paints it, his face obscured by an object jutting out from the left portion of the screen. Another carnival figure is seen as two workers, viewed in profile, adjust it. More papier-maˆche´ sculptures are seen in profile, then another being carried, though the person carrying it cannot be seen. Images of carnival were perhaps the largest cinematic heritage that Vigo encountered in making a film of Nice. While few narrative films were set in Nice during the silent period (a notable exception is Abel Gance’s La Roue), the Gaumont news team made a regular point of visiting the city to record both carnival and the annual Bataille des fleurs. A film from 1928, entitled Nice. Comme Chaque Anne´e, La 1e`re Bataille de Fleurs Comportant des Chars Tre`s Richement Ornes a Conne Un Grand Succe`ss, consists of seven stationary shots of the floral floats. In another film from 1928 entitled Nice, Sa Maje`ste Carnaval A Fait Pour La 50e`me Fois Son Entre´e Dans Les Villes, the floats are shot from a long perspective and framed so that they stretch from the bottom of the screen to the top. Crowds throng alongside, in one shot stretching from one side of the frame to the other, nearly engulfing the whole screen. The effect, then, is of celebration amid an impressive display of frivolity. The closing shots of the film show Nice at night, the buildings along the shore outlined in thousands of lights, an electric parade of urban showmanship. Wholly absent are the workers Vigo depicts at the beginning of his film. These two films, made the year before Vigo and Kaufman took to the streets of Nice, illustrate the popular conception of Nice in the eyes of the media and, by extension, the French public. In addition, they highlight what was thought to be cinematically important about Nice, or visually adherent. Though elliptical and brief, the fifty-eight-second film depicts a day at carnival. Regardless of whether Vigo or Kaufman were aware of these films, they serve to show that within the actualities and journalistic practices of the period, there was already an impulse to depict both everyday activities and, to a certain extent, events taking place within a single day. City films were thus built from this context. After these images of men constructing the floats, we see a waiter carrying several umbrellas over his shoulder, his arms extended across his face as he

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

127

hoists them forward. He walks through the cafe´ courtyard, dropping an umbrella at each table, his face in profile or obscured. We view another giant sculpture, seen from its base, its breasts, lips, and nostrils towering above us. Then the face of a sculpture is seen being painted, though the painter is out of shot, only his brush visible. Next, a palm branch is seen in close-up, a hand trimming it, before the camera cuts to a shot of the worker seen in full profile, the top of the tree and its branches visible as well. A miniature potted palm is then seen against an abstract background. Finally, the camera traces a palm from its base to the top, buildings visible in the background. These initial images of Nice locate us by the sea, in the sky, and at the parade’s preparations. By intercutting such different images, Vigo invites the viewer to contemfigure their relationship to one another.

ARISTOCRATIC AND BOURGEOIS NICE After these images of workers we move into an extended sequence of aristocratic and bourgeois Nice. The sequence begins with a view of a hotel from a slaked angle (Fig. 3). The camera then rotates ninety degrees until the hotel stands upright. Another building is seen in a similar fashion. The camera again rotates until the building is set right. Hotel Negresco undergoes a similar treatment in the next shot, before one final building transforms from slanted to upright. Hence, ‘in all of the hotel shots, the

Fig. 3.

A View of a Hotel from a Slaked Angle.

128

MICAH TRIPPE

dominant visual factor is cinematic distortion through the slaked moving camera’ (Simon, 1981, p. 18). These hotels formed a central part of the drive to beautify Nice at the end of the nineteenth century. As Paul Caste´la (2002) has observed, ‘the palaces constructed along the Promenade des Anglais from 1870 to 1910 responded to the need to welcome an aristocratic clientele within an opulent and exotic frame’ (p. 300, translation mine). The Hotel Negresco was the last hotel to open before the First World War. As Caste´la recounts, ‘The architect Niermans also fixed the main entrance to the hotel in the center of the side facing the north, so that women did not suffer the heat of the sun because they must be distinguished from women of the people, bronzed by the sun and heavy work outdoors’ (op cit., p. 306, translation mine). The hotel thus epitomized the aristocratic qualities of the city that Vigo detested, as well as the attempt to bifurcate Nice. The manner of framing the hotels on their side before literally righting them seems to be a way of calling attention to buildings that might otherwise blend into the background and the civic order that they reflect. After the hotels, we view the cracks of a sidewalk as the camera tracks along it in close-up. The camera moves through the Promenade des Anglais, tourists on both sides of the camera’s path (to catch the strollers unaware, Vigo and Kaufman built a cardboard box to conceal the camera. See Salles Gomes, 1988, p. 58). A newspaper vendor is seen driving his cars through the street. The camera follows until the cart passes, the sign at the rear advertising Daily Telegraph. Another two shots of well-dressed gentlemen along the shore follow. A less well-dressed man then ambles along in front of two women dressed in the fashion of the day. More shots of the well-todo English ensue. This sequence is the most realistic treatment of the bourgeoisie yet seen in the film. The figurines dispensed by the croupier’s rake have heretofore been the viewer’s best glance at the rich Nicois and tourists. It should be noted, however, that these figurines only appear because Vigo and Kaufman could not gain access to Nice’s casinos (Salles Gomes, 1988, pp. 62–63). The film may well have begun with scenes of the well-to-do in the casino. In the finished product, however, they appear at a point in the film in which so much about Nice has already been presented. A viewer’s clue as to how Vigo and Kaufman feel about these men and women is their placement within the film, since they follow scenes of workers and nature. While the fate of the tourist figurines who arrived at the beginning of the film is clear, in these scenes, the style of the shots is matter-of-fact and the wealthy are not wiped away. Instead, Vigo uses montage as a strategy to highlight class differences and his contempt for the city.

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

129

The film continues along the Promenade, cutting from workers to vendors to tourists and aristocrats, who scorn the merchandise and the camera equally. The camera then moves to an overhead shot of the beach, framed similarly to the street, men and women standing about. The camera tracks over the ocean, leaving the beach behind. A stationary hydroplane is seen along with a kayak; then another hydroplane skips along the water. The camera cuts between beach, street, and hydroplane before it moves up the sails of three racing boats, then along their tops and back down. We see boats sailing along the water. We cut to three wider shots with a dozen or so boats in the water, the city visible behind them. These shots begin to elaborate upon the culture of leisure so despised by Vigo. There is an initial movement toward the kind of nature shots that Vigo originally envisioned would act as a counterpoint to the leisurely city (Salles Gomes, 1988, p. 54), but the camera then moves swiftly back to planes, sailboats, and racing. Like the carnival, these types of images were associated with Nice in the popular imagination, and had already assumed a position of prominence in film, particularly newsreels, as noted above. Accordingly, Vigo puts this view of Nice on film. His film consists of 44 general views (12.83%), 167 leisure shots (48.69%), 30 scenes of sport (8.75%), one shot of transportation, none of agriculture, 4 of commerce (1.17%), 34 of labor (9.91%), 12 of art (3.5%), and 7 of religion (2.04%). Hence, A Propos de Nice shows virtually no transport, agriculture, commerce, or religion. Labor accounts for only about 1 in 10 shots, and art is minimal. Vigo’s film thus presents a city that consists largely of general views, leisure, and labor, with a spattering of sport and art. Vigo assumes a satirical stance toward leisure, while also displaying the physical city and occasionally showing shots of labor that contrast sharply with the leisure seen in the film. After the shots of the boats, we see a man playing tennis, viewed in a medium shot from the waist up. We cut back to two more shots of the sailing boats before viewing the tennis player from the waist down as he moves along the baseline. Spectators watch. This montage links two sports associated with the elite: tennis and sailing. The film cuts to a pe´tanque game, the men’s feet visible along with the moving ball. We then view a racing car on the track as it careens past the camera. The camera cuts to a shot of a buoy in the water, then another sailboat. We view another racing car, then another. These images bring a theme of mobility to the forefront, leaving the fac- ade of the city behind in order to further frame the techniques of the camera vis-a`-vis the modern machines of mobility. The racing cars give way to two shots of elegant luxury automobile along the Promenade, followed by a woman getting out of a car, escorted by a

130

MICAH TRIPPE

chauffeur. The camera cuts to a man reclining at a table, having finished a snack. Another woman sits at a table, folding the brim of her hat over her forehead to avoid the camera’s glare. The camera cuts between cars arriving and people at the cafe´. Nineteen shots of people along the Promenade follow. They read the paper and talk. In the middle of this sequence, we view the image of an ostrich. We then see various street performers, men dozing, and more street performers. Several more shots of men and woman reclining in seats follow. Michael Temple (2005) has argued that these shots underscore the idle nature of the Nic- ois and tourists (pp. 22–24). Indeed, their idleness extends to a wariness of the camera. One woman attempts to shield herself from the camera, while another gazes uneasily toward it. The shots would appear as simple, documentary footage akin to Gaumont documentaries were it not for this attitude and the insertion of the ostrich, which sends up the haughty behavior of the women. The next sequence, one of the more famous of the film, further subverts this idleness. A woman is seen reclining in a chair, viewed from the neck down. She then appears in several different dresses. Her position never changes but her dress progresses through several pieces. The final shot depicts her in the nude (Fig. 4). As Robert Sklar (2002) has argued, this is one of the more overtly surrealist sequences in the film (p. 221). The dream logic of surrealism appears in Vigo’s film as the dissolution of the ruling class, witnessed in this particular sequence as a literal undressing of a woman, a repudiation of fashion and style as worn by the wealthy, but seen

Fig. 4.

A Woman Reclining in a Chair.

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

131

overall in the film as the destruction of a city, bringing to bear upon Nice the kind of anarchic sentiments many surrealists harbored. In addition, the surrealists shared a sometimes overlooked preoccupation with urban spaces, particularly those that were disappearing. As Robin Walz (2000) has commented, ‘while modern Paris provided a cultural terrain for surrealist inspiration, Breton knew that the commercial and political interests transforming the urban landscape resisted and thwarted surrealism’ (p. 17). In his ‘Introduction to the Discourse on the Paucity of Reality,’ Breton (1978) himself wrote ‘I know that in Paris, on the boulevards, the beautiful luminous signs are making their appearance. These signs mean a great deal to me as I walk, but actually they represent only that which annoys me’ (p. 19). There thus existed within surrealist thought both a dissatisfaction with the city and a desire to preserve the kinds of spaces that might allow for the transformation of reality that the surrealists sought. In approaching Nice, then, Vigo sought to both damn the city while also discovering the places wherein a magical transformation might take place, thus usurping places (such as the seaside) for his own purposes. The nude woman becomes his accomplice in this endeavor. In images of the Promenade and beach, Vigo has established a satirical stance toward the wealthy, a playful desire to transform the ordinary into the surreal and a preoccupation with the segmented body. In exposing the female body, undressing it and stripping it of bourgeois symbols, Vigo’s camera lingers on the body, again seen from the neck down, the face unseen as in the images of the workers attending to the carnival figurines. The woman breathes in, out. A shot of a statue of a woman follows, then two more. In this juxtaposition, the artistic display of sculpture accompanies the nude woman, but equally, since these statues are from a cemetery, the death of the bourgeois body is visualized. By aligning the images of the cemetery statues with that of the nude woman, the cemetery becomes not only a venue in which to relegate the city to the dead, but also an arena of play and desire. Vigo’s film is thus consistently commingling the body, anarchy, surrealist tendencies, and images of Nice in order to present a revolutionary and segmented view of the city, the revolutionary ardor consistently framed through the vehicle of the human body. We next see a man toweling off on the beach, then a woman reclining on a chair on the beach, then two boys tossing a ball in the sea. More men and woman recline. A man is seen sunbathing, then overly tanned. A shot of crocodiles follows. These shots continue the visual strategies seen in the progression from the women on the Promenade to the ostrich. The bronzed skin of the man is compared to the scales of crocodiles. One might further

132

MICAH TRIPPE

argue that the cunning and danger of crocodiles mirrors the activities of the rich. Vigo will return to these concerns, but after the image of the crocodiles, the camera moves away from the body to more architectural considerations and to a new portion of the city.

VIEUX NICE AND CARNIVAL We move along the arches and columns of an anonymous building in three shots. In the third shot, the camera pans right to an open sky (Fig. 5). Next, a narrow streetscape is viewed, seen from the ground as the camera looks up between two buildings, the sky forming a narrow diagonal line across the frame. This point of view is new. Previously, we have viewed scenes from eye level or from above. Another shot moves along the narrow buildings, then tilts down into the street. The camera zigzags down the buildings to women cleaning clothes. They are dressed distinctly differently than the well-to-do men and women we have previously seen. Clothes hung out to dry, billowing from windows, are viewed from street level. We view a woman clean a shirt with soap. Only her arm is visible, along with the shirt and water. The camera then moves along dilapidated buildings, revealing windows both thrown open and shuttered. These are the quarters of the Old City, which was generally shunned by tourists. The sense of space is cramped in these shots, and there is ‘a collective spirit very different from the crowd of bourgeois individuals we saw on the Promenade’ (Temple, 2005, p. 24). In the final decades of the

Fig. 5.

A Narrow Streetscape between Two Buildings.

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

133

nineteenth century, ‘the Old City, the traditional home of Nice’s business and professional classes, was transformed from an occupationally and socially diverse neighborhood into a lower-class ghetto dominated by laborers’ (Huag, 1982, p. 68). Many of these laborers were Italians who remained in the area after the annexation of Nice to France in 1860. The beautification that took place in the new quarters of the city, as highlighted above in the building of the Hotel Negresso, did not take place in Vieux Nice, thus creating a bifurcated city. Vigo establishes this division formally through the use of shots that look up from the city toward the open sky, placing the viewer in a stance of longing for escape from the confined poverty of the area. Next, several young men and women carry pissaladieres (a type of large pizza) on their heads to market, then back to the narrow streetscape, viewed from street level looking up, then back to the men and women bringing the pissaladieres to town. Boys play cards in an overhead shot. They play a counting game, seen from shoulder to waist level, so that the frame is taken up mostly by their arms and hands gesticulating as they play the game. Then a man moves through a street carrying pissaladieres. This is a vastly different view of Nice than that offered by traditional actualte´s of Gaumont or Pathe´, as described above, or as advocated in the building boom that accompanied the end of the nineteenth century, in which Nice hoped to attract aristocratic wealth while building a resort to rival Monte Carlo. The presence of the pissaladieres, a traditional provenc- al dish, situates this section of the city – and by extension the film – in the mixture of foreigners (Italian migrants who lingered in the area after the annexation) and poverty. Coming in the middle of the film, these images of Vieux Nice act as a kind of centerpiece, surrounded by images of the Promenade des Anglais and carnival, whose feˆted celebrations and ostentatious wealth assume an air of gilded ignorance and oppression. The camera next captures an overhead shot of the market, followed by an image of a woman selling her wares. The pizzas are seen being sliced. The camera reverts back to the boys’ hands as they play the game, then a shot of their faces. Eight more shots of the boys ensue, concluding with the image of a boy with a disfigured face. The generally unfavorable elements of the Old City are highlighted by the presence of this boy whose face and fingers are disfigured. This sense of the Old City is then reinforced by an image of rubbish in a gutter. Finally, a cat sits beside rubbish and a manhole. It turns and stares at the camera. We have barely registered the cat’s enquiring stare, however, before the camera dissolves to a ballroom of bourgeois dancers. Fifteen more shots of

134

MICAH TRIPPE

the dancers follows, cutting from body shots to shots of faces, to men and women seated at tables beside the dance floor. The final image blurs and then cuts to an image of carnival, the parade progressing down the street with the sculptures seen at the beginning of the film. The poverty of the Old City sequence is brought into glaring contrast with the posh Promenade des Anglais by the images of overdressed couples in a ballroom, as well as the viewer’s place within that inequality. We view couples dancing from the knees down. The move from the disfigured boy’s face and the cat moving amidst rubbish to an elegant ballroom pits the disenfranchised squarely against Nice’s bourgeoisie. If distortion and obscuring are part of that transition, then the formal properties of film only serve to further the cause of obscuring and distorting the normal view of Nice promulgated by the actualities of Pathe´ and Gaumont, as well as the architects of the Belle Epoque. Six shots of carnival follow, from men and woman dancing, to papiermaˆche´ sculptures, to women seated on floats. Images of dancing link the carnival images with the ballroom sequence seen before it. One cannot help but wonder, alongside Michael Temple (2005), if the carnival sequence is ‘a joyous anarchistic liberation from this strait-laced and oppressive world’ (p. 27). In the midst of these first images of carnival, men appear inside giant costumes, the opening in the costumes lined with bars. William Simon (1981) has argued that, ‘the sense of men being prisoners, behind bars, is unmistakable’ and that these shots ‘graphically capture the situation of the working class – a behind-the-scenes presence working to support the festivity of the rich’ (p. 28). As above analysis have suggested, this is a theme that Vigo has built throughout the film. Accordingly, three images of women picking flowers follow, before we cut back to flowers strewn on the ground. We see two shots of men and women throwing flowers at one another during carnival. Vigo literally depicts the process by which the flowers have been procured. A shot of a sculptured wing on the back of a float follows. Six more shots of flower merrymaking follow. Then a group of men with sculpted masks and guitars progress down the street. More shots of men in costume follow. We then see a group of men and women dancing. Shots of the same are intercut before we see an abstract image of a woman in a shop window (Fig. 6). The insertion of this Cubist-like figure into Vigo’s film seems deliberate. It is immediately followed by an image of another figurine superimposed on a

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

Fig. 6.

135

Abstract Image of a Woman in a Shop Window.

shop window that reads ‘DE PARIS.’ This image evokes the center of these painting practices, as well as the Coˆte d’Azur’s role at that time as a residence for many painters. In placing these images of the body in dialogue with Simultanist-like representation, Vigo and Kaufman illustrate montage’s ability to reflect the world of ideas rather than simply the mere appearance of things. Montage is thus the element by which city symphonies attain the level of idea, but the medium and properties of film dictate that this must be accomplished by directly viewing the world and contemplating the connections between its various elements. In these films, ‘the juxtaposition within the same frame of shots portraying an almost unnoticeable lapse of time [y] demonstrates how temporal, alongside visual, simultaneity and multiplicity – put forward by artistic movements such as Cubism – could be achieved in cinema’ (Alifragkis, 2009, p. 44). Montage in these films is crucially concerned with representation as much as with what is represented (or displayed). In Vigo’s film, for example, during the carnival procession, as his camera cuts back and forth between the parade and women picking flowers, he uses shots of the same woman to visualize the multiplicity of her experience with those of the flower pickers. The carnival in general, then, visualized alongside other events, represents an event happening simultaneous to others, as well as one of multiples events in a day. City films seek to transcend narrative to arrive at a new representation of the city, a representation that is defined by placing segments side by side, something painters had been attempting since the first decade of the twentieth century.

136

MICAH TRIPPE

TOWARD DESTRUCTION AND THE ECSTATIC After the silver foil figure, two mannequins are seen in shop windows. The dancers are seen again. More men in costume progress down the street. A man rides a horse down the street. A military troupe marches down the street. Then, graves topped by crosses are seen. This is the first image of the cemetery, which Vigo will continue to intercut with scenes of carnival. Within the history of the city itself, the cemetery was a grand gesture of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy to honor its heroes, but the cemetery itself was subject to decay. Caste´la (2002) has written that ‘the funerary architecture, characteristic of the Mediterranean deportment, couldn’t resist the weather. Large tombs were destroyed’ (p. 339). In choosing photos of the cemetery, Vigo thus combines images of both bodily and urban decay. The cemetery shots foreshadow the ultimate ruin illustrated in the final section of the film, in which carnival paraphernalia is destroyed in an industrial incinerator. Before that final section, however, a plethora of carnival images intercut with scenes from the Promenade ensues. We view a marching band, men and women dancing, naval ships, a priest walking down the street, then more dancers. The camera cuts to a funeral procession viewed in fast motion, then more dancing. An automobile is seen along the Promenade, then a woman in a float as flowers are tossed at her. A man appears in the car on the Promenade. A dancer is seen from below, her legs kicking across the screen. Men and horses progress along the Promenade. A military officer tips his hat. A man shines a shoe, only his back and the shoe visible; then the shoe becomes a bare foot. We see a grave marker consisting of a large cross, then a lamppost viewed from below. Together, this rush of images combines many of the subjects that the film has already established: the body on display, surrealist tricks, the cemetery, and the revelry of the rich. Next, we see men and women walking over a manhole, seen from beneath it. This is one of Vigo and Kaufman’s more elaborate setups, highlighting the extents to which they went to film the Nic- ois unaware. Kaufman must have descended into the manhole and then filmed from below the street. Such stunts are common in many city films, particularly Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. After these shots, the dancers take their most prolific role at this point in the film. We view them from below (Fig. 7), then a quick shot of a bust of Gambetta before the camera returns to the dancers. They are seen dancing at 34 speed. We view another bust. Then the dancers appear again again at 34 speed. A tombstone appears, then more cemetery shots, followed by more 3 4 speed shots of the dancers. The cemetery is viewed again. Next, we view

137

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

Fig. 7.

Dancers at

3 4

Speed.

waves crashing on the shore, then images of trees and waves. The camera reverts to the cemetery. A man sunbathing stretches his skin. The camera cuts to a statue of a woman mourning. We view the sky, then waves, then cemetery statues of women. The camera moves in on the woman’s private areas. We then view a tree abstracted against the sky, waves, and trees. The camera cuts back to the dancers, then to a woman looking up, talking. An extended sequence of the dancers at 34 speed follows. William Simon (1981) has contended that the use of slow motion ‘makes the dancing appear especially frenzied and grotesque’ (p. 30). Vigo himself stated: ‘In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial [y] the film develops into a generalized view of the vulgar pleasures that come under the sign of the grotesque, of the flesh and of death’ (as quoted in Salles Gomes, 1988, p. 68). This sequence then, with its extensive use of images of the cemetery, incorporates this triumvirate of the grotesque, flesh, and death. In this slow motion sequence, however, the body seems to be simultaneously held up as grotesque, but also celebrated in movements that are held up for scrutiny and contemplation. A Propos de Nice is, like all city films, unquestionably about everyday life. Unlike many other city films, however, the film constantly seems on the verge of renouncing the everyday life it finds, detecting and damning the social injustice inscribed in everyday activities. The body is the site upon which this transformation turns. Despite the injustices surrounding them, the dancers enjoy their bodies; they find in them a source of pleasure and revelry extending beyond the

138

MICAH TRIPPE

prison-like statues of the carnival masks or the labor inscribed in the picking of the flowers. Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (2007) has argued that the quotidian quality of everyday life is suspended when it is noticed, and this suspension leads to manifold and potentially endless reflections on the nature of being in the world by, first of all, distancing oneself from familiarity with the world, leading to a special fascination manifested in various forms of ecstasies (p. 243). In the dancing sequence, the everyday activities of the film are suspended and the ecstasy of the dancers is captured via slow motion, while the camera delights in its own abilities and the bodies of the dancers merge with the body of the camera. The everyday is transformed into the ecstatic. The essential effort, then, of this sequence, and perhaps of the film and city films in general, is to ‘revitalize the lived world’ (Gosetti-Ferencei, 2007, p. 248). The viewer, held in a state of mesmerization, is briefly able to contemfigure the being-in-the-world of the dancers, the city and the everyday events passing by on the screen. The dancing sequence is thus a momentary reprieve from the overall critique that the film launches, and to which it reverts in the final sequence of the film. The camera cuts to a shot of factory towers. We have returned to the realm of the worker, and herein are the film’s first explicitly industrial images. Whereas previously the film has avoided such images, here the factory towers appear several times, as the camera cuts from a woman looking up to the factory chimneys, then cuts back and forth several times. The effect of the montage is to make it appear as if the woman were looking up at the factory towers in a position of submission. Next, we see a carnival statue in the incinerating factory, getting ready to be burned. The day has drawn to a close. Smoke emanates from the chimneys. Factory workers laugh in close-up. The camera cuts back to the smoke pouring from the chimney, the statues continuing to burn. The fire continues, incinerating items from carnival. A factory worker pushes items into the fire. More shots of smoke and chimney follow, the entirety of carnival destroyed and, by implication, the world it encompasses. The film ends. This final sequence may constitute the final triumph of the workers as imagined by Vigo. Heretofore workers have appeared throughout the film, but they have done so within the world of leisure, tourism, and the aristocracy. A Propos de Nice has yielded images of the urban dweller as dancer, parade participant, agricultural laborer, cafe´ waiter, sunbather, aristocratic leisure seeker, and athlete, but few if any industrial workers. In the final moments of the film, the camera captures them in their own world. Even there, however, the factory workers pictured at the close of the film are seen

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

139

on a break, laughing. When in the factory, they assist in the destruction of the world pictured in the film, rather than strenuous, industrial labor. Still, the close-ups of their laughing faces are not followed by images that would satirize or criticize their merriment. In fact, the coupling of the destruction of the carnival statues with their laughter suggests that their delight lies in the demise of carnival and all it represents. Coming on the heels of the dancing sequence, the very being in the world of the viewer is called into question in relation to the dynamics of labor, bourgeois activities, and the society that frames them and the city they produce. Death has consistently lurked over carnival, as Vigo has intercut images of the cemetery with shots of revelry. This death is then extended from the physical death of individuals to the death of an entire system.

CONCLUSION Siegfried Kracauer (1997) called A Propos de Nice ‘brilliant if immature’ (p. 181). This opinion may lie in the somewhat abrupt nature of the ending. The subtleties of the film’s critiques give way to a blatant revolutionary tone. As mentioned above, Vigo and Kaufman did not have a great deal of usable material at the end of filming. One suspects that they cobbled together an ending from what they had. Still, the ending of the film represents one of the few efforts in city films to visualize the destruction of a given urban order. Vigo sends up the system and then destroys it, leaving the viewer with a sense of possibility still lingering in the air when the film closes. It might be characterized as immature, but is nonetheless redolent of the daring for which Vigo’s film would come to be famous. This analysis of A Propos de Nice has sought to examine the film within the various discourses in which its production occurred, including the urban history of Nice itself, cinematic conceptions of Nice before 1929, and the French avant-garde (both artistic and cinematic). This convergence of discourses was common to the genre of city films that developed in Europe in the 1920s. In a manner similar to how Edward Dimendberg’s Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (2004) illuminated the ways in which film noir highlighted the changing social nature of urban spaces in 1940s and 1950s America, city films of the 1920s and 1930s likewise help illuminate the changing nature of urban space in those decades, which was, as ever, a site of battling interests. If A Propos de Nice bears similarities to other city films, Nice was somewhat unique when Vigo made the film. Urban space was constructed in

140

MICAH TRIPPE

a manner distinct from other European cities. Paul Caste´la (2002) has argued that ‘Nice is a city apart in a Europe undergoing industrialization and the advent of rural people who crowd into neighborhoods huddled next to workshops and factories. In cities where the neighborhood – poor – occupy most of the area, the slums of the era of the first industrial revolution constitute reserve space for operations of modern urbanism, but this is not the case in Nice’ (p. 342). As such, one might configure A Propos de Nice as irrelevant to more industrial, or even postindustrial, cityscapes. However, the segmented view of a city that A Propos de Nice presents to a viewer is translatable to all cities since the everyday divisions in Nice are common to any city, industrial or postindustrial: wealthy and indigent, decadent and monotonous, genteel and laborious. Since Vigo’s time, the use of film, both documentary and fiction, has continued to expand in sociological realms. The use of montage remains an exemplary way to illustrate the daily spatial practices that, while segmented, form the totalizing effects of urban life. The documentary films and experiments of William Whyte in New York City during the 1970s are an excellent example of how film can be used to detect the daily patterns and habits of urban residents and workers, such as which areas of a park they favor and which types of street attract activity. On the narrative front, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) portrays one twenty-four hour cycle in a segmented Brooklyn neighborhood. In the process, the film displays the various segments of a population that inhabit a neighborhood. This kind of information can be quite information for urban planners seeking to meet the needs of neighborhood residents. Finally, film can be used as an observational tool in examining how a city changes over time, as Terence Davies has recently illustrated in setting images of contemporary Liverpool against archival footage of the city from the early twentieth century in Of Time and the City (2008). Together, these examples illustrate that as the contemporary city continues to expand upon segmented lines, the ability of film to place these segments side by side makes it an invaluable tool for sociologists, urban planners, historians, architects, and students interested in how urban inhabitants exists alongside one another. Hence, just as filmmakers like Vigo believed that film’s unique ability to place simultaneous events side by side gave it a special place among the arts in relation to the city, so too today’s urban dwellers and scholars continue to look to the cinema as a means of understanding what it means to be urban.

The Segmented Quotidian Made Visible

141

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dr. Francois Penz in the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, has been enormously helpful in guiding and inspiring this work. The staff at the Gaumonth-Pathe´ archives in Paris graciously authorized access to relevant materials. Finally, the conveners and attendees at ‘Everyday Life in the Segmented City’ in Florence, Italy, July 2010 provided insight and encouragement.

REFERENCES Alifragkis, S. (2009). City Symphonies: Reconstructing the Urban Landscape: Dziga Vertov’s ‘Man with the Movie Camera’ and the City of the Future. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge, Cambridge. Breton, A. (1978). What is surrealism? London: Pluto Press. Caste´la, P. (2002). Nice, une capitale historique. Nice: E´ditions Gilletta. Charde`re, B. (1961). Jean Vigo. Lyon: Premier Plan. Conley, T. (2007). Cartographic cinema. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Dimendberg, E. (2004). Film noir and the spaces of modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gosetti-Ferencei, J. A. (2007). The ecstatic quotidian: Phenomenological sightings in modern art and literature. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Huag, C. J. (1982). Leisure and urbanism in nineteenth-century nice. Lawrence, KS: The Regents Press of Kansas. Kracauer, S. (1997). Theory of film: The redemption of physical reality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lie´geard, S. (1887). La Coˆte d’Azur. Paris: Impremerie Maison Quantin. Mitry, J. (1965). Esthe´tique et psychologie du cine´ma vol. II. , Paris: E´ditions Universitaires. Salles Gomes, P. E. (1988). Jean Vigo. London: Faber and Faber. Simon, W. G. (1981). The films of Jean Vigo. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press. Sklar, R. (2002). World atlas of film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Temple, M. (2005). Jean Vigo. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Walz, R. (2000). Pulp surrealism: Insolent popular culture in early twentieth-century Paris. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

CHAPTER 7 SEGMENTED CITIES WITH FUZZY WALLS: CHANGES IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS AS SEEN THROUGH A MULTISCALE ANALYSIS Mauro Normando Maceˆdo Barros Filho and Circe Maria Gama Monteiro ABSTRACT This chapter aims to discuss the segmented city in the less developed world, focusing on its informal settlements. The main assumption is that the walls of informal settlements change from rigid to fuzzy ones, as they are analyzed using finer scales. In order to show this change, this chapter is divided into four sections. The first section analyzes the changes in two types of urban structure model: the segregated city model and the segmented city model. The second section describes the changes in governmental intervention models for informal settlements in Latin American cities, emphasizing what has been happening in the city of Recife, Brazil. The third section investigates the fact that, despite the changes in terms of governmental intervention models for informal settlements, there are still limits on the official city maps that effectively impede any appropriate representation of them. In order to show the gaps between the official cartographic representations and the reality of Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 143–167 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011010

143

144

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

informal settlements, the last section of this chapter analyzes in more depth the walls of one specific informal settlement in Recife called Brası´lia Teimosa. This finer scale analysis allows us to see that its walls are even more fuzzy and permeable than the walls of the many formal settlements. Keywords: Segmented city; informal settlements; scales; urban structure models; governmental intervention models; cartographic representations

INTRODUCTION Cities can be seen as complex urban mosaics made up of a set of fragments that reflect the social inequalities among their residents, and, at the same time, change their actions and decisions. These mosaics are easier to see in metropolises in the less developed world, as in these urban regions, one does not need to be an urban planner or an old city dweller to see that some areas are more attractive, privileged, and better serviced than others. The bigger and more populated a city is, the more visible its social inequalities are likely to be. The fragments of the urban mosaic are divided by walls. Some walls are visible, tangible, and concrete barriers resulting from the built and natural environment. Other walls are intangible or invisible barriers imposed by zoning and social prejudice (Marcuse, 1995). The rigidity of the city’s walls may vary according to the scale through which they are analyzed. In this context, the chapter aims to discuss the segmented city in the less developed world, focusing on one particular type of urban fragment: informal settlements. These settlements can be defined as urban areas that have been developed outside the official land use laws and regulations. In general, such areas are occupied by the poor who have not been able to buy, sell, or rent a household in the city’s formal real estate market. Normally, these households are built spontaneously, without a previous plan to guide or control the land occupation. The result is the generation of a set of ‘places’ more than just ‘spaces’ since these places inherently have a strong set of social relations among their inhabitants (Norberg-Schulz, 1979), and their morphologies may vary significantly from the formal urban spaces – and it is also possible to say that formal cities have fewer ‘places’ and more ‘spaces’ for the same reason as previously mentioned.

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

145

The main assumption of the chapter is that the walls of informal settlements change from rigid to fuzzy ones, as they are analyzed using finer scales. In order to show this change, this chapter is divided into four sections. The first section analyzes the changes in two types of urban structure model: the segregated city model and the segmented city model. The former is a synthesis of the traditional ecological models of the Chicago School, as well as the Marxist core-peripheral model. The latter is an alternative and complementary model that reveals the dynamics of the contemporary Latin American metropolises as a result of the fragmentation of the previous segregated city model, and can be described by three basic features: the fractioning of the social classes, spatial roughness, and network territories. The second section describes the changes in governmental intervention models for informal settlements in Latin American cities, emphasizing what has been happening in the city of Recife, Brazil. It shows that, since the 1980s, conventional slum eviction programs have been replaced by programs to upgrade slums. These changes have contributed to a much better understanding of the specificity and diversity of the informal settlements, as well as to ‘knocking down’ their previously rigid walls, and accepting the inevitability of their existence. The third section investigates the fact that, despite the changes in terms of governmental intervention models for informal settlements, there are still limits on the official city maps that effectively impede any appropriate representation of them. These limits can be seen through the analysis of the features in the two main databases about the city of Recife: the Brazilian Demographic Census data and the city’s official cartographic base. In order to show the gaps between the official cartographic representations and the reality of informal settlements, the last section of this chapter analyzes in more depth the walls of one specific informal settlement in the city of Recife, Brazil, called Brası´ lia Teimosa. This finer scale analysis allows us to see that its walls are even more fuzzy and permeable than the walls of the many formal settlements.

FROM SEGREGATED TO SEGMENTED CITIES: CHANGES IN URBAN STRUCTURE MODELS The urban structure models of the Chicago School revealed changes in the dynamics of social groups within urban space. The mononuclear city

146

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

represented in the concentric rings model proposed by Burgess (2005) in 1924, and in the sector model proposed by Hoyt (2005) in 1939, became a multinuclear city in the multiple nuclei model as defined by Harris and Ullman (1945). The Central Business District (CBD) is of less importance in the intra-urban structure. Despite these changes, none of these urban ecological models altered the hierarchical order among the residential areas occupied by different social groups. The persistence of this order underscores the hypothesis that the spatial organization of social patterns is the result of a segregation process, according to which the spatial distance between different social groups is significant. Actually, all these models represent different versions of the segregated city as social mosaics comprised of large homogeneous regions hierarchically separated from each other. In this context, the segregated city can be understood as a synthesis or convergence of all classic models, due to its capacity to maintain large spatial distances and the same hierarchical order among different social groups (Barros Filho, 2009). In the last decades, several studies (Caldeira, 1996; Lago, 2000; Marcuse, 1995) have noted changes in urban patterns in a segregated city. According to these studies, a new real estate dynamic has emerged in the metropolises of the less developed world, which has, at the same time, led to (i) the emergence of high-income enclaves protected by walls and technological security equipment on the outskirts of the city, a region that was always predominantly occupied by the poor; (ii) the consolidation and densification of slums in central and extremely valuable areas. These new dynamics shorten the physical distance and, at the same time, increase the social distance between the different social groups. Borsdorf et al. (2002) proposed a new model to explain the intra-urban structure of Latin American cities from the 1980s until the end of the XX century. This model represents an intensification of the linear trend in Hoyt’s sector model and the cellular trend of Harris and Ullman’s multinuclei model. The intensification of the linear trend is due to the improvement and duplication of existing thoroughfares, as well as the construction of new intra-urban highways in and surrounding the metropolises. The intensification of cellular trend is due to the emergence and growth of new facilities and housing typologies – such as gated communities, malls, new industrial and business parks, shopping centers, and urban entertainment centers – spread throughout the metropolitan region. This cellular trend reveals a fragmentation of the urban structure. For the authors, land use patterns in contemporary Latin American cities no longer have large dimensions or contiguity. In recent years, ‘islands of wealth’ have

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

147

sprouted up, of high-income gated communities and commercial centers built in very poor regions, as well as ‘islands of poverty’ with small slums occupying vacant plots in the high-income sectors. This is only possible with the construction of walls to protect the islands of poverty against eviction from the real estate market, as well as to guarantee security on the islands of wealth. Although several characteristics of the previous models are maintained, what really distinguishes this model from the others is that the nonresidential areas and the residential areas occupied by different social groups are dispersed throughout the urban space. Thus, there are two main new trends in Latin American contemporary metropolises. On one hand, there is a decrease in the large socially homogeneous residential areas and, on the other hand, there is a spatial discontinuity in these areas within the metropolitan region. As the urban areas occupied by high-income groups become more exclusive (Ribeiro, 2000), the social polarization of the urban structure (Harvey, 1975) and the complexity of its spatial distribution continue to increase with the presence – both in the city’s center and in its periphery – of marginalized and gentrified urban spaces. As such, there is an increase in the social distances between the poor and the rich. At the same time, there is a decrease in the spatial distances between exclusive gated communities (which no longer need to occupy continuous tracts of land to impose and maintain their power), and exclusionary enclaves (which depend on the infrastructure, facilities, services, and jobs offered by the former). As a consequence, the segregated city breaks its large homogeneous social regions into social microspaces found throughout the urban tissue, leading to a pulverized socio-spatial configuration. According to Lago (2000), these social microspaces, associated with slums or gated communities, resulted in a new spatial scale of social segregation in Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s. They are largely a product of the real estate crisis, and a result of negotiation and tolerance practices to deal with illegality. Caldeira (1996) points out that this new urban segregation pattern – in which different social groups are far closer to each other, although separated by walls and security technologies in and surrounding the ‘fortified enclaves’ – has been a characteristic of the socio-spatial structure in Sa˜o Paulo since the 1980s, overlapping to the core-peripheral model that prevailed in this city between the 1940s and 1980s, when the social groups were separated from each other by sizeable physical distances. The assignment of certain regions of the city to specific social groups becomes more complex even in spaces traditionally seen as homogeneous.

148

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

Valladares and Pre`teceille (2000) noticed that in Rio de Janeiro, not only the slums can be assimilated as exclusionary enclaves, since situations of extreme poverty are now found more frequently outside slums. In large slums, their internal differences are also very important, as slums within slums are also evident. This complex socio-spatial configuration of contemporary cities requires the term ‘urban segregation’ be replaced by ‘urban fragmentation.’ In the last decades, the term ‘urban fragmentation’ has mainly been used to express the intensive subdivision of the traditional segregated spaces in the cities. According to Santos (1990), urban fragmentation is the disintegration of a territory due to the extremely low spatial mobility of the poor who live in the periphery of underdeveloped metropolises, transforming these territories into ghettos. According to Souza (2002), urban fragmentation is a process through which, on the one hand, slums become territories for trafficking gangs and cartels, and, on the other hand, high- and medium-income groups aim to live in exclusive gated communities due to their ever increasing feeling of insecurity. In this sense, the fragmentation is related to the higher complexity of the segregation patterns, which challenges the idea of the city as a unity of diversities, since it creates ‘socio-political fractures’ and social enclaves that intensify the segregation; or the socio-spatial disparities in urban space. Like Santos (1990), Souza’s (2002) concept of urban fragmentation is more related to the intensification of urban segregation than to the spread of social enclaves into different locations within the metropolis. Thus, neither of these authors assumes that fragmentation replaces the traditional coreperipheral model. In this sense, the segmented city model is better understood as a complementary model with its own features, which, at the same time, retains features from the previous model. In order to understand the distinct features of the segmented city model, it is necessary to go beyond the Marxist approach by criticizing its economic emphasis and its traditional social class division. This is only possible if urban space is dialectically understood, that is, if it is not only seen as a reflection, a stage, or a scenario where social practices have been taking place, but also as a condition to these practices, that is, as a real protagonist or agent of the social relations. In this context, three basic features are enhanced in segmented cities: (i) the steady increase in the fractioning of social classes among both workers and capitalists; (ii) the spatial roughness effects, which impede the homogenization of capitalist production; and (iii) the prevalence of spatially discontinuous network territories.

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

149

The spatial interests of Later Capitalism do not represent a distinct class, and cannot be simply explained through the capital versus work relationship, as Marx believed. Actually, they represent fractions of social classes that may include both workers and capitalists. All these fractions can use the exchange value of the urban land because it is a product pulverized by the real estate market (Gottdiener, 1994). The social space cannot be exclusively reduced to the economic field. Actually, it is a multidimensional space, an open set of relatively autonomous fields where those who occupied dominant and dominated positions are continuously involved in different types of struggles. The capitalist production system accelerates and makes the socio-spatial segregation more complex, generating a significant fragmentation of the social structure. Distinct classes of consumption emerge, aiming a variable and continuous demand that causes deviations in social class’ consciousness (Harvey, 1975). According to Lefe`bvre (1979), the principal spatial contradiction in society is the confrontation between the abstract and social spaces. The former is the externalization of the economic and political practices that originated from the capitalist class and the State. The latter represents the spaces comprised by the use values that are produced by the complex interactions between all classes in everyday life. Territoriality, race, and a neighborhood culture are based on noneconomic issues. The common needs generated by primary education; religious participation, crime prevention, and recreation are only some of the ways to access and measure the qualities of the community space that drives the land use values above the land exchange values. Ethnic and parental links as well as voluntary associations are much more related to political participation than to a specific class (Mollenkopf, 1975). Thus, the current intra-urban configuration cannot be restricted to simple binary models such as capitalist versus workers or rich versus poor. The lowincome population is not simply excluded from the real estate market, as they share a less formal piece, in a small proportion, often small entrepreneurs, clandestine plotters, and community leaders, among others. Some urban spaces have been seen as spatial roughness (Santos, 1999) to the required spatial articulation of urban infrastructure and facilities. The private control of land use is inevitably anarchic and leads to unpredictable results, paradoxically out of the dominant classes’ control (Scott 1980). The inertia of some ‘crystallized areas’ in the city (such as historical sites and informal settlements) due to the cultural heritage inherited from past generations (Correˆa, 1995), as well as the particular way of parceling such urban spaces, may become an obstacle in terms of the continuous occupation of the urban land desired by the formal real estate market.

150

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

Global capital tries to impose a unique and extremely rigid top-down rationality that depends on severe laws being effective everywhere. However, each individual location acts and reacts accordingly to its own rationality. As a result, contrary to the rationality imposed by global capital, which tries to homogenize social values, ‘counter-rationalities’ emerge that cannot be completely subordinated by the dominant rationalities (Santos, 1999). Urban spaces are network territories. They are at the same time fragmented and connected (Correˆa, 1995). Their walls are not rigid and permanent elements. They are modified over time, changing the social relations within closed spaces. Individuals and social groups, in a less intensive way, as well as urban planners and administrators, more intensively, have contributed to building, modifying, and demolishing walls that divide or protect social groups in the city (Marcuse, 1995). These dynamics, thanks to the advances made in information technologies, generate ‘flow spaces’ that are intentional and repetitive sequences of interchanges and interactions among physically disarticulated positions of social actors in the economic, political, and symbolic structures of society (Castells, 1996). The contemporary fragmented city cannot simply be understood as a set of ‘spaces of places,’ but above all as a set of ‘flow spaces.’ Urban spaces are in a permanent process of change, which is the reason why urban phenomena are always incomplete and uncertain. The main characteristic of the flow spaces is the physical disarticulation or the lack of spatial contiguity among the spaces of places. They generate discontinuous spaces of places that are connected to each other through topological distances based on a non-Euclidian representation of the space. Thus, urban fragments tend to be discontinuous but connected materially (roads, fiber optic cables, water mains and electricity lines, etc.) and immaterially (the Internet, electromagnetic waves, etc.) in networks. Such fragments have fuzzy walls because their boundaries may change according to the intensity of the flows of goods, people, and, particularly, information. They can be represented as discrete or continuum urban structures. Each urban fragment in a city is a social place on a local scale, but at the same time let us think about its relation to the whole city on a global scale. Although there are different levels of connection in a city, all of its fragments are connected to each other. No one is completely isolated. The more the places become globalized, the more they become singular (Santos, 1999). A place is a location where certain global activities can be carried out. It is a small part of the city but could have a role in its history. The introduction of a public facility (like a soccer stadium) in a particular place, for example, affects the whole urban structure and its evolution.

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

151

FROM RIGID TO FUZZY WALLS: CHANGES IN THE INTERVENTION MODELS FOR INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS At the end of the XIX century, the interventions of Haussmann in Paris were used as a model for many urban interventions all over the world. Particularly in Brazil, at the beginning of the XX century, urban reforms were made in the central areas of the biggest cities in order to resolve three basic problems: sanitation, accessibility, and modernity. These reforms involved the demolition of important historical buildings and entire central districts, replacing the old colonial architectural style with a new modern one (Leme, 1999). After the Second World War, many US and European cities were targets of Urban Renewal Programs, applying principles of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAMs) in order to rebuild them. Such principles were also used as a model in Latin America to renew existing cities and to build new ones, such as the current capital Brası´ lia (Hall, 1996). All these models were based on a centralized and top-down planning model that ignores everything that differs from the desired formal order. This includes not only historical sites but especially informal settlements. As a legacy of these modernist renewal models, for a long time (and still nowadays in certain regions of the world), the traditional intervention model for informal settlements basically consisted of four main steps: (i) to evict their dwellers; (ii) to remove their belongings; (iii) to demolish their homes; and (iv) to rebuild the resulted vacant area with new ‘adequate’ houses, streets, parks, etc. Then, due to the intensity of the housing crisis (and consequent social pressure), the government had to include a new step in this model: (v) to provide social housing for the evicted population on the outskirts of the city. This practice did not solve (and is still not solving) the housing problem, and had (and still has) many negative effects. It destroys the existent commercial and social networks, increases the distance from home to work; as well as housing costs. Some poor families who were subsidized to buy a new home could not afford to pay the taxes and had to resell their homes to higher-income families. As a result, the poor families had to return to the informal world and the housing problem increased, together with the sociospatial segmentation. Informal settlements have existed in Recife since the XVII century. They were dispersed and camouflaged inside swamps where their inhabitants – not

152

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

employed in the formal market – could find free food (mainly crabs) to survive. During this period, their dwellers lived almost peacefully in private areas still not that valuable in the real estate market. The landowner allowed the informal settlements’ inhabitants to live on their properties since they took care of it. In some cases, they were asked to pay a tax for land use, and generally the only conflict with the landowner was the inhabitants’ resistance to pay this tax. It was only in the 1920s that the informal settlements’ locations effectively became targets for the real estate market. During this period, many urban improvements were made to expand and modernize the city, which required the demolition of many informal settlements. At the same time, they began to be seen as a problem in terms of public health and the aesthetics of a city. Many urban plans and zoning laws were proposed based on hygienist and modernist ideas to eliminate or avoid informal settlements in the central areas of a city. From the end of the 1930s to the mid-1970s, slum evictions significantly increased in relation to the previous years. Informal settlements were not only seen as health and aesthetic problems but also as social, economic, cultural, and, especially, political problems. They were considered as one of the great causes of social degradation, and became targets for governmental interventions. In order to resolve the city’s problems, their eviction was considered as the only solution. In 1939, a governmental social housing program called ‘social league against the slums’ was created with the aim of eliminating all slum areas in Recife. From 1939 to 1944, 12,434 households were demolished in the central areas of the city, but only 5,415 new houses were built for their families (corresponding to 16.6% of the precarious housing in the city). In the end, the program failed to eradicate all the slums. It actually relocated many poor families to the hills around the city. Between 1945 and 1960, many people affected by the agricultural crisis migrated from rural to urban areas. As a consequence, in 1960, the number of households in slums totaled 90,000 that corresponded to 60% of the total number of the city’s households (Falca˜o & Souza, 1995). In 1964, the National Housing Bank – BNH and the Housing Financial System – SFH were created based on a broad and centralized model for social housing policy. Since then, the State became more involved with the social housing problem and many programs were created to finance houses for the low-income population. From 1965 to 1987, almost 80,000 housing units were built in the Recife’s Metropolitan Region, which corresponded to approximately 30% of the total number of legal households in the city in

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

153

1987. Most of the housing units were constructed on the outskirts of the city due to the low land prices. Many poor people were relocated from central areas of the city to its periphery, increasing the urban area, and a large amount of money was required to improve and extend the urban infrastructure. However, the governmental housing programs did not guarantee the poorest people accessibility, as they only benefited the population with a monthly income equal to or more than three minimum wages (equivalent to approximately 786 US dollars), thus effectively excluding 84.5% of poor people in Recife’s Metropolitan Region. The increase in house prices led to the systems’ collapse due to a sharp rise in debt and a drop in new investments. In such programs, the housing units were bought at social prices. Many poor families had to resell their homes to higher-income families due to their inability to make debt repayments, but also because of the distance from their homes to work, leading to increased travel expenses that directly affected their living costs, as well as the possibility of actually finding jobs. Between 1978 and 1983, 80 land invasions were registered, involving 150,000 people. The formal process of housing production was unable to keep up with the dynamics of informal occupation. The increase in land invasions and the resulting conflicts between landowners and land occupants led to a strengthening in the social movement for land, the failure of the hitherto governmental programs, as well as a crisis of State, as it was unable to deal directly with the demand for public investments, which led to a political back down and a radical change in the government repressive housing policies. A new model of governmental intervention for informal settlements was thus created. In this model, the informal settlement began to be seen on a finer scale, which contributes to a much better understanding of their reality. This scale allows us to identify the porosity, flexibility, and permeability of the informal settlement’s walls. Since then, many upgrading programs have been proposed to consolidate the existing poorer areas in the city. In 1979, an alternative housing program for low-income families with a monthly income of less than three minimum wages was created. This aim of this program was not to remove the poorest people from their informal settlements, but to provide basic urban infrastructure, housing improvement, and land regularization. In 1983, 27 poor areas in the city were classified as Special Zones of Social Interest – ZEIS, and were legally recognized and protected against the pressure from the formal real estate market attempts to evict them. In 1987, the ZEIS were regulated by a

154

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

specific law called PREZEIS, which defined urban parameters to guide upgrading plans in these areas. This law established a pioneering participative management structure for the ZEIS that is currently used as a model for slumupgrading programs in many Brazilian cities. Despite such efforts, little concrete improvements were made in the ZEIS in relation to their great demand, and attempts are still being made to evict these low-income families. Whatever the final outcome, the creation of the ZEIS and PREZEIS contributes to their inhabitants’ feeling of security, which in turn encourages them to make gradual improvements in their homes. On the other hand, it contributes to attracting new families to these areas, increasing their density; as well as the social and environmental problems to be dealt with.

FROM RIGID TO FUZZY WALLS: LIMITS OF INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS’ CARTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS Informal settlements have been virtually ‘invisible’ areas in cities for a long time, effectively forgotten areas in terms of urban planning. They were neither registered in official data or maps nor recognized by the authorities. Their reality is often overestimated or underestimated, based on subjective concepts or on the motivation of researchers and political entities involved in making the estimations (UN-HABITAT, 2007). To date, there has been a significant lack and scarcity of information about informal settlements. In general, such settlements are sporadically and partially updated, and are not well represented in quality geo-referenced digital databases. Many of the available methods, indexes, and variables are not standardized, thus making it almost impossible to make any analytical comparisons between them. Although informal settlements are the most dynamic areas in the city, surveys for registering them are always a great challenge. There is a marked lack of administrative tools to control and manage their development, as well as to assess their upgrading programs. An even worse problem related to cartographically representing informal settlements is associated with their own definition and the subsequent choice of indicators and variables to describe them. The definition of an informal settlement is inaccurate and has changed over space and time. Informal settlements are often seen as poor urban areas. However, measuring informality based exclusively on income indexes does not capture their diversity. Not all the poor live in informal settlements, and not all the

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

155

inhabitants in such settlements are poor. Many people who work their way out of the poverty prefer to stay in these areas because of the unavailability of affordable houses anywhere else, and/or their fear of losing their existing social and economic networks (UN-HABITAT, 2007). According to Gilbert (2007), the UN has employed the word ‘slum’ to emphasize their problems and to tackle with them. However, rather than contributing to their improvement, it ‘has nearly always been used pejoratively or ideologically, often both at the same time’ (Gilbert, 2007, p. 701): all slums and all their dwellers are seen as a unique and indifferent problem. As such, it can be used by unscrupulous and demagogic governments to justify slum clearance programs. The author also questioned the UN initiative ‘cities without slums’ and pointed out that ‘even if the initiative should prove successful in improving living conditions, slums will remain because, as general housing standards rise, areas that fail to reach the new general standard will be newly categorized as slums’ (Gilbert, 2007, p. 706). Moreover, four of the five indicators used by UN to define slums are based on the physical dimension of the shelter: sufficient living area, access to water, access to sanitation, and durable housing. The other indicator ‘secure tenure’ has to do with legality (UN-HABITAT, 2007). UN indicators do not consider other important social and political issues such as health and accessibility conditions, social relations, and political participation. Although informal settlements have existed in the city of Recife since its origins, until the mid-1970s they were commonly represented as vacant areas or as areas covered with natural vegetation, rivers, and swamps on the city’s maps. During the last 30 years, due to the changes in terms of governmental intervention in informal settlements, the availability of information about these areas has significantly increased. Since the mid-1970s, many slumupgrading programs have elaborated topographic and cadastral maps in order to plan, manage, and regulate their urban development. On a global scale, maps and cadastral surveys have been prepared by real estate agencies to give a broader comprehension of their growth and dynamics in the city’s metropolitan region. In 1978, 1988, and 1998, the state planning agency registered the low-income settlements in Recife’s Metropolitan Region. However, up to now informal settlements’ maps and cadastral surveys have been made in a nonsystematic manner. The definitions of informal settlement, and the methodologies applied to their characterization and classification, have changed over time. As a consequence, some areas have more accurate and updated information than others, making it very difficult to compare different informal settlements in the city, as well as different

156

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

areas within them. Moreover, the informal settlements’ maps are available on different cartographic scales or levels of detail. Each scale provides a different ability to analyze and understand them. The majority of the information available is for the area as a whole. On this scale, it is possible to get general information about them (population, territorial area, density, etc.) but it does not allow us to see what actually goes on inside them. The census sector is the smallest spatial data unit of the Brazilian Demographic Census (IBGE, 2000). Its size is defined by the number of householders a single census surveyor can visit during a month. In Recife, many census sectors are smaller than the informal settlements’ territorial area. Thus, they can be used to determine the different households and conditions inside these settlements. However, the delimitation of the census sectors’ boundaries is exclusively based on administrative criteria, and their socioeconomic conditions are not taken into account. As a consequence, it is possible to find areas inside them with very different socioeconomic conditions. In addition, for security reasons, it is not possible to obtain census data at the household level, and the time interval between two subsequent censuses is 10 years, not allowing for a more precise analysis of the informal settlements’ dynamics. According to 2000 Census, a household is defined as a separate and independent shelter built to house one or more individuals, or which has been used as a house during the census survey. This definition, however, cannot properly characterize the reality found in informal settlements, since many housing units (apartments or rooms occupied by a family or an individual) resulted from divisions inside the buildings are not necessarily ‘separate and independent.’ In order to accurately characterize the informal settlements, the census definition of a household should be reformulated. It is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of a ‘building’ and a ‘household,’ considering the topological spatial contingency relation among the housing units. In this context, a building is understood as the construction that houses one or more households, which in turn are the places where an economically independent individual or family lives (Lacerda et al., 2009). The most accurate map of Recife was a product of a project called UNIBASE, a cooperation agreement carried out in 1983 in nine municipalities in the metropolitan region and public services companies. The aim of this project was to unify the process of production and updating of the cartographic bases, from the various existing cadastral information systems, in order to increase the efficiency of the provision of public services to the citizens (Barros Filho, 2009).

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

157

UNIBASE maps of the city at a scale of 1:1,000 were produced from photogrammetric restitution of aerial photos taken in 1983, 1987, 1988, and 1997, respectively. These maps have not been produced since then for several reasons: the high cost involved, the length of time spent on the updating process, and the rapid technological changes that required new equipment and computational systems to work with the digital data. Despite this, up to now, UNIBASE maps (due to their high accuracy) are still being used as a reference base for many topographic and cadastral maps of the city. The UNIBASE maps provide three important cartographic features: blocks, plots, and buildings. These features, however, do not properly represent the complexity of the informal settlements. In such settlements, there is no clear difference between plots and buildings because, in many cases, the external walls of a building correspond to the plot boundaries. In other cases, the plot boundaries are not clearly defined. The public and private domains are mixed up. Moreover, as previously mentioned, the registration of buildings is not enough to characterize the reality of informal settlements. Their maps require a more defined level of spatial aggregation to characterize those families and individuals who live in different households inside the buildings.

INCREASING SCALES, REMOVING THE WALLS Brası´ lia Teimosa is a low-income informal settlement in the city of Recife. It is situated on a triangular peninsula delimited by the Pina River and the Atlantic Ocean (Fig. 1). It is located in one of the most valuable areas of the city, close to the historic city center and to a high-income neighborhood. Because of this condition, it has been a constant target of the formal real estate market (Lacerda et al., 2009). The occupation of the site began in 1947 by poor immigrants from rural areas, during the construction of today’s Brazilian capital (at the end of the 1950s). In the 1960s, many urban plans were proposed to remove the poor population from this area, and transform it in modern entertainment and tourist sites comprised of hotels, restaurants, convention centers, highincome residential buildings, and sport and cultural facilities. The informal settlement was seen as a spatial roughness, or closed space that should be open to the rest of the city by totally demolishing its physical environment and evicting its low-income population. However, by this time, Brası´ lia Teimosa already had an active and strong local council that helped the community to resist the many eviction orders.

158

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

Fig. 1.

Location of Brası´ lia Teimosa in the City of Recife, Brazil.

This explains its name: ‘Brası´ lia’ that is the name of the Brazilian capital, and ‘Teimosa’ that means ‘stubborn’ in Portuguese. Since the 1980s, the settlement has benefited from the improvements made to basic urban infrastructure and facilities, and many upgrading programs have been proposed for this area. In 1983, the informal settlement was recognized as a ZEIS, and was thus legally protected against the formal real estate market. During the last 30 years, families from the most precarious areas in the settlement who used to live in palafitas (a housing typology built over bodies of water) by the ocean, with a constant risk of flooding, have been relocated to new residential areas inside the same settlement. Despite all these efforts, its population continues to grow and new palafitas were built by the sea. According to the 2000 Census, Brası´ lia Teimosa had 20,464 inhabitants, living in 5,168 households and occupied an area of 64.78 hectares. In 2004, the palafitas were relocated again to new housing blocks (this time in another city neighborhood), and the sea waterfront was finally urbanized by the municipal government to avoid any further illegal settlement. In 2000, Brası´ lia Teimosa was divided into 13 census sectors, as represented in the maps shown in Fig. 3, with a Quickbird satellite image in the background (Figs. 2 and 3). As we can see, the census sectors of Brası´ lia Teimosa are different in shape and size. While some sectors are quite compact, others sectors are too long. This is due to fact that the

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

Fig. 2.

Fig. 3.

159

Sector Boundaries of Brası´ lia Temoisa in 2000.

Sector Classification of Brası´ lia Teimosa in 2000.

number of households was the only criteria considered in the sector delimitation. Undoubtedly, the size and shape variations in these spatial units have a great influence on the comprehension of the settlement’s sociospatial pattern.

160

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

Despite these problems, a rough analysis of the informal settlement’s inhabitability patterns can be achieved by applying some basic geographic information system (GIS) tools. Each census sector’s polygon was assigned to an inhabitability index created from census data (Barros Filho, 2009). This index is a combination of two sets of census variables. The first set is related to the income, education, and age of the head of the household. The second one is associated with the household’s size, occupation, and sanitation conditions. The thematic map in Fig. 3 was generated from the classification of the inhabitability values into five groups. The sectors with darker colors represent areas of higher inhabitability. This map shows that, in general, the census sectors close to the formal area (on the left of Fig. 3) have a higher inhabitability than those further away. Thus, this preliminary analysis shows that the formal neighboring area has had a significant impact on the informal settlement’s inhabitability conditions. On the UNIBASE map, all the buildings in Brası´ lia Teimosa are represented as a single household. However, considering the distinction between ‘building’ and ‘household’ described in the last section, it is possible to determine the number of households within each building by identifying the number of energy meters on the buildings’ fac- ades (Fig. 4). Each energy meter corresponds to a household inside the building. Moreover, these electric energy linkages are evidence that this informal settlement is connected to the city. In other words, the segmented city is made up of spatially discontinuous ‘network territories.’

Fig. 4.

Energy Meters on a Building in Brası´ lia Teimosa.

161

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

Fig. 5.

Schematic Elevation of a Typical Building in Brası´ lia Teimosa.

Fig. 6.

Housing Type 1.

A schematic elevation of a typical building in Brası´ lia Teimosa (Fig. 5) also shows how intensive and dynamic the informal real estate market in this area is. Inside a single building is a shop (1 in Fig. 5) and three households (2, 4, and 5 in Fig. 5) for rent. The mixed use within a single building proves that the population of the segmented city is composed of ‘fractions of social classes.’ The residents are not simply householders, as they are also involved in other activities (they are shoppers, mechanics, hairdressers, artists, carpenters, etc.), which indicate that they earn different wages. Considering the arrangement of buildings and households, it is possible to distinguish three different housing types in Brasilia Teimosa (Lacerda et al., 2009). The first type is a building with a single household. It corresponds to the first stage of the occupation process in the area, and has many similarities to the popular building types found in the formal city. Nowadays this is very a rare type of building in Brası´ lia Teimosa, and it seems that this housing type is heading toward extinction in the near future (Fig. 6). The second type is a building with two or more households. They are usually generated from the first type through the subdivision of the

162

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

Fig. 7.

Housing Type 2.

available spaces inside the building or by increasing its built area. Its built area can be horizontally or vertically increased. In the former, small free spaces available in the plot adjacent to the building are occupied. In the latter, new floors are added to the original building. The building has, in general, a single owner, but the households are selling or renting to different families. The owner tries to make the households’ accessibility as independent as possible. However, sometimes, this is not possible to achieve, and one needs to go through other households or common areas inside the building. In the urbanized sea waterfront, it is possible to find out some buildings with two or more households that were previously built for rent (Fig. 7). The third type is a complex combination of a set of buildings included in the first and second types. This combination can be the result of the appropriation of a single plot, generating a common semiprivate space; or it can be the result of its proximity to a street, generating a common semipublic space (Fig. 8). According to the three types described above, one can verify that the classification criteria were based on the topological spatial contingency relation among the housing units. In the second type, many different households live in a single building. In the third type, several buildings are included in a single plot or common area. These three housing types represent different stages of the informal settlement’s process of expansion, which leads to an increasingly dense built up area. Clearly, they require specific spatial representations, which are not actually found on the available maps of the city. Moreover, the UNIBASE map only shows the long and wide streets in Brası´ lia Teimosa. These streets seem to be an extremely impermeable urban

163

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

Fig. 8.

Housing Type 3.

Fig. 9.

UNIBASE Map.

164

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

structure (Figs. 9 and 10). However, a closer look at this layout (the red circular area in Fig. 9) allows us to identify a hidden network of narrow passages that cross the grid. These narrow passages, not represented on the map, provide a diversity of alternative routes used by the local community (Fig. 11).

Fig. 10.

Fig. 11.

Wide Street.

Narrow Alley.

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

165

CONCLUSION This chapter underscores the importance of scale in understanding segmented cities. The rigidity of its walls depends on the scale with which these spaces are analyzed. Informal settlements used to be considered as spatial roughness. On coarse scales, informal settlements are normally seen as social enclaves, the walls of which do not permit any integration with the rest of city, effectively protecting them from the police and the generally applicable rule of law. They are also seen as risk/problematic areas, spreading fear and diseases, which need to be opened up or cleaned out. These perceptions are actually often urban planning strategies to relocate low-income groups to the city’s periphery, increasing the intra-urban sociospatial segmentation. On finer scales, informal settlements may be seen as open spaces without the rigid walls imposed by urban laws, providing rich social environments not found in modern formal cities. Their streets/alleys are not exclusively for cars but also for many other activities. Their public and private spaces are not clearly separated, but better understood as semipublic or semiprivate spaces. Their buildings are divided into independent units that are rented out to different families. For a long time, informal settlements were only analyzed using large scales. Since the 1980s, many Latin American governments have been applying a new model to intervene in such areas, which helps to see them on finer scales and to better understand their individual characteristics. However, the cartographic bases of the informal settlements still do not properly represent them. Up to now, many buildings and alleys are simply not represented on the available maps of the city, leading to a misunderstanding of their complexity. As and when the informal settlements are seen on finer scales, some of their hitherto rigid walls are removed or become porous, flexible, and fuzzy. These changes were seen in the informal settlement of Brası´ lia Teimosa, in the city of Recife. Contrary to the formal settlements, its streets and alleys are not exclusively used by cars, but for many activities. Its public and private spaces are not clearly separated from each other, but better classified as semipublic or semiprivate spaces. Narrow and tortuous passages permeate its regular streets, going through houses and private plots. Its buildings are divided into many households, and many families live in small rooms under the same roof, sharing a single bathroom. However, are the urban patterns really changing? Or are the cities being seen, represented and analyzed using finer scales? The hypothesis of spatial

166

M.N.M. BARROS FILHO AND C.M.G. MONTEIRO

fragmentation and dispersion of urban patterns is often related to the availability of data disaggregated into smaller spatial units and temporal intervals. In the last few decades, the development and diffusion of geospatial technologies has increased the possibility of representing and analyzing cities (Barros Filho, 2009). GIS tools permit the integration and management of data from different sources, formats, and scales, and the resolution of remote sensing imaging increases every year. New techniques have increased the ability to detect, enhance, and discriminate features in digital images. Thus, the representation of the city varies according to the scale used to analyze it. According to the fractal theory, the length of a boundary is dependent on the scale on which it is mapped. Increasing the map scale does not result in an absolute increase in precision, but only reveals variations that had hitherto passed unnoticed. As Bronowski (1973) brilliantly pointed out: ‘We are here face to face with the crucial paradox of knowledge. Year by year we devise more precise instruments with which to observe nature closer and closer. And when we look at the observations, we are discomforted to see that they are all still fuzzy and we feel that they are as uncertain as ever. We seem to be running after a goal which lurches away from us to infinity every time we come within sight of it’ (Bronowski, 1973, p. 256).

REFERENCES Barros Filho, M. (2009). Escalas da diversidade intra-urbana. Recife: Editora do Autor. Borsdorf, A., Ba¨hr, J., & Janoschka, M. (2002). Die Dynamik stadtstrukturellen Wandels im Modell der lateinamerikanischen Stadt. Geographica Helvetica, 4, 300–310. Bronowski, J. (1973). The ascent of man. London: BBC Publications. Burgess, E. (2005). The growth of the city: An introduction to a research project. In: N. Fyfe & J. Kenny (Eds.), Urban geography reader (pp. 19–27). London: Routledge. Caldeira, T. (1996). Building up wall: The new pattern of spatial segregation in Sa˜o Paulo. International Sociological Science Journal, 48, 55–56. Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society, the information age: Economy, society and culture Vol. I. Oxford: Blackwell. Correˆa, R. L. (1995). O espac- o urbano. Sa˜o Paulo: A´tica. Falca˜o, J., & Souza, M. (1995). Os mocambos do Recife: O direito de morar. Cieˆncia HojeEspecial Nordeste, 3, 74–78. Gilbert, A. (2007). The return of the slum: Does language matter? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31, 697–713. Gottdiener, M. (1994). The social production of urban space. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Segmented Cities with Fuzzy Walls

167

Hall, P. (1996). Cities of tomorrow: An intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twentieth century. Oxford: Blackwell. Harris, C., & Ullman, E. (1945). The nature of cities. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 242, 7–17. Harvey, D. (1975). Class structure in a capitalistic society and the theory of residential differentiation. In: R. Peel (Ed.), Processes in physical and human geography (pp. 354– 372). London: Bristol Essays. Hoyt, H. (2005). The pattern of movement of residential rental neighborhoods. In: N. Fyfe & J. Kenny (Eds.), Urban geography reader (pp. 28–36). London: Routledge. IBGE (2000). Agregados por setores censita´rios dos resultados de universo. Retrieved from http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/defaulttab_agregado.shtm. Lacerda, N., Barros Filho, M., Anjos, K. L., et al. (2009). Mercado imobilia´rio de aluguel em a´reas pobres e suas escalas de representac- a˜o socioespacial. Paper presented at the 13th ANPUR, May 25–29, Floriano´polis, Brazil. Lago, L. (2000). Desigualdades e segregac- a˜o na metro´pole: O Rio de Janeiro em tempo de crise. Rio de Janeiro: Revan. Lefe`bvre, H. (1979). Space: Social product and use value. In: J. Freiberg (Ed.), Critical sociology: European perspective (pp. 285–295). New York, NY: Irvington Publishers. Leme, M. (1999). A formac- a˜o do pensamento urbanı´ stico no Brasil. In: M. Leme (org.), Urbanismo no Brasil (1895–1965) (pp. 20–38). Sa˜o Paulo: Studio Nobel. Marcuse, P. (1995). Not chaos, but walls: Postmodernism and the partitioned city. In: S. Watson & K. Gibson (Eds.), Postmodern cities and spaces (pp. 187–198). Oxford: Blackwell. Mollenkopf, J. (1975). The postwar politics of urban development. Politics and Society, 5, 247–296. Nurberg-Schulz, C. (1979). Genius Loci: Towards a phenomenology of architecture. London: Academy Editions. Pre´teceille, E., & Valladares, L. (2000). Favela, favelas: unidade ou diversidade da favela carioca. In: L. Ribeiro (org.), O futuro das metro´poles: desigualdades e governablidade (pp. 375–403). Rio de Janeiro: Revan. Ribeiro, L. (2000). Cidade desigual ou cidade partida? Tendeˆncias da metro´pole do Rio de Janeiro. In: L. Ribeiro (org.), O futuro das metro´poles: desigualdades e governablidade. (pp. 63–98). Rio de Janeiro: Revan. Santos, M. (1990). Metro´pole coorporativa fragmentada: O caso de Sa˜o Paulo. Sa˜o Paulo: Studio Nobel. Santos, M. (1999). A natureza do espac- o. Sa˜o Paulo: Hucitec. Scott, A. (1980). The urban land nexus and the state. London: Pion. Souza, M. (2002). Mudar a cidade: Uma introduc- a˜o crı´tica ao planejamento e a` gesta˜o urbanos. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand. UN-HABITAT. (2007). State of the world’s cities: The millennium development goals and urban sustainability: 30 years of shaping the habitat agenda. London: Earthscan.

CHAPTER 8 GLOBAL PHENOMENON – LOCAL EFFECT: THE QUESTION OF PLACE IDENTITY IN VIEW OF THE GLOBALIZATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION OF URBAN SPACE Magdalena Zmudzinska-Nowak ABSTRACT The scope of this chapter is place and its identity in view of global changes. The ground for undertaking the topic is the belief that by conscious activity undertaken to protect the value of places we are capable of facing modern changes involving the homogenization of space. Today we are witnessing a rapid destruction of the existing urban forms, leading to fading legibility of the city structure, destroying the state of subtle balance between space and place, and shaking the sense of identity of city inhabitants. The values of identity, legibility, and a traditional network of meanings and symbols are fading away. The space of flows supplants the space of places, evoking essential changes in the functional structure of cities, almost all over the world. Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 169–194 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011011

169

170

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

Is it possible to preserve the tradition and identity of place under globalization conditions? It is a challenge for architects, urban planners, decision-makers, investors, and inhabitants. One potential role of the urban planner is perceived as active participation in creating new qualitative social attitudes, as well as undertaking mediating, promotional, and educational activities. Tools that could be helpful in shaping a new model of place involve comprehensive discussion and education in the field of the value of space, shaping social awareness and grounds for social development. It may be concluded with some caution that such comprehensive discussion will contribute to raising the level of knowledge about the world and the sense of the value of space. Keywords: Space; place; identity; legibility; social awareness; education The separation between function and meaning, translated into the tension between the space of flows and the space of places, could become a major destabilizing force in European cities, potentially ushering in a new type of urban crisis. Manuel Castells

INTRODUCTION Dynamic changes that take place in the modern world, influenced, among other factors, by commercialization and the development of communication and advanced information technologies, have led to the complete revaluation of some traditional concepts. To address the issue of modern cities, Castells introduced the concept of the space of flows, pointing out that nowadays numerous economic, social, or, paradoxically, even spatial processes, occur with neither reference to their location nor connection to place. Thus, the traditional ‘space of places’ is driven out by the space of flows (Castells, 2003). Dispersion, fragmentation, and absence of a distinct structure of urban space constitute distinguishing features not only of modern metropolises, but, increasingly and more commonly, of medium-sized cities and towns with preserved historical urban tissue. The space of the modern city, subjected to global economic mechanisms, is dominated by commercialization and media; it is consumed and utilized mainly by means of the car. Such discernible changes inevitably seem to head toward the destruction of a traditional city and its transformation into strips of flows: universal,

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

171

commercial space expanding along vehicle communication routes. To paraphrase the term proposed by Castells, the city, as it becomes the space of flows, creates the architecture of flows, which, as dazzling and attractive as it appears, is in fact shoddy and unstable, and dominated by intertwining layers of information and advertising. The architecture of places tends to be long lasting, whereas structures erected nowadays are predominantly of a temporary nature, juxtaposing the concept of space. The goal of this study is to search for the answer to the following questions: – Is it possible to preserve the tradition and identity of place under globalization conditions? – Do attempts at rescuing the identity and unique nature of disappearing places have any chance of success, or are they purely utopian? – What is the role of state administration bodies, architects, urban planners, and the inhabitants in this process?

PLACE IDENTITY: THE MODEL ASSUMED IN THE STUDY The notion of place is inspiring but difficult to define explicitly. It expresses a profound and authentic relation between man and space, becoming, in consequence, fundamental to such fields of science as geography, sociology, philosophy, psychology, environmental psychology, anthropology of culture, theory of architecture and urbanism, as well as for the practice of spatial and urban planning, architectural design, revitalization of areas, restoration of heritage sites, etc. Being a multidimensional subject of research, place is a field of interdisciplinary studies that use methods and approaches typical of different fields of science. In discussions concerning the origin of the notion of place and its definition, many authors emphasize that in some works of ancient philosophers space goes beyond the meaning of common location (Casey, 1998). In the 1960s, following Heidegger’s philosophy, the concept of place evolved to its modern meaning. Contemporary theoreticians of architecture created their notion of place on the grounds of three ideas of architectural space: physical, conceptual, and behavioral (Canter, 1977). Place as an area that is integrated with human activity became one of the key concepts constituting existential space and was provided with such attributes as

172

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

dimensions, interiors, and boundaries. All these elements are mutually related and their spatial connections create a true facet of human existence. Accordingly, every aspect of human activity has a certain spatial character, because every activity occurs in some specific relations with places in space (Norberg-Schulz, 1971). Place as meaningful space is also a subject of interest in phenomenology, where it is treated as a field of experiences and an object of emotional and sensual cognition. According to such interpretation, the main focus in the concept of space is shifted toward activity, experience, and perception of meaning. Tuan defines space as an outcome of total experience intensified by reflection (Tuan, 1977). Likewise, Relph states that the relations between man and place are individual, profound, and often subconscious (Relph, 1976). In such approach, one of the properties of space is its ‘spirit’ – genius loci, so difficult to define. It determines the specificity and uniqueness of place, and its components are not only physical elements, but also meanings, symbols, and emotions (Norberg-Schulz, 1979). The following assumptions have been made in this study: – Place emerges on the grounds of physical space (understood as the natural and the built environment). – Place emerges in the process of continuous experience of space (by occupancy, house-holding, providing and deciphering meanings, collecting experiences and memories). – The activation and experience of space by humans endow it with a new sense, and transforms it into meaningful place. – The process of the emergence of place, the accumulation of humanistic values that constantly enrich place is a specific continuum (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

The Process of the Emergence of Space and the Formation of its Values.

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

Fig 2.

173

Place Identity: Its Qualities and their Interrelations.

Place has both physical aspects (spatial values) as well as humanistic aspects (involving the interaction between people and their surroundings, and social interactions within place). Hence, place is a world of values, whereas its humanistic qualities are of key importance and determine its emergence, existence, and development. In the process of duration, through human activity, changes, assigning and decoding meanings, the two groups of factors combine and create a field of common experience. The interlaying elements, meanings, and values make up a kind of palimpsest that is subjected to continuous deciphering, interpretation, and reinterpretation. Accordingly, space identity is a sum of spatial and humanistic values that intertwine in the process of the duration, performance, and expansion of shared memory/reminiscence (Fig. 2). Place identity shall be preserved if good relations between duration and change are maintained, facilitating the existence of place continuum within the framework of legible and comprehensible base of values. A harmonious process of place transformation does not destroy its identity. Rapid and chaotic changes, introduction of alien, and incomprehensible elements disrupt a subtle structure of place and blur its identity (Zmudzinska-Nowak, 2010).

GLOBAL PHENOMENA – LOCAL EFFECTS The issues presented in this chapter shall be illustrated by examples of Polish cities, where the processes of contemporary transformations are more and more legible, not only in respect of the image of cities, but also in their spatial and social functions. Although Polish towns and cities differ considerably in their spatial size and form, as well as in the genesis and historical specifications of their development, every historical period has left its mark, visible to a greater or lesser extent in their spatial and social structure.

174

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

Due to Poland’s turbulent history, the historical heritage of most cities is diverse and complex. The towns ‘immersed’ in the current reality reflect, in a certain proportional sense, all the processes in their space: the impact of political, economic, social, and cultural transformations on a global and local scale, which permanently and consequently ‘shape’ their form at an uneven pace (Zmudzinska-Nowak, 2006). Since the end of World War II there have been two distinguishing periods: – 1945–1989: Socialist Regime; – Political and Economic Transition: 1989 onward. Current changes observed in Polish cities are produced by problems that may be generally categorized as global (especially since Poland’s accession to the EU) and local (due to a specific nature of place). Both global and local problems occur on different grounds: economic, political, and cultural (Wnuk-Lipinski, 2004). Bearing in my mind an almost fresh memory of the dreary and meager space of the previous system, I find difficult to keep up with the diversity, scale, and rate of the changes. The scope of this chapter is merely to turn attention to some directions of urban space transformations, and not their detailed analysis. The modern Polish city eludes all attempts of definition. It is becoming more and more intricate, illegible, gaudy, and unfriendly. Accordingly, it is impossible not to refer to Aleksander Wallis, the eminent Polish sociologist whose classic works analyzed the issues of urban space. In the 1970s, at the time of ‘prosperity’ of the Polish socialist economy and socialist–modernist massive construction, he paid attention to the fading values of historic architecture and the traditional city. Among other observations, he stated that ‘architectural objects, especially when embedded in urban complexes, are the foundation of cultural continuity and contribute to the shape of society’ (Wallis, 1977, p. 90). He also noted that the space of capitalist (free market economy) cities imposes, in an intense or even pushy manner, the concept of ‘living for the moment’ and the ideology of total consumption (Wallis, 1979). He designated a strict yet natural boundary between the permanence of traditional buildings and architectural layouts and the temporariness of commercial architecture and its ensuing changeable meaning. In the 1970s, when Polish cities were dominated by concrete cubature architecture, manufactured in accordance with standardized dictates of urban planning, Wallis’s conclusions concerning capitalist cities were hardly understandable to many people in Poland. Today, after 20 years and under new social and economic conditions, in the face of globalization and chaotic changes aimed at commercialization, it

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

175

may be claimed that Wallis was correct in his identification of the two forces that destroy traditional urban space. Thus, doctrinal, insensitive, and bureaucratic socialist planning on the one hand, and the subordination of spatial development to the laws of the free market economy on the other, destroy the traditional values of the city: its architectural–urban, historic, semantic, and symbolic qualities. It was also in the 1970s that Robert Venturi, while describing the American city, recognized the equivalence and interchangeability of the architectural value and the commercial form of its connotation. Architecture, according to Venturi, has become a token of space, and the token a form of ‘anti-spatial architecture.’ The commercial buildings described by Venturi make up a transient landscape of clues, and the buildings become the contradiction of permanence. His statement is a specific manifesto, an acclamation of the variety and impermanence of commercial urban space (Venturi, Scott Brown, & Izenour, 1977). But in such a concept the city is only a space of consumption, incapable of creating profound and lasting relations with man. New architecture in the context of the city – impressive but often trashy, fluctuating, short-lasting, governed by gaudy adverts, self-centered, and arrogant not only toward the existing historic tissue but also toward real spatial disasters – is merely an effective cover for ruthless mechanisms that rule urban space. It tries to stifle disorder, poverty, rejection (exclusion), and fear. Paradoxically, however, it only deepens the chaos and constitutes an appropriate illustration of the processes that affect it. Today we are witnessing a rapid destruction of the existing urban forms, leading to fading legibility of the city structure, destroying the state of subtle balance between space and place, and shaking the sense of identity of city inhabitants. The space of the modern city – including Polish cities – is subject to global economic mechanisms, dominated by commercialism, and utilized primarily by means of cars, thus being transformed, according to Castells (2003), from the space of places to the space of flows. Analyses of spatial transformations of contemporary cities reveal high commercial costs of modernity; it often happens that the urban structure and the architectural tissue are destroyed, which, in turn, causes the vanishing of the uniqueness of space identity. The visual space of the city, its cultural landscape, which is a common good of its inhabitants and defines the identity of spaces, is appropriated by the intrusion of big advertisements, company, and commercial chain stores logos. The range of such intrusion and its symbolic impact transform the image of place to a degree that is often difficult to accept and that makes it unfamiliar and anonymous. Space is subject to unification in its symbolic and semantic

176

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

aspects. The presence of a global language of signs blurs the specific and distinguishing qualities of place. Spatial forms and aesthetic patterns are instantly copied, whereas omnipresent accessibility to technologies and materials facilitates their immediate application. The behavior, activities, customs, and traditions of city dwellers are also changing, spurred by fashion and blueprints promoted by mass media. Generally, they diverge from the cultural sources, local traditions, and values. Hence, the issue concerning methods of sustaining local space identity is crucial for the future of the city.

EXISTENTIAL SPACE VERSUS THE STRIP OF FLOWS: GLIWICE CASE STUDY Many trends and phenomena described in this chapter may be observed in other cities, but I have decided to base my reflections on Gliwice and other cities of Upper Silesia, a postindustrial region in southern Poland. Gliwice, a very local example, serves as a lens focusing on modern processes of change, and this city, being my hometown, is the place of my day-to-day experience of space. The spatial transformations of Gliwice did not take place gradually, and at least five separate stages may be distinguished in the spatial history of the city. Each of them has left a more or less legible layer on the spatial character of the city: 1. From the foundation of a location town in the mid-thirteenth century to the eighteenth century. Even today, the chess-like system of medieval streets of the Old Town is fairly legible; 2. Intense industrialization and urban development in the nineteenth and early twentieth century; 3. The Interwar period; 4. The Postwar period (1945–1990), time of Real Socialism; 5. From 1990 onward, times of new political and economic reality and ubiquitous globalization. Under new economic and political circumstances, the ‘antiurban’ model has become popular in Poland, and Gliwice and other Silesian cities do not stand out in this respect. Contrary to the previous system, in answer to market demands the predominant form of housing today is detached houses built by private investors or development companies. In recent years, the inhabitants have also reviewed their assessment of housing estate complexes and the desire to change their living environment (Borowik, 2004). Detached

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

177

housing estates are frequently built in suburbia. Such uncontrolled urban sprawl was already being described by Mumford, with a certain degree of disdain, as ‘formless urban exudation’ (1961). But huge block housing estates remain a permanent element of the landscape, a visiting card to the city from the times of Socialism, still posing an insoluble and growing spatial and social problem. Important new industrial and production investments are located in the so-called ‘Special Economic Zone,’ situated in Gliwice’s north-western suburbs. New companies operating in the Special Economic Zone enjoy an excellent road infrastructure and carefully planned surroundings. Such structures have no connection to urban space, and no influence on its image. At present it seems that the historic centers – places of the highest cultural, semantic and symbolic value – have not found the right form of expression in the new free market economy. They provide construction sites for banks, office facilities, and hotels. The principles of cultural and spatial contextualization are not observed in their construction. They don’t connect to the tradition of place. The emergence of shopping malls and business centers serves as an excellent example of global phenomena penetrating to the new Polish reality. Huge shopping centers, often augmented by recreational and entertainment services, have become a permanent landmark of the Polish suburbs. The concentration of commercial functions in the form of hypermarkets and galleries including hundreds of shops, scores of restaurants, cafe´s, cinemas, and other entertainment facilities has led to significant changes in the functional structure of cities. Baudrillard has described a hypermarket as ‘a negative of the city,’ an expression of a new, postmodern lifestyle, from which the concept of urbanity and social space has finally and completely disappeared (Baudrillard, 2005). These architecturally worthless structures have exerted an impact not only on the image and the functions of the city but have also contributed to changes in the behavior patterns of city inhabitants. Shopping sprees on days off work and Sundays have become a popular pastime, clashing with the traditional family-oriented model of a holiday. This is just one symptom of the departure from traditional values of social life. Closed-down heavy industrial enterprises have left huge cubic capacities of structures, which have often been transformed into shopping malls. The facilities of these closed-down industrial plants, steel works, and coal mines, often of great historic value, are now the subject of transformations, creating a sort of ‘decoration’ for new predominantly commercial, trading, and service activities with elements of leisure programs (Fig. 3).

178

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

Fig. 3. The Facilities of the Former Gliwice Steel Works, Today Completely Demolished to Provide the Site of ‘Focus Park’ Shopping Center in Gliwice.

Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that the city space, with its processes of urban, social, economic, political, or cultural transformations, still constitutes an existential space; accordingly, any changes evoked in such space result not only in the direct perception of the image of space, but, more importantly, in an impact on the relation of people to the world that surrounds them. The conceptual dichotomy between space and place in the view of Y. F. Tuan’s proposal offers an excellent description of the existential aspect of these relations (Tuan, 1977). Place as a particularly personal or even intimate fragment of space emerges from the process of individual experience of space. The humanistic values of space shape and enrich the awareness of habitation and compose its specific aspect, called the sense of place (Relph, 1976). Symbolic city landmarks build individual relationships with place, creating its uniqueness and identity. They create the space of places and make the sense of place (Fig. 4). The main street of Gliwice has been a symbolic axis of urban space for over a hundred years. The Old Market Square used to serve as the functional and symbolic heart of the city, and the main street as its commercial and stately artery. Such feeling is also shared by the contemporary inhabitants of Gliwice, as proved by the results of my study conducted in the late 1990s. The humanistic essence of place – the sense of place – is a value individually perceived; thus the techniques applied to obtain the necessary information had a qualitative character. The method of a direct interview was assumed as the most appropriate. Accordingly, 60 interviews were conducted in Gliwice. The questions asked in the interviews were concerned with diverse aspects of man’s relation with space; therefore,

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

179

Fig. 4. Traditional Cities Endowed with the Features of Place Have Entered the New Reality of Facing Spread Spaces with Blurred Borderlines, Altogether Making Up Flow Spaces of Commercialism and Consumption, Devoid of the Concept of a Traditional Center.

the selection criteria for the respondents involved the fact of residence in the town. In the majority of cases, the fact of residence entailed other relations: learning, working, sometimes, even being born in the town. An attempt was made to determine which places are significant to man in the existential dimension and what are the values that make up the notion of place and decide about its essence. The leading question of the interviews was: – What do you understand by ‘My place in town?’ Indicate your place and describe it. – What values does the place represent to you? The respondents not only expressed any doubt as to where the central part of the city is located, but they were also very positive about the legibility of the city center and its historical value, not hiding their emotional attitudes. The historical city buildings are still perceived as valuable and decisive about the nature and uniqueness of the city. One of the respondents

180

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

Fig. 5.

Gliwice, Old Town.

remarked: ‘The old market square is a determinant of the city center, together with its town hall and beautiful historic tenements, the Post Office, the Cathedral, All Saints’ Church, St. Cross’s Church, ‘the dancing fauns’ before the Municipal Office, the old Faculty of Chemistry. They are landmarks on which one may rest their eye with pleasure, and are often explored by photographers and producers of postcards’ (ZmudzinskaNowak, 1998) (Fig. 5). As the city spread to the outskirts and vehicle traffic increased considerably, it now looks as if it is cut through in all directions. Its boundaries and the functions of specific zones blended, and the traditional concept of the city faded. Already in the late 1960s, the first visions of Gliwice as moto-polis, and Silesia as moto-region, were evolving. To address the problem of dynamic development of vehicle traffic, the main West-East road – the so-called ‘Diameter Route’ (DTS) connecting the cities of the Upper Silesia Industrial Region (now postindustrial) – was planned. Today, the Diameter Route is almost completed, its main aim probably to connect the commercial centers and shopping malls, transforming the region into a commercial strip. Recent tendencies for joining the cities of the Upper Silesian Industrial Region into one administrative conurbation have been reflected in a plan to found the Upper Silesian Metropolis, consisting of the biggest towns and neighboring smaller communities. Irrespective of the success and final form of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, at the threshold of new bright perspectives of trans-boundary development the process of city ‘dissolution’ has already started. It shall continue, as it is irreversible.

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

Fig. 6.

181

Commercial and Leisure Strips Located Along Fast Roadways: DK88 and DTS´ in the Upper Silesian Industrial Zone.

Traditional cities endowed with the features of place have entered the new reality of facing spread spaces with blurred borderlines, altogether making up flow spaces of commercialism and consumption, devoid of the concept of a traditional city as a place to live. Consequently, the car-dependent model of the citizens’ existence results in the fragmentation of everyday life (Fig. 6).

WHO ARE WE? THE QUESTION ABOUT THE IDENTITY OF PLACE The observed processes that occur globally have spurred a complete devaluation of the concept of the city, where the values of identity, legibility, and a traditional network of meanings and symbols are fading away. The space of flows supplants the space of places, evoking essential changes in the functional structure of cities, almost all over the world. Chaotic and unpredictable changes brought about by the current stage of the transformation process may become a source of the loss of ‘feeling at home,’ uncertainty that, in turn, may generate an attitude of indifference and estrangement toward the city that is becoming hostile and dangerous. It is hard not to notice that, behind the curtain of colorful and flamboyant facades, there is a certain anxiety about the future of the city. It seems to be losing its traditional urbanity, and becoming a scene of the exchange of commodities and information rather than experiences, positive emotions, and profound feelings. Even if we refrain from a quality assessment of the emerging space, we cannot ignore the fact that the basic element generating

182

Fig. 7.

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

Who Are We? Where Is Our Place? A Commercial Center in Gliwice.

anxiety and blurring legibility is the pace of changes, as opposed to the doctrine of the city perceived ‘as a long-lasting structure.’ We seem to be witnessing an unprecedented situation in which the city changes faster than our knowledge and attitudes toward it, giving us no time to understand the changes, or at least to get used to them. The changes of the last decades have not infringed on the territorial borders, but have shaken ‘the coordinate system’ that determines collective identification processes; there is no more us without them (Michalski, 1995) and thus, the answer to the question ‘Who are we?’ has become ambiguous, as the answer to the question about identity of the space that surrounds us and the places where we live (Fig. 7). The successive waves destroying the traditional city have devastated not only its ‘hard’ structure (its urban layouts, forms of settlement, and historic spatial heritage) but also the nonmaterial ‘soft’ layer of the city (its aesthetic, emotional, and symbolic expression). Against such a background, there arises a question concerning man’s place in space and the attitude toward the city perceived as values, which is consequently a question concerning the identity of people and places, the concept of urbanity and inhabitation. The crisis of inhabitation and urbanity is not only a result of the economic forces that induce unpredictable, unusually rapid spatial changes, generating the demand for new forms of development and new ways of their use. An increasing sense of living in an artificial world, an escalating spatial ‘simulacrum’ (Baudrillard, 2005), evokes a feeling of uncertainty, instability, and intimidation, proving that the modern globalized world is

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

183

devoid of stable foundations. The dynamic and chaotic changes that occur in the modern world, influenced, among other factors, by advanced information technologies, have evoked the reevaluation of the traditional categories of place. Giddens emphasizes that in premodern conditions time and space were interconnected by means of place, whereas nowadays they have been completely separated. Although we live in local environments, we experience ‘worlds’ that are global. Thanks to modern mass media we incorporate, not always consciously, distant events into our everyday experiences to such an extent that it becomes difficult to tell them apart from reality. We distance ourselves from our local roots, relations, and contexts (Giddens, 2002). In view of such complex characteristics of the Polish reality, any attempt at a comprehensive description of the processes and their spatial implications seems risky. A search for explicit diagnosis or positive solutions would border on naivety. Therefore, the author of the study only wants to identify one fundamental task to be undertaken: the need to reform social awareness, burdened with the mental heritage of socialism, as well as society’s attitude toward space as common good (Zmudzinska-Nowak, 2006). Results of various surveys and studies confirm that the inhabitants feel no social bond with the cohabitants of their estate, block, or even the next door neighbors, and reveal no sense of commitment to the space surrounding them, because the previous system completely eliminated the concept of ownership. What was joint, collective, or social property was treated as ‘nobody’s’; it doesn’t need any care or attention (Fig. 8).

NEW CHALLENGE The present phase of development has created legible opportunities for changing social attitudes toward urban space and transforming the city’s inhabitants into actors on the scene of their own life space. One potential role of the urban planner is perceived as active participation in creating new qualitative social attitudes, as well as undertaking mediating, promotional, and educational activities. The transformations in favor of democratization of social life that commenced in Poland after 1989 have created conditions for the creation of a new citizenship mentality that can finally eliminate the previous conviction of the subjugation of the role of individuals in society and the feeling of having no say in spatial or economic activities. The emergence of nongovernmental organizations and associations offers opportunities for

184

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

Fig. 8.

Collective or Social Property was Treated as ‘Nobody’s.’

taking decisions in many fields. Thus, it is necessary to create a conscious civil society, where the concepts of ‘coresponsibility’ and ‘participation’ in the creation of the city mean much more than empty slogans. It should be emphasized, without exaggerated optimism, that the present phase of development has created legible opportunities for revaluing social attitudes toward urban space and transforming the city’s inhabitants into real actors on the scene of their own life space by providing frameworks for the operation of local governments and nongovernmental organizations, or the implementation of revitalization projects. The protection of place and place identity, sustaining the national heritage, acceptable range of possible changes, flexibility to adjustments and transformations are all issues that are commonly discussed in research and professional publications. However, in many works authors emphasize that the designation of the boundary is difficult and requires an individual approach. The boundary is often subjective and it depends on multiple humanistic factors (a strong sense of bondage and emotional attitude to place). Then, any attempt at irresponsible intervention ruffles the balance between the community and space, destroying place and its identity. As far as the social aspect of place identity is concerned, it undoubtedly involves the presence of a local community and its authentic involvement in shaping the image of place. The openness to development and dialogue with

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

185

the external surroundings, ‘negotiating’ its own identity is a skill that testifies about the maturity and awareness of local community, which is strong enough to face changes and able to assimilate them in a reasonable way. Such community is not hermetic, and the boundaries are treated as possible fields of dialogue. The range of such dialogue fields, as well as the constant elements constituting space identity are individual for each place and may only be determined by means of in-depth analysis and approximations, offering no universal solutions. Therefore, perhaps it may be stated that the higher the awareness of the inhabitants and their sense of place identity, the more the place becomes resistant to the negative impact of changes, as the boundary of intervention and its range are intuitively felt. Under such circumstances, place is a subject of constructive evolution and preserves its values, while, at the same time, it strives for modernity.

COMPREHENSIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION: AN ATTEMPT AT SEARCHING THE TOOL Positive changes in space are possible not only as an outcome of creating appropriate conditions, but also thanks to applicable tools that enable the implementation of the changes and undertaken activities. These may be divided into two groups: – Hard tools: understood as definite spatial activities – planning, designs, and investments carried out on the grounds of legal regulations – stimulations of local spatial management and development plans, design requirements, conservators’ guidelines, etc. – Soft tools: entailing all educational, promotional, and awareness-raising activities, aimed at shaping the attitude of the inhabitants to the occupied space of urban cultural heritage understood as common values and good and activating local communities toward participation in spatial development projects. It may seem hard to recognize a direct correspondence between the two groups of activities: local, small-range educational activities versus urban development policy. However, there is such correspondence definable by one simple statement: educational activities should, and must, constitute the foundation for any and all spatial activities. The reconstruction of relations between people and the space that they occupy, the propagation of social

186

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

awareness concerning the city perceived as values, and the assumption of responsibility for the city will result in: – Bonds among local communities; – Responsible citizenship (after decades of total indifference and disbelief in the effectiveness of any social activity); – Social awareness and responsibility for space perceived as common good and values, especially among young generations. One can sincerely hope that widespread understanding of the great value of space will become a cornerstone of the foundation of responsible attitudes in officials, investors, and citizens, going beyond their particular interests. The level of social development, measures undertaken and quality of created space, make up a spiral of codependence that might be a source of either growth or degradation of the city and which cannot be substituted by any, even the best, legal regulations. Comprehensive education may turn out to be an effective tool aiding the process of harmonious space development, as it raises the social awareness of the value of places. Education improves the level of social awareness, and, in turn, the level of social awareness makes it directly possible to determine space identity and all possible changes that do not evoke fear of its loss. Hence, education is the basis for all other activities. One of the most effective educational forms is participation, i.e., direct and active involvement of local community in architectural and construction design and consultation processes. The process of participation activates the inhabitants, gives them a chance of becoming acquainted with space management problems and builds the sense of responsibility for the place of their occupation. Only a community aware of its civic rights and responsibilities is capable of participating in the creation of spaces. Nevertheless, it is often emphasized that ‘in new democracies people who have been subjected to the authoritarian regime just assume the consumer status, abandoning, in the course of political and economic changes, the citizen status that involves not only rights and privileges (by no means easily given up) but also duties and responsibilities for the entire democratic community’ (Wnuk-Lipinski, 2004). Thus, it is necessary to build socially and spatially aware urban communities that will be capable of understanding the notions of ‘coresponsibility’ and ‘participation’ in the creation of urban space. The challenges that architectural and urban education must face are multiple. They may be categorized depending on the objective, on the entity that undertakes specific tasks and on the group of recipients, as shown in Table 1.

The Tasks, Objectives and Beneficiaries of Comprehensive Education Focused on Space.

Task

Objective

Realization

Building the awareness about spatial Universities, culture centres, values and spatial problems, shaping nongovernmental of responsible citizenship organizations, experts, media Search for new spatial, technological Universities, institutes, experts and other solutions, dissemination groups, research teams, of new innovative methods of student teams development Expertises, counselling Problem analysis, search for new Experts, branch teams, solutions interdisciplinary teams, designers, urban planners Universities, branch Education of professionals, Opening to new approaches and continuous professional knowledge, qualifications organizations, experts (courses, internship, development improvement, continuous specialist studies) professional development Nondegree open urban Solution of spatial and social Universities, branch education (e.g., within the problems, opening to dialogue with organizations, associations framework of programs inhabitants, opening to experts’ (courses, trainings), focused on specific urgent opinions specialists from related fields, issues) practicians Comprehensive education in the field of space and its values Research, innovation, implementation

Beneficiaries Inhabitants, decision-makers, authorities, investors (individual, institutional, developers, etc.) Authorities, decision-makers, investors

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

Table 1.

Authorities, decision-makers, investors, inhabitants Architects, urban planners, contractors, decision-makers, officials Authorities, decision-makers, designers, nongovernmental organizations, voluntaries, inhabitants

187

188

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

The above compilation indicates three main potential groups of users who should be targets for educational activities and, concurrently, three main objectives of education: inhabitants-professionals (mainly designers, contractors, and experts), decision-makers, and investors. The conclusion to be drawn from Table 1 is not optimistic. On the basis of the comparison of the three groups of recipients, and the author’s own observations and experience, it may be stated that inhabitants are the relatively most susceptible group to the feedback from educational content and values. They show gradually increasing attention given to space and try to contribute to initiatives aimed at its proper development. Also in Poland, a certain rise of interest in participation and activities run by nongovernment organizations is clearly observed and inhabitants’ associations and cooperatives have become more concerned about places and their qualities and, in consequence, capable not only of their protection and promotion, but also of conscious citizenship in confrontation with important changes and decisions. At the same time, the most difficult partner is the group of ‘decision-makers’ including: municipal authorities, government officials, institutional investors, and developers. It seems that a crucial role in the process of social education in view of citizenship and spatial awareness may be played by architects, designers, and urban planners who should utilize their knowledge, competence, mediation skills, and social mission. Such new challenges may seem difficult to undertake, because of, among other factors, the current gap in the perception of urban problems that exists between designers and planners on the one hand, and, one the other hand, a wide and inconsistent group of space users, including: the inhabitants, developers, real estate agents, and local authorities. Multiple and contradictory interests represented by the above-mentioned groups evoke conflicts that, in the absence of the awareness and involvement of the inhabitants, always lead to solutions in their disfavor. The breach is further sustained by architects who relish in their own privileged and elitist position. Such situation is partially a result of educational systems that promote strong individuality and ignoring the value of group and teamwork, negotiating skills and social dialogue. The issue of the architect’s attitude toward the spatial and social context of places is a very broad one, and, recently, it has received a lot of attention. Unfortunately, the discussion concerning this issue is often limited to academic circles and is not really reflected in practice. Architects, designers, and urban planners should face the challenge of revising their attitude toward local communities and should open to new

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

189

methods of projects implementation, focusing, first of all, on the following most difficult elements: – Interdisciplinary approach and combination of design theory with practice; – Activities targeted at local contexts, yet in consideration of global conditions; – Increasing the awareness of the inhabitants, developers, and decisionmakers; – Social participation in the process of designing, decision-making, and implementation of investments (Hague & Jenkins, 2005) (Fig. 9). Fig. 9 shows the process of modern space emergence and its identity formation: a place that is open, but, concurrently, resistant to negative impacts. Falling back on the assumed definition of space identity as a certain harmony between spatial (physical) factors and humanistic ones, the boundary of transformations must be respected on both platforms by maintaining a durable identity ‘core,’ based on the deepest layer of qualities

Fig. 9.

Strengthening Place Identity in the Process of Comprehensive Education.

190

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

that should be protected from change. Accordingly, they are determinants and reference points of place, including: – As far as spatial values are concerned: urban systems, scale, network of most important heritage, and symbolic elements; – As far as humanistic values are concerned: authentic bonds with place; interpersonal relationships; citizenship attitudes; conscious, critical, and constructive attitude toward change. The maintenance of proper relations between locality (values, traditions, history, and identity) and globalization is a skill enabling good choices and conscious decisions.

LOCAL ACTIVITIES: EXAMPLES The methods and tools of enhancing social awareness toward the occupied space, such as open lectures, seminars, workshops, and publications, are becoming more and more popular in our country. Actions are initiated to shape a sense of pride and identity of the occupied place and responsibility for the state of space. Exemplary actions, implemented on a regional level (Upper Silesia–southern Poland) include cultural heritage days: annually held open educational and promotional events presenting the historical and spatial qualities of cities. Similar projects include wide-ranging educational actions such as ‘Knowledge of the Region,’ ‘Open University,’ ‘I look, I see, I understand,’ etc. (Fig. 10). ‘I look, I see, I understand’ is an educational project, involving workshops and seminars. The project is implemented in cycles. The lectures and seminars acquaint the participants with the issues of history and tradition of places and facilities, describing their form, symbolism, and importance to given urban space. Each cycle is focused on certain selected issues to draw the inhabitants’ attention to various qualities of cultural heritage and to extend their knowledge of unique elements of traditional urban space, such as house, street, playground, square, park, statue, etc. An attempt at answering the question about ‘one’s own place in a city’ seems to be the first step in determining personal attitudes and relationships of the project participants to their nearest neighborhood, to their district, and to the space of their city (Fig. 11). Still rare, but gaining in popularity, are social actions promoting participation in the process of decision-making concerning investment: for example ‘Join in the City.’ These workshops and field studies are devoted to

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

191

Fig. 10. ‘I Look, I See, I Understand: Zatorze District, Values of Place’: Educational Project in Gliwice. (a) Children in the Course of Workshops; (b) The Exhibition Arranged as a Follow-Up to the Workshops.

Fig. 11. ‘I Look, I See, I Understand: My Place in Town’: Visiting Zatorze District with a Guide. A Form of Promotion and Activity Undertaken by the Inhabitants in the District Space.

independent designs of fragments of space and its elements made by the project participants: for example, ‘a square in my backyard/playground,’ ‘a statue in my district,’ etc. Both adults and, increasingly, young people and children take part in such schemes.

192

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

The main objectives of these projects are: 1. To develop social awareness as far as cultural urban heritage, spatial and architectural qualities of the built environment are concerned; 2. To strengthen a sense of identity and to deepen the relationship between the inhabitants and their habitation space; 3. To present good practices of urban space management as exemplary forms of social activation that may be initiated by local authorities, social organizations, or educational institutions; 4. To present the possibilities and means of developing conscious and active attitudes of the inhabitants toward their historical heritage; 5. To promote activities related to architectural education as an essential element of building the citizenship society to provide basis for harmonious development of the city.

CONCLUSION In this time of globalization and commercialization of space, cities are facing a serious crisis that is reflected in a sense of alienation, threat or indifference to space. One may quote here Dutch architect and urban planner Cornelis Van Eesteren’s statement that no city shall ever be better or more beautiful than the society that creates it (Somer, 2007). This opinion emphasizes that the positive characteristics of a social system – the level of social awareness (culture, education, customs, and values) – as well as, and perhaps especially, the negative ones (scale of negligence, irregularities, and pathologies) are directly converted to the manner in which people create, use, and identify themselves with city space. Or, to be more concise, to ‘their approach to urban space.’ Many contemporary authors indicate new prospects for the renewal of the concept of place. Such concepts are expressed by Joseph Rykwert, who emphasizes that it is the awareness of the structure of space and its relationship with humankind and their artefacts that mark the beginning of any activities and comprehension of places (Rykwert, 2002). A similar idea is propagated by Leonie Sandercock, who believes that it is possible to search new opportunities for the continuity of the tradition and cultural perseverance of places under the conditions of globalization. This opportunity lies in the development of ‘the art of city involvement’ in the planning process, which would consider the issues of democracy, social justice, and sustainable development: ‘What particularly interests me about this approach is the possibility of social transformation,

Global Phenomenon – Local Effect

193

of a process of public learning, which results in a permanent shift in values and institutions’ (Sandercock, 2004). The change of social awareness should become one of the main pillars in the new development strategy. Raising the awareness of the youth and children to prepare them to act as mature citizens, managers, investors, and decision-makers is an investment into the future. Comprehensive architectural education and promotion of cultural space have become one of the most important issues discussed in ‘Polish Architectural Policy: landscape quality, public space, and architectural aspects,’ devised upon the initiative launched by the Polish Council of Architects and the Union of Polish Architects under the auspices of The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and, in cooperation with the Polish Society of Urban Planners, the Polish Chamber of Architects, the Society of Landscape Architecture and the National Heritage Research and Documentation Centre. Among other stipulations, the following statements are contained in the said document: ‘The culture of our spatial surroundings should be properly promoted in all available mass media. Such promotion should involve the dissemination of positive examples of designs, plans, projects and their successful implementation. A system of comprehensive social education is required (y) Revitalization projects should be followed by building the awareness of our history and local identity. Promotion and educational activities are essential for social participation. One of the tasks of modern architecture is to consciously relate to the past’ (Chwalibo´g, 2009, pp. 146–147). Despite growing popularity of educational activities, they are just germs of broader ideas and their effectiveness measured against the background of the circumstances of fierce market economy is still negligible. However, after decades of total indifference and distrust demonstrated toward any social initiative, one may certainly hope that newly undertaken activities will not only make the inhabitants more sensitive to the values embedded in their nearest surroundings but will, also, contribute to a deepened sense of ‘homeliness’ and the feeling of coresponsibility for the space they occupy. However, this calls for tremendous effort, consistent measures and long-term perspective. Political, economic, and spatial changes occur relatively quickly and produce spectacular although often superficial effects. But the process of recreating the mentality and social attitudes is incomparably more difficult and long-lasting. It may even seem that at this stage any ‘soft’ activity border on naivety and may remind us of the Biblical David planning to fight Goliath. However, it is absolutely obvious that this is the only way toward qualitative changes in the spatial and social relations in the city, offering opportunities for protecting the identity of places and their harmonious growth.

194

MAGDALENA ZMUDZINSKA-NOWAK

REFERENCES Baudrillard, J. (2005). Symulakry i symulacja. Warszawa: Sic! Borowik, I. (2004). Blokowiska – habitat miejski w ogladzie socjologicznym. In: A. Majer (Ed.), Woko! socjologii przestrzeni (pp. 153–166). Lodz: UL. Canter, D. (1977). Psychology of place. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Casey, E. S. (1998). The fate of place, a philosophical history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Castells, M. (2003). European cities, the informational society, and the global economy. In: R. T. LeGates & F. Stout (Eds.), The city reader (pp. 475–485). London: Routledge. Chwalibo´g, K. (2009). Polska polityka architektoniczna. In: R. Janikowski & K. Krzysztofek (Eds.), Kultura a zro´wnowaz˙ony rozwo´j – s´rodowisko, !ad przestrzenny, dziedzictwo (pp. 127–147). Warszawa: Polski Komitet do spraw UNESCO. Giddens, A. (2002). Nowoczesnos´c´ i toz˙samos´c´,’ja’ i spo!eczen´stwo w epoce po´z´nej nowoczesnos´ci. Warszawa: PWN. Hague, C., & Jenkins, P. (Eds.). (2005). Place identity, participation and planning. London: Routledge. Michalski, K. (Ed.) (1995). Toz˙samos´c´ w czasach zmiany – rozmowy w Castel Gandolfo. Krako´w: Wydawnictwo Znak. Mumford, L. (1961). The city in the history. New York, NY: Harvest Books. Norberg-Schulz, C. (1971). Existence, space and architecture. London: Studio Vista. Norberg-Schulz, C. (1979). Genius loci: Towards a phenomenology of architecture. New York, NY: Rizzoli. Relph, E. (1976). Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited. Rykwert, J. (2002). The seduction of place. London: Vintage Books. Sandercock, L. (2004). Practicing utopia: Sustaining cities. In: R. Paloscia (Ed.), The contested metropolis: Six cities at the beginning of the 21st century (pp. 15–23). Basel: BirhauserPublishers for Architecture. Somer, K. (2007). The functional city: CIAM and the legacy of Van Eesteren. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers. Tuan, Y. F. (1977). Space and place, the perspective of experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Venturi, R., Scott Brown, D., & Izenour, S. (1977). Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wallis, A. (1977). Miasto i przestrzen´. Warszawa: PWN. Wallis, A. (1979). Informacja i gwar. Warszawa: PIW. Wnuk-Lipinski, E. (2004). S´wiat miedzyepoki. Krako´w: Znak, ISP PAN. Zmudzinska-Nowak, M. (1998). Ład i chaos w przestrzeni miasta. Research grant n. PBU-67/ Rar-4/96, Unpublished. Zmudzinska-Nowak, M. (2006). Between global and local: Polish city space during a time of transition. Journal of Urban Technology, 13(1), 33–53. Zmudzinska-Nowak, M. (2010). Miejsce: toz˙samos´c´ i zmiana. Wydawnictwo Politechniki Slaskiej.

CHAPTER 9 A HERITAGE CLAIM TO PUBLIC SPACE: EXAMPLES FROM A MIXED NEIGHBOURHOOD IN DRAMMEN, NORWAY Grete Swensen, Sveinung Krokann Berg and Johanne Sognnæs ABSTRACT The multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Strømsø in Drammen in Norway is facing a major transformation. The town has undergone major renewal processes during the last decade and has been presented as a successful example of urban development both nationally and internationally. In the chapter, we look closer at what spaces and qualities are underlined as significant in this neighbourhood by the examined appropriators of public space, and how their views relate to the qualities stated in planning documents for the area. Public spaces and meeting points can play a vital role in safeguarding diversity and urban cultural heritage associated with these spaces. Public space represents physically defined structures (streets, squares, parks), but even more importantly a social space offering possibilities of encounter and activity otherwise not displayed in the city. These qualities might be perceived as heritage values and

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 195–221 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011012

195

196

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

significant constituents inherent in public space. This makes public space the keeper of values that are seen as basic urban qualities. Keywords: Cultural heritage; public space; urban renewal; multicultural neighbourhoods; opportunity space; heritage by appropriation

INTRODUCTION Identification of heritage value is often used to capture the identity and historical qualities immanent in a site. In urban areas of homogeneous character or with clearly defined and designated heritage value, this identification is less disputable than how to capture the historical qualities of fragmented and heterogeneous areas. When it comes to ‘ordinary’ mixed urban areas which consist of a blend of buildings and physical structures from different periods, the chances are more likely that colliding views exist among planners, developers and inhabitants of what strategies will benefit the area. In this chapter, focus is directed towards the relationship between heritage and public spaces and how public spaces can be regarded as a keeper of qualities in an ongoing renewal process in the neighbourhood Strømsø, Drammen. It is a neighbourhood close to the commercial centre and the riverbank, both influential factors in making it an attractive development area. The area can at the moment be described as a compound area when it comes to ethnicity, functions and physical appearance. The town of Drammen has undergone major renewal processes during the last decade and has been presented as a successful example of urban development and honoured with several prizes both nationally and internationally. In an established neighbourhood like Strømsø where a wide spectrum of buildings and urban spaces from different periods contribute to give this neighbourhood a patchwork-structure, the challenges the municipal planners and architects face are large when they strive to succeed their visions of establishing well-functioning integration between the new and the old areas (Fig. 1). In the chapter, we ask what spaces and qualities are underlined as significant (‘appreciable’) in this neighbourhood by the examined appropriators of public space, and how do their views relate to the qualities identified or stated in planning documents for the area?

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

Fig. 1.

Overview Showing Parts of Strømsø (MapAid/Lasse Tur 2008).

197

198

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

Local tradesmen and fifth-grade schoolchildren are deliverers of empirical material in the survey through interviews and photo documentation along with observations of the use of public space to identify which qualities are appreciated by people living and working in the area. By observing the use of public space, the user groups inhabiting and dominating the various spaces are identified.

Urban Renewal, Heritage and Opportunity Space Identification of the heritage value is generally used to capture the identity and historical qualities immanent in a site as potential guidelines for further development. If it concerns urban areas with already clearly defined heritage values, it might open up a testing out at a larger scale of the restoration principles developed through, for instance, World Heritage Sites assignments. When it comes to more ‘ordinary’ mixed urban areas, however, which consist of a blend of buildings and physical structures from different periods, the chances are more likely that colliding views exist among planners, developers and inhabitants of what strategies will benefit the area. Heritage is often understood as buildings and other kinds of constructions. We are, however, focusing on the space between those material objects and the way this space is appropriated and taken into use. Could the open space – and the use of it – be denominated as ‘heritage’? Could it be valued as something worth taking care of? What are the functions of these spaces: how have they been used traditionally, how are they used today? Who are the primary users? Is there a territorial ‘battle’ with winners and losers or do the new forms of use bring different groups together, thereby opening up for new kinds of communication? Are there qualities inherent in public space that play a vital role in defining which spaces are appropriated and valued? Cultural heritage often gains its status by use of evaluation and assessment methods developed by national or international cultural heritage management and are safeguarded through corresponding jurisdiction. Another approach is to view heritage production as a process, where regular use of one’s everyday surroundings leads to appreciation of special features. These two processes have been described as heritage by designation and heritage by appropriation (Tweed & Sutherland, 2007) to elaborate what qualifies as cultural heritage and to explain why it is so. Another way of conceiving the contingent nature of value is as a spectrum with fundamental values at one end and incidental values or benefits at the other (Pendlebury, 2009, p. 203). This recognizes the socially constructed nature of heritage values and that

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

199

heritage is instrumental and valued for something. The relationship between public value and heritage is used within this spectrum to distinguish between what are established values, which thereby underpin the system of protection and what are socially constructed values (Pendlebury, 2009, p. 202). Valuing a place includes identifying the essence or sense of place, and in particular for sites that have not been formally identified as having heritage value character has been used as a means of identification (Pendlebury, 2009, p. 219). Characterization is used to consider the (historic) character of a place rather than focusing exclusively on particular places because of their perceived special qualities (Department of Culture, Media and Sports & Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, 2001). It is an attempt to bring together as many aspects of a place as possible, in order to appreciate and understand it better and to understand the experience of being in it (English Heritage, 2005). The first generation of preservation plans in Norway which was made according to the Planning and Building Act of 1965, focused strongly on character (Nyseth & Sognnaes, 2009, p. 37). These plans were formulated in a way that permitted to build extensions to the houses, if the character of the preserved agglomeration was taken care of. The character of an area was approached as something more than the single objects. Later, we will return to the complex character of Strømsø’s cultural environment and its heritage assets as defining an opportunity space rather than a historic place, a binary distinction described by Pendlebury, Townshend, and Gilroy (2004). They underline that when historic environment is interpreted as an opportunity space, it may bring a physical quality to regeneration that is otherwise not easily reproducible. Rather than putting emphasis on intrinsic historic nature, regeneration may occur and relate to its historic setting without restraining new additions (Pendlebury, 2009, p. 200; Pendlebury et al., 2004, p. 12). The inclusive aspect immanent in the opportunity space might also cover the appreciation of the situatedness of reading and operating within sites, and particularly in fragmented cultural environments like Strømsø. To stress the qualities of what is already there, As Found as a design approach has developed within architecture, urbanism and heritage studies to give what is found on the site and its uses and interpretations of a determining role for preservation of urban landscapes. It seeks to perceive urban landscapes as dynamic lifeworlds rather than enclosed objects and to identify opportunities rather than absolutes. The As Found principle might be described as ‘picking up, turning over, and putting-with’ (Smithson & Smithson, 1990, p. 201) or as an even more inclusive approach through what Chemetoff

200

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

describes as adoption, which ‘serve[s] the purpose of revisiting the past years’ production – not to bring it in line with contemporary taste, but to find a place for each thing in today’s city’ (Chemetoff, 2009, p. 14). The fact that something was already there is asserted to be a positive thing. As Found stresses the property of the thing, not the thing itself and not the activity that produced it. As Found is the tendency to engage with what is there, to recognize the existing, to follow its traces with interest (Lichtenstein & Schregenberger, 2001). As Found is a perceptive recognition of reality, a new seeing of the ordinary, an openness to how prosaic things could re-energize our inventive activity (Smithson & Smithson, 1990).

Public Space and Urban Social Life Most outdoor areas in Norwegian towns are publicly accessible, even though most of these areas are seldom mentioned or thought of in terms of public space as such. They include streets, parking lots, sites which are temporarily vacant and in-between areas of various characters. Today most town planners naturally relate to issues to ensure well-functioning public spaces in their strategic thinking, and this concerns more aspects than just form and aesthetics. Different but complementary approaches to public space have been used in different disciplines, and discussions on this topic have been supplemented with various socio-cultural, political and architectural perspectives (Garcia-Ramon, Ortiz, & Prats, 2004). Public spaces in the city are social spaces of encounter and communication. Public spaces also fill people’s economic, social, spiritual and physical needs. They are action spaces, spaces of orientation, places of identification and important habitats. The combination of their physical, social and temporal dimensions forms both the physical and the spiritual framework of people’s lifeworlds. Public spaces have many roles without which a city cannot function or be liveable. By providing people with an important living space beyond their private homes, public spaces are essential guarantors of urban life. The quality of public spaces is a gauge of the quality of life and without doubt will play a significant role in deciding the future viability of cities (Engel, 2006). When focus has been directed to factors which are considered positive dimensions of such places, it is underlined that they can strengthen a sense of community. Both by offering possibilities for breaks from daily routines and by providing opportunities for making bridges between people, they can

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

201

have a direct influence on well-being by raising people’s spirits and thereby influencing the general feeling of health and welfare (Cattell, Dines, Gesler, & Curtis, 2008). ‘Often quite mundane places attain symbolic significance for people through social relations that take place there’ (Cattell et al., 2008, p. 556). Such places can have cultural values that add to the more traditionally accepted values of historic places that are used by heritage managers: ‘Living in a place for a long period of time, working in a place, narrating stories and telling myths about a place, and engaging in any activity can generate a particular relationship between a person, a group and a particular location’ (Low, Taplin, & Scheld, 2005, p. 15).

Planning to Ensure Multi-Functional and Multicultural Dimensions Aspects of relevance to areas with a considerable amount of cultures present are the possibilities such areas offer as ‘glimpses into other worlds’. This aspect is mentioned particularly by Hajer and Reijndorp (2001) when they discuss the new challenges that planning for public domains in the postindustrial society raises. People tend to live in separated spheres, where public spaces are one of the common grounds where people with different backgrounds and worldviews can meet. By the mere fact that different cultural groups have different traditions for using public space, it provides options for making diversity visible and opens up for cultural exchange and interaction. It can add to the particular flavour of a place and represents a dimension of vitality, adventure and culture much appreciated and searched for in contemporary urban development. Public space indicates an area open to everyone. Juridically this is mostly true, although some areas with a public character, such as commercial centres, are owned by private interests. Public spaces are mostly owned by the community, ruled by civic legislation and political decisions and maintained by public funds. However, this is no guarantee that everyone will feel welcome there; some may not even be at ease. In spite of the designated and intended use, the space might be appropriated by special groups, thereby keeping others out. The activities can sometimes be interesting for passers-by to watch and thus make the area as a whole more attractive to walk through. At other times, the use – or the users – can be of a kind that has a disturbing effect on the passer-by. First it will be observed as something unfamiliar going on. Next it will be interpreted: is it ok? Or could it somehow be threatening? This might be met with indifference. But it could also cause negative reactions such as intruding and reprimanding,

202

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

positive ones such as greeting and smiling, or in some cases reactions like withdrawing or avoiding passing or entering the area. There will always be a fine balance, however, between appreciating the unknown and fearing the unfamiliar. In a study of urban parks in the USA, Low et al. (2005) show how a new tendency has arisen in the American metropolis to reduce general access, which can be seen as a process affecting both the ‘vitality and vibrancy of such places’. It is interpreted as a new kind of threat to public space, one not of disuse but of patterns of design and management that exclude some people and reduce social and cultural diversity. In some cases, this exclusion is the result of deliberate programmes to reduce the number of undesirable people. In others, it is a by-product of privatization, commercialization, historic preservation and specific strategies of design and planning (Low et al., 2005). Town planning processes of today are grappling with issues of community participation and engagement, while criteria for defining heritage value rather reflect cultural values that are regarded as having special historical or architectural interest designated by the heritage management. By including children, local tradesmen and observed users of public space to identify carriers of value for their own use and appropriation of space, this chapter addresses the potential exclusion immanent in the designation process and by that prepares for a more user-oriented practice which is both more inclusive and more in terms of the identity, economic potential and pluralism/diversity urged in contemporary town planning.

METHODS The methods used in the study include observations and photo documentation of types of public spaces along with qualitative interviews, supplemented by critical reading of planning documents.

Observations and Photo Documentation Observations were made by walking around in the area at daytime, sometimes two of us together, sometimes one alone. The observations are also accompanied by photo documentation supporting the material. The photos were seen as means to literally bring forward a picture of the physical and material surroundings that define and constitute the different open

203

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

spaces. They were important to be able to describe, characterize and categorize the different spaces present in the research area. Both physical and perceived borders have been sought to analyse various typologies of public space. The design of the surrounding structures does not only constitute the streets and squares physically but also provides them with certain qualities experienced as ‘sense of place’. The borders can be firmly or vaguely defined, and thus give the space a distinct or blurred character. We also wanted to study the degree to which the surrounding ‘walls’ can be interpreted as means to stimulate or prevent contact and communication. Do they enable or block visual contact? When they create a distance, how big is it? What can be seen and heard at this distance, and what cannot? Can the walls be penetrated or are they absolute, more like fortifications? Do they signal that those on one side have to be protected from those on the other side? It was also considered important to see how people used the different spaces, and as a by-product, even how they reacted to our presence.

Interviews Based on a mapping of the areas present trades and ownership and on Strømsø’s historical business structure, an enquiry was introduced by telephone to a selected number of local tradesmen/proprietors located close to the public square Bølgeplassen. Eight of the persons contacted accepted to participate in the enquiry and were asked to describe their neighbourhood and define which qualities are fundamental and important for their localization and their perception of Strømsø. The interviewees represent different trades, various periods of time being located at Strømsø and places of origin. The interviews took place during working hours and were carried out as semi-structured conversations, based on an interview guide, emphasizing their own descriptions and uses of terminology. Methodically, they were asked to define nodes, landmarks/points of orientation, local identity and the basis for being localized in the area. This draws on both visual methods as presented by Kevin Lynch (Lynch, 1960) and an effort to identify qualities ‘on site’ as presented in the As Found approach (Chemetoff, 2009; Lichtenstein & Schregenberger, 2001; Smithson & Smithson, 1990). Contacting people by telephone might have an effect on the participation in the enquiry ending up with a selection of interviewees comfortable with

204

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

the theme. Persons not willing to or interested in being interviewed either referred to other people expected being more qualified to answer or didn’t find time to participate. Representativeness might not be pleaded by the interviews completed, but some common denominators indicate certain qualities of relevance for the capture of the fragmented sense of place characterizing the area.

Document Study The documents studied in the project involve programme, strategy and jury reports from the city and housing exhibition located in Strømsø in the period 2009–2018.1 In addition to this, a preliminary strategy note for the heritage work (Insam, 2007) and the municipal sector plan for Drammen central area (Drammen kommune, 2006) constitute prevailing guidelines for further development in Strømsø regarding cultural heritage.2,3 The municipal sector plan is politically approved, while the other documents must be regarded as professional initiatives contributing to the further process of regenerating Strømsø. In addition, various local literatures have provided important historic data on the use of the built environment, supplemented by maps, photos and observations.

The Schoolchildren Project: Photo and Storytelling Students from a primary school in the neighbourhood were invited to participate in the project. They were asked to produce a series of pictures using mobile phones or cameras illustrating places they greatly appreciate in their neighbourhood. The final task included writing a story describing the place they selected as their most appreciated place. Thirty-eight pupils participated, of which twenty were girls. Approximately half of the pupils were second-generation immigrants. When choosing the school and age group to involve in the project, the following factors were emphasized: we wanted to reach children in an age group in which there was a chance they would still have maintained some of their childish curiosity concerning the areas where they live. We therefore chose the only primary school in the area (Brandengen skole), which is situated on the border between the two neighbourhoods Strømsø and Tangen. A short information sheet was distributed to the headmaster, who

205

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

facilitated contact with an interested teacher in charge of the fifth-grade class, and three visits were made to the school while the project was being carried out. The method has some marked limitations. When children have been involved in visual research projects, it has often been from one of two angles: either as a theme for the study itself or as active participants by providing results by use of visual media (Thompson, 2008). This project belongs to the last category. In such a project, children have an opportunity to be heard via their ‘visual voices’ (Burke, 2008), which has a potential to expand perspectives to include groups and aspects which may have been excluded or marginalized (Thompson, 2008). A rather similar project has been performed and described by Burke (2008), who stresses that this form of project requires engagement by the researchers over a longer period of time. This has not been possible in our case, and the project therefore has some limitations which have been accounted for. When interpreting the results, it is, for instance, not possible to tell whether the teacher or other grown-ups, for instance, parents, have had a major influence on either the selection of themes for photographing or the organizing of the story. Many children aged 12–13 years have mastered the use of the Internet very well, and when asked about what they consider cultural heritage, this might also have influenced their views.

RESULTS As Found: A Patchwork Structure Strømsø is a neighbourhood undergoing urban renewal. In this area, wooden houses from the nineteenth century stand next to concrete flats from the 1960s and brick buildings from the late twentieth century, and former upper class listed wooden buildings from the seventeenth century are located in close proximity to typical dwellings of people of more humble means. It is one of the neighbourhoods in Drammen where we still find important parts of the old wooden settlements from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and this is mainly due to the fact that the devastating fire which hit a large part of the town in 1866 did not reach this part of town. Part of this neighbourhood, the lower part of Tollbugata, consists of a row of listed buildings which are classified as belonging to the national heritage. A major part of these impressive buildings was owned by rich merchants dealing with the export of timber. There are other areas in the neighbouring streets with

206

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

a more mixed population basis. Many of them originated from the nineteenth and twentieth century, and the area has from the start been dominated by a blend of houses and outbuildings with workshops. There is still a certain degree of mixed use in the area. There is a rather high proportion of immigrant inhabitants, and several of the shop owners were originally from Turkey and Pakistan, which contributes to giving the area a special character. During the last 45 years, there has been a tendency to build blocks of flats with shops and offices in the most central part of the neighbourhood, which is the upper part close to the town’s railway station as well as the main bridge connecting the two major commercial centres of Drammen. From an overall point of view, Strømsø is today best described as a neighbourhood consisting of a set of different fragments, and it is designated by the urban planners as an area with further prospects for development. The various zones with a wide spectrum of buildings and urban spaces from different periods contribute to giving this neighbourhood a patchwork structure, which can present large challenges to planners and architects with visions of well-functioning integration between the new and the old areas. Through our survey of how fifth-grade pupils and tradesmen/estate brokers define their neighbourhood and an observation study of how public spaces and squares are appropriated by various groups of users, we have tried to identify which qualities inherent in Strømsø today may be of significance for the maintenance of local and situated character and by that cultivate and strengthen the local identity.

The Main Themes Accentuated in the Plans for Strømsø The present aims, strategies and tools for developing Strømsø have been sharpened lately through the ongoing city and housing exhibition for the period 2009–2018. Streets, outdoor areas, squares and places to meet have been one of several focal themes in the city and housing exhibition, and 8 out of 24 sites indicated for development are public estates and possible squares/green areas.1 Heritage aspects are mainly connected to buildings, but areas where several listed buildings define a larger unity or a street structure are considered as cultural environments including both buildings and the structures in-between. From the heritage management, seven areas of Strømsø are designated as preservation areas in addition to the city axis connecting Strømsø and Bragernes across the river. Streets and squares are considered important to

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

207

safeguard, maintain and obtain coherence and activity in the apparently fragmented Strømsø district. Tollbugata is the main street running through the whole area and is a significant structural element connecting the designated heritage areas and a central nerve/public space defining movement and interaction within Strømsø. Intercultural activity has been considered a main feature of Strømsø throughout history, and constitutes a dynamic and vivid production of footprints regarded as valuable and significant for the interpretation of Strømsø today. Again Tollbugata turns out to be the focal point exemplifying how various ethnic groups appropriate and influence the public space by establishing a wide spectrum of businesses. Vitalizing Tollbugata to reflect its time span from the seventeenth century until the multicultural present is regarded as an important strategic move in the further development of Strømsø. Heritage aspects are presented as one of several premises for the initiated development of Strømsø, but the basic premise for the ongoing exhibition/competition, named Future Built, is to promote climate-effective architecture and city development. The role of heritage in this guiding principle is not necessarily evident. In the appointed panel’s general comments on the submitted proposals, the importance of distinguishing between some streets generating major meeting places and defining new uses of streets with a weaker public character is stressed. This is anticipated to strengthen the complex character of the area without losing its diversity/pluralism. Regarding city spaces, the proposals favouring small-scale spaces generating buildings close to the squares are preferred to obtain intimate demarcated spaces in a dense positive interdependency with the business and trade at street level. No specific architecture is given priority, but as a principle the jury has approved the idea that the new structures facing the river, which is also an important public space, should be designed by different architects to create variety. In respect of heritage, the city structure and Strømsø as a unity is regarded as a cultural environment in addition to single objects. The history of the street structure, the significance of backyards, the location of wharfside sheds and so on are considered and have contributed to the perception of Strømsø’s history as highly fragmented and not automatically instructive for a further strategy for densification. In addition to the aims emphasized in the exhibition, the prevailing municipal plan for Drammen and the municipal sector plan for its central area give the premises for further development.2 A sector plan for street use in Strømsø is approved where the street structure is partly aimed at safeguarding and strengthening the historic public spaces, areas and

208

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

building structures. In a preliminary strategy for how to follow up the cultural heritage in Drammen’s central area, Strømsø’s main street, Tollbugata, is given priority as a structural element embracing four centuries of city development including material structures representing various epochs within this period.3 The strategic approach is meant to include both nimbus (common apprehension of monuments and national treasures) and dissonance (diverging opinions of historical representation) both to cover the shared memory and to represent the various epochs as extensively as possible.

Use of Public Spaces in Strømsø Observations Our observations have been set out to throw light on opportunity space immanent in the material structures at Strømsø. By the concept opportunity space, we here think of surroundings enabling and promoting encounter and communication between persons and groups of people, qualities that are crucial to make the spaces come alive as true urban spaces. We have focused mainly on two questions:  Are there some features connected to the material heritage that facilitate informal contact? Incidental meetings and informal contact can be a first step to a more extended contact;  How do we experience the different public spaces at Strømsø? Are they true public spaces with equal rights for everyone to attend, or do they seem to be dominated or even ‘occupied’ by certain groups? The question is reflected in the fact that when different people and cultures are assembled in small areas, feelings of ownership to certain spots and places might arise. At a first glance, some groups are identified by their presence or dominance or by leaving footprints characterizing certain areas:       

the populace/the public; car owners; small-scale traders of immigrant origin and their customers; skaters inhabiting the park under the highway; boat owners populating the quay; visitors at the graveyard; graffiti artists and other sub-cultures.

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

209

Some selected spaces are further examined regarding their physical expression and their users. The recently constructed footpath along the riverbank seems to attract and be accessible to ‘everybody’. Immigrant women in long dresses, young mothers or fathers pushing prams, or single men with a dog, seem to be comfortable and relaxed when walking along the river, alone as well as in small groups (Fig. 2). In another newly created park, traditional park elements in old style (benches, lawns, flowers and a fountain) are surrounded by buildings and roads which don’t seem to adequately define the area as a park. In addition, this vaguely defined space seems localized in an area with a blurred character. It neither belongs to the city centre on the upper side nor to the harbour area on the lower side, but is something in between. When compared to the newly established river park, the most striking difference is that the river park is very vivid and well looked after, whereas this small ‘old style’ park area is less used and more littered. The skatepark is certainly dominated by skaters, but paradoxically this is not as exclusive as one might think. Passers-by are included as observers and people in different ages – children as well as grown-ups – are hanging around on the ramps when they are not used for skating (Fig. 4). Tollbugata is the main street of Strømsø and stands out as the main business district of the greater city for immigrants from outside Europe. Although open for thoroughfare, it has the impression of being a pedestrian area and a marketplace: clothes for sale are exposed outside of the shops, small groups of people are hanging around in front of mobile phone companies, Internet cafe´s and travel agencies and small children are sitting on the doorsteps or peeping out from display windows. When we did our photo documentation, the reaction from people in the street varied between rejections to friendly accommodating attitudes. Interviews The public square called Bølgeplassen, named after the sculpture located in the square, is defined by the meeting point of Strømsø’s main street, Tollbugata, the perpendicular Langes gate and the end of Schultz gate, resulting in five corner buildings defining the closure of the square (Fig. 3). This city space has been defined by the meeting streets since the layout of Strømsø in the seventeenth century and today makes up a kind of crosssection of Strømsø’s character in terms of both buildings and activity. The five corner buildings house a Turkish gift store, a Turkish cafe´, a furniture shop, a hairdresser, a mason’s for tombstones, an undertaker’s office, a parking lot and a church. The five blocks surrounding the square consist of

210

Various Spaces of Strømsø (NIKU 2008).

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

Fig. 2.

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

211

four seventeenth-century buildings, nine from the nineteenth century, two from the first half of the twentieth century, six buildings from the period 1950–1980 and eight buildings erected after 1980 (Fig. 3). Qualities connected to this cultural environment and the surrounding parts of the city are identified and analysed by interviewing business people and property developers located in the vicinity of the square. Among the qualities emphasized by the persons interviewed are as follows:     

accessibility; low thresholds; low prices; a preference for the urban rugged/grey areas; long history in the area.

According to what is inherent in the opportunity space and partly the As Found approach, these qualities underline the importance of a city space that is perceived as not restricted, not too organized and not too adjusted to accommodate a predefined and narrow purpose. The appreciation of Strømsø’s fragmented character is expressed through a description of Strømsø as ‘having a more attractive urban situation’ than Bragernes, which is the present commercial centre, and also having a more homogeneous building structure raised after a city fire in 1866. Strømsø’s content, however, differs in the informants’ view from having ‘everything’ to a description of an area where nothing exists; the former statement was made by a retired third-generation local tradesman, the latter by a settling restaurateur. In describing important landmarks/points of orientation, the post office, the railway station and the museum are pointed out by several of the informants. The museum and the railway station may be connected to monumental buildings as parts of the sites, but pointed out together with the post office the use and the public character might be of significance. For development of the area, more housing and inhabitants are expressed by all informants as a benefit based on the opinion that during the last decades the area has lost a lot of inhabitants, leaving the streets empty and thereby leading to a loss of public life. Schoolchildren’s Visual Voices Schoolchildren were selected as one relevant group to obtain insight into what they considered as Strømsø’s major assets to enable us to learn more about whether there were special places in the neighbourhood people seemed to particularly like (or dislike) and to try to better understand what

212

The Mixed Space Bølgeplassen (NIKU 2008).

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

Fig. 3.

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

213

causes these situations. To make their ‘visual voices’ (Burke, 2008) heard, the children were asked to take photos from their favourite places and write an accompanying story. The intention in this part of the project was to try to get an impression of the aspects which are important in a child’s relationship to everyday places: number of playgrounds, football pitches, easily available kiosks, ‘exciting’ places etc. There are in total 38 presentations produced by the pupils participating in the project. The school is situated in a multicultural neighbourhood, and the pupils involved in the project had parents who were of Vietnamese, Turkish, Philippine, Polish, Afghan and various African as well as Norwegian descent. The presentations have been divided into four types depicting 1. institutions, 2. assigned cultural heritage places, 3. public and recreational spaces and 4. diverse spaces. The first group, institutions, comprises presentations of the library (2), their own school, Brandengen (5) and a secondary school, which was closed down recently (3). The cultural heritage places entail photos and stories about a rock carving (1 presentation), the local church (2 presentation), and Austad mansion, a designated heritage asset owned by the museum (1 presentation). The third group – public and recreational spaces – is by far the largest. Here we find presentations portraying the popular riverbank (4 presentations), the pedestrian bridge (3 presentations), the outdoor swimming pool and stadium (2 presentations), the large sports arena (2 presentations), the skatepark (4 presentations) and a local outdoor recreational area, Tegger’n (4 presentations). The more individual presentations are placed in the fourth group: a modern monument, a private beach, a football team, a shopping centre and a shop and gallery. The stories that accompany the pictures have varied degrees of personal character; while some undoubtedly are made up from information from the Internet, several have the character of personal stories, even sometimes supplemented by personal poems. A closer look at the material presented by the pupils gives insight into what places in their neighbourhood they appreciate. When the public bath and the football arena are picked as favourite places – primarily by boys – it is owed to the fun these places give and the good memory they attach to them (P27, P12, P5).4 The library was chosen because it is a calm and peaceful place (P19, P7), but one of the girls also added that the place had other qualities as well; ‘Read, dress up, homework, borrowing books’ (P19). The local outdoor recreational area, Tegger’n, was by one pupil described this way; ‘In the summer it is green and warm, in the winter cold and fun! We ski and toboggan down the hill. And we have a fabulous time! A bit gloomy at night when you pass by’ (P21). The descriptions two of the girls give of two designated cultural heritage sites give

214

The Pedestrian Bridge Ypsilon and the Skatepark (NIKU 2008).

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

Fig. 4.

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

215

room for some reflection. The first presentation is of a church, and here the girl, with her partly Philippine background, succeeds in pointing out the fact that there are many different cultural understandings of what church attending means, when her poem concludes in the statement that ‘the church provides no tea’ (P6). In the other presentation, the pupil has produced a beautiful picture of the Austad mansion bathed in snow in a dark winter night, which has a personal poem about friendship attached (P16), which appeals to the reader’s emotions. Despite the fact that these presentations cover a wide spectrum of places, they have a rather dominant feature in common: namely that the great majority of them are public meeting places of various types. This is also the case for the three cultural heritage assets they have chosen: they represent publicly accessible places that the schoolchildren visit with parents, friends or schoolmates. They underline the important role that public spaces play in children’s everyday lives. The popularity of the riverbank and the skatepark can also be interpreted as a confirmation that the planners’ attempt to establish areas which are easily accessible and well appreciated by children and youths have succeeded.

DISCUSSION We will now return to the main research questions we have raised in the chapter: what spaces and their qualities are underlined as significant (‘appreciable’) in this neighbourhood by the observed and examined appropriators of public space? And secondarily: do we find that these qualities coincide or collide with qualities which are stated in planning documents for the area? A quality characterizing the use of this neighbourhood is accessibility. Accessibility may be defined in broad terms of social, economic or physical content. When accessibility is emphasized by the local tradesmen, it seems most likely that the opportunity for potential customers to reach their location is in focus. Whether walking, public transport or driving is preferred depends to a certain degree on the type of activity, but few restrictions and easy access by car seem to prevail. Whether restrictions of car access would alter the business structure is uncertain, but one of the informants chose to locate here because of the easy car access and another is already on the move partly because of restrictions, while another remains regardless of this based on the business’ long-lasting belonging in the area. The belief that development will tend to go on where access is easy, as

216

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

expressed by Peter Smithson (Smithson & Smithson, 2005) is not necessarily correct; it rather indicates that this is an important quality to certain trades. Inclusion is an aspect of accessibility. Despite the fact that the schoolchildren involved in the photo project represent at least seven different nationalities, there are few signs that their cultural backgrounds played a decisive role in their selection of places to portray. When we look more closely at their choices, it is evident that easily accessible public spaces within walking distance from home mean a lot to young people in an urban neighbourhood. Such places are free for everybody to attend and can be visited with schoolmates and other friends and thereby instigate social interaction across different age groups and cultural backgrounds. At the same time, they represent a type of meeting place in an urban context which is clearly set out and considered secure from parents’ point of view. Newly prepared places like the skatepark, the riverbank and the library are much appreciated, along with a more rugged area like the one with character of being a nature recreational area, considered ideal as a sledging hill in the winter and playground in the summer by children. The risk that design and management might exclude some people and reduce social and cultural diversity to which Low et al. (2005) called attention has not yet presented a problem. Accessibility, however, might include a territorial battle defined by use. A dominant group observed as the user of public space is the car owners, who do so through the use of assigned parking lots and temporary parking at abandoned building sites, filled up streets and post-war buildings where the first floors are arranged as garages. This can lead to a situation where Strømsø is considered more as an area to supply the city than providing valuable public spaces as such. Low thresholds and low prices might touch the same appreciation by local tradesmen of few restrictions, but also indicate an opportunity space for establishing businesses which are less commercial or differ from what can be perceived as the conformable city. In Strømsø, as in plenty of other worn areas, this has turned out to give birth to new trades otherwise not capable of existing and often localization of various cultural ethnicities. Taking photos in one of the shopping streets dominated by immigrants was declared non-grata by some of the traders/inhabitants, which consequently made the observer appear to be a stranger or someone who did not fit in. A territorial battle might also here be present indicating a vulnerability inherent in city spaces principally with low thresholds. Finding pleasure in the urban areas of a more rugged character can be comprehended as a mere preference for the worn, mature and distinguished

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

217

that is often present in these areas. Perceiving these areas as something unfinished or as raw material, they might also be a parallel to what Tim Edensor finds in former industrial sites as possible assets for inclusion of the contingent, ineffable, unrepresentable, uncoded, sensual, heterogeneous possibilities often sought after in contemporary cities (Edensor, 2005, p. 19). These observations require further analysis, but raise considerations concerning which activities are present and which ones are desired/undesired in the public space. Identifying these various types of appropriations also poses a claim for strategies to facilitate these activities and how to safeguard desired qualities through planning. The qualities pointed out might not have any obvious connection to what can be claimed to be heritage or given legal protection. However, identifying these qualities might indicate aspects of what constitutes a site’s character or sense of place requested both in defining cultural environments and in planning for urban diversity. The appropriation of these areas by groups not necessarily planned for introduces qualities otherwise not detected which can both safeguard variety and by that generate a broader and more inclusive approach to what is regarded as heritage. Strømsø is an area where urban renewal is approaching. Is there any resonance of the approaches and qualities identified in this chapter with the intentions outlined in the plans for the area, and what are the means and practical implementations following this? The municipal plans for the area, as well as the guidelines for the city and housing exhibition, show us that attention has been paid to the role that streets, outdoor areas, squares, and places, that is the role of public space, plays in an urban setting. Creating small-scale spaces is given precedence, partly due to the importance placed on business and trade at street level. This can also be viewed as catching an important part of the local character and therefore in accordance with some of the As Found principles highlighting what is already there. Two of the main public spaces in focus for regeneration, which are also declared heritage areas in the strategic plan (2007), are Strømsø Torg, as part of the city axis, and Tollbugata. Strømsø Torg is the main square in Strømsø; it acts as a route connecting Strømsø and Bragernes and also makes the starting point for Tollbugata. From being an open urban area with a mix of short-term private parking lots and bus stops, the square is now being upgraded to create a new teeming meeting place in this part of town as a supplement to the main square on the Bragernes side of the river. The role of the square is not clearly defined by our user groups in respect of preferred use, but varies from creating displeasure about car restrictions to

218

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

being valued as an important and accessible connection space for infrastructure and movement both within the city and out of the city due to the railway station located at the square and the bus station just off the square. Tollbugata is Strømsø’s main street heading south-east from the square parallel to the river. With its long history, safeguarding this street is considered important for maintaining coherence and activity in the neighbourhood. It is, however, seen as a problem that sections of this street today are left partly empty. The upper and lower parts of the street appear disconnected due to a wide motor road which renders accessibility difficult. In the strategic plan from 2007 special attention is paid to this street and to various sections which need upgrading. The approach we can recognize in this document is an underlying wish and intention to integrate new elements as infill and thereby to maintain and strengthen the old structural elements in the townscape. The attention to how various elements along the street are supposed to communicate is also emphasized in the municipal plan through the focus on vitalizing the street with respect to the whole time span rather than giving priority to only a few selected elements. This indicates an attitude towards what Tollbugata as opportunity space can offer and how to find a place for each thing in today’s city as stressed by Chemetoff (2009) and maintain the combination of nimbus and dissonance indicated in the strategy for the use of cultural heritage. The fragment of Tollbugata which consists of an unbroken line of listed buildings from the seventeenth and eighteenth century has to relate to clear restrictions concerning conservation of such buildings specified in the Norwegian Cultural Heritage Act. They belong to the group ‘designated heritage’ (Tweed & Sutherland, 2007), where the planners are obliged to consider special measures to make sure these areas to be included and safeguarded when new plans are being developed for the area. Renewal efforts in a mixed area like Strømsø can have unforeseen consequences, because considerable parts of the townscape consist of ‘old buildings’, that is fragments of buildings from seventeenth century up until the 1960s. Parts of these elements and structures possess a character which contributes to giving the neighbourhood a ‘sense of place’ which has to be acknowledged and recognized fully if the qualities of the area are to be ensured and preferably strengthened through development plans. This approach includes giving the qualities of what is already there a determining role for preservation and development of the urban landscape. A problem which too often arises in planning processes in Norwegian medium-sized towns is that the planners tend to soften their grip of the

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

219

strategic planning processes the minute the plans leave ‘the drawing board’. At this stage, much of the discussions and negotiations involve developers, and their agenda is not always in accordance with what is considered desirable by local NGOs and cultural heritage managers (Swensen, Larsen, Molaug, & Sognnaes, 2009). The importance of recognizing a city space as an opportunity to bridge the past and the future lies in perceiving city space as something not too restricted, not too organized and not too adjusted. In this discussion, the concept ‘opportunity space’ has been seen to represent an approach that opens up for processes that both adopt physical diversity and make social inclusion possible. The opportunity space discussed as an approach to identify these values is, however, a vulnerable position, easily wiped out when grasped by planners carried away in the attempt to create diversity or a distinct character, whether it is about a total renewal or a restoration project. Places tend to become uniform and personal initiatives and individual expressions by the inhabitants risk being weeded out. It seems easier to argue for, and realize, a zone with a distinct character than a zone where multitude and change is the norm. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that opportunity space probably has to be protected by some kind of restrictions to survive.

CONCLUSION The study has revealed the multiple affiliations people who are living, working and using the neighbourhood have to the area. While from some outsider’s point of view it can appear like a rugged area in need of being tidied up, some people consider this an aspect which gives it a particular urban quality and charm. It represents variety, both by offering space for small shops, workshops and affordable housing and providing easy access to central public institutions and recreational areas. The fact that the main streets in the area, like Tollbugata, are filled with activities of different types, of which small food stores with owners of Turkish or Pakistani descent and cafe´s and pubs play an important part, add to make this area special. It provides places of encounter and is a neighbourhood which opens up for glimpses into different worlds and makes diversity visible. The appropriation of public space is chosen as an example of how qualities pointed out or taken into use by a variety of users might be a gateway to how a broader and more inclusive approach to cultural heritage can be gained. Public space represents physically defined structures (streets,

220

GRETE SWENSEN ET AL.

squares, parks), but even more importantly a social space offering possibilities of encounter and activity otherwise not displayed in the city. Valued as properties to safeguard and take care of, these qualities might be perceived as heritage values and significant constituents inherent in public space. This makes public space the keeper of values that are seen as basic urban qualities and also sought in any urban renewal project at stake and by that legitimize the heritage claim indicated for these spaces.

NOTES 1. A city to live in (En by a˚ leve i, Ide´konkurranse om utvikling av Strømsø sentrum i Drammen, September 2009). Aims, strategies and tools for Strømsø district (Ma˚l strategier og virkemidler for Strømsø bydel, januar 2009). City – and housing exhibition Oslo – Drammen 2009–2018 (By – og boligutstilling Oslo – Drammen 2009–2018, prosjektbeskrivelse, November 2008). Future Built (Programbeskrivelse, November 2009). Jury report ‘A city to live in’ (April 2010). Look to Strømsø (1st prize winner of competition), Norconsult/Alliance Architects. 2. Municipal sector plan for Drammen central area (2006) (Sentrumsplanen, Drammen kommune 2006) 3. On further work for preservation of cultural heritage in central Drammen (Oppfølging av kulturminnearbeidet i Drammen sentrum, Insam 2007). 4. The numbers refer to a list where nationality, gender and presentation themes are stated.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This chapter presents results from the research project City centre development with cultural heritage as a resource in a multicultural and fragmented environment. The project is part of a five-year programme financed by the Norwegian Research Council titled Processes of change in urban environments: cultural heritage, urban development and regionalism. We are most grateful to the participating actors in Strømsø giving essential material and input to our study.

REFERENCES Burke, C. (2008). Play in focus. Children’s visual voice in participative research. In: P. Thompson (Ed.), Doing visual research with children and young people (pp. 23–36). London: Routledge.

A Heritage Claim to Public Space

221

Cattell, V., Dines, N., Gesler, W., & Curtis, S. (2008). Mingling, observing, and lingering: Everyday public spaces and their implication for well-being and social relations. Health & Place, 14, 544–561. Chemetoff, A. (2009). Visits: Town and territory – Architecture in dialogue. Basel: Birkha¨user Verlag AG. Dept. of Culture, Media and Sports and Dept. of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (2001). The historic environment: A force for our future. Retrieved from http://www.tourisminsights.info/ONLINEPUB/DCMS/DCMS%20PDFS/HISTORIC %20ENV%20FORCE%20-%201.pdf Drammen kommune. (2006). Municipal sector plan for Drammen central area (Sentrumsplanen, Drammen kommune 2006). Edensor, T. (2005). Industrial ruins: Spaces, aesthetics and materiality. Oxford: Berg. Engel, B. (2006). Public space in the blue cities in Russia. Progress in Planning, 66, 147–239. English Heritage (2005). Characterisation, conservation bulletin 47. Retrieved from http:// www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/conservation-bulletin-47 Garcia-Ramon, M., Ortiz, A., & Prats, M. (2004). Urban planning, gender and the use of public space in a peripheral neighbourhood of Barcelona. Cities, 21(3), 215–223. Hajer, M., & Reijndorp, A. (2001). In search of new public domain. Analysis and strategy. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers. Insam. (2007). Oppfølging av kulturminnearbeidet i Drammen sentrum. Unpublished report, Drammen. Lichtenstein, C., & Schregenberger, T. (2001). As found: The discovery of the ordinary. Baden: Lars Mu¨ller Publishers. Low, S., Taplin, D., & Scheld, S. (2005). Rethinking urban parks. Public space and cultural diversity. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge: MIT Press. Nyseth, T., & Sognnaes, J. (2009). Godt fungerende bevaringsomra˚der, NIKU rapport 34. Oslo: NIKU. Pendlebury, J. (2009). Conservation in the age of consensus. London: Routledge. Pendlebury, J., Townshend, T., & Gilroy, R. (2004). The conservation of English cultural built heritage: A force for social inclusion. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10(1), 11–31. Smithson, A., & Smithson, P. (1990). The ‘‘as found’’ and the ‘‘found’’. In: D. Robbins (Ed.), The independent group: Postwar Britain and the aesthetics of plenty (pp. 201–205). Cambridge: MIT Press. Smithson, A., & Smithson, P. (2005). The charged void: Urbanism. New York, NY: Monacelli Press. Swensen, G., Larsen, K., Molaug, P., & Sognnaes, J. (2009). Kulturarv og stedsidentitet. Byers kulturmiljø i krysssilden mellom bevaring og utvikling. NIKU Tema 31. Oslo: NIKU. Thompson, P. (2008). Doing visual research with children and young people. London: Routledge. Tweed, C., & Sutherland, M. (2007). Built cultural heritage and sustainable urban development. Landscape and Urban Planning, 83, 62–69.

CHAPTER 10 SENSITIVE URBAN RENEWAL OR GENTRIFICATION? THE CASE OF THE KARMELITERVIERTEL IN VIENNA Florian J. Huber ABSTRACT The Karmeliterviertel is an inner-city neighborhood in Vienna, which underwent a significant revitalization and renewal. Since the opinions of Viennese urban researchers differ to a large extent whether gentrification occurs in Vienna at all, this chapter examines the question, whether the revitalization of the Karmeliterviertel can be defined as ‘gentrification.’ This question is elaborated in the context of Vienna’s overall ‘soft urban renewal’ strategy. Despite the fact that direct displacement of households from the Karmeliterviertel was prevented by the mechanisms of Vienna’s strict tenancy law, also the local coordination office played a certain role. As higher-status groups moved in the neighborhood, the infrastructure and the amenities changed and were adjusted to their demands. This cultural redefinition resulted in the replacement of restaurants, cafes, and bars, which served the needs of longtime residents and low-income groups. The revitalization of the Karmeliterviertel thus has to be termed ‘gentrification,’ as their social spaces were displaced and as they are less visible in the neighborhood. This form of displacement develops a similar dynamic as Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 223–239 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011013

223

224

FLORIAN J. HUBER

direct displacement, when social relations, bonds, and networks, which provide options, coping strategies, and sources of a place-based identity, are dissolved. As gentrification results in homogeneity, the main challenge for a city is to maintain spaces of different milieus and thus to preserve authentic places, characterized by heterogeneity and urbanity. Keywords: Gentrification; urban renewal; Vienna; neighborhood; displacement; Karmeliterviertel

CITIES AND GENTRIFICATION A city is a spatial and social entity with intensified social relations. It can be defined by the tension between ‘proximity and distance’ (Simmel, 2007) as well as the interdependency of ‘public and private’ (Bahrdt, 1998). On the one hand, cities are socially organized by static institutions, but on the other hand, they are shaped by social change and thus spaces with certain possibilities and places of conflicts over representations of power, culture, and history (Lo¨w, Steets, & Stoetzer, 2007). The emergence of the postmodern society, globalization, international migration, and individualization caused extensive transformations within society, economy, and politics. On a global level, these shifts become manifest in growing social inequalities. On a city level, they are reflected in social and spatial differentiation as well as segregation. In many cities, urban renewal projects initiated by the city government in cooperation with real estate developers can cause gentrification processes, which lead to the displacement of socially deprived inhabitants with a lower income and therefore a lower social status. Thus, the definition of gentrification consensually describes the revitalization of inner-city neighborhoods and the displacement of low-income households due to an economic revaluation. Therefore, gentrification has to be perceived as a spatial manifestation of social inequality. Despite the negative implications, urban authorities and the real estate industry present renewal projects as developments, which have solely positive consequences for all citizens or at least the affected inhabitants of a neighborhood. Because of their restricted financial resources, marginalized households, however, have to face the dilemma, which they can hardly afford an upgrading of their living conditions and thus have to move to other neighborhoods. This pressure for movement is enforced by the fact that their presence is not welcomed as their low-status within the social hierarchy reduces the value of the potential real estate stock and thus

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

225

the profit of those who have economic interests due to their investment (Lees, Slater, & Wyly, 2008). For many years, the scientific discourse has been centered on the question of how gentrification is initiated and controlled. The explanatory models are based on topics like characteristics of actors, power structures, hegemony, and dominance, which are manifestations of a latent social conflict over status and position. These models are either focused on the real estate market (production theory) or on consumption (consumption theory) (Ley, 1986). The supply-side model deals with the interdependency between economic capital and production of space in the first line, and the key aspects are the complexity and the speed of investments. The gap between low profits, which are currently capitalized, and high profits, which could be capitalized, if investments are made and the current use is replaced by an optimal use of the lot of land, is seen as a catalyst for gentrification. This difference between the current profit and the potential profit under a ‘higher and better use’ is called rent gap (Smith, 1996). On the other hand, the value gap explains why rental apartments are sold during the gentrification process. Following this explanation, the gap in profit between an apartment or a building, which is rented out, and units, which are sold after renovation and modernization, is defined as the catalyst for gentrification. In addition to the economic upgrading, gentrification also leads to a specific cultural redefinition of an area. This alternative explanation is the basis of the demand-side model, which regards consumption patterns, cultural capital, and lifestyle as initiators of gentrification (Meinharter & Rode, 2001): ‘Where supply side explanations provide an understanding of how gentrifiable properties are produced through the logic of the ‘rent gap’, demand-side theories focus on the production of gentrifiers and their cultural attributes’ (Bailey & Robertson, 1997, p. 563). The consumption theory explains this phenomenon within the context of the constitution of the postindustrial society, which is explained by the increasing importance of science-based jobs and the diversification and individualization of lifestyles (Beck, 1986; Bell, 1973; Lees et al., 2008). In this context, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is applied for analysis and interpretation of the establishment of social structures through aesthetic dispositions, sociocultural practices (like consumption), and modes of production of place-based identity. The gentrifier’s position within the social structure is thus defined by cultural practices and reproduced by their classhabitus (Davidson, 2007). Because of the emphasis on gentrification as a mean of identity-construction, places of consumption comprise a central symbolism: ‘Characterized by the presence of cafes, restaurants boutiques

226

FLORIAN J. HUBER

and art galleries, consumption-scapes provide a locus for the articulation and display of an affluent gentrification-derived identity’ (Rofe, 2003, p. 2521). The high amount of disposable economic capital enables gentrifiers to develop patterns of conspicuous consumption and effectively realize a distinct lifestyle in the city. Moreover, these neighborhoods function as means of distinction and represent a certain form of habitus as apartments and houses show certain aesthetic criteria. In the context of gentrification, the spatial, symbolic, economic, and social realization of this distinct lifestyle is made possible through displacement of other lifestyles or aesthetic preferences, which do not correspond to the habitus and the cultural capital of the gentrifier (Bridge, 2006). The definition of gentrification, which is applied in this chapter, is predominantly based on the consumption model, as it specifically takes into account the cultural redefinition caused by these processes. As it was already mentioned above, displacement is a constitutive element of the theoretical concept of gentrification and moreover it is multidimensional. On the one hand, gentrification can result in direct displacement of households from their apartments or houses. On the other hand, indirect displacement becomes evident due to the cultural redefinition of an area, although these forms are often not obvious or statistically measurable as direct displacement and thus are likely to be denied. When lower uses of space get displaced by higher uses, the social spaces of low-status milieus get displaced and low-income groups are likely to be expelled from the public sphere as well. Also forms of exclusionary displacement are an indicator for gentrification. Those forms are, for example, elaborated in studies on ‘brownfield gentrification’ and ‘new-built gentrification,’ where areas are developed to not tolerate social mix a priori. These different forms of displacement can also occur alone or together, but in terms of consequences, all of them are very problematic (Betancur, 2011; Huber, 2011). Under this presumption, this chapter discusses the question, whether the revitalization of the Karmeliterviertel in Vienna can be termed as ‘gentrification’ or just as a ‘natural’ process of change, which was furthermore planned, supervised, and moderated at any stage by the local authorities. History, politics, economy, and law are key aspects of an extensive framework, which governs developments and changes in cities and their social structure. As revitalization is highly connected with city-wide renewal plans and their effects on the city’s society, the next sections highlight the overall framework of socio-spatial distribution and segregation in Vienna as well as the model of ‘soft urban renewal,’ before the case of the Karmeliterviertel is examined in detail.

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

227

PATTERNS OF SEGREGATION Vienna, the capital of the Republic of Austria, is inhabited by nearly 1.7 million people within its city boundaries, which comprise an area of 414.9 square kilometers and thus has a comparatively large city proper, which was constantly enlarged until 1954 by incorporating surrounding municipalities. Like every city, Vienna shows a certain pattern of segregation as different social and ethnic groups live preferentially or of necessity in certain districts and neighborhoods. These segregation patterns are partly historically determined, as Vienna has always been characterized by immigration and by the new cultural assets, which were at least to some extent absorbed by the majority of the city’s population. As the capital of the Danube Monarchy, the demand for workers at the outset of the industrialization period during the second half of the nineteenth century was accommodated by people from the crown lands. It led to a rapid growth of the city’s population, which reached its peak in 1914 with over 2.2 million inhabitants. The wave of immigration was disrupted by the First and the Second World War as well as by the erection of the Iron Curtain, which also very much affected Vienna’s economic situation. The low proportion of non-Austrian citizens during the 1950s and the 1960s increased by a new wave of immigration. This wave started in the 1970s, as people from former Yugoslavia and Turkey were recruited as guest workers for unskilled labor. Because of the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the number of immigrants and refugees increased in the 1990s and was supplemented by an increase in immigrants from Turkey (Giffinger, 1998; Hatz, 2008). Since Austria became a member of the European Union (EU), which was enlarged in 2004, the immigration patterns changed (Seisz, 2008). The main proportion of the current population growth can be traced back to immigration from EU member states. Vienna now serves as a hub for economic activities in central and eastern Europe and thus became attractive for German citizens, who take up a crucial part of the current proportion of 20.7% non-Austrian citizens living in the city. The changes of immigration patterns also correlate with the socio-spatial polarization, which is increasing within the urban society of Vienna. The distribution of social and ethnic groups correlates with the rental price level and thus goes along with their status and position. It can be observed in selected districts, which have a high proportion of poorly equipped apartments and where, for example, 40% of all the Turkish citizens lived in 2001. As immigrants from non-European countries only receive short-term

228

FLORIAN J. HUBER

rental contracts, their housing situation is precarious (Hatz, 2008). Some of the most deprived areas are located in (outer) inner-city areas like the 15th and the 16th district, which feature a derelict, but historically valuable housing stock from the period of promoterism (Gru¨nderzeit). This housing stock actually counts for approximately one-third of the total housing stock of Vienna.

THE CONCEPT OF ‘SOFT URBAN RENEWAL’ Since the urban renewal activities were intensified in 1984, social and ethnic segregation was heightened, as the upgrading reduced the quantity of affordable apartments. The activities have been aimed at maintaining and improving the historic building fabric especially in the outer areas of the inner city. They were the main target area of the specific ‘soft urban renewal’ model, which was aimed at improving the housing conditions by minimizing poorly equipped apartments and increasing the social mix within the neighborhoods (Hatz, 2009). For some of the deprived neighborhoods, rent gaps can be constituted due to the inner-city location and the derelict, but potentially interesting housing stock. Nevertheless, for the most part, displacement is mitigated by a socially oriented housing policy including rent regulations, the concept of ‘soft urban renewal,’ community-subsidized tenement buildings, and social housing, which evolved from specific political circumstances: Vienna has been governed by the Social Democratic Party since 1919 (for Housing Policy between 1919 and 1934 in ‘Red Vienna’ see also Chaddock, 1932). In 2001, approximately 60% of all households resided in subsidized apartments (Hatz, 2009). Twenty-three percent of all apartments in Vienna are categorized as ‘community housing’ and another 13% are defined as ‘social housing’ (Kattinger, 2010). But as social housing was restricted to Austrian households until 2006, the majority of immigrants from Turkey and former Yugoslavia were forced to resort to small and poorly equipped apartments within the private rental segment (Giffinger, 1998). Given the problem of emerging ‘ethnic enclaves’ or ‘ghettos’ under such conditions, in particular the welfare system, the subsidization of rents for low-income households and also the change of the social housing policy in 2006 have prevented their formation (Hatz, 2009). Besides the noticeable proportion of social housing and the subsidization of rents, the ‘soft urban renewal’ model contributed to the prevention of displacement in the context of gentrification. In 1984, a new law on the

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

229

renovation of dwellings was adopted. It linked financial support for renovations exclusively with the age of the building (it has to be older than 20 years) and the standard of the apartment and not with the location of the building. Since then, a renovation fund is preparing and accompanying as well as controlling the process, with a strong focus on the principles of usefulness, efficiency, and social compatibility. The social criteria, which are based on the concept of renovating an inhabited building in cooperation with the tenants, aim to conserve the building fabric, to minimize tendencies of segregation, to prevent tenants from getting displaced, and to preserve a functional mix (Fo¨rster, 2004). Between 1984 and 2007, more than 210,000 apartments were renovated, which is about one-fourth of the total housing stock in Vienna (Hatz, 2008). Especially in the first years, a main part of the urban renewal activities and investments comprised the improvement in housing conditions by installing modern central heating systems and bathrooms within the apartments, which increased the value and thus the future rental revenues (Giffinger, 1998). In addition to the renovations of single buildings (Sockelsanierung), which count for approximately two-third of the city-aided renovation activities, a new model has emerged in 1989 with the implementation of a concept based on the rehabilitation of a whole block (Blocksanierung). Besides the renovation of apartments, development plans also had to integrate the design of public space and green areas as well as a functional mix of local supply and technical and social infrastructure. Both renovation instruments can be classified as public–private partnerships as they follow (at least in theory) a combination of private investments and public funds and emphasize the social and economic compatibility (Hatz, 2004). In case of the renovation of a building, every household has the right to decide about its future housing situation. Households can either stay in their unmodified apartment or improve their actual apartment in the course of the renovation (Huckepacksanierung). If they decide to move out, they receive a financial compensation or an alternative apartment. Furthermore, the city’s financial support for the renovation projects is bound to the obligation that the owner has to guarantee the continuation of existing tenancies for 10 years. This mechanism acts against rent increases and displacement. It is bound to the fund and demanded by the city as the public funds nearly cover the total costs of the renovation. The purpose of this regulation is that owners do not have to pass on costs to the households and tenants who live in the building (Hatz, 2004). If the owner does not observe this regulation, he/she has to pay back the whole funds, which he/she received from the city. Nevertheless, there are no regulations beyond this

230

FLORIAN J. HUBER

time span and there are also no regulations for new tenants, who usually have to pay a price according to the market standard. Thus, this expectable increase in profit is the main incentive for owners to renovate a building. Taking into account the principles of the ‘soft urban renewal’ paradigm, the effects of the renovation activities in the inner and outer districts of the inner city of Vienna are ambivalent. Despite lower than market prices for the renovation, only 11% of all households participated and improved their apartment in line with the renovation activities, which were done on the whole building, whereas 41% left their apartment unmodified. As mostly longtime tenants stayed during the rehabilitation, the displacement of older people was indeed prevented. Nevertheless, this positive aspect is confined by the fact that for the most part they already lived in well-equipped apartments and thus had no need to improve their housing conditions. The social implications of renovation activities are evident by the fact that 48% of the inhabitants in refurbished buildings are new tenants, which are of younger age. Accordingly, these instruments, which were elaborated above, have demographic effects in terms of residential-location decisions. Predominantly younger, lower-income households moved out before the renovation activities started and drew on the provided compensation. After the rehabilitation, these apartments were rented out to younger households at a price according to the market level. The new tenants are characterized by their higher social status, which is related to better education and a higher amount of disposable income. The concept of ‘soft urban renewal’ has prevented widespread dilapidation and segregation. But despite the mitigating effects, it nevertheless has polarizing and selective effects on the social structure of neighborhoods, as the rehabbed buildings cluster within certain areas (Hatz, 2004, 2008). The evaluation of the ‘soft urban renewal’ instruments, which are applied in Vienna, can thus be perceived as ambivalent. Besides these instruments, which are mainly based on aspects concerning the building fabric and financial support, the implementation of local coordination offices (Gebietsbetreuungen) in certain districts was supposed to create social cohesion and to mitigate displacement. The first office was opened in 1974 in the 16th district. Not every district has its own coordination office, as they are implemented according to the status of main target areas of urban renewal. These areas are usually indicated by the low social status of the neighborhood’s residents and marginalization. Especially smaller districts or areas, where many households with a higher social status reside, share an office, as the demand for this kind of mediation and intervention is either insignificant or it is important to take into account a wider area for the

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

231

analysis of social problems. In addition to the offices within the districts, there is also a mobile office, which is specialized on information and legal advice for renters. More generally, the local coordination offices serve as low-threshold facilities. Their activities include tasks like mediation between inhabitants, owners of buildings or investors, and local authorities – also, but not exclusively, in cases of imminent displacements of lower-income households (Fo¨rster, 2004). Although the city itself plays a key role in neighborhood revitalization and development of these instruments, which further include participation and art projects involving residents and local coordination offices, one question remains open: is there no gentrification in Vienna at all? The estimations of urban researchers, who engage in urban research in Vienna, differ to a large extent. In order to find a feasible answer, the following case study examines this question by analyzing the revitalization of the Karmeliterviertel.

THE CASE OF THE KARMELITERVIERTEL, VIENNA Methodology The research was conducted as part of the author’s doctoral project, which examines gentrification as a global phenomenon and focuses especially on the role of the actors. In order to address this topic, research was conducted in three neighborhoods in Vienna, Chicago, and Mexico City to acquire knowledge from different urban settings and to some extent effect a global spreading. The neighborhoods within these cities were selected by an analysis of the media-coverage in the context of gentrification as well as personal observations and communication with local experts. A qualitative approach was chosen for the empirical research. The semistructured interviews were grouped around topics like individual motivation, characterization and the change of the image of the neighborhood, reflection of the gentrification process, social cohesion, place-based identity, and future perspectives. As an actor-model for the selection of the respondents, the gentrification stage-model by Clay (1979) was extended to meet the transformations that changed the emphasis since the proposition of the basic model. The actormodel, which was applied, included longtime residents, pioneers, gentrifiers, representatives from the local administration, shop-, bar- or restaurantowners, journalists, real estate agents or developers, architects as well as

232

FLORIAN J. HUBER

displaced people. The respondents were found through research and personal recommendations (‘snowball-system’). As for Vienna, 11 interviews, which are partly cited and largely reflected in this chapter, were conducted by the author between late November 2009 and early February 2010.

Description of the Research Area The Karmeliterviertel is a small inner-city neighborhood and is located in the northwestern part of the second district, which is called Leopoldstadt (Stadt Wien, 2009). The neighborhood as an entity is mainly based on perception, but its boundaries refer to the historical development of the area. Although they vary in dependency of certain perceptions or purposes, the neighborhood though can tentatively be demarcated by the following streets and geographical limitations: Taborstrasse, Obere Augartenstrasse, Obere Donaustrasse, Malzgasse, Leopoldsgasse, and Danube canal, where it adjoins to the first district. Like some other areas in Vienna, which were formerly located at the urban fringe, the Karmeliterviertel was characterized by a Biedermeier building fabric, which has been preserved at least in some streets. This fabric is mixed with buildings from the second half of the nineteenth century and some older baroque houses as well as publicly subsidized rental dwellings. The waterfront at the Danube canal is, however, dominated by (post)modern high-rise buildings. Although the street layout is basically more wide-meshed than in the first district, the combination of small streets, small-section allotments, and the historic building fabric creates a feeling of intimate urbanity, which is accentuated in most of the interviews. Moreover, the Karmeliterviertel draws restaurants, bars, shops, and small offices (usually creative economy or company-related services) and people who appreciate the idea of an ‘urban village.’ The neighborhood underwent a very diverse history. The name goes back to the Roman-Catholic fraternity ‘Karmeliter,’ which settled here in 1621. In 1624, the emperor Ferdinand II expelled the Jews from the city center and forced them to move into a ghetto outside of the city’s boundaries. The area where the ghetto was located is now part of the Karmeliterviertel. Despite the expulsion from the ghetto in 1670, the demolition of the area during the II Ottoman siege in 1683 and various floods, which happened frequently as the Danube was not regulated yet, the Jews continued to come back and to rebuild the area. As they constantly received more rights, they were able to develop a rich cultural and intellectual life. In 1923, about one-third of the

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

233

whole Jewish population in Vienna, which counted for approximately 200,000 individuals, lived in the second district. Thus, they also provided a significant proportion (close to 50%) of this area’s population until Second World War, when the Holocaust set a drastic end to the flourishing and prosperous Jewish culture in Vienna (Giffinger, 1998). In 2007, only 4% of the total population of the second district were Jews, although the proportion is recently growing again. After the Second World War, the Karmeliterviertel became a working class area. Because of the war, massive changes in the economical system and increasing suburbanization, its demographic development shows a significant population decline from the 1960s until 2001, which is a typical pattern for the whole district. The second district reached its tipping point in 1910 with 162,442 inhabitants and shows a massive decline in population until 1951 (106,809). From 1951 to 1961, the population grew by 1.2%, but continued to decline again until 2001, when the population reached 90,922 individuals. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the population of the second district has grown again and in 2009 the district had 94,595 inhabitants. Despite the total population decline until 2001, since the 1970s the district, and thus also the Karmeliterviertel, shows an above-average percentage of non-Austrian residents from former Yugoslavia and from Turkey as well as from eastern European countries. In 2005, the percentage of non-Austrian residents in the second district reached 26.5%, which was about 8% above the average figure in Vienna (18.7%). Until the gentrification process started in the beginning 1990s, the inhabitants of the Karmeliterviertel had to deal with various social problems, which led to a negative perception of the neighborhood. The area had a characteristically bad reputation and thus was classified as a deprived neighborhood.

Soft Urban Renewal or Gentrification? By the end of the 1980s, artists and students, the ‘pioneers’ or ‘earlygentrifiers,’ discovered the neighborhood and started to move in because of its inner-city location, the proximity to amenities like the food market as well as local parks and – due to the old and derelict housing stock – the availability of cheap apartments with amply dimensioned layouts, which could be used as or easily transformed into ateliers or apartment-sharing communities. An artist and architect, who lives in the neighborhood since 1989, also defines the social heterogeneity as a crucial reason to move to the

234

FLORIAN J. HUBER

Karmeliterviertel. According to her, the heterogeneity is related to the diverse social realities, which were manifest within this working class, red light and Jewish neighborhood. A few years earlier, the city government recognized the requirement for revitalization as well as for reimaging this deprived inner-city neighborhood. On the first hand, it was the housing situation, why it became a target for urban renewal activities in 1984, but also social and economical aspects played a certain role. The housing stock mostly consisted of very small and poorly equipped apartments, the housing density was very high, and building activities were low due to the negative image and the old-age structure. Along with a competition to create an overall development plan for this defined renewal area, a local coordination office was installed in the same year to serve as a mediator between the diverse interests. When the coordination office was established, the area of responsibility covered 0.42 square kilometers and included 14,000 inhabitants. The area was enlarged twice, and in 1992 the office had the responsibility for an area of 0.60 square kilometers with approximately 16,500 individuals. Because of the reorganization of the concept and responsibilities of all local coordination offices in 2008, the office was suspended and the area was incorporated into the responsibility of a new-established local coordination office, which now works within the whole district and thus has a certain focus on other, still deprived neighborhoods within the district. From 1984 to 2008, the local coordination office of the Karmeliterviertel was involved in various projects including the realization of new city-owned apartment buildings and the rehabilitation of various dilapidated buildings as well as the redesign and reorganization of public space. Accordingly, various projects to encourage participation were initiated to include and involve the inhabitants in renewal activities. Out of the variety of activities, which were undertaken, the redesign of the whole central area of the neighborhood, where the majority of the public institutions like schools, the market, the administrative office of the district, and the police station were located, had probably the most impact. The redesign, reorganization, and building activities began in 1991 and were finished in 2008, when the extension of the subway line U2 was finished, which connected the neighborhood with the city’s subway system (Stadt Wien, 2009). The largescale renewal project significantly changed the image and the (inner and outer) perception of the neighborhood, and as a consequence social problems were more and more relocated to other areas. But besides renewal activities on behalf of the city, which are also perceived as having an impact on the safety within the neighborhood, other

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

235

amenities, like the proximity to local parks, the presence of groups with high resources of cultural capital, the inner-city location, and the refurbished buildings draw higher-income groups, who discovered the area as a desirable place to reside. Like in other gentrifying neighborhoods, the interplay between media and gentrifiers resulted in the branding of the Karmeliterviertel as a ‘trendy neighborhood.’ The influence of the media on the image of a neighborhood is also emphasized by a journalist, who works for a weekly city-newspaper. In the interview, he states that the impact of the media shouldn’t be underestimated as people consider information, which were published in a newspaper, as being more reliable than an advertising brochure by the city government. Nevertheless, there has to be at least some development like a few new restaurants or bars and shops, which locate in a neighborhood after a critical mass of pioneers has moved to the area, otherwise the media wouldn’t report about it. In addition to the amenities, which were listed above, the revitalized outdoor food market, which is located in the center of the neighborhood, serves as a strong pull factor for higher-status groups. The market also fits in the imagination of the neighborhood as an ‘urban village,’ as which the Karmeliterviertel is characterized by almost all interview partners. Thus, the market serves as a resource for quality of life, although its function as a food supplier is not as important as it was in the past. The social and communicative aspects of visiting the market gained importance and are combined with conspicuous consumption and distinct shopping patterns, as the retailers increasingly specialized on demands of the new clients (Kattinger, 2010). The Karmelitermarkt serves as a place ‘to see and to be seen.’ Besides the marketers, who sell organic food and gastronomic specialties, also the bars and restaurants at or near the market fit into these distinctive consumption patterns of the new inhabitants. The renewal activities in combination with the influx of groups with a higher social and economic status led to an increase in the rent level, as the former manager of the local coordination office validates in the interview. Although the increases were moderate and real estate speculations were limited to an assessable amount of buildings (except during the application for the World Exhibition, which was supposed to take place in 1995), the population of the neighborhood changed. But as many elderly people lived in the neighborhood before, a demographic shift on the basis of the age structure is seen as relevant for the change of the social structure. Along with the demographic change, also the occupational structure changed due to the increase in creative and knowledge-based professions, which resulted

236

FLORIAN J. HUBER

in the emergence of small offices or even a shared office space, which is located in a former manufacturing building. In terms of population change, direct displacement of households from their apartments was prevented or at least mitigated by Vienna’s tenancy law, the mechanisms of soft urban renewal, and by interventions of the local coordination office. On the basis of his yearlong experience and the data, with which he worked, the former local coordination office manager resumes that long-established or low-income inhabitants as well as nonAustrian households or families with migration background still live in the area. Direct displacement thus was not a crucial issue in the case of the Karmeliterviertel and this corresponds with the high proportion of nonAustrian citizens still living in the second district. Also the above-mentioned artist observed that many migrant households reside if not in the neighborhood than at least in surrounding areas of the Karmeliterviertel as the schools in the neighborhood are still very diverse. But despite the maintenance of the wider area’s diversity, other processes and at first less apparent changes occurred, which became manifest as the neighborhood’s popularity grew. During the transformation into a trendy place, it was culturally and infrastructurally (and thus economically) redefined. Especially at and around the market, but also within the rest of the neighborhood, new restaurants replaced many of the old cafes, restaurants, and bars, where long-established low-income inhabitants used to meet, as it was emphasized in the interviews and confirmed by observation. Therefore, the revitalization of the neighborhood can be classified as gentrification, as displacement of social spaces becomes eminent and is accompanied by exclusion from the public sphere. In the context of gentrification, space is used as a mean of capital accumulation and displacement occurs, if lower uses of space get displaced by higher uses of space. This form of displacement affects groups with a lower social status, because of their limited economic resources they are dependent on spaces, where commodification is limited by lower uses. When the infrastructure for groups with a higher status expands, the cultural redefinition in conjunction with economic upgrading tends to confront the long-established and marginalized residents with a new form of hegemony. The public sphere loses its former diversity, when certain behavioral patterns, a certain dialect and values or signs of belonging to a lowstatus group are sanctioned, despised or regarded as minor value by the gentrifiers, who tend to define the urban setting due to their economic resources, their social capital, and their cultural dispositions. As a consequence, amenities, which served as meeting points especially for the long-established (low-income) residents, disappear or are at least

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

237

significantly reduced. The result of this phenomenon is that people prefer to stay at home instead of going to new restaurants and bars, which predominantly serve the needs and demands of solvent consumers, as the former manager of the coordination office emphasizes in the interview. Thus, long-established social networks and relations are at stake, which is insofar problematic as they are specifically important for marginalized groups: these networks and social relations can provide possibilities and strategies to cope with precarious situations (see also Betancur, 2011). Although direct displacement isn’t significant for the Karmeliterviertel, the limitation and displacement of social spaces have serious impacts on low-status groups, as the loss of networks, social relations, and bonds seriously limits their options and opportunities.

CONCLUSION The Karmeliterviertel is an inner-city neighborhood in the second district of Vienna, which is connoted as a ‘trendy’ neighborhood and which now provides amenities especially for groups of a higher social status. This chapter examined the question, whether the revitalization of the Karmeliterviertel can be termed as ‘gentrification’ or whether it has to be classified as a ‘natural’ process of change, which was – in the context of Vienna’s ‘soft urban renewal’ strategy – furthermore planned, supervised, and moderated at any stage. Direct displacement of households didn’t take place at a noticeable level. Especially, Vienna’s tenancy law in combination with efforts by the local coordination office played a crucial role in mitigating the effects of the significant increase in the overall rent level. Thus, the increase predominantly affected newcomers, who have more economic resources than the long-established or low-income, marginalized households. Another reason, why direct displacement didn’t turn into a problem, was the comparatively high amount of empty apartments, partly because of the image of the neighborhood, and partly due to the age structure. But due to the cultural redefinition, which is a crucial aspect of gentrification, the commercial infrastructure and the gastronomy of the Karmeliterviertel was steadily adjusted to the demand, the preferences, and the consumption patterns of the new residents. As this implies the displacement of social spaces of longestablished residents and low-income groups, the revitalization of the Karmeliterviertel clearly has to be termed as gentrification. This conclusion though contrasts the opinion of other urban researchers, who state that there’s

238

FLORIAN J. HUBER

no gentrification in Vienna. Moreover, urban renewal in Vienna can be classified as a contribution for gentrification to some extent, although there are useful mechanisms to limit direct displacement. Displacement in the context of new culturally hegemonic realities in a neighborhood is not less problematic and shows a similar dynamic like direct displacement, as social relations, bonds, and networks are dissolved. The consequences are losses in options and coping strategies for low-income households. Moreover, it also has psychological effects: the space of a milieu including its networks and bonds provides a source of place-based identity. When it disappears, the individuals feel more and more detached from society. Without these social relations, the feeling of exclusion thus is amplified and the individual person turns into resignation. Therefore, the challenge for cities is to create conditions where social diversity is preserved, and to support spaces where the probability that different milieus with different resources of economic, social, and cultural capital could meet is high. As socially mixed, authentic places are crucial for vibrant cities, the authenticity of neighborhoods and places has to be maintained. Social diversity also means heterogeneity and, following Louis Wirth (1938), heterogeneity is one of the main preconditions of urbanity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Christoph Reinprecht, the supervisor of my thesis, and Stacey Seigler-Frank, for proof-reading the first draft of this chapter.

REFERENCES Bahrdt, H.-P. (1998). Die moderne GroXstadt. Opladen: Leske þ Budrich. Bailey, N., & Robertson, D. (1997). Housing renewal, urban policy and gentrification. Urban Studies, 34(4), 561–578. Beck, U. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Bell, D. (1973). The coming of postindustrial society. New York, NY: Basic Books. Betancur, J. (2011). Gentrification and community fabric in Chicago. Urban Studies, 488(2), 383–406. Bridge, G. (2006). Perspectives on cultural capital and the neighbourhood. Urban Studies, 43(4), 719–730. Chaddock, R. E. (1932). Housing in Vienna: A socialistic experiment. The American Journal of Sociology, 37(4), 560–568. Clay, P. L. (1979). Neighborhood renewal. Middle-class resettlement and incumbent upgrading in American neighbourhoods. Lexington: Lexington Books.

Sensitive Urban Renewal or Gentrification?

239

Davidson, M. (2007). Gentrification as a global habitat: A process of class formation or corporate creation? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32, 490–506. Fo¨rster, W. (2004). Wiens Stadterneuerung zwischen Staat und Markt? De´rive, 17, 22–25. Giffinger, R. (1998). Segregation in Vienna. Urban Studies, 35(10), 1791–1812. Hatz, G. (2004). Sozialra¨umliche Folgen der Stadtsanierung durch Public-Private-Partnerships. Das Modell der ‘sanften’ Stadterneuerung in Wien. In: Institut fu¨r Geographie und Regionalforschung der Universita¨t Wien (Ed.), Geographischer Jahresbericht aus O¨sterreich. Band 60-61 (pp. 77–105). Wien: Institut fu¨r Geographie und Regionalforschung. Hatz, G. (2008). City profile Vienna. Cities, 25, 310–322. Hatz, G. (2009). Features and dynamics of socio-spatial differentiation in Vienna and the Vienna Metropolitan Region. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 100(4), 485–501. Huber, F. J. (2011). Das kulturelle Kapital und die Pionier/innen im Gentrifizierungsprozess. Forschungsansa¨tze und Herausforderungen fu¨r die Stadtsoziologie. In: O. Frey & F. Koch (Eds.), Positionen zur Urbanistik I. Wien: LIT. Kattinger, A. (2010). Griss um die Trendviertel. Wiener Journal, 1. Lees, L., Slater, T., & Wyly, E. (2008). Gentrification. New York, NY: Routledge. Ley, D. (1986). Alternative explanations for inner-city gentrification. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 76(4), 521–535. Lo¨w, M., Steets, S., & Stoetzer, S. (2007). Einfu¨hrung in die Stadt- und Raumsoziologie. Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Meinharter, E., & Rode, P. (2001). Gentrification – ein langer angloamerikanischer Diskurs. De´rive, 4, 21–23. Rofe, M. (2003). ‘I want to be global’: Theorising the gentrifying class as an emergent elite global community. Urban Studies, 40(12), 2511–2526. Seisz, R. (2008). Wer baut Wien? Salzburg-Mu¨nchen-Wien: Verlag Anton Pustet. Simmel, G. (2007). Die GroXsta¨dte und das Geistesleben. In: G. Runkel (Ed.), Die Stadt (pp. 27–39). Hamburg: LIT. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier. Gentrification and the revanchist city. London: Routledge. Stadt Wien, (Ed.) (2009). Gebietsbetreuung Karmeliterviertel 1984–2008. Ein Bericht von Dipl.Ing. Ferdinand Bartel. Wien: Stadt Wien. Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a way of life. The American Journal of Sociology, 44(1), 1–24.

CHAPTER 11 USERS’ PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE OF THE ‘NAVIGLI’ AREA IN MILAN Stefano Forbici and Davide Diamantini ABSTRACT In this chapter, starting from a general overview of the problems linked to ‘symbolic consumption’ we will investigate the satisfaction of city users. We will then focus on tourist consumption, examining the impact of place identity on its fruition by the public. The focus will be on people’s perception of an urban place and how this perception may interact with the symbolic dimension underlying both place identity and its consumption. Such a dimension is not strictly connected to the practical utility of the goods but to their ability to produce values and symbols for the establishment of personal identity. The data collected during an empirical survey regarding people’s perception of the Navigli area of Milan have been used to develop this analysis. Keywords: Consumption; identity; image; Milan; Navigli; territory

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 241–260 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011014

241

242

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

INTRODUCTION Today consumption seems to be based on trends that no longer depend on the basic needs of survival, but has mainly cultural and symbolic connotations. Hirsch (1976) notes that the subsistence economy based on primary needs has become a positional economy, based on the hierarchy of status, goods, and services. For Sen (2000) welfare is not measured according to gross domestic product, but is measured as growth of individual freedom. Consumption is largely dependent on free personal choice in the private sphere of everyday life (Holt, 2002). Individual choices are dictated not so much by the practical utility of the object as much as the status elevation connected with its possession. Thus, ‘consumer goods have cultural categories which transfer them to the single person’ (Sacco & Viviani, 2003, p. 16). Consumption is no longer dictated by the need to acquire necessary goods for one’s livelihood: if consumption is no longer dictated by this, what counts is the socially agreed capacity of goods to function as a symbol (Witt, 2010). Such consumption is ‘one of the ways in which the individual addresses the emerging problem of communication and negotiation of identity’ (Sacco & Viviani, 2003, p. 17, our translation). The goods become an indicator of individual status and identity. We live in a society that is radically different from the society of the postwar period, where the scarcity of resources determined a strong social rigidity that provided unequivocally a social identity (the same identity for many people). Contemporary society is diametrically contrasting, the abundance of goods guides consumption in relation to the construction of one’s identity: ‘happiness extracted from goods does not depend on their ability to satisfy a specific need through their product feature, but to contribute to the construction of individual identity. The social meaning of consumption has changed. At the same time the motivation and the determinants of consumer welfare have changed as well’ (Sacco & Viviani, 2003, p. 6, our translation). This change in consumption, along with the transformation of urban space due to new economic structures characterized a new type of population. In fact, nowadays the city’s economy is increasingly based on consumption by mobile populations who do not live in the same areas in which they work. The increasing number of city users has changed the urban model. The metropolis in which we are living today is very different from the metropolis called second generation metropolis. In this new metropolitan morphology a new population is emerging. It is a small but very specialized population of metropolitan businessmen. They are people who come

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

243

downtown to do business and/or establish professional contacts: they are businessmen and professionals who visit their clients. They are by definition mobile, international consultants and managers. This fourth population, relatively small but growing, has considerable private and enterprise capital. Normally they stay in the city for a few days, but also for extended periods, on one hand for their profession and on the other hand, they use the city for a high level of consumption. It is a population of citizens who are experts. They are very selective in terms of shopping and restaurants and choices of hotels, as well as greater cultural consumption, such as concerts, exhibitions, museums, and also saunas and gyms. In this metropolitan morphology business and tourism increasingly cohabit (Martinotti, 2006). Consumption today is a cultural activity by which an individual builds his/her own self (career, religion, or lifestyle) through the symbolic use of material goods. The material concreteness of the goods is transcended; symbolic features are what make them desirable. In the next section we will focus on how place and consumption of immaterial goods determine the process of identity representation.

SPACE CONSUMPTION AND IDENTITY OF A PLACE According to the studies cited, the choice process of people is increasingly based on characteristics that transcend the usefulness of the product. The strong symbolic and cultural connotation concerns consumption tout court. Space consumption, as a place visit or journey experience, can help in structuring the personal identity only if it represents cultural contents, values, and meanings that can strengthen the personality of those who experience it. Gottdiener has observed how tourism is ‘exemplary of the consumption of space’ (2000, pp. 268–269): specific locations are consumed as spaces of cultural difference, attractions, traditions, and history. At the same time, when the image of the area is not very noticeable, activities, facilities, and amenities of a place become the only expression of the location’s identity. In this case a place can be marked more for its services and amenities than for its own historical identity. Marc Auge´ speaks about Non-Places ‘if a place cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place’ (Auge`, 1995, pp. 77–78). The hypothesis advanced here is that supermodernity produces non-place, meaning places which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike the Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier

244

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

places: instead these are listed, classified, promoted to the status of ‘place of memory’ and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position’ (Ibid.). In his work Auge´ refers to spaces like airports, railway stations, hotel chains, leisure parks, and large retail outlets. On the contrary, for Diamantini and Martinotti (2009) these places are not ‘non-places’ but they are ‘our places’: They are the places of the city we live-in today. ‘Nonplaces’ are nothing less than the typical places of the city of our times. True, they are abstract, impersonal anonymous and maybe anomic, but they are this way because we want them to be so’ (p. 32). In other words Martinotti is not opposed to Auge` in relation to the meaning of the term ‘Non-place’, but he does not agree to its negative connotation. Nevertheless, it is also true that if the places are impersonal and anonymous the consumption will not be visual, but will only regard products and services that are offered (quality vs. price). Therefore, the area will not be able to satisfy symbolic consumption and will lose its attractiveness: ‘Consumption, as both an economic and cultural process, is critical. There is, after all, no point in a process of production of space if this product is not then consumed: its branded products accepted and bought at a premium, its enhanced land values traded in a market and its names recognized and used not only locally but also globally’ (Overton, 2010, pp. 2–3). In Urry’s study on ‘consuming places’ (1995), places are not only consumption areas in which goods and services are purchased and used, but a two-way relationship between people and territory is established: people change their behavior influenced by the surrounding territory, and the territory is changed by the individual behavior of the people. The two-way relationship goes toward the enrichment of individual identity, and it is therefore capable of producing an interaction with the city user who enjoys the place for immaterial consumption. Also for Urry, the use of land is primarily a visual consumption. This is not the only approach in this theme of course: Overton (2010, pp. 2–3) stresses that places are not only ‘consumed visually,’ but they are consumed by the sale of typical products that reflect their place of origin (fruit, cheese, wine, coffee, etc.) and by selling the locality itself. Moreover, for Urry the relation between space and consumption is particularly relevant because places are themselves consumed: the author (1995) suggests, for example, how tourists consume a place by visiting it and experiencing how the locals live in that territory. In turn they consume the place through their activities there and by living the represented identity. We can find a relationship with Soja’s study on the conceptualization of space (1996). In fact, Soja refers to the concepts of real space and space

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

245

representation in an elaboration of the categories proposed by Lefebvre in The Production of Space (1991). Many geographers made their contribution on the relation of space consumption. For instance, Mansvelt (2005) has found connections of how consumption forms space and how different consumption cultures help to create different spaces of consumption. However, underlying in these studies is Urry’s concept that space itself is consumed and the other concept regarding the bilateral dependence of place and user’s cultures. As suggested below, even the consumption of ‘original’ products pertains to symbolic consumption that is related to concepts like authenticity and uniqueness. That is why consumption is defined as a cultural act. One issue in the consumption of space is how places are sold to consumers. This involves the notions of uniqueness, of authenticity of place and the suggestion that these places and products can be found and taken advantage of only in one specific place. Such uniqueness and rarity increases and guarantees the value of the place, reinforcing its image. If consumers accept the authenticity of the territorial brand, they themselves become vital in the promotion of places. In fact, if the location is associated with an original and recognizable image or a slogan, the location tends to remain in people’s minds. That is why Twitchell analyzed the importance of stories in marketing strategies: ‘a good marketing plan is the one with a memorable story, while an ineffective one is forgotten’ (2004, p. 4). From the beginning of the 1990s place marketing (and later city branding) ‘has become a common place activity of cities, regions and countries’ (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005, p. 507). Every branding action attempts to provide distinctiveness to the product to be launched on the market. Equally ‘a place needs to be differentiated through unique brand identity if it wants to be first, recognized as existing, second, perceived in the minds of place customers as possessing qualities superior to those of competitors, and third, consumed in a manner commensurate with the objectives of the place’ (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005, p. 510). Contrary to what happens in product branding, often in city branding actions, as Rizzi and Dioli (2010) consider in their study, finding a unique identity in towns with many areas of interest becomes almost impossible. ‘In order to make this operation successful, only a few of the existing social and cultural symbols of the city must be chosen. Deciding on the right brand can help increase the status of the city as a tourism destination to visit, as a residential place to live in or as a business space to invest in’ (p. 42). Branding Strategy is not a spot activity, it is not a single element of promotion, but it has to be considered as a process in a complex promotion

246

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

project. In fact, the branding action can be defined as a systemic action, which relates and influences the territory, its inhabitants and people who go there. In particular, inhabitants need to recognize and identify themselves with the image selected to represent a territory: this is why the coherence between cultural and traditional content of the area and its image is so important. There are several ways for a place to reshape its image. In this study we will mention the cases of Turin and Genoa, which are comparable to the features of the case of Milan, which is the focus of our survey. Both Turin and Genoa are cases in which the local governments decided to promote a city identity renewal through a mega event. Such an enterprise is able to change the image of these areas from their industrial past. The mega event is also a tool for attracting a number of investments in order to build infrastructures in the city. The study of Guala (2007) analyzed in depth the case of Turin and treats it as a successful case of image change for the city. Furthermore, Turin can be considered a positive example of how a city is able to plan the post-event time. Also the studies of Bobbio and Guala (2002) and Dall’Ara (2009) analyzed how important it is to plan the reuse of the structures which are specifically set up to host an event, which is the event’s legacy. Specific projects carried out to host a mega event are opportunities for improving the structural conditions of the city. According to Guala, Turin was able to change its identity through a coherent strategic plan and efficient marketing efforts. In this case the Olympics helped to completely change the image of the city. Turin indeed had an industrial tradition that had prevented a re-functionalization of the city. Turin has always been considered a onecompany town, due to its industrial specialization linked primarily, if not exclusively, with automotive production. In fact, Fiat has deeply affected economic, social, cultural, and political development, both locally and nationally. The industrial crisis of the 1970s affected many cities in the Western world and has pushed local governments to adopt a policy to redirect the economy from heavy industry to the advanced third sector. During the Winter Olympic Games in 2006 the communication program sponsored by the public institutions of the city was crucial in reorienting the role of the city from an industrial to a cultural destination. This action helped to change the image of the city. The old specialization in the industrial sector changed into more and more differentiated offers. Thanks to investments for the Olympic Games, the city began to improve its aesthetic appeal, re-qualifying whole urban areas and increasing the cultural offer with museums and temporary exhibitions. The change of activities and functions of the city has also caused a social transformation: the former population was composed mostly of

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

247

workers who were politically very active toward the ruling class during the oil crisis. Today the population is made up of office workers in the tertiary and high tech sector, which is partially the creative class indicated by Florida (2002). This reorientation has prepared the city for new challenges in cultural activities. Turin also won the title of Design Capital in 2008, and has become the regular location for important events such as the Torino Film Festival (now in its twenty-eighth edition), the International Book Fair (2011 will be its twenty-fourth edition), and the Salone del Gusto (for good quality food and wine, eight editions). As we said before, such a change has also profoundly influenced the perception of the city itself. The city was not only able to produce a rejuvenation of its own image, but also to reposition itself as a dynamic city and a cultural and tourist destination, capable of intercepting the interests of the new international middle class. The awarding of Turin as the Design Capital in 2008 is the result of a strategy to position the city as an important cultural center in Italy. This strategy was inaugurated in 1993 with Artissima, the most important art fair in Italy of private galleries. Not only these initiatives have expanded a rich cultural offer, but the change of the city’s image has also produced a ‘common denominator’ for all these activities by promoting the city as a system that offers many cultural activities in an integrated way. The contribution of cultural events for the image recovery is aimed not only outward but also inward for the citizens in order to strengthen or to renew a spirit of belonging to the city. Sport and cultural events produce an element of distinction for the hosting cities. The citizens recognize each other in this element. For this reason cities often apply to host Olympic Games or a mega sport event to facilitate the participation and inclusion of minority communities: ‘The Olympic Games (and the bidding itself as an international competition) were thought to be an opportunity for flag-waving and national pride, and for national consciousness-raising on the global stage’ (Hiller, 2000, p. 453). Analyzing the purpose of the mega event for the area in which they are made, Richards and Wilson state that: ‘In such a climate, cultural events in particular have emerged as a means of improving the image of cities, adding life to city streets and giving citizens renewed pride in their home city’ (2004, p. 1932). Genoa is another example of re-shaping the economic structure in an area affected by industrial decline. The image was reshaped through the establishment of a series of events created to improve the image of this city as rich in history and culture. The events that have implemented the renewal were able to promote the city’s global development by reinforcing social and cultural dimensions.

248

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

Major events with international initiatives were undertaken for several reasons: to produce and embrace urban renewal, to promote the city’s image abroad as an attractive place, to strengthen local identity and also to receive international funds (Getz, 1991). The whole renewal process essentially began in 1992 with the Colombiadi, to celebrate the 500 years of Columbus’ discovery of America. The event represented the first opportunity for the city to begin its renovation by enfranchising from its industrial image. The redevelopment had its epicenter on the waterfront and harbor area. Regeneration has created new spaces for new functions (for instance the aquarium and the Children’s City) in one of the most typical areas of the city. Also the G8 summit, held in the city in 2001, was part ‘of the tourism development and promotion strategy of the city and was an occasion for advertising a new image, a changing inner city open to international perspectives’ (Pozzi & Martinotti, 2004) , as well as for acquiring funds to renovate its image. Nevertheless, in the Genoa case severe problems occurred during the demonstrations against the summit: 1 dead, 560 injured, 360 arrested and detained, 25 million Euros damage (Il Vertice Maledetto, 2010). Thus, the overall review of the event was heavily influenced by its negative outcomes. Similarly in 2004 the nomination of Genoa as the capital of European culture was an important opportunity to help the city be more in line with its new profile as a destination for cultural tourism. Being the European Capital of Culture1 means that the city became the focus of many activities (drama, music, dance, arts, exhibitions, etc.), aimed to give a cultural offer as a national as well as an international target. The events promoted in the city, and consequently the regeneration of some decayed areas of the city (the port and the old town), have not only led to an image enhancement and an impact on tourism, but also to an increase in demand for air transport and port activities. The port of Genoa increased traffic by 30% in the period 1994–1999, which is more than Valencia (21%) or Barcelona (16.5%) (Marshall, 2001). Cities like Turin and Genoa were able to transform their traditional industrial image to a renewed one. Through the organization of mega events these cities were able to attract the new European middle class. Furthermore, the branding strategy in these cases has been to renew the image without losing the heritage of the cities. Therefore, offering a place image inherent to the history of the area is vital in representing its identity. However this identity cannot be something superficial like a label applied to a territory; it has to share cultural contents and traditions of the place.

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

249

Tourists or city users perceive place as a system that can represent a unique and strong identity. This way the consumer of the place becomes vital in the construction of places. They, in effect, validate the construct of that place. In fact, one of the most important elements of the consumption of space is the way places are sold to tourists and city users. This involves the notions of uniqueness and authenticity of place. In this way the place differentiates its offer in the market increasing its competitiveness, since the consumer has to return if he/she wants that product or that experience. Such an advantage can exist if consumers believe that the place concerned guarantees uniqueness and authenticity. This introduction has considered a number of important issues to the structure of our study. First of all, we underlined how the consumption of goods is not only the satisfaction of a concrete need, but increasingly regards the symbolic dimension of the goods. This dimension concerns social status and thus individual identity. Secondly, we have highlighted how these immaterial characteristics also apply to the consumption of a place. In this case, a two-way relationship between territory and people has emerged: the two variables influence each other. Finally, it emerged how this mutual dialogue between the individual and the place is behind the establishment of local identity. Such an identity makes a location unique and original, and it makes the experience of that place unrepeatable. These points can be summarized in two main issues:  whether and how symbolic dimension is linked to the fruition of a place;  what the impact of the identity reconstruction of a location is in its user fruition. The discussion of these concepts will be delved into using data obtained from our survey on one of the most characteristic areas of Milan: the Navigli area.

THE CASE STUDY: THE NAVIGLI AREA Usually a tourist chooses Milan for shopping and fashion. Via Montenapoleone is definitely the place that best embodies these two elements. It perfectly represents the symbolic consumption that we alluded to in our introduction, that is, consumption of goods that enhances a social status. However, one of the most historically representative areas of the tradition of Milan is the Navigli area. The Navigli area is the place that most express the city and the inhabitants’ identity. There are many reasons: historically it has

250

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

been a goods yard, it is in the city center, it has always been densely populated by working class. Over the last forty years, its strong identity is no longer evident. That is the reason why we have focused on this place and how it is perceived by people. As we shall see in more detail below with the aid of data produced by our empirical research, the situation in the territory we considered in our analysis is mainly due to a loss of representativeness in relation to some aspects that characterize the history of Milan, in particular its historical image as a water city: Milan is located in a beautiful, rich and fertile plain, equidistant between two wonderful rivers, the Ticino and Adda [y] A surprisingly beautiful and wide moat surrounds the city on all sides and does not contain a putrid swamp or pond, but the living water sources, populated with fish and shrimp. (Our translation)

This is what the poet Bonvesin de la Riva wrote in De Magnalibus Mediolani in 1288. He demonstrated how Milan was perceived as a city with many waterways: the first so-called Naviglio Grande was in fact built in 1179. The river network in Milan was extended until around the nineteenth century having the triple purpose of a transport route to reach the city both from the Ticino and Adda rivers, as an irrigation network and as a defense system. Subsequently, river transport fell into the background compared to rail and road transport; production increased significantly necessitating the relocation of industries. This is the situation described by Marshall (2001) about Bilbao and Shanghai, but is also the case of the Navigli area of Milan. Consequently, also the function as an irrigation basin, transportation way and defense system were less used, and it was decided to cover part of the canals. This decision seems emblematic for the present situation: the partial coverage of the canals as a metaphor for the coverage of the Navigli area identity. The loss of the functional purpose of this place determined a loss in meaning and consequently a territory depletion, both concrete (the industries and the commercial market disappeared) and ideal (the function and the meaning were removed). Since the 1970s the area has lost its identity and its appeal, but continues to be popular given the presence of a large number of restaurants, bars and opportunities for entertainment.

METHODOLOGY The empirical research has been based on the administration of 821 questionnaires (Table 1). The aim was to note people’s perception (especially residents and users of the area) toward the Navigli area.

251

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

Table 1.

Quantity MI Center MI Navigli area MI North MI East MI West MI South Corsico Province Other Not responding

Questionnaires for Survey Zones.

Resident Questionnaires

Users Questionnaires

Business Questionnaires

Total

231

321 7 72 39 34 37 59

269

821 7 450 39 34 37 59 110 59 17 9

153

66 12

225

44 47 17 9

626

Milan

169

Province

Starting from the characteristics of the area we studied, three groups of users were identified:  People related to businesses and commercial activities;  Residents;  Users of the area. The survey primarily allowed the collection of quantitative data through three different questionnaires to three different sample types: (1) businesses and commercial activities (this data is not considered in this chapter); (2) the residents; (3) the users of the area covered by the survey. The data collected in the three samples have identified different images of the area. Since we made a field survey, it was also possible to make interviews to collect qualitative data. Thus, it was possible to analyze the information that has formed the basis of qualitative data relevant to our research. To obtain information from these groups three detection schemes were prepared and three main instruments were defined: (1) ‘Interview for businesses and commercial activities’: A sample of businesses tenants (bars, restaurants, clubs, shops, etc.) were interviewed to identify the flows involved by business activities. We differentiated the flows related to suppliers and those related to customers. This allowed us to determine the load of the pedestrian area (these sample results were not used for this chapter).

252

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

(2) ‘Residents’ Questionnaire’: Individually administered by a researcher to the specific target of people who live there. (3) ‘Users’ Questionnaire’: The target was people who ‘consume’ the area (referred to as ‘pedestrians’). The aim was to investigate the widespread perception of the Navigli area. The administration of the questionnaires began in early June 2009 and lasted until the end of September 2009. Resident Sample Composition The Navigli area has a predominantly young population (75% are under 45 years). Regarding the sex of respondents 62% are female and 38% are male. Regarding education, 48% of the people have a high school diploma and 38% have a university degree. Fourteen percent have only completed elementary or junior school (Table 2). User Sample Composition Fifty percent of those who frequent the area are between 25 and 33 years old. If one considers that another 25% are under 25, as many as 75% of the respondents were very young. Subsequently, it emerges that the main characteristic of the area is related to leisure and dining (Table 2). The sex composition in the sample of users follows the trend of residents, even though the difference between male and female is more moderate here: women are the majority (57%). Table 2.

Employment Status of Questionnaire Respondents.

Employment Status People with permanent contract Students Professionals Managers Retired people Workers Occasional workers Creative workers Unemployed Housewives

Navigli Residents

Navigli Users

44% 16% 10% 7% 6% 5% 4% 4% 2% 2%

32% 28% 11% 9% 5% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1%

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

253

In the case of education the gap between the resident sample and the user sample is higher. University graduates go up to 50% (the incidence in residents with a university degree was 38%), while the percentage of people who have a diploma decreases (43%) (residents was 47.5%) and those who have received primary education also decreases (7%). The interviewed sample of the user flow shows: 67.3% go there at least once a week. This result is the sum of those who go every day (18.7%), several times a week (21.3%), and once a week (27.3%). The percentage of those who go to the area sporadically is low (11.2%).

FINDINGS As previously mentioned, the opinion of the authors of this chapter is that the ‘Navigli’ area has now lost its representative capacity, but it maintains a wide user flow only because it has an advantageous position, that is, the revenues come only from the strategic location of the area and are due to the presence of a large number of restaurants and bars. The area does not attract tourists or users for itself, but it attracts consumers just for the businesses located in the place. The advantageous position is a danger because it is a phenomenon that facilitates immobility instead of innovation. In a sense, the consumer is forced to make use of that area because there are no alternatives. Were there other new and competitive areas, users would lose interest in the area and would migrate to where their need for consumption would be satisfied. The situation of the Navigli area of Milan is due to its competitive advantage. Being in a central location, the Navigli is strategically positioned both for the center of the city and for the city users’ flows. It seems strange because a strategic position usually is an advantage in the market. In general terms strategic position can be seen as an advantage. However, the area has not only demonstrated immobility in renewing its offer, but also its image. With the crisis in the sector of heavy industry, many areas of Milan have lost industries, and necessarily had to change their function in the economy of the city. Currently Milan is involved in many regeneration projects that have brought improvement to many areas. These areas are considered as competitors for Navigli, which instead lies in a state of urban blight. As anticipated, the data obtained from the questionnaires show that Milan is now perceived as a city without a link to the past. In fact the image of Milan is characterized by work (48% of respondents), fashion (39%), and traffic (42%) rather than factors associated with tradition (7%) (Fig. 1). In

254

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

Fig. 1.

How Milan Is Perceived?

addition, the survey shows how the ‘Navigli’ area is no longer evocative of traditional Milan, but is characterized only by recreational activities such as bars and restaurants (51%) (Fig. 2). The data is confirmed by the answer to the question ‘Why are you here today?’: 68% of interviewed users answered ‘for entertainment/dining.’ It is interesting to note how this data seems to contradict the results of Fig. 3, where 44% of the sample believed that the Navigli expresses one of the most typical features of Milan. This apparent discrepancy can be explained by the fact that the Navigli has lost its identity, although something typical remains. So much so that in the same question 19% of people consider the area a place as another, but which contains a huge potential for tourism and culture. In other words, it seems to be a perception that the Navigli have a link with the past, but this is not noticeable, it remains hidden. On one hand, the Navigli have lost their meaning and thus their authenticity, but on the other hand they possess strong potential, as if to say

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

Fig. 2.

Fig. 3.

255

Area Users and Their Perception of Navigli.

Residents and Their Perception of Navigli.

that ‘something is still burning under the ashes.’ We have seen that in Fig. 2; in that case we asked to ‘indicate which statement they considered close to the image of Navigli and which one was far away from it.’ The presence of bars and restaurants (51%) is the trait that distinguishes the Navigli area,

256

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

which is very far from the mood of the 1960s and 1970s (51%); where the main aspect of the area coincided with its function, a city port. Also in people’s perception canals are not compared to famed waterfronts as those of Paris or London (42%), where instead for these two European cities the regeneration was precisely oriented to create and strengthen the city’s image. This latter data is indicative of how the Navigli is not so representative for Milan, conversely to the Seine and the Thames, which are among the most remembered characteristics when one thinks of Paris or London. This difference between Milan and cities as Paris and London is also due to the lack of regeneration policies aimed to recover the waterfront in the case of Milan. This fact is underlined in Fig. 1 where the most representative nouns for the city identity are ‘work,’ ‘fashion,’ and ‘traffic.’ In addition these results show that the residents, despite being very attached to the land, believe that Milan is a city without traditions, even if they consider the Navigli area as one of the most typical places in the city (Fig. 3). In other words people recognize something typical, but not for the overall image of Milan (the image of Milan is far from the concept of ‘tradition’). The historical legacy of the area is indubitable as its importance in representing ‘The Old City,’ but this legacy seems to be overflowed and decayed. The user crowd of the Navigli is given only by the presence of bars and restaurants. People do not go to the Navigli to have a unique and unrepeatable experience. The representativeness of the area compared to Milan has fallen, in parallel with the aesthetic decay of the zone. We are facing an area that has not been affected by any kind of redevelopment or restoration work since it ceased to serve for transit and as a freight depot. Since then many renewal hypotheses have followed, but none have launched a plan that would produce a systemic redevelopment project for the area. Today, the area is affected by the absence of a regeneration project led by the local government; any changes have occurred spontaneously. The results of the survey showed that both residents and users of the area feel the need for a renewal that gives uniqueness to the area, improving the competitiveness of supply and thus increasing demand. In fact, the sample showed that users and residents not only desire physical improvement of the area, but also what regards the fulfillment of a visual and symbolic consumption. This demonstrates how important factors of place identity are important and how the competitive offer must necessarily be developed in a systemic perspective. Indeed, the first priority action indicated by the sample is the need for street furniture: 42% of users and 40% of residents (Fig. 4). This priority regards visual consumption. The second priority intervention needed by the area users (25%) is ‘more

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

Fig. 4.

257

Intervention Priorities for the Navigli Area.

events related to the image of the waterways of the Navigli’ while the fourth priority intervention for area users is to increase ‘the cultural offer’ (23%). These priorities of intervention regard the image of the territory and therefore constitute requirements related to the symbolic and cultural sphere based on place. The results that concern the residents have the same orientation. As a priority, residents indicated the need to intensify cultural offer (23%) and to increase the number of events related to the image of the waterways of the Navigli (21%), if we do not consider residents second and third priority interventions which are the need for less polluting and alternative vehicles (33%) and the extension of the navigation service to the suburbs of the city (25%) (Fig. 4). The analysis of these data indicates the way in which an area must enter the market. To put it better, an area must appear as an authentic unicum. This goal can be achieved by improving market competitiveness of the area through building or strengthening its identity. At the same time this authenticity, this ‘brand’ must be acknowledged in every element that constitutes the supply of that territory.

258

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

CONCLUSIONS The study analyzed how contemporary consumption is driven by many symbolic aspects that encourage the purchase of goods or a service. Later, the analysis addressed the problem of consumption related to a particular area assuming that a tourist destination must be able to express identity, an authentic image which distinguishes it from other places. Based on these concepts, the research objective was to test two basic issues:  whether and how symbolic dimension is linked to the fruition of a place;  what the impact of the identity reconstruction of a location is in its user fruition. Regarding the first issue, the Navigli area maintains a high flow due to its position, even though people are not satisfied with it because it is not perceived as a unique and distinctive place. Based on the data available regarding the second issue, we can say that identity is crucial both to the value of what is in the area (i.e., products and services) and to what makes the experience of the place more evocative. In fact, the findings highlight how Milan is perceived as a city where people live just because they work there. Moreover, it appears how the concept of urban space in the city is chaotic and without green spaces and how people are subjected to the stereotype that Milan is a ‘fashion capital’ without any reference and link to its traditions. Instead, the users perceive the Navigli area as fundamentally linked to the presence of bars and restaurants that no longer evoke the characteristics of a river harbor that had the Darsena (the dock at the conjunction to the Navigli). Furthermore, users believe that the Navigli area does not have the attractiveness of the riverfront of cities like London or Paris. Nevertheless, 36% of respondents consider Navigli a fascinating place with a cultural environment and many wine and food amenities (Fig. 2). In the same direction, 44% of the area users consider the Navigli area as one of the most typical places in Milan (Fig. 3). The recognition of this traditional aspect is somewhat hidden. In fact, many interviewees answered currently that the Navigli area appears to be far from the mood of the 1960s and 1970s. It proves that the Navigli have strong characterization, but currently this aspect is unnoticed because there is decay of the place in comparison to the image of a river harbor that has always characterized the area. Indeed the urban decay is one of the other features that is confirmed by the question ‘what are the intervention priorities to improve the Navigli image?’ (Fig. 4). As we said before most of the preferences identify first ‘urban design and structures’ priorities then ‘the need

Users’ Perception and Representative Image of the ‘Navigli’ Area

259

for less polluting and alternative vehicles,’ and next the number of events related to the image of the waterways of Navigli and the cultural offer. This trend is corroborated with the results in Fig. 2 that shows the need for urban and architectural regeneration. The decline of the area is also evidenced by the area users’ request for better service and transport. This improvement is not only desirable in terms of frequency and range, but also in terms of pollution. In conclusion, a territory will be competitive on the market if it is able to differentiate itself, offering unique and original experiences (perceptively, culturally and visually) if compared with the ones of other areas. The place must possess original and typical identity to be competitive in the market. Therefore, the services and products offered will share the identity value that characterizes the area. The goods and services then, sharing a number of meanings with the territory, will be able to meet the needs of contemporary consumers, related to a symbolic economy where the ‘experiential universe’ is more important than the utility of the goods. This case study shows how an area can lose competitiveness if it is based exclusively on an advantageous position without a systemic action on everything that makes up the offer of that place. An urban regeneration project with good chances for success needs to satisfy not only the traditional types of consumption, but also the symbolic ones.

NOTE 1. The program started in 1985 as an official program of the European Community that elects a city each year (too see past European Capitals of Culture, look at http://ec.europa.eu/culture/our-programmes-and-actions/doc2485_en.htm).

REFERENCES Auge`, M. (1995). Non-places. Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London: Verso. Bobbio, L., & Guala, C. (2002). Olimpiadi e Grandi Eventi. Roma: Carocci Editore. Dall’Ara, G. (2009). Il Marketing Degli Eventi. Matelica: Halley Editore. Diamantini, D., & Martinotti, G. (2009). Urban civilization from yesterday to the next day. Napoli: ScriptaWeb. Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. New York, NY: Basic Books. Getz, D. (1991). Festivals, special events and tourism. New York, NY: van Nostrand Reinhold.

260

STEFANO FORBICI AND DAVIDE DIAMANTINI

Gottdiener, M. (2000). The consumption of space and the spaces of consumption. In: M. Gottdiener (Ed.), New forms of consumption: Consumers, culture, and commodification (pp. 265–284). New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc. Guala, C. (2007). Mega Eventi. Modelli e Storie di Rigenerazione Urbana. Roma: Carocci. Hiller, H. H. (2000). Mega-events, urban boosterism and growth strategies: An analysis of the objectives and legitimations of the Cape Town 2004 Olympic bid. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(2), 439–458. Hirsch, F. (1976). The social limits to growth. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Holt, D. B. (2002). Why do brands cause trouble? A dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(June), 70–90. Il Vertice Maledetto. (2010). Rai Educational, La Storia siamo noi. Retrieved from http:// www.lastoriasiamonoi.rai.it/puntata.aspx?id¼209 Kavaratzis, M., & Ashworth, G. J. (2005). City branding: An effective assertion of identity or a transitory marketing trick? Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 96(5), 506–514. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Mansvelt, J. R. (2005). Geographies of consumption. London: London University Press. Martinotti, G. (2006). Tecnologie per la conoscenza e per la mobilita`. In: A. Pozzali (Ed.), Conoscenza senza distanze (pp. 21–35). Milano: Guerini e Associati. Marshall, R. (2001). Waterfront in post-industrial cities. London: Spon Press Taylor & Francis Group. Past European Capitals of Culture. (2011). European Commission. Retrieved from http:// ec.europa.eu/culture/our-programmes-and-actions/doc2485_en.htm Overton, J. (2010). The consumption of space: Land, capital and place in the New Zealand wine industry. Geoforum, 41(5), 752–762. Pozzi, C., & Martinotti, G. (2004). From Seattle to Salonicco (and Beyond). Political tourism in second generation metropolis. Urban Public Economics Review, 1, 37–61. Richards, G., & Wilson, J. (2004). The impact of cultural events on city image: Rotterdam, cultural capital of Europe 2001. Urban Studies, 41(10), 1931–1951. Rizzi, P., & Dioli, I. (2010). From strategic planning to city branding: Some empirical evidence in Italy. PASOS Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 8(3), 39–49. Sacco, P., & Viviani, M. (2003). Scarsita`, benessere, liberta` nel contesto dell’economia dell’identita`. Istituzioni e Sviluppo Economico, 1, 5–41. Sen, A. (2000). Lo Sviluppo e` liberta`. Milano: Mondadori. Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real and imagined places. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Twitchell, J. B. (2004). Branded nation: The marketing of megachurch, college Inc., and museumworld. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Urry, J. (1995). Consuming places. London: Sage. Witt, U. (2010). Symbolic consumption and the social construction of product characteristics. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 21(1), 17–25.

CHAPTER 12 YOUTH POLICIES, SOCIAL SANITATION, AND CONTESTED SUBURBAN NIGHTSCAPES Jordi Nofre ABSTRACT During these past years, contemporary urban entertainment economy has been increasingly driven by social and spatial inequality and segmentation of consumer markets. This dominant mode of production has involved a displacement of older modes of working-class nightlife. However, social resistances mainly played by suburban young working classes are being especially (re)produced during their nighttime leisure activities. In the case of Barcelona (Catalonia), youth policies carried out by local administration during these past three decades have intended to reinforce social sanitation through the re-catalanization of its suburbs and by marginalizing social and cultural practices of the young suburban working classes. Focusing on the Catalan capital, this chapter explores how a suburban otherness is mainly built up through the (re)production of highly politicized suburban nightscapes, which are largely related to the claiming of a Spanished ‘suburban’ identity, clashing with the Catalan official one. This chapter ends up opening a debate about the relationship

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 261–281 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011015

261

262

JORDI NOFRE

of the re-bordering of postcrisis urban inequalities, the collapse of social cohesion in suburbs, and the emergence of new topographies of urban and suburban power in Barcelona. Keywords: Young working classes; suburban nightscapes; social resistances; identity; leisure consumption; Barcelona

INTRODUCTION During the past 30 years, many capitalist cities have used urban renewal processes to resize their urban landscapes through cultural strategies that emphasize corporative entertainment and hubs of leisure (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003; Gottdiener, 2001; Hannigan, 1998). This kind of new urban economy plays a key role in the branding of global cities. But local governments have not produced a homogenous social framework. Chatterton and Hollands (2003) suggest that the contemporary urban entertainment economy is driven by social and spatial inequality and segmentation of consumer markets. Besides, the (re)production of global branded products takes a significant importance in some gentrification processes (Kumar, 1995). This dominant mode of production is displacing older, historic modes of working-class nightlife largely connected to Fordist forms of social practices. This new hegemonic nightlife may be considered as a postindustrial mode of corporately driven nightlife production in the consumption-led city (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003). There is no doubt that consumption and leisure has become central in postsubcultures and youth identities (Hollands, 1995; Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003; White, 1999; Willis, 1990). Social resistances primarily expressed during nighttime leisure activities develop among suburban young working classes. However, it is surprising that, along the second half of the twentieth century, Anglo-Saxon social sciences and humanities have not given much thought to the relation between youth subcultures and their nightlife consumption and to the role that this played in the configuration of youth identities. What Stuart Hall suggested in his book Encoding/Decoding (1980) may be useful to situate this text. Hall considers subcultures as a source of resistance by suggesting that the main variable to consider is social class, whereas age, gender, and ethnicity belong to least explicative categories. He suggests that cultural producers write their own ideologies and political positions in their products to pass them on to consumers. Such ideologies may be accepted or

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

263

negotiated. But consumers may also reject these values, beliefs, and opinions (Hall, 1980). Since the 1990s, nightlife and youth studies have been mainly focused in violence episodes during nighttime leisure activities, including Allen, Nicholas, Salisbury, and Wood (2003), Finney (2004), Eckersley and Reeder (2006), Hobbs, Winlow, Hadfield, and Lister (2005), O’Brien, Hoobs, and Westmarland (2008) and Recasens (2008). But there has not been much work dealing with the relationship between nightlife promotion and social homogenization. For that very reason, what Henri Lefebvre (1974) suggested in his book entitled La Production de l’Espace may be pretty useful to explore such relationship. Lefebvre (1968, p. 1974) asserted that great urban transformations had become one of the most important strategies to clean urban space and even re-moralize society. But Lefebvre also wondered why young people looked more rebellious, less socialized but showing a strong social conformity, whereas, at the same time, they recognized that elites manipulated their daily life and space even in a damaging way without embarking in massive revolts. According to such situationist point of view, the space of bureaucratic politics produces, imposes and reinforces social homogeneity (Lefebvre, 1974). Many have argued that capitalist downtowns have recently become urban thematic parks (Edensor, 1998; Hannigan, 1998; Judd, 2003; Lefebvre, 1968, 1974), in which nightlife promotion plays a key role. What has been suggested up to now seem to reinforce Lefebvre (1968) and Wouters’ (1986) thesis about the reinforcement of the close relationship between social control and urban space. Although there are no works dealing with the relationship between youth policies and social homogenization in contemporary Southern European cities, undoubtedly youth policies carried out by most of the Southern European City Councils have recently become one of the main strategies for the social sanitation in suburban areas (Nofre, 2009a).1 Social sanitation does not refer to public health policies, but to social cleaning in those working-class areas. Works dealing with this phenomenon in the case of Southern European cities are scarce and shows an unequal quality. In fact, during these past decades, youth debates have been depoliticized, favoring British post-subcultural theories (Feixa, Saura, & De Castro, 2003; Muggleton; 2000; Redhead, 1990; Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003). Focusing on the case of Barcelona, this chapter demonstrates how youth policies carried out by Catalan and local administration during these past three decades have been led to reinforce social sanitation being enclosed by a re-catalanization of its suburban areas, marginalizing the social and cultural practices of the young suburban working classes. Using Pere Lo´pez’s (1991) discussion of social sanitation in Barcelona downtown just before Olympic

264

JORDI NOFRE

Games in 1992 as a starting point, this chapter highlights how a significant part of suburban young working classes contest such re-catalanization policies by claiming and consuming Spanish cultural products. This chapter emphasizes how this suburban otherness is mainly built up through the (re)production of highly politicized suburban nightscapes, which are largely related to the claiming of a Spanished ‘suburban’ identity, clashing with the Catalan official one. This chapter ends up by opening a debate about the relationship of the re-bordering of postcrisis urban inequalities, the collapse of social cohesion in suburbs, and the emergence of new topographies of urban and suburban power in Barcelona. Methodologically, this chapter is based on Ulf Hannerz’s (1980) suggestion that the urban ethnographer ought to have a greater methodological flexibility as well as an inventiveness attitude. In that sense, both Hannerz (1980) and Wynne (1998) points of view have been largely considered in this work, as their suggestions offer a solid methodological eclecticism, whereas deconstruction (Derrida, 1967) has been used to analyze those documents dealing on social, cultural, and youth policies published by local administrations; transduction (Lefebvre, 1968) has been used to carry out an ongoing feedback between conceptual framework and empirical observations. The use of anthropological, sociological, and geographic qualitative fieldwork techniques has established a new subfield based on Peto´nnet (1982) discussion of floating observation. This kind of observation consists of strolling with no precise destination; letting oneself be carried along by temporary meetings, with an available and vacant look, independently of circumstances, and compiling information with no a priori assumptions. Fieldwork has been completed by carrying out 32 semi-structured interviews in situ. They have been conducted with young people aged from 15 to 34 as a way of supplementing the main data generated through floating observation. Furthermore, my experience working during two years as assessor for political foundations linked to the main local and Catalan government party (Socialist Party of Catalonia, PSC) has allowed me to get a high level of access as well as intimate insider knowledge, which has been pretty useful to deconstruct public documents that are analyzed later.

YOUTH POLICIES AS SOCIAL AND MORAL CONTROL As a result of deindustrialization, current nighttime leisure economy plays a central role in the generation of income in many Western cities. Even in this new urban context, ruling classes continue to consider working-class leisure

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

265

as a source of vice and moral deviance since the industrial revolution (Cunningham, 1980). Paul Chatterton and Robert Hollands assert that nowadays ‘the night continues to be heavily influenced by Fordist concerns for tighter regulation, social control and zoning, due to lingering moral panics about lawlessness and disorder’ (2003, p. 48). A detailed reading of the Barcelona Youth Survey (Servei d’Avaluacio` I Estudis, 2003a) allows to see that youth cultural consumption in the Catalan capital is highly segregated according to the district of residence and, therefore, social class. Data and workshop documents published by the Barcelona City Council reveal some concerns of ruling classes about the new ‘deviant’ social behaviors of young suburban working classes. While young upper-middle classes, who are mainly living in the inner city, tend to spend their leisure time by consuming tangible cultural products with the implicit objective to continue accumulating cultural capital and social distinction – in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1979) terms – the young lower-middle classes and working classes living in suburbs tend to spend their leisure time by socializing with friends and family. However, these activities often use public space – public parks, for instance – in a more intensive way those of the young upper-middle classes, who prefer to use private spaces as coolest bars or even night lounge clubs (Nofre, 2007, 2009a). Most of Barcelona’s young people go out during nighttime in their own district: 64.4% of downtown venues’ customers aged 15–29 lives in this district. In the case of Les Corts, one of the wealthiest Barcelona’s districts, the percentage is 59.4%, and in the case of Gra`cia, the coolest Bohemian district in the Catalan capital, the percentage increases to 68.4%.2 Confronted with the social and spatial segregation of cultural consumption, Barcelona City Hall has provided responses through the increasingly strategic economic planning as well as youth and cultural strategic policies especially relative to nighttime leisure activities during latter years. In that sense, in 1998, Barcelona City Council published Barcelona BonaNit (Servei d’Avaluacio´ i Estudis, 1998), which contains a large number of proposals to (re)produce an ‘alternative nightlife.’ In this strategic document, day time is seen as insufficient for a full socialization of youth. For that very reason, nightlife becomes one of the ‘spaces of freedom’ for young people. However, Barcelona BonaNit pretends to reinforce ‘control systems’ on nighttime leisure activities through six guidelines: (1) the re-adaptation of those services and programs faced with new (complex and fragmented) reality; (2) the full development of this Barcelona BonaNit project to promote alternative nighttime leisure activities (which should counteract new ‘deviant’ social behaviors, new ‘disorders’); (3) the promotion and adaptation of different programs and services (due to the increasingly complex and fragmented

266

JORDI NOFRE

leisure demand); (4) the recompilation and diffusion of both alternative social and cultural supply (that does not involves ‘disorders’); (5) the organization of workshops and detailed studies dealing with nightlife in Barcelona (to promote an on-going updating of social control mechanisms over such ‘disorders’); and (6) the financial contribution of social control with each district (or how to improve the financial system of these mechanisms of social control). Such guidelines seem to reveal that local government is relying on the (re)production of new spaces of socialization for young people through the assimilation of differences and dissidences. Current hegemonic nightlife system based on bars, pubs, and discotheques are regulated, involving the exclusion of possible ‘elements of disorder’ involving lower classes and marginal individuals. Such social exclusion used to be carried out by security staff members of venues, which is regulated by the right to refuse admission considered in the Decree 200/1999 (DOGC no. 2942–30/07/1999). However, those alternative nighttime leisure activities quoted by Barcelona BonaNit program are the same ones that are consumed by young upper middle classes in the Barcelona Youth Survey (2003). As Barcelona BonaNit suggests, ‘studying, doing sport, visiting museums and expositions, doing cultural activities, riding by bike, linguistic exchange couples (y) are examples of activities that increase local cultural supply. In short, we want to provide normality to nightlife’ (Regidoria de Joventut de Barcelona, 1998, p. 1). Is it ‘unusual’ to go out to bars, pubs, and discotheques? What does ‘normality’ mean? May it be seen as a wish of homogeneity? These activities were originally proposed from Barcelona Youth Council. This public organization is mainly formed by young activists and teenager supporters of the main local political parties. Furthermore, it should take into account that visiting museums, attending small-format theatre sessions, or doing other cultural activities, for example, riding a bike, are those preferred activities pointed out before (Servei d’Avaluacio´ i Estudis, 2003a). In fact, Barcelona BonaNit labels as ‘non-normal’ that suburban young working class-led nightlife, which often takes place in marginal industrial areas of the Catalan capital. The desire of the Catalan and local governments to remove ‘deviant’ leisure activities in Barcelona’s suburban areas is not only one of the main strategies contemplated in the Youth National Planning 2010 but it has also become a key point of the main cultural strategies for urban renewal carried out by the Barcelona City Hall during these past years. In that sense, the first guideline of this Youth National Planning 2010 is to adopt educative and cultural policies

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

267

that will consolidate the ‘integral formation of the individual’ through the (forced?) promotion of ‘the national identity and Catalan language.’ Such new moral framework proposed by the Catalan Government is also shared by the Barcelona City Council. The most recent strategic planning for nighttime leisure activities is entitled Joves i Nit (Servei d’Avaluacio´ i Estudis, 2003b), which aims ‘to hold responsible and make aware to young people about the civic use of nightlife’ (2003). However, which values and behavior codes indicate a ‘civic use’ of nightlife and which they do not? Bakhtin (1963) and Walton (1998) suggest that nightlife of the late nineteenth-century Great Britain used to be characterized by an excess of food and drinking; peep shows; gypsies; and other immigrants such as exotic objects, ventriloquists, phrenologists, and astrologists. The users of public space were flooded by ‘screaming, flailing, bumping, crushing, vertigo and bodily exposure’ (Walton, 1998, p. 94). Early twentieth-century Barcelona also showed a similar urban nightscape in some specific downtown areas. Bembo (1912) noticed unhealthy conditions and misery of many small-sized working class-led bars. In 1910, harbor neighborhood of the Catalan city was featured by a ‘jumble of misery, vice and ignorance’ (Villar, 1996, pp. 34–36). Moreover, some venues had become focus because of the sexual transmission diseases such as syphilis. This was an important concern to the ruling classes, who relied on improving health conditions of urban space by applying social sanitation measures. Hence Barcelona’s civil governor Eduardo Sanz Escartı´ n sentenced in 1917 that all bars and so-called cafe´s-cantantes ought to be closed at 3 a.m. at latest. Such ‘moralizing’ as a reply to misery and vice was enclosed by a persecution of drug consumption mainly played by local working classes, whereas morphine and cocaine had become elements of social distinction for local upper classes (Villar, 1996). All this was completed with a stronger campaign against homosexuality, quick-change artists, and transsexuals who were seen as mental illnesses by both ruling classes and most of right-wing intellectualists, as Guillermo Befesse (1933). In fact, since the middle of the nineteenth century, the conservative ruling classes of Barcelona began to form a new bourgeois culture based on order, hierarchy, discipline, well-done work, and civility. It was about a new culture based on public and social hygiene, elegance, catholic morals, a refined style of dressing, and a great devotion for Victorianism and Wagnerism (Duarte, 1999; Marfany, 1995; Ucelay-Da Cal, 2003). This new bourgeois culture was intended to remove daily social practices of working classes by identifying them with misery and nauseating dirtiness of some downtown areas. But also they were identified with flamenco art, which was the main cultural and artistic expression of working classes themselves

268

JORDI NOFRE

(Marfany, 1995). Such conservative and catholic Catalan nationalism became a cultural and political strategy of the ruling classes in Barcelona. Hence, the fact of re-catalanizing suburban working classes became the main guideline of the political, social, and cultural agenda for this new catholic Catalanist project of late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Marfany, 1995). However, some values and behavior codes that were proposed from this bourgeois political and cultural project (Noucentisme) may be found in the current youth and cultural policies, even in the cultural strategies for urban renewal in downtown (Nofre, 2009a). Therefore, the desire of the ruling classes of re-moralizing suburban young working classes may be also considered as a wish of reinforcing of social control. Parsons (1951) suggested that, through a normative consensus, certain common values are required to assure social order. Some authors suggest that common values use to be rigged by the new cultural intermediaries (Archer, 1988, p. 34). The achievement of these common values in a homogeneous social context is especially significant in the suburban areas. In such areas, ‘whole of conditions take place for a perfect domain, for a refined exploitation of people, who are exploited as producers, products consumers and as space consumers at the same time’ (Lefebvre, 1968, p. 43). In 1996, the Culture Institute of Barcelona decided to reconsider cultural policies by developing new more innovative and creative strategies. As Culture Councilor Ferran Mascarell (2003, p. 4) suggested, ‘new ideas and values should be created to achieve a stronger social cohesion in order to construct better ways of coexistence, by assuring more efficient practices of interculturality, participation and democracy.’ A critical interpretation of his statement would reveal a certain desire of promoting new strategies for social control. In that same sense, Pep Subiro´s (1999, p. 34), director of the Barcelona Culture Institute, asserted that ‘fortunately or unfortunately, there is no big enough public power to impose and develop a hegemonic cultural policy.’ Why was it unfortunately? The latest version of the Strategic Planning of the Cultural Sector of Barcelona (entitled Nous Accents 2006) suggests that ‘community centres should be useful to join more and more different citizens under an only social core’ (Institut de Cultura de Barcelona, 2006, p. 50). This would reveal some concerns of the City Council of Barcelona about the existence of cultural resistances especially located at suburban youth sectors. Hence, Nous Accents 2006 (p. 22) warns that, whereas there is a significant volume of loyal consumers of official culture, ‘there is an important part of young population that does not consume that culture offered by municipal cultural equipments (although they maybe are cultural consumers in their own

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

269

homes).’ The following section explores this part of young people by showing their very reasons to not consume Catalan official culture, but Spanished products as ‘suburban contestation.’

CONSUMING SUBURBAN NIGHTSCAPES, (RE)PRODUCING ALTERITY The fact that most of the official culture promotion in Barcelona is currently oriented to youth allows suggesting that culture policies have become an extended appendix of youth policies and vice versa. But it also shows that social and cultural resistances are emerging as contestations to the branding of urban space (Nofre, 2007, 2009a). Raymond Williams (1958) suggested that culture might be defined as the signifying system through which a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced, and explored. Many years later, Lily Kong (1995), taking into account William’s suggestions as a starting point for her research, suggested that music may be used to (re)produce hegemony or to express resistance. Many recent British social researchers point out that violence during nighttime leisure activities typically use to involve young males who do not know one another well (Allen et al., 2003; Hustschinson, 1998). However, this is not really true in the case of the Barcelona suburbs: there is also a politic background based in two main issues. On the one hand, the very important role of the increasing politicization of youth identities must be taken into account. This politicization is based on the duality Catalan nationalist/Spanish nationalist or, in other words, based on the confrontation between consumption of Catalanness and consumption of Spanishness. On the other hand, this political background in youth violence episodes have also to do with the consolidation of the human fear’s ecology (Davis, 1992) and the fear to otherness as emergent elements of negotiation in urban space. In fact, suburban nightscapes in Barcelona are based on spaces highly characterized by social and spatial segregation regarding not only customers’ social status (or its appearance) but also the identification with specific ethnic groups (as gypsies). Here, I focus on how music plays a key role in the class-related politicization of suburban nightscapes in Barcelona. What Costa et al. (1996) suggested about youth neotribalization as a result of the deterioration of living conditions of young suburban working classes should not be underestimated when studying subcultures’ configurations in Western societies. In the case of Barcelona, since the late 1970s, some youth

270

JORDI NOFRE

working-class subcultures such as rockers and teddy boys have come to express resistance to the prevailing Catalan nationalist political and cultural hegemony (re)produced by the inner city’s ruling classes. But the birth of these resistances cannot be explained without considering the Spanish fascist regime not only as merely a confrontation between Spain and Catalonia but also an alliance between conservative ruling classes of Iberian peripheral regions and aristocratic as well financial elites of Madrid, all them organized against that left-wing government, which won democratic elections in 1936 (Navarro, 2006). This note about the contemporary history of Spain allows better understanding why suburban music scene in all Spanish cities often (but not always) show a leftist (even Marxist) semiotics in confrontation with elitized music (re)produced from the inner city. In the case of Barcelona, while rock and roll (both Spanish and Anglo-Saxon) was mainly consumed by young working classes, Catalan folk (so-called Canc- o´ Catalana), Laietanian rock (the origins of the later so-called Catalan rock in the 90s), jazz fusion, and other minor genres were mainly consumed by young liberal upper-middle classes of the inner city. If Spanish was the common tongue for the first (largely due to the fact that they were descendents of Southern Spain immigrants coming to Catalonia after Civil War), the Catalan tongue – despite the prohibition by the Spanish fascist government – was daily used by the young liberal upper-middle classes. While most of young working classes live in the suburbs of Barcelona, young upper-middle classes live in wealthy neighborhoods of the Catalan capital. Largely due to the transmission of tastes from parents to descendants as well as due to contemporary ‘sanitized’ youth and cultural policies carried out by local and Catalan administration since fascism was set down, the resulting social, cultural, and political dimension of ‘center-periphery’ in Barcelona and its metropolitan area largely coincides with its physical dimension. To better understand how this duality is spatially and socially constructed, a detailed reading of the social, political, and cultural chronicle written by Jose´ Marı´ a Sanz ‘Loquillo’ about the city of Barcelona in the late 1970s and earlier 1980s could be very useful. For most Barcelona’s (not only young) people, ‘Loquillo’ has been (and he is still) the most widely recognized, legitimized suburban voice in Barcelona. His book Barcelona Ciudad shows a brilliant representation of the social and political duality that is still featuring the Barcelona’s society: ‘The commonly-named chiruqueros3– who are enemies of all urban and cosmopolitan, with their face seeming an spinach and more boring than a fungus – always walk wearing a backpack, dreaming an independent Catalonia and hoping to get on all we to the Sinai

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

271

Mount of the Catalan nationalism: the Canigo´.4 If this about the mountain seems us terrible, their individual aesthetics horrifies us, based on ugliness, beard and country-like witches’ sabbath. They spend their days playing the flute and singing Raimon5 and traditional Catalan songs. We young urbanites think about country life and patriotism like national flags and revolution. In two words: A SHIT. We dream adventures lighted by neon and the promiscuity of the rock and roll of Lou Reed. In this orgy of protests, the city is the world for us’ (Sanz, 2010, p. 55; my translation). Jose Marı´ a Sanz ‘Loquillo’ (2010) points out how punk rock lyrics written by suburban youth in the late 1970s dealt with ‘street realities’ really different from those ones that took place in the bourgeois (rural) Catalonia. Different everyday contexts between suburbanscapes and rural/bourgeoisscapes are the very reasons of today’s social and political duality of music consumption in Catalonia. This, together with the existence of different socioeconomic problems of greater Barcelona regarding the rest of Catalan small cities, is what has been largely justifying the (re)production of today’s politicized divergence between suburban and rural-rooted lyrics of different music groups in Catalonia. To combat the force of Spanish rock music produced in the Barcelona suburbs during later 1970s and along the 1980s, conservative and nationalist Catalan Government formed by the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) and Democratic Union of Catalonia (UDC) and externally supported by the Catalan independentist party named Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) was setting up a new Catalan rock scene as well as renewed nightscapes that aimed at minimizing the presence of Spanish music in Barcelona and other Catalan cities. This action could be seen as a strategy for the ‘cultural colonization of Barcelona’s suburbs’ (Nofre, 2007, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). In the earlier eighties, Catalan administrations pretended to import the most important Catalan cultural elements that were featuring the cultural scene of the inner city since the birth of the Catalan nationalism in the late nineteenth century (as theater, majorettes, folkie chorus, associations of excursionists, etc.) to be introduced in all suburbs by seeking not only their social homogenization but also a social sanitation through their (re)catalanization and (re)moralization. It should not be overlooked that these suburban areas created under the Spanish fascist government in the second half of the twentieth century aimed at accommodating all slum dwellers that immigrated to Catalonia after the Spanish Civil War (Nofre, 2007, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). Against strategies of (re)catalanization and (re)moralization promoted by the ruling classes of the inner city, it emerges a Spanished suburban otherness in working-class

272

JORDI NOFRE

suburbs of the Catalan capital. However, this suburban otherness was not exclusively played by rockers, punks, and teddy boys. The lasting impact of the contingent of immigrants (more than one million of individuals) that mainly came from Southern Spain (Andalusia and Extremadura) along the period 1940–1975, after the Spanish Civil War, should not be underestimated. While the Spanish fascist regime folklorized most of artistic expressions from former Spain peripheries namely as Catalonia, Valencian Community, Basque Country, and Galicia, flamenco music was commodified and nationalized as ‘the only true Spanish culture’ by censuring most of protest-related flamenco lyrics. Then Spanish fascist regime created a new flamenco-like music under the umbrella of the socalled national-flamenquism (A´lvarez Caballero, 1992), much more festive, even carnivalesque, with no protest lyrics, as sevillanas. Together with the commodification and sanitation of the most festive subtypes of flamenco as rumbas, such Spanish ‘true culture’ largely featured cultural consumption of those individuals from Southern Spain who immigrated to most important Spanish industrial areas as Catalonia. For that very reason, the fact that nowadays most of the immigrants’ descendants in Catalonia prefer consuming Spanished or Latin music rather than Catalan music should not be a surprise: it should be understood as a demand for and consumption of Spanishness faced with that Catalan cultural and political hegemony (re)produced from the inner city. Largely due to conservative and nationalist government of Catalonia in the 1980s and 1990s marginalized rock and roll, rockabilly, and punk scene consumed by some youth suburban groups as a consumption of Spanishness, the Madrid-rooted cultural industry saw the consumption of such Spanishness by descendants of Spanish immigrants living in the Barcelona’s suburbs as a greater market opportunity. This is the case of the commonly known ‘cholos’ and ‘cholas.’ One of the most important subcultures that have recently the Spanished suburban otherness in Barcelona is the so-called cholos (boys) and cholas (girls). These are both native working-class gypsy-like boys and girls aged 13–25 living in the suburbs of Barcelona.6 They take, transform, and enhance gypsy aesthetics7 and ethics to claim – as it has been previously pointed out – a suburban otherness faced with that identity (re)produced by the Barcelona ruling classes living in the inner city (Nofre, 2007).8 Indeed, their cultural consumption strongly holds Spanish nationalist symbolism, which ‘clashes’ with Catalan nationalist symbolism contained in the most of the official products promoted by the Catalan cultural industry. Spanish nationalist symbols consumed by ‘cholos’ and ‘cholas’ belong to the cultural

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

273

fields of garment, music, language, uses of public space, gastronomy, shopping, and nighttime leisure (Nofre, 2007). The radically different styles of music that are consumed by both young upper-middle classes (new Catalan pop music) and young working classes (flamenco-like music, Spanish and Latino American commercial pop rock, and reggaeton music) prove the existence of a highly politicized, socially, and spatially segregated cultural consumption (Nofre, 2009b, 2009c), even in nighttime leisure activities. Undoubtedly, the act of consuming specific nightlife venues may be considered not only as a social distinction/exclusion but also as a strategy of symbolic appropriation of urban space (Nofre 2007, 2009a). Each social environment tends to promote its own order and rationality, which is regulated by public administration mainly through local acts. This fact holds evident class-conscious semiotics and involves a specific strategy of distinction and exclusion of the ‘otherness.’ Therefore, some social groups tend to (re)produce nightlife ghettos (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003). In the case of Barcelona, most of them are located at suburban industrial areas. For instance, and according to the data offered by the Barcelona Youth Survey (2003), 80% of nightlife consumers aged 15–29 who use to go out to La Maquinista Shopping Centre venues live in the Nou Barris District itself – a working-class suburban area – whereas the rest of them live in Sant Martı´ (the adjoining working-class district). Furthermore, a detailed reading of this survey suggests that those urban spaces where different youth subcultures could eventually be in contact have all but disappeared (Nofre, 2009a). As a result of the promotion of a certain distinguished clubbing in the inner city by the City Council that involves social exclusion (Malbon, 1999; Thornton, 1995),9 today’s Barcelona nightlife is based on the (re)production of social distinction/exclusion spaces, shaping a highly social class-related segregation. The ghettoization10 of nighttime leisure activities of suburban working classes in Barcelona within specific urban areas and nightscapes reveals that it exists a certain demand of suburban otherness, which is mostly (re)produced by latinos and ‘cholos’ mostly during their nighttime leisure activities being often located in suburban areas and characterized by the reconversion of marginal industrial areas into nightlife clusters. Suburban nightscapes consumed by ‘latinos’ and ‘cholos’ are characterized by a strong sexualization of girls’ aesthetics as loyalty strategies for masculine customers, alcoholfueled bodies, a strong consumption of Spanishness, and often episodes of youth violence (Nofre, 2009a). The consumption of both flamenco-like and reggaeton music in these nightlife ghettos means a certain politicization of

274

JORDI NOFRE

this marginal nightlife, considering it as a ‘contested’ suburban nightscape. To better understand how this suburban nightscape becomes a contested space mainly through consumption of Spanishness, I describe the ‘Malalts de Festa,’ the discotheque mostly consumed by ‘cholos’ and ‘cholas’ living in the Southern side of the Barcelona metropolitan area. Like many Western discotheques, the clientele of the Malalts de Festa has changed over the years: ‘It was very posh when it opened ten or fifteen years ago, but now it is very cholo’ (Inma, 34 years old).11 The design of its dance rooms is influenced by both tropical and industrial aesthetics. This could be seen as a representation of the daily routine of working classes: work, leisure, and work. In fact, the tropicalization and carnivalization of the main dance rooms Malalts de Festa emulates false, de-territorialized ‘non-productive’ space, which avoids any individual creativity (Sherman, 1986) and reinforces social control over working-class leisure (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1947). The sexualization of nightlife is also a major characteristic of suburban nightscapes in Barcelona. Girls (both feminine clientele and bar staff) become pure objects of sexual desire, sexualizing their image by wearing Playboy t-shirts, tops and mini-shorts, transparencies, visible underwear, and so on. Moreover, Malalts de Festa discotheque organizes SexDating parties monthly. There is no doubt that this sexualization of nightlife becomes an efficient strategy of customer loyalty in this type of suburban nightscapes. But also it becomes an otherness in contrast to that ordered, hierarchical, and civilized new middle classes-led nightlife located in the inner city as well as wealthy neighborhoods. Beyond sexualization and alcohol-fueled bodies as strategies of nightlife promotion in the suburban nightscapes of Barcelona, the key role that consumption of Spanishness plays in the configuration of this working classled nightlife in the suburbs of the Catalan capital should not be underestimated. Such Spanishness is mainly consumed through the everyday use of Spanish tongue, wearing Spanished garment and through consuming flamenco-like music. The fact of wearing the Osborne Bull – one of the main Spanish icons – or the Spanish flag painted on t-shirts as well as wearing Lois jeans (a Spanish garment firm that has bull as its corporative logo) together with the fact of carrying both male and female gypsy-like bijouterie becomes one of the main manners to show and consume Spanishness. However, the most important manner is by consuming Spanished music, as flamenco-like one. What it must be understood as flamenco-like music is that music produced by groups such as Estopa, Los Chichos, El Fary, or Lola Flores ‘La Lola de Espan˜a’ (this last one, the Queen of Spanish song under the Spanish fascist

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

275

regime). If El Fary, Los Chichos, or Lola Flores or sevillanas may be considered as symbols of national flamenquism created under the Spanish fascist government,12 Estopa is absolutely a different music phenomenon.13 But when some of these symbols of Spanish music sound any session of Malalts de Festa, a collective enthusiasm explodes. Actually this kind of music does not sound in any public radio station set up by the Catalan administration. The social and spatial duality found in contemporary Barcelona and its suburbs helps to explain the consumption of Spanishness as discourse and practice of a suburban otherness and its representation in suburban nightscapes as contested spaces, as described by two informants from my fieldwork. Merce` is a 17-year-old girl and promoter of a former discotheque near Malalts de Festa, Bora Bora (Cornella` de Llobregat). She offers long drinks for only one euro until 2 a.m. She studies in a public high school and lives in Can Vidalet District (Cornella` de Llobregat, a Southern Great Barcelona suburban town). She looks like a ‘chola’ girl and emphasizes that her daily language is Spanish. However, she mistakes me as a high school teacher. For that very reason, she speaks me in Catalan, because ‘all high-school teachers speak in Catalan.’ The fact that she feels herself as ‘chola’ girl expressing her gypsy-like aesthetics and ethics in an everyday context seems to be the main reason to choose the history of flamenco music singers (cantaores) as a subject for her final high school research work. Furthermore, as she says, her family emigrated from Southern Spain after Spanish Civil War. Hence she feels some curiosity for both flamenco art and music. Laia is 21 and she lives in Castellbisbal (Western Great Barcelona). She is also a discotheque promoter in Cornella` de Llobregat. Laia wears a white evening dress and black high-heeled shoes. Big earrings, black eyes, and straight hair enhance her gypsy-like look, although she has one’s hair waved during working days. However, she liked Catalan heavy music when she was 15: ‘I was very fan of Sau, Sopa de Cabra, Lax’n’Busto, Sangtraı¨ t and so on.’ Her look was absolutely different than that of the Catalan young uppermiddle classes’ with stylishly scruffy hair and posh look (Nofre, 2007, 2009a). But, at present, she likes ‘petardeo’ music (Spanish commercial and popular flamenco-like music from Franco’s period), although she clearly asserts that she goes on feeling herself ‘catalufa’ (Catalanist).14 Which are the very reasons of this change? Her statements are in closely keeping with what A`gueda, a 25-year-old girl from El Prat de Llobregat (Southern Great Barcelona), asserts, ‘I don’t like Catalan because it’s for posh people’.15

276

JORDI NOFRE

The apparent high consumption of cocaine16 and alcohol abuse among the clientele of Malalts de Festa strongly contributes to the episodes of youth violence: ‘I used to go there (y) it always happens the same. People are very very drunk (y) here inside [Malalts de Festa] someone raped a girl eight months ago (Albert, 29 years old).17 According to Laia, a Malalts de Festa promoter aged 21,18 violent episodes usually are starred by ‘latinos’ or ‘gypsies.’ She also states that fights often begin by ‘wrong’ seduction strategies or by the appropriation of physical space occupied by another person or group. Public security forces involved in the prevention of public disorder in the nightlife cluster where Malalts de Festa is located corroborate such information: ‘Every night we arrest ten or twelve people for fighting.’19

CONCLUSIONS Cultural consumption may indicate politicized protests. Focusing in the case of Barcelona, this chapter highlights how alternative modes of nightlife promoted from youth policies may be considered as non-visible strategies for the social sanitation of suburbs in Barcelona. One consequence has been the emergence of social resistances especially during suburban nighttime leisure activities. This claim for a Spanished ‘suburban identity’ is in conflict with official identity reproduced by the nationalist Catalan ruling classes. In fact, it should be noted that reggaeton, flamenco, and flamenco-like music are banned from Catalan public radio stations (Nofre, 2009b). Both flamenco and flamenco-like music emphasize two basic attitudes of gypsy ethics: cockiness and gallantry (Timothy J. Mitchell, 1988; Nofre, 2007). Together with alcohol abuse and high levels of drug consumption, such cockiness and gallantry is seen as an expression of hypermasculinity by ‘cholos’ (boys) that contributes to the underlying violence associated with the lack of individual and collective perspective especially in most young Southern European working classes and lower-middle classes. Social cohesion in Barcelona and its metropolitan area is questionable in spite of several strong efforts of local and Catalan administration to emphasize cultural, social homogenization in Barcelona (Nofre, 2009a, 2009b). Although some boundaries between middle classes and social exclusion have been erased in Western societies, new postcrisis urban inequalities are emerging, as well as new contemporary fragmented social, political and cultural spaces, creating material contexts within which take

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

277

place new struggles for individual and collective determinacy, autonomy, and cultural rights (Don Mitchell, 2000). Far from disappearing, social inequalities have re-drawn its borders over urban and metropolitan space. The ecology of fear (Davis, 1992), emotional insecurity, and the lack of perspectives of individuals involve uncertainty about traditional urban forms of coexistence. The increasing duality in the uses of public spaces in Barcelona by different social class groups tends to enhance a ghettoization of cultural consumption spaces of lower classes as well the re-bordering of urban inequalities. In fact, it could be seen as a failure of integration policies and the marginalizing of new opportunities for local and global social justice. Therefore, new ‘contested’ spaces claiming an alterity have emerged, shaping new topographies of urban and suburban power. De-politicized youth is, simply, a fantasy.

NOTES 1. This concept must be considered under a Southern European context. 2. Data provided by the Barcelona Youth Survey (2003). 3. The term ‘chiruquero’ comes from ‘Chiruca,’ a Catalan shoes brand for hiking. 4. Canigo´ (2,784m) is located at the French side of Catalonia. This Catalan territory was separated from Catalonia in 1659. 5. Raimon (Xa`tiva, 1940) is one of the most important singers born in Valencian Country (Southern Catalonia), who played folk music against the Spanish fascist regime. 6. In Catalan context, the origin of the term ‘cholo’ has no connections with neither American Indian ancestry nor Mexican-Californian modern usage. 7. For a definition about gypsy aesthetics, see Washabaugh (2005). 8. Because historically lower-class gypsies have been marginalized in Catalonia since the Modern Age, both ‘cholos’ and ‘cholas’ see them as example of social and cultural resistance in a hegemonic cultural environment. 9. Also see Redhead (1993, 1997) and Redhead, Wynne and O’Connor (1998). 10. Concept suggested by Paul Chatterton and Robert Hollands (2003). 11. Inma, 34 years old, former client of Malalts de Festa. Interview carried out on 05/19/2007, Bar Trifa`sic, Rambla Just Oliveras, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. 12. Actually, flamenco and flamenco-like music emerged during the second half of the twentieth century. They were considered as fundamental elements of national flamenquism that was created and reproduced by Spanish fascist regime, and Franco considered this kind of music as the ‘essential’ of the ‘pure Spain’ (A´lvarez Caballero, 1992). 13. Born in Cornella` de Llobregat (a suburban city in the Southern side of the Barcelona metropolitan area) in the late 1990s, Estopa is a rock/rumba group that has rapidly become the most legitimized suburban voice in today’s Barcelona after the death of suburban rock and roll scene in the Catalan capital. In fact, Estopa’s

278

JORDI NOFRE

lyrics deal with ‘the realities of the street,’ in line with those lyrics written by punk and rock bands from the suburbs of Barcelona in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 14. Laia, 21 years old, Castellbisbal. Public Relations of Malalts de Festa. Interviewed on April 20, 2007. Malalts de Festa, dance room 1. On the contrary, petardeo means both funniest flamenco and flamenco-like music (sevillanas, rumbas, bulerias, alegrias, etc.). For ‘cholos’ and ‘cholas,’ catalufa means Catalan girl who daily use to speak in Catalan. 15. A´gueda, 25 years old. El Prat de Llobregat. Long-term unemployed, uneducated. Interview in October 24, 2007. La Flama Restaurant, Bellvitge District, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. 16. According to anonymous sources of Catalan Police ‘Mossos d’Esquadra,’ cocaine in Malalts de Festa is sold in restroom area. Interview on April 20, 2007, in Polı´ gon de Can Famades, Cornella` de Llobregat at 03:37 a.m. 17. Albert, 29 years old. Malalts de Festa’s client. Interview on April 20, 2007, inside Malalts de Festa at 02:12 a.m. 18. Laia, 21 years old. Castellbisbal (Barcelona), Malalts de Festa’s promoter. Interview on April 20, 2007, inside Malalts de Festa at 02:44 a.m. 19. Interview on April 20 2007, pretty close to Malalts de Festa entry (Coure Street), in Cornella` de Llobregat, at 03:15 a.m., after a massive quarrel.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work has been funded by the Fundac- a˜o para a Cieˆncia e a Tecnologia do Ministerio da Cie`ncia, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior de Portugal (FCT), and the Centro do Estudos Sociolo´gicos da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CESNOVA-FCSH/UNL).

REFERENCES Adorno, T.W. & Horkheimer, M. (2004[1947]). Diale´ctica de la Ilustracio´n. Madrid: Ed. Trotta. Allen, J., Nicholas, S., Salisbury, H., & Wood, M. (2003). Nature of burglary, vehicle and violent crime. In: C. Flood-Page & J. Taylor (Eds.), Crime in England and Wales 2001/ 2002: Supplementary volume. Home office statistical bulletin 01/03. London: Home Office. A´lvarez Caballero, A. (1992). Historia del Cante Flamenco. Madrid: Ed. Alianza. Archer, M. (1988). Culture and agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bakhtin, M. (1963). Ravelais u e o up. Ravelais and his world (1984). Bloomington, IN: Midland-Indiana University Press. Befesse, G. (1933). Profesionales del Amor. Barcelona: Cano. Bembo, M. (1912). La Mala Vida. Barcelona: Maucci. Bourdieu, P. (1979). La Distinction. Paris: E´ditions de Minuit. [La Distincio´n. Santafe´ de Bogota´: Taurus, 2000].

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

279

Chatterton, P., & Hollands, R. (2003). Urban nightscapes: Youth cultures, pleasure spaces and corporate power. London; New York, NY: Routledge. Costa, P., Pe´rez, T., & Tropea, F. (1996). Tribus urbanas. El ansia de identidad juvenil: entre el culto a la imagen y la autoafirmacio´n a trave´s de la violencia. Barcelona: Paido´s. Cunningham, H. (1980). Leisure in the industrial revolution 1780–1880. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Davis, M. (1992). Beyond blade runner: Urban control, the ecology of fear. Westfield, NJ: Open Media. Derrida, J. (1967). De la Gramatologie. Paris: E´ditions de Minuit. Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya. (1999). Decret 200/1999 de 27 de juliol, pel qual es regula el dret d’admissio` als establiments pu`blics on es realitzen espectacles i activitats recreatives (n. 2942, p.10317). Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya. Duarte, A. (1999). Societat i economia al final del segle XIX. In: M. Risques (Ed.), Histo`ria Contempora`nia de Catalunya (pp. 173–187). Barcelona: Po`rtic. Eckersley, R., & Reeder, L. (2006). Violence in public spaces. Explanations and solutions. Retrieved from http://www.australia21.org.au/pdf/Violence%20in%20public%20places %20report.pdf Edensor, T. (1998). Tourists at the Taj: Performance and meaning at a symbolic site. London; New York, NY: Routledge. Feixa, C., Saura, J. R., & De Castro, J. (Eds.). (2003). Mu´sica i ideologies. Lleida: Universitat de Lleida & Generalitat de Catalunya. Finney, A. (2004). Violence in the night-time economy: Key findings from the research. Findings, 214, 3. Gottdiener, M. (2001). The theming of America: American dreams, media fantasies and themed environments. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hall, S. (1980). ‘Encoding/decoding’, a Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In: Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972-79. (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson. Hannerz, U. (1980). Exploring the city: Inquiries toward an urban anthropology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Hannigan, J. (1998). Fantasy city: Pleasure and profit in the postmodern metropolis. New York, NY: Routledge. Hobbs, R. F., Winlow, S., Hadfield, P., & Lister, S. (2005). Violent hypocrisy: Governance and the night-time economy. European Journal of Criminology, 2(2), 61–183. Hollands, R. (1995). Friday night, Saturday night: Youth identification in the post-industrial city. Newcastle: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Department of Sociology. Hustschinson, I. L., Magennis, P., Shepherd, J. P., & Brown, A. E. (1998). The BAOMS United Kingdom survey of facial injuries part 1: Aetiology and the association with alcohol consumption. British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 36, 3–13. Institut de Cultura de Barcelona. (2006). Nous Accents 2006. Pla Estrate`gic de Cultura de Barcelona. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Judd, D. R. (2003). El turismo urbano y la geografia de la ciudad. Revista Eure, 87(29), 51–62. Kong, L. (1995). Popular music in geogrpahical analyses Lily Kong, a progress. Human Geography, 19(2), 183–198. Kumar, K. (1995). From post-industrial to post-modern society. Oxford: Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (1968). Le droit a` la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Lefebvre, H. (1974). The production of space (original published in 1974). Oxford: Blackwell.

280

JORDI NOFRE

Lo`pez, P. (1991). 1992, objectiu de tots? Ciutat-empresa i dualitat social a la Barcelona Olı´ mpica. Revista Catalana de Geografia, 15, 91–99. Malbon, B. (1999). Clubbing: Dancing, ecstasy and vitality. London: Routledge. Marfany, J. L. (1995). La Cultura del Catalanisme. Barcelona: Empu´ries. Mascarell, F. (2003). Presentacio´. In: ICUB, Barcelona, una cultura en moviment (1996–2002) (pp. 4–7). Barcelona: Institut de Cultura de Barcelona. Mitchell, D. (2000). Cultural geography: A critical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Mitchell, T. J. (1988). Violence and piety in Spanish folklore. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Muggleton, D. (2000). Inside subculture: The postmodern meaning of style. Oxford: Berg. Muggleton, D., & Weinzierl, R. (Eds.). (2003). The post-subcultures reader. New York, NY: Berg. Navarro, V. (2006). El subdesarrollo social de Espan˜a: Causas y consecuencias. Barcelona: Anagrama. Nofre, J. (2007). Resiste`ncies culturals als suburbis de Barcelona. Una aproximacio´ qualitativa al fenomen dels ‘cholos’ i les ‘cholas’ des de la Nova Geografia Cultural. Barcelona: Papers de la Fundacio´ (151), Fundacio´ Rafael Campalans Nofre, J. (2009a). L’Agenda Cultural Oculta. Una deconstruccio´ de l’oci nocturn de Barcelona i els seus suburbis. Doctoral thesis (PhD), University of Barcelona, Barcelona. Retrieved from http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/1966. Nofre, J. (2009b). Centre i perife`ria a la mu´sica urbana de Barcelona. In: C. Carreras & S. Moreno (Eds.), Llegint pedres, escrivint ciutats (pp. 152–185). Barcelona: Page`s Editors. Nofre, J. (2009c). Les politiques culturelles et de jeunesse a` Barcelone et ses banlieues, un essai critique. Du la colonisation culturelle a´ l’homoge´ne´isation social. Sud-Ouest Europe´en: Revue Ge´ographique des Pyre´ne´es et du Sud-Ouest, 26(1), 83–98. Nofre, J. (2010). Polı´ ticas culturales, transformaciones urbanas e higienizacio´n social en la Barcelona contempora´nea. Anales de Geografı´a, 30(2), 133–161. O’Brien, K., Hobbs, D., & Westmarland, L. (2008). Negotiating violence and gender: Security and the night-time economy in the UK. In: S. Body-Gendrot & P. Spierenburg (Eds.), Violence in Europe: Historical and contemporary perspectives (pp. 161–176). New York, NY: Springer Science. Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. New York, NY: Free Press. Peto´nnet, C. (1982). L’observation flottante. L’exemple d’un cimetie`re parisien. L’Homme, 224, 23–35. Recasens, A. (2008). La viole`ncia entre joves en espais d’oci nocturn. Un estudi comparatiu europeu. Barcelona: Atelier & Polic School of Catalonia. Redhead, S. (1990). The end-of-the-century party: Youth and pop towards 2000. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Redhead, S. (1993). Rave off: Politics and deviance in contemporary youth culture. Aldershot: Avebury. Redhead, S. (1997). Subculture to clubcultures. Oxford: Blackwell. Redhead, S., Wynne, D., & O’Connor, J. (Eds.). (1998). The clubcultures reader. London: Blackwell. Sanz, J. M. (2010). Barcelona Ciudad. Barcelona: Ediciones B. Servei d’Avaluacio` I Estudis. (1998). Barcelona Bonanit. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona.

Youth Policies, Social Sanitation, and Contested Suburban Nightscapes

281

Servei d’Avaluacio` I Estudis. (2003a). Barcelona youth survey. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Servei d’Avaluacio` I Estudis. (2003b). Joves i nit. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Sherman, B. (1986). Working at leisure. London: Methuen. Subiro`s, P. (1999). Estrate`gies culturals i renovacio´ urbana. Barcelona: Aula Barcelona. Regidoria de Joventut de Barcelona. (1998). BCN BonaNit. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Thornton, S. (1995). Club cultures: Music, media and subcultural capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ucelay-DaCal, E. (2003). El Imperialismo Catala´n. Barcelona: Edhasa. Villar, P. (1996). Historia y Leyenda del Barrio Chino (1900–1992): Cronica y Documentos de los Bajos Fondos de Barcelona. Barcelona: Ed. La Campana. Walton, J. K. (1998). Blackpool. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Washabaugh, W. (2005). Flamenco: Pasio´n, polı´tica y cultura popular. Barcelona: Paido´s Ibe´rica Ediciones. White, R. (Ed.) (1999). Australian youth subcultures: On the margins and the mainstream. Hobart: Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies. Williams, R. (1958). Culture and society (1780–1950). London; New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Willis, P. (1990). Common culture. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Wouters, C. (1986). Formalization and informalization: Changing tension balances in civilizing processes. Theory, Culture & Society, 3(2), 1–18. Wynne, D. (1998). Leisure, lifestyle and the new middle class: A case of study. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 13 SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL CAPITAL IN AN ENGLISH SUBURBAN COUNCIL ESTATE: THE WHITLEY ESTATE, READING, IN SOUTH EAST ENGLAND Mark Clapson ABSTRACT The marginalisation of council housing in Britain since the Housing Act of 1980 threatens to obscure some of the very valuable lessons to be learned from almost a century of mass public housing provision. This chapter demonstrates that despite considerable economic problems, and in the face of social change since 1980, a relatively poor council estate remained a site of social capital, and that women were particularly prominent in working with local agencies to solve problems. Keywords: Social change; poverty; social capital; sports; environmental issues

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 283–306 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011016

283

284

MARK CLAPSON

INTRODUCTION The era of council housing in Britain lasted from 1919 to 1980. As accommodation built by local authorities with a subsidy from central government, and rented to lower income groups, council housing made an important contribution to the improvement of working-class living standards during the twentieth century. From 1980, however, the conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher dismantled state housing and encouraged either the ‘right to buy’ of individual tenants, or the large-scale transfer of council stock to privately run housing associations. ‘Social housing’ now became the new label for working-class rental accommodation. This chapter has three broad themes. One is the sad demise of the sociology of suburban housing estates, particularly working-class suburbs. This demise is sad partly because we have lost focus upon community and association in working-class housing estates, and the ways in local patterns of association evidence social capital. Furthermore, the falling away of estate-based studies was accompanied by the growth of a new orthodoxy in social history that the British working classes were in decline, and that council estates were a major context for this decline. A second theme explored in this chapter is the fact that as council housing was dismantled, its reputation suffered drastically from uninformed media chatter and a dearth of serious historical and sociological investigation into late twentieth century working-class housing. As a consequence, an important continuity has been overlooked: there was always an important reserve of social capital in poorer working-class suburbs, and wilful social engineering by neo-Liberal governments has done nothing to destroy it. This is emphasised in the third section of the chapter, in relation to localised actions to protect the tenure of council housing, to develop leisure opportunities, and in local environmental campaigning. The context for this study is the Whitley Estate in Reading, Berkshire, a town 60 kilometres west of London, and a similar distance south east of Oxford. A mostly prosperous town, it nonetheless contains sizeable areas of poorer housing in its inner-urban areas and on its suburban fringes. The Whitley Estate is one of them. It is now over eighty years of age (Fig. 1).

THE DEMISE OF SOCIOLOGICAL INTEREST IN WORKING-CLASS SUBURBAN HOUSING ESTATES Whatever happened to the sociology of housing estates in England? More specifically, why did social scientists lose interest in the question of

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

285

Fig. 1. Map of Berkshire. The Location of Whitley Ward in Reading Approximates to Much of the Estate, Which Forms a Good Deal of It, and Also Overlaps into Church Ward; a Ward is a Voting Constituency (r Crown copyright Ordnance Survey. All rights reserved).

community and association in working-class housing estates? During the 1930s the sociologist Ruth Durant (later Ruth Glass) discerned a culture of intense sociability and problem solving in the earliest years on the council (public) housing estate of Edgware (which Durant nicknamed Watling) in North London. Once the estate was populated and settled, a more relaxed

286

MARK CLAPSON

and selective pattern of social interaction based upon considerations of occupation and status could be identified (Durant, 1939, passim; Durant, 1969, pp. 159–185). After the war, the independent research unit Political and Economic Planning (PEP) revisited Edgware and reaffirmed Durant’s findings. PEP also observed the prominent contribution of women in the corporate life of the estate (Political and Economic Planning, 1947, passim). During the 1950s, the Institute of Community Studies, headed by the social scientist Michael Young, who had also been a leading light in PEP, negatively compared the bleak new suburban council estates of Essex with the livelier matriarchy-driven working-class communities of Bethnal Green, or what is now romantically known among academics as ‘the old East End’ (Young & Willmott, 1957). Ruth Glass was highly critical of the microsociology of community studies during the 1950s, which she claimed isolated one key variable – localised community – and failed to synthesise it in relation to other forces and influences in urban living. By contrast, she favoured the comprehensiveness of the ‘Charles Booth tradition’ and the ‘Chicago group’ (Glass, 1988a, pp. 53–55, 1988b, pp. 36–37). Family and Kinship became the most famous sociology of suburbia but there were many others, from the localised approach of J. M. Mogey and Margaret Stacey’s work on suburban housing estates in Oxfordshire during the 1950s and the 1960s (Mogey, 1956; Stacey, 1960; Stacey, Batstone, Bell, & Murcott, 1975), to a number of smaller studies of community and meaningful association based upon immediate or town-wide local networks (e.g. Spencer, Tuxford, & Dennis, 1964). Both Mogey and Stacey were generally optimistic about the social evolution of the working class and its capacity for meaningful social interaction. Mogey argued that in leaving the slum for the suburban council estate poorer sections of society became less segregated and more integrated into the associational life of the city (Mogey, 1956). Stacey argued that the capacity for associational action by the manual working classes was marginally less than the middle class, but its interests and intentions were often different. In the suburbs of Banbury, a middling-sized town in Oxfordshire, there was no dearth of community and association. Significantly, the local associative culture produced leaders in a range of non-works activities (Stacey et al., 1975, pp. 41, 48–50) Interestingly, the singular Peter Willmott made a study of Dagenham during the 1950s, a huge suburb of East London built between the wars. Synthesising sociology with history, Willmott argued that many of the social and community values and practices of the working-class in the old East London were replicated to varying degrees in the newer suburb, an altogether different slant than Family and Kinship had adopted, suggesting

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

287

that Young was more pessimistic that his co-founder of the Institute for Community Studies (Willmott, 1962, passim). Despite differences of approach, urban sociologies have provided the social historian with a rich range of sources about social life in working-class England (a book-length history of British urban sociology might uncover a new history of social capital too, by retrospectively applying that term and examining the causes and nature of community and association, and its efficacy at addressing civic and social issues and problems). But sadly, a dearth of social studies of working-class community and association in housing estates emerges around 1980. Social studies in the suburbs of small provincial towns figure significantly less in the British Journal of Sociology in the past thirty years (http://www2.lse.ac.uk/BJS/pastVolumes/Home.aspx). It is tempting to argue that as class-based perspectives have declined, and as the traditional urban working-class has ebbed away with de-industrialisation, the suburban working classes have moved somewhere beyond the socio-spatial horizon, increasingly out of the view of urban sociology, while remaining at the mercy of Tory tabloid columnists and sneering well-paid comedians on the BBC. Poorer tenants and residents on working-class council estates deserve better. Social history has suffered from its own failure of approach within a similar time frame, and the consequences are similarly dire. Social historians have become too concerned with the ‘decline’ of the working class to attempt any longitudinal appraisal of social capital (Hopkins, 1991, passim; Taylor, 2005, pp. 371–388). Concomitantly, the social history of suburban council estates has been sadly neglected in Britain. And today, thirty years after Mrs Thatcher’s Housing Act of 1980 which brought the era of council housing to an end, the image of council housing is dire. Conservative governments after 1980 sought to marginalise state-subsidised housing in Britain. They did not completely succeed, but it is pause for thought that today many leading writers on the Left of British politics are now reaffirming the negativism associated with public housing, by dismissing it as a ‘disaster story’ (Marchant, 1999, back cover). Council estates are now widely viewed as bastions for a declining and dysfunctional working class (Burnett, 1991), and in her widely discussed book Estates: An Intimate History (2007) the journalist Lynsey Hanley uses personal memoir to present herself and others as victims of a failed modernist experiment in social engineering which reaffirmed the segregation of the urban working classes in Britain. This simplistic picture is sociologically inaccurate, historically unsound, and worse still, it unwittingly legitimises Conservative attacks upon council housing. It also does nothing to address the inadequate

288

MARK CLAPSON

policy responses by the current Liberal–Conservative coalition government to the need for hundreds of thousands of social housing units to solve the current housing shortage.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND From 1919 to 1980 Britain enjoyed a prolonged era of public housing. The 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act, passed not by a socialist administration but by a Conservative and Liberal coalition government, initiated subsidies from the centre to local authorities which resulted in the creation of over 1.1 million local authority houses – more commonly known as council houses – between the wars. The great protagonist of council housing was Christopher Addison, a Liberal MP at that stage of his career, and a passionate enemy of the slums. Subsequent housing acts were indeed passed by Labour administrations, but they were instituted by governments that were Conservative or Conservative dominated. The Housing Act of 1924 improved the subsidy for council housing, and was not wound down until the 1930s. In 1930 the Housing Act of that year, passed by a crosspressured Labour government, began a new phase of slum clearances. The fall of the Labour government led to a Tory-dominated National Government that continued its provisions, and pursued further slum clearance legislation in the decade of the 1930s. Most of the working-class housing estates for former slum dwellers were built on the outskirts of town, where land was cheaper than in or near the centre. The years from 1945 to 1975 witnessed the peak years of public sector housing, and have been labelled – somewhat monolithically – as the era of ‘collective consumption’ in housing. Again, both post-war Labour governments and Conservative governments presided over an expansion of public housing provision. By 1975, about 30 per cent of the population of England and Wales were living in council housing, and by then 3.3 million council dwellings had been built since the war, as opposed to 2.8 million for private ownership (Cook & Stevenson, 1996, pp. 121–122). However the post-war period had witnessed an expansion of home ownership, and this slowly began to residualise council housing. But only to a degree. The impact was relatively minor prior to the 1980s, but from then the marginalisation of council housing became a major intention of neoLiberal Conservative social policy. Under Margaret Thatcher, Conservative intentions were pretty straightforward: to shrink the state, and to encourage Tory-voting home ownership. The Housing Act of 1980 greatly expanded

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

289

the ‘right to buy’ council houses for tenants of local authority housing: the facility to purchase a council house had been in existence for most of the post-war period. The 1980 Housing Act also removed the subsidy from central government to local authorities, thus also undermining the capacity of local councils to build new homes for rent. Instead, the government promoted Housing Associations, privately run large-scale landlords, as the alternative to council housing (Malpass, 2005). And from 1988 the Government allowed local councils to effectively jettison their stock of council houses into the hands of a private landlord or Housing Association. This was known as large scale voluntary transfer (LSVT) because the tenants had to vote in favour of it. In some areas of Britain tenants did indeed vote in favour of LSVT, particularly if the promise of improved housing conditions for similar rents. But in many towns and cities tenants voted to continue with the local authority as landlord. Today less than 20 per cent of the population of England and Wales rent from the council (Clapson, forthcoming). Many former tenants bought their home; other former council tenants are now tenants of a housing association. Councils no longer build new homes for rent in any numbers: the term ‘social housing’ has become the umbrella term for the dwindling stock held by councils, and the growing number of homes owned and run by housing associations.

THE GROWTH OF THE WHITLEY ESTATE The Whitley Estate in Reading is situated towards its southern outskirts. It is among the largest estates in the town, and has remained redoubtably working-class since its origins during the 1930s. Nearly 20,000 people moved into almost 2000 new homes on the estate between September 1930 and the outbreak of war in 1939. It was an estate composed almost entirely of slum dwellers during the 1930s. The vast majority of its householders were in manual work, and of those most were unskilled labourers (Fig. 2). The houses on the Whitley Estate that were built during the 1930s are all two-storey red-brick cottages set in small gardens: the norm for Whitley was the norm for most interwar suburban council estates. Their architectural inspiration came from the homes designed for Letchworth Garden City and for the wider garden suburb movement (Cherry, 1996, pp. 66–68). The trouble was Whitley departed from the norm in one important respect. John

290

MARK CLAPSON

Fig. 2.

1930s Houses on the Whitley Estate (Photograph by author, 2010).

Burnett argues that the majority of council between the wars were threebedroom dwellings (Burnett, 1991, p. 236). But over 50 per cent of the Whitley Estate was built with two-bedroom houses. This may seem incredible today, given that most of the families dispersed from the slum were relocated partly because they had young children, and it led to a degree of overcrowding that almost paralleled that of the slum during the later 1930s (Berkshire Record Office: R/AC1/3/63: Housing Committee Minutes, 4 May, 1936). Still, at least people were now living in houses with internal toilets and bathrooms, and with running water. After the war, the Whitley Estate more than doubled its population, its number of houses and site coverage. At least another 2,000 homes were added to the estate. The new houses on the estate were mostly made not of brick but of concrete or concrete aggregate due to a shortage of bricks during the early reconstruction years. However, the homes benefited from the wartime government’s Dudley Report. Published in 1944, it recommended more variety in housing design than on pre-war estates, and an emphasis upon higher quality internal layouts and workspaces in homes. The people moving into those homes were not from the slums any more, but they were still predominantly from the manual working classes (Fig. 3).

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

291

Fig. 3. Post-War Houses, Made of Concrete Aggregate, in the Southern Extension to the Whitley Estate, Built from 1946; the Houses on the Left of Each Pair are Still Council Homes; the Other Two Have Been Bought (Photograph by author, 2010).

292

MARK CLAPSON

THE WHITLEY ESTATE AS A SUBURBAN PROBLEM Between the wars, as suburbanisation, both planned and unplanned, spread across England, a profound sense of misgiving settled in among the elites. Leading agencies including the Church of England and the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) became convinced that the new council estates were possible seedbeds of social disaster, one-class dormitories that were devoid of most of the necessary social, cultural, and economic apparatuses of urban life. The worry was that the suburban masses would become easy fodder for totalitarian parties, especially fascism. Yet there were indeed difficulties to be faced upon the new housing estates. Most new suburbs, whether private or council, were not provided with resources and facilities from their beginnings. From the beginning to the present day the Whitley Estate has often been seen as a problem, both in and of itself, and for what it represented about wider things that were apparently going wrong in England. The first people moved in during 1930, but as the estate grew rapidly resources lagged behind woefully during its first decade. As this writer has found from Reading Council Housing Committee Minutes for the 1930s (held at the Berkshire Record Office) and the local newspapers the Berkshire Chronicle and the Reading Citizen. Only two schools were built on the estate before the war, one a junior school and one a nursery school; the first school for the over 11 was not available until the mid-fifties, and it was only for boys. The first social facility, a library, was not opened until the summer of 1935: – – – – – –

no shops were opened until 1936; a playable park wasn’t available until 1937; the Anglican Church was not consecrated until 1938; a clinic and dispensing chemist was not opened until 1938; the community centre was opened on the eve of war in 1939; no dedicated trolleybus service was available until after the war.

Many from above looked at these resource vacuums and wondered aloud at their social consequences. Anglican hopes and fears for Reading were soon fastened upon the Whitley Estate. In December 1937, the Rural Dean of Reading described Whitley as ‘a serious blot on the church life of Reading’. As the leading local newspaper the Berkshire Chronicle reported,

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

Fig. 4.

293

The South Reading Community Centre (Photograph by author, 2010).

the Dean situated the spiritual challenge of at Whitley within the wider suburbanisation of Southern England: The growth of Oxford, the Slough Trading Estate, Didcot and the Whitley Housing Estate at Reading were problems which had to be faced. The extension at Whitley was, in particular, extremely difficult. Ten years ago the population there was about 9,000, now it was in the region of 25,000. The machinery of the parish was in no way equipped to deal with this growth. The people of Whitley had no corporate life in their midst. (Berkshire Chronicle, 3 December 1937)

Hence he strongly supported campaigns for a church to be built upon the estate. This was St. Agnes Church, completed a year before the outbreak of war and situated on the western side of Northumberland Avenue, a short distance from the site allocated for the South Reading Community Centre (Fig. 4). The National Council of Social Service was the key mover in the agitation for a community centre. Formed in 1919 the NCSS was primarily concerned to promote the more systematic organisation of voluntary social work in Britain. Although it also dealt with problems of rural depopulation and unemployment in the distressed areas, between the wars the NCSS became increasingly focused on the social life of the suburban estates forming

294

MARK CLAPSON

around Britain’s towns, and on the need for community centres to cater for young people, for a variety of interest groups, as well as acting something like a little local debating chamber. The local Labour Party also agitated for a community centre and other local facilities, and in so doing it helped to create the Whitley Estate as a socialist bastion. Since the 1930s the Whitley Estate Labour has been the predominant party, whether for or against the national trend at local and general elections. More significant, however, was social action from below. During the formative years of the estate, as it grew to over 20,000 people by the end of the 1930s, such conditions of rapid expansion were no barrier to social formation. Nor was the fact that the estate was largely comprised of former slum dwellers. Another group calling for a community centre was the South Reading Tenant’s Association (SRTA). Made up from working-class tenants of the council, the SRTA was in existence on the Whitley Estate by 1931, and included Labour councillors and at least one communist who lived in Whitley. Petitions were mobilised with hundreds of signatures on a wide variety of social and environmental needs. In addition to the church, the SRTA campaigned for a community centre, which was finally built on the eve of war in 1939 and also for better public transport, and more leisure facilities on the estate (Clapson, forthcoming, Chap. 3). During the post-war years, the estate achieved something of a period of equilibrium between the mid-1950s and the later 1970s. Although a number of smaller extensions to the estate occurred after the mid-1950s, the estate settled down into a relatively settled and relatively homogenous phase of its existence. New facilities were added to the estate, for example new shops and community centres for the post-war housing areas, and new places of worship, notably a Catholic Church, inaugurated in 1958. Hence the Whitley Estate shared in the growing prosperity of the so-called ‘golden years’ between 1950 and the Oil Crisis of 1973. Its working-class population enjoyed higher living standards and relatively full-employment (Clapson, forthcoming, Chap. 5). From the 1970s, however, the working classes in Reading were hit hard by de-industrialisation as manufacturing industry declined and service sector employment expanded. The leading manufacturing industries – beer, biscuits and bulb production – had quit the town centre by 1980, and further de-industrialisation followed (Hylton, 2007, p. 231). Economic change was intertwined with demographic change. The council estates of the town became more heterogeneous as decolonisation led to higher levels of black and Asian immigration. Still, by 2001 over 85 per cent of households on the Whitley Estate were white. Family composition also diversified. The estate became

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

295

the home of the largest percentage of one-parent families anywhere in Reading, and the association of one-parent families with high levels of welfare dependency, unemployment and welfare benefits has been much analysed. The inability of the local economy to produce lots of decently paid unskilled and semi-skilled employment compounded these problems. And the Whitley Estate also became more diverse in terms of tenure (Hancock, 2003, passim).

THE 1980 HOUSING ACT: RETHINKING SOCIAL POLARISATION AND SOCIAL CAPITAL The impact of the 1980 Housing Act has been complicated but it did not lead to the level of social polarisation predicted by social scientists in the 1980s. Peter Saunders was one of the leading neo-Marxist advocates of ‘consumption cleavages’ during the 1980s. He predicted a major new fault-line drawn in society based not on class (ownership of means of production) ‘but on the basis of sectoral alignment (ownership of means of consumption)’: A fundamental division is already beginning to open up between those (the majority) who are or will be in a position to enjoy market access to good quality services and those (the increasingly marginalized majority) who are not. The contrast between owner occupiers and public sector tenants (a division which takes on additional significance given the accumulative potential of house ownership) is merely the most developed form of this sectoral cleavage. (Saunders, 1989, p. 213)

So what happened at Whitley? About 50 per cent had bought their house by 2007 (Reading Borough Council, 2007). But this was an acceleration and an expansion of a pre-existing trend. Since at least 1947 more affluent younger households had been able to buy council homes. This was a small but growing phenomenon both in Whitley and across England and Wales prior to the 1980s, but it indicated a desire for home ownership among the poorest sections of English society. Tenure had only a limited impact on spatial mobility in Whitley. Any notion that more skilled workers would all sell their houses and move off the estate and onto the housing ladder was simplistic. A sample of 400 houses on the estate from 1979 and 2007 (about 20 per cent) proved that over one hundred, or more than a quarter of the households, shared the same surname in 2007 as they had in 1979. Significantly, 49 were purchased homes, while 53 remained as council tenants in properties (Berkshire Record

296

MARK CLAPSON

Office, 1979, 2007). Loyalty to the estate was only marginally influenced by property ownership, in spite of the fact that almost all council tenants who paid all or most of their rent on time possessed security of tenure. The loss of such security accompanied the gain of home ownership, and home ownership did not translate into a voluntary and dismissive evacuation from the estate. Many remained loyal to the estate, and in contact with family and neighbours there. The 1988 Housing Act also allowed councils to offload their houses to large landlords or housing associations if their tenants agreed. This was called large-scale voluntary transfer (LSVT). Some councils wanted LSVT. Some tenants did too. But some did not. In Berkshire, wealthy small towns with conservative administrations such as Windsor and Newbury got rid of their council houses but in Reading the Labour administration campaigned against voluntary transfer. The campaign was called ‘Our Homes Are Not For Sale’ and with the public service trade unions and local council tenants across the town, but led by a community activist in Whitley, the campaign mobilised over 8,000 signatures against LSVT. Reading Borough Council kept its council houses, albeit a dwindling stock of them. And against the intentions of the Conservative legislation, the Housing Act strengthened the bond between council and tenant. Led by a woman on the Whitley Estate, and encouraged by a Housing Officer at Reading Borough Council, the Reading Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations were formed by 1990. This is hugely significant: both tenants and residents who had bought their council homes formed associations on their estates all across England, so any notion that there would be tenurebased polarisation needs to be modified in that light (www.rftra.org.uk). One of the key lines in the previous paragraph is ‘led by a woman on the Whitley Estate’. This is a good point to raise the sociological issue of social capital, defined here as the capacity to engage in social networks, promote meaningful and positive civic action, and to make a positive difference to society. Many writers have addressed the issue of social capital, but the most significant text in recent years is by Robert Putnam. In Bowling Alone, Putnam argued that ‘whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals’: Social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called ‘civic virtue’. The difference is that ‘social capital’ calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital. (Putnam, 2000, p. 19)

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

297

The demise of the American bowling leagues during the 1980s and since was the hook upon which Putnam hung his argument. During the 1950s to the 1970s, he argued, a pattern of civic consciousness and social participation accompanied the heyday of the bowling leagues, but from the 1980s increasingly individuated and mobile American lifestyles and cultures weakened social capital in the suburban heartlands. Some British cultural commentators have written in almost apocalyptic terms of a growing privatism and collapse of the public domain, and in the New Statesman, the house journal of the Left of the Labour Party, grim prognoses of ‘low social capital’ areas reiterate the usual litany of drugs, alcohol abuse, environmental degradation, anti-social behaviour and political apathy (New Statesman, 28 May, 2001). Another application of the social capital approach to social housing can be found in the work of Simon J. Charlesworth, a social anthropologist at Cambridge University. His approach is influenced not by Putnam, however, but by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the French social scientist. For Charlesworth, working-class life in poorer housing estates is now devoid of community and association, and therefore, by implication, of social capital. Charlesworth contributes nothing to the debate about social capital except extreme pessimism. He views any form of social action as essentially pointless from the working-class perspective because of the repetition in the habitus of working-class life. Typical phrases from A Phenomenology of Working-Class Life include: ‘an area that is dissipating and fragmenting’ (Charlesworth, 2000, p. 58); ‘‘a stagnant pond in which we are the suffocating organisms’’ (Charlesworth, 2000, p. 60); ‘the existential frame of these lives has dissolved’ (Charlesworth, 2000, p. 61); ‘the atomizing disparate distress of these people’ (Charlesworth, 2000, p. 69);

And in the early twenty-first century, argues Charlesworth, both ‘communication and community’ have ceased to exist in any meaningful sense in working-class life, ‘and there has emerged an absence of association’. (Charlesworth, 2000, p. 292). Thus was the negative imagery of workingclass housing estates, particularly ‘council estates’ and pessimism about the current conditions, confirmed by debates about social capital in Britain. But working-class housing estates are not historically devoid of social capital. A common theme in local social organisation in suburban housing areas has been that a small number of people can make a positive difference in an associative culture based upon networks between local people and local agencies and authorities. Since the 1930s and through to

298

MARK CLAPSON

the present, there has been a significant level of campaigning by people on the estate to address resource issues and social problems. From various campaigns for a community during the 1930 through to more recent attempts to address environmental problems, crime and anti-social behaviour, the estate has continued to produce articulate and motivated leaders, mostly women, who mobilise others, and work with a variety of agencies from the council to the police and the local churches. During the 1990s and the first decade of this century, a number of middle-aged and elderly women living on the Whitley Estate have headed up the local tenants and residents organisations and groups, and liaised with the Council, the police, the housing associations and other agencies to tackle problems on the estate. And both prior to the 1980 Housing Act and after it women have been the most instrumental at campaigning on a range of issues, for example petitioning for better public transport, improved schools, against dangerous traffic, and other local environmental issues. Hence bonding capital – local women’s networks on the estate – thus became bridging movements. These two forms of social connectivity were not as mutually exclusive as Robert Putnam likes to think they are. As Ben Fine has argued: The problem is that bonding, bridging and linking cut across the traditional variables of social theory – such as class, gender, race and so on – and as a result, overlook that one person’s bond is another person’s bridge etc., or vice versa. (Fine, 2008, p. 446)

More to the point, a poor area like the Whitley Estate has played its part in maintaining a viable level of social networking in England, where according to the Office of National Statistics ‘there has not been deterioration of social capital [as] in America’ (Office of National Statistics, 2004, p. 15). This point is now focused down to three spheres of life in Whitley: the defence of council tenure, recent uses of sports and sports facilities, and environmental campaigning.

ASSOCIATIVE ACTION IN DEFENCE OF COUNCIL HOUSING IN READING With the local engagement of tenant’s organisations across Reading, and local government unions such as the National and Local Government Officers union (NALGO), the Labour-led Reading Borough Council supported the ‘Our Homes Are Not For Sale’ campaign. As the Reading Chronicle reported in the Autumn of 1989, Reading Borough Council

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

299

(RBC) was given ‘an overwhelming vote of confidence by its own tenants’ in a survey over the choice between transfer and the status quo: A total of 8,668 questionnaires were sent out to all tenants who could be affected by the new housing laws, and so far, 5,468 forms have been returned. Housing chairman Jo Lovelock said: ‘we’re very pleased by the number of forms that have been returned. Our tenants clearly recognise the level of commitment they get from the council as landlord’ (Reading Chronicle, 6 October, 1989).

The Conservative Governments of the 1980s wanted to assume that councils were less efficient landlords than housing associations and private property owners, but a 1989 report by the Department of the Environment found high levels of satisfaction among council tenants with their housing management (Ravetz, 2001, p. 208). An unintended consequence of the Housing Act of 1988 and other pieces of legislation, therefore, was to strengthen the bond between the declining number of council tenants and Labour-controlled local authorities (www.tenant shistory.org.uk/history/index.htm). Tory housing legislation inadvertently strengthened a culture of tenant consciousness and group participation between the tenants and some councils, while in other local authorities attitudes to tenants were less generous, or geared towards transfer (www.tenantshistory.org.uk/participation/rights.htm). The Tenant’s Support Manager of RBC, Chris Bloomfield, worked hard to encourage tenants to establish tenant’s associations (Reading Chronicle, 6 October, 1989; Chris Bloomfield, RBC Neighbourhood Regeneration Manager, in discussion with this writer, 15 March, 2010). Out of this later came the Reading Federation of Tenant’s and Resident’s Associations (RFTRA), which was part of a national movement – albeit uneven – to promote federations of tenants and homeowners in former council estates. The history of the RFTRA is summarised on its website as follows: Following an information campaign launched by Reading Borough Council on issues that arose from the 1988 Housing Act, the new post of Tenant Support Manager was established in 1989 to co-ordinate consultation and build effective partnerships between council tenants and the Council. The growth in Associations necessitated the need for an umbrella group to represent the collective interests of these groups. The inspiration and idea for the formation of Reading Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations (RFTRA) was first developed by a small group of tenants and residents groups across Reading that met in the front room of a tenants’ home in Whitley. RFTRA was not officially recognised until 1993 but had been busy behind the scenes drawing up a constitution and gaining funding. The Council responded to this need by developing and supporting RFTRA. RFTRA was found a small office space in the Civic Centre. Now the support includes an annual grant and the provision of a Resource Centre based in the

300

MARK CLAPSON

centre of Reading. After some time more funding was found which enabled RFTRA to employ a full time administrator (www.rftra.org.uk/history.htm).

Following the 1988 Housing Act, Reading Borough Council fought for council housing and to retain maximum influence over their tenants. Ideological opposition to Thatcherism was one factor but by the difficulties presented by a declining stock of council homes was another. Practical measures were needed address the housing shortage in Reading during the late 1980s. The sale of over 1,700 family-size homes through right-to-buy has contributed to this situation, but so too had and continuing migration to Reading. With a dwindling income from dwindling stock, RBC was obliged to sell land to housing associations. Sites on the Whitley Estate were included in this sell-off (Reading Chronicle, 8 July, 1988; 23 September, 1988). But against the whole-hearted support of the Conservative governments from 1979–1997 for a massive aggregate reduction in the volume of municipal housing, and in the face of the continued marketisation of housing under New Labour, renting from the council remained strong in Whitley. As Norman Ginsburg argued in 2005, ‘many people find it hard to believe’ that for decades and into the present century council housing was ‘genuinely popular’: The British Social Attitudes survey in 2000 revealed ‘relatively little support among the public for the view held by many experts and policy makers that council housing has passed its ‘‘sell by date’’’. [The] survey also found that ‘a significantly greater proportion of housing association tenants would rather rent from the council than vice versa’. (Ginsburg, 2005, p. 118)

Little wonder therefore that local tenants campaigned for a continuation of council tenancy, and in so doing conservative directions in housing policy were successfully confronted. An alliance of proactive tenants on council estates with local agencies successfully demonstrated that there were strategic reserves of social capital for political as well as residential ends. It also demonstrated that bonding capital, the coming-together of locals, became bridging capital when linked up to those local agencies. Putnam argued that bonding capital is often nepotistic or exclusionary, but that does not accurately describe the situation in working-class housing estates where a sense of pulling together is part of a wider culture of local social action. And that pulling-together then sometimes requires the strategic intervention and assistance of local agencies to ensure that issues and problems are addressed.

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

301

SPORT AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION Bowling might have declined in North America, but then it is only one sport among many in our world of global suburbs. Despite ebbs and flows, weekend amateur football, for example, is still popular in England, and the Whitley Estate continues to have a lively presence in the local leagues. The South Reading Community Centre (SRCC), fought for by the local population during the 1930s, remains an important hub for a wide variety of sports and leisure activities. From the Second World War until 2009 it was the base of a local football team, Rabson Rovers (named after a local recreation ground that was itself named after a Labour councillor and housing reformer in Reading) and at its peak, during the late 1940s to the 1960s, the SRCC and local football were a significant presence in the sporting life of Reading and its hinterland. And since the mid-1990s, the Whitley Estate and its schools and sporting facilities have hosted the South Reading Football Club, an umbrella organisation of local children’s and youth teams that compete across the town, the region and even internationally, Girl’s football has expanded greatly on the Whitley Estate, partly as a consequence of the social capital of local parents, and partly with the assistance of teachers who volunteered beyond teaching hours to help out (www.southreadingfc.co.uk; www.vixens-fc.co.uk). This has meant that the Whitley Estate has been part of, and made it own unique contribution to, the growth of girl’s and women’s football in Britain since the early 1990s (www.thefa.com). Sport has also been used by local authorities in Britain to promote community development and social cohesion and integration. From 2002, the South Reading Community Centre has been used by Reading Council to these ends. There is no coincidence that in 2002 the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) gave financial and practical support to the Reading Positive Futures Campaign, run by the Council’s Sports Development Team. A 2006 publication by the DCMS and the Reading Sports Development Team entitled Reading Positive Futures: Whitley Basketball Case Study drew attention to the problem of inadequate facilities for young people in a poor area: Whitley in the South of Reading is an area of significant social and economic deprivation, with big problems in educational attainment, health and child poverty. Local young people in the area are more likely to become truants, be excluded from school, be unemployed or in unskilled jobs – and then to flirt with criminality and substance misuse – than elsewhere in the town. The community often feel stigmatised

302

MARK CLAPSON

and young people can be easily drawn into a culture of underachievement (Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Reading Borough Council Sports Development Team, 2006, pp. 1–2).

And the report also observed a ‘them and us’ situation on the Whitley Estate. Middle-aged or elderly tenants or residents perceived that young people hanging around in groups were inevitably involved in anti-social behaviour. But that was by no means an accurate picture (Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Reading Borough Council Sports Development Team, 2006, pp. 1–2). But where social capital was less forthcoming, the game was by no means lost. Sports among poorer groups of young people on the estate was given a strategic assist from the local authorities to prevent segregation. The project comprised a number of different partners, namely youth workers from the Council, local schools, the Youth Offending Team, staff at the Community Centre itself, and local youngsters. A programme of ‘taster’ sporting activities was developed, and basketball proved to be one of the most popular sports on offer. In an increasingly multicultural area, this sport had a wider appeal to different ethnic groups than football. The team sheets evidence that Asian, African and white boys are all members of the Whitley Wizards basketball team. The report was realistic about the early months of the project, noting that the beginnings of the team were potentially undermined by low and irregular attendances in coaching sessions. A lack of self-confidence on the part of the players who had did not fully grasp their own talents and potential was at the heart of this. But the Positive Futures project continued despite such issues, and the team gelled, naming itself the Whitley Wizards. Accurately measuring outcomes in the demise of segregation through public expenditure is often difficult. But Reading Borough Council could argue that the Wizards were a tangible sign that the participants were beginning to feel proud of their community (Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Reading Borough Council Sports Development Team, 2006, p. 2). Players began to grow in both individual confidence and in the context of team spirit. The Wizards have for some years competed in the English Basketball Southern Region Wessex League. A branded kit and a regular venue has hopefully made the Wizards a permanent fixture in English basketball, and a vehicle for self expression for talented young people in Whitley (Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Reading Borough Council Sports Development Team, 2006, pp. 3–4; www.sportreading.co.uk).

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

303

ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNING A study by Anne Power and Jake Elster for the Economic and Social Research Council found that environmental problems were often widespread in lower income areas, but they also discovered ‘little evidence that wider environmental concerns are less in low-income communities’ (Power & Elster, 2001, pp. 1–2). The authors observed that local people were keenly aware of global green issues, but that the streets and parks that that they lived in and relaxed in were their major concerns. Better rubbish removal and recycling schemes, enhanced green spaces and ecological areas, and smooth working relationships between local councils and their neighbourhood managers were called for by poorer tenants (Power & Elster, 2001, pp. 1–2). Experience on the Whitley Estate strongly supports such findings. In 1994 in South Whitley, the Whitley Green Resident’s Association (WGRA) was formed, in its own words: By a group of residents who wanted to do an extra something for the area they live in. We work hard on all environmental issues, street lighting, roads and paths, abandoned vehicles, or anything that makes our estate a nicer place to live in. We work for all, tenants and homeowners alike. The object of the association is to promote the interest of all, to promote social activities and to be a non-political group (www.whitleygreen.co.uk).

Environmental issues here mean rubbish dumping, graffiti, the condition of open spaces and buildings, the busyness of the roads and so on. Nonetheless the WGRA addressed environmental issues in a local context: it articulated international issues at ground level, for example enhanced public transport, and the planting of more shrubs and trees to beautify the estate. The ten members of the WGRA were mostly council tenants, but some were from private housing (www.whitleygreen.co.uk). Hence local residents took initiatives to improve not only services, but also the visual amenity of the estate, and tenure was by no means an obstacle to local environmental action (www.whitleygreen.co.uk). The website of the WGRA is an example of how the people of Whitley are not digitally excluded, even if they are disadvantaged when compared to wealthier suburbs. Other Whitley websites exist, for example a Whitley Facebook site, and an online forum and information site run by the local Labour Party (www.whitleynews.org). As recent work on suburban Rome has shown, sociability and meaningful interaction occurs not only in the ancient streets of the city centre but also in the streets and spaces of the newest areas, including online interest groups (Annunziata & Cossu, 2010,

304

MARK CLAPSON

pp. 131–152). Throughout its life, from its youngest years to maturity, the Whitley Estate is living proof this pattern.

CONCLUSION Despite the reassuring news about associative action and social capital on poor housing estates, the overweening cultural imagery remains negative. The back cover of Lynsey Hanley’s Estates: An Intimate History (2007) provides a damning abridgment of social housing in contemporary Britain: ‘Britain’s council estates have become popular shorthand for poverty, social mayhem, drink, drugs and violence: the social evils they were built to cure’. But there are few if any council estates in England any more. Even in towns and cities (and Reading is one of them) where local councils retained their housing stock, all poorer housing areas have been increasingly characterised by diversity of tenure. Home ownership is one such tenure, but privately run housing associations have displaced public sector rental in so many areas of Britain. It should also be stressed that the social evils that Hanley describes, moreover, were increasingly diagnosed after 1980, as council estates ceased to exist. Although some council estates were designated as ‘problem estates’ prior to the 1980s, most were not. As noted above, Thatcherism introduced home ownership on council estates to improve their socio-economic fortunes (and to increase the propensity of the working-class homeowner to vote Tory). On both counts, this project failed. The Whitley Estate has remained a bastion of the Labour Party in local council elections from the 1930s to the present. There are currently three councillors for Whitley Ward, the political constituency of which the Whitley Estate forms a large segment, and all are Labour (www.whitleynews.org). So public sector renting is unfairly singled out as a cause of social evils but this was never really the case. It is a shame that this historical insight, supported by sociology prior to the 1980s at least, has been so marginalised. But then the working classes have been marginalised from appraisals of the suburban world we are increasingly living in. Only recently have workingclass suburbs, in all their diversity, past and present, been given the academic attention they deserve (Harris, 2010, pp. 19–26). The difficulties that have befallen poorer working-class housing areas since 1980 owe little to council tenancy, and are more accurately consequential upon social changes since the 1960s, and de-industrialisation. Britain now faces a serious and growing housing shortage and a desperate need for housing at the lowest possible rental values. Housing Associations

Social Change and Social Capital in Whitley Estate, Reading

305

will not be able to meet all of the demand. Additionally, the ageing population will also exacerbate the housing shortage by 2020, but council housing – rental accommodation subsidised from the centre – is not on the government agenda. This is a grim historical twist, because it was a Conservative– Liberal coalition that initiated nation-wide council housing in the first place.

REFERENCES Annunziata, S., & Cossu, M. (2010). Urbanity beyond nostalgia: discovering public life at the edge of the city of Rome. In M. Clapson & R. Hutchison (Eds.), Suburbanization in global society. Research in Urban Sociology (pp. 131–152). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Berkshire Chronicle, 3 December 1937. Berkshire Record Office. (1979, 2007). Electoral registers for Whitley and church wards. Reading: Berkshire Record Office microfiche collections. Berkshire Record Office & Reading Council Housing Committee (1936): R/AC1/3/63: Housing Committee Minutes, 4 May 1936. Bloomfield, C. (2010). RBC Neighbourhood Regeneration Manager. In discussion with this writer, 15 March. Burnett, J. (1991). A social history of housing, 1815–1985. London: Routledge. Charlesworth, S. J. (2000). A phenomenology of working class experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cherry, G. (1996). Town planning in Britain since 1900. The rise and fall of the planning ideal. Oxford: Blackwell. Clapson, M. (forthcoming). Working-Class Suburb: Social Change on an English Council Estate. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cook, C., & Stevenson, J. (1996). Britain since 1945. London: Longman. Department for Culture, Media and Sport & Reading Borough Council Sports Development Team. (2006). Reading positive futures: Whitley basketball team case study. Reading: Reading Borough Council and Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Durant, R. (1939). Watling: A survey of social life on a new housing estate. London: Smith. Durant, R. (1969). Community and association on a London housing estate. In: R. E. Pahl (Ed.), Readings in urban sociology (pp. 27–50). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Fine, B. (2008). Social capital versus social history. Social History, 33(4), 442–467. Ginsburg, N. (2005). The privatisation of council housing. Critical Social Policy, 25, 115–135. Glass, R. (1988a). Urban sociology. In: R. Glass (Ed.), Cliche´s of urban doom (pp. 51–69). Oxford: Blackwell. Glass, R. (1988b). Urban sociology in Great Britain: A trend report. In: R. Glass (Ed.), Cliche´s of urban doom (pp. 27–50). Oxford: Blackwell. Hancock, C. (2003). Reading ward profile: Whitley ward. Reading: Reading Borough Council. Hanley, L. (2007). Estates: An intimate history. London: Granta. Harris, R. (2010). Meaningful types in a world of suburbs. In M. Clapson & R. Hutchison, Suburbanization in global society. Research in Urban Sociology (pp. 15–47). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Hopkins, E. (1991). The rise and decline of the English working classes, 1918–1990. London: Weidenfeld.

306

MARK CLAPSON

Hylton, S. (2007). A history of reading. Chichester: Phillimore and Company. Malpass, P. (2005). Housing associations and housing policy: An historical perspective. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Marchant, A. (1999). Living room. London: Working Press. Mogey, J. M. (1956). Family and neighbourhood: Two studies of Oxford. Oxford: Oxford University Press. New Statesman, 28 May 2001. Retrieved from http://www.newstatesman.com/contents/2001/05/28 Office of National Statistics & Social Analysis and Reporting Division. (2004). Social capital: A review of the literature. London: HMSO. Political and Economic Planning. (1947). Watling revisited. Planning, 40, 270. Power, A., & Elster, J. (2001). Environmental issues and human behavior in low-income areas in the UK: A report to the economic and social research council. London: ESRC. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Ravetz, A. (2001). Council housing and culture: The history of a social experiment. London: Routledge. Reading Borough Council. (2007). Whitley North map. Reading: Reading Borough Council. Reading Chronicle 8 July 1988; 23 September 1988. Saunders, P. (1989). Beyond housing classes: The sociological significance of private property rights in means of consumption. In: L. McDowell, P. Sarre & C. Hamnett (Eds.), Divided nation: Social and cultural change in Britain: A reader. London: Sage. Spencer, J., Tuxford, J., & Dennis, N. (1964). Stress and release in an Urban estate: A study in action research. London: Tavistock. Stacey, M. (1960). Tradition and change: A study of Banbury. Oxford: University Press. Stacey, M., Batstone, E., Bell, C., & Murcott, A. (1975). Power, persistence and change: A second study of Banbury. London: Routledge. Taylor, R. (2005). The rise and disintegration of the working classes. In: P. Addison & H. Jones (Eds.), A companion to contemporary Britain, 1939–2000 (pp. 371–388). Oxford: Blackwell. Willmott, P. (1962). The evolution of a community. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Young, M., & Willmott, P. (1957). Family and kinship in East London. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

CHAPTER 14 ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN ITALIAN COHOUSING: A PRELIMINARY REFLECTION Chiara Durante ABSTRACT This chapter looks at the increasing interest in the cohousing phenomenon in Italy within civil society, public institutions, and academia. The most significant element to emerge from all this interest is the ‘ambiguity’ concerning the use of the concept. It is thus necessary to identify what the ‘Cohousing’ nomenclature is applied to, present it in its historical and geographic context, trace its origins and development on the basis of the related literature, and highlight the recent issues that have arisen from the debates held in international research networks. This chapter will advance the hypothesis that ‘ambiguity’ is playing, to a certain extent, a positive role, creating a common ground where different traditions, institutions, and social practices can meet and approach one another. I also propose considering the remarkable territorial activation expressed by emerging bottom-up initiatives as the most relevant specificity of the actual Italian situation from a public policies point of view. I identify the main issues at the national level and compare them with those issues found during field research carried out through participant observation. The introductory

Everyday Life in the Segmented City Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 11, 307–333 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1047-0042/doi:10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011017

307

308

CHIARA DURANTE

analysis of the reported case study, which focuses mainly on context conditions, shows the Ferrara bottom-up initiatives to be the (unintended) result of previous active citizenship public policies, thus revealing the importance of and the frames provided by urban policies to social innovation processes. As a future research issue, a shift is recommended from a blanket approach to a critical analysis of specific experiences. Keywords: Cohousing; active citizenship; public policies; international ecological movements; empowerment; inclusiveness

The theme of cohousing is discussed here with a particular interest in the increase in citizen participation and territorial activation that has arisen in Italy in the last decade. Before pointing out the ambiguities and confusion characterizing the Italian debate, it is helpful to explain what is usually intended by the term cohousing, where this concept originates, and how it has evolved across different historical and geographical contexts. The most common definition describes cohousing as a collective housing approach that can be delineated through a few main features: association of private units (in which the households reside) with common spaces and shared services, participated project and direct management by residents, Social Contact Design (the intentional project of the neighborhood with specific attention toward improving a sense of community), collaborative lifestyles, and a democratic, nonhierarchical decision-making process. This definition is derived from American architects Charles Durrett and Kathryn McCamant (1988) who, in the 1980s, studied the Scandinavian experiences and published the first articles in English on the subject of cohousing. This, in turn, led to a wider diffusion of the idea in the United States and from there to many other countries (Lietaert, 2007; Williams, 2008). The majority of studies about cohousing (mainly in English) focus on the relationship between the design of spaces and social interaction (TorresAntonini, 2001; Williams, 2005) and methods of community building and the difficulties associated with them (Durret & McCamant, 1988; Fromm, 1991). The cohousing concept, constituting an innovative approach to housing and a lifestyle based on collaboration and education to collective problem setting and solving, was only recently used to indicate a proper social and cultural movement that is organized in networks with the aim of stimulating social change. These three components are characterized differently in the three main waves of cohousing diffusion: the pioneer wave of Scandinavian

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

309

Cohouses in the 1970s, the American model affirmation in the late 1980s, and the ongoing phase. The origins of the cohousing model are commonly traced back to two articles published in Denmark in the late 1960s (Durret & McCamant, 1988; Sargisson, 2010): journalist Bodil Graae’s ‘Children should have one hundred parents’ (1967) and the architect Jan Gudmand-Hoyer’s ‘The missing link between Utopia and the dated one-family house’ (1968). In this early phase, one of the main aspects of cohousing is connected with gender struggle for equality in the distribution of reproduction roles (De Gregorio, 2000; Maggio, 1986; Vestbro, 1997). Instances of communitarian utopia and experiments with cooperative communities in the framework of countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s provided the cultural context in which cohousing experiences are rooted. In fact, while radical political parties were concerned with altering the prevailing social order, communitarian exemplary counterinstitutions applied political commitment in every field of day-to-day life, developing a laboratory for social experimentation (Gromark, 2000). They exemplified, in their own structure and conduct, an alternative set of ideals that would set the basis of a new society (Starr, 1979). In Northern Europe, the widespread development of cohousing was supported through public policies, legislation, and funding (Williams, 2005), with some important variations among different countries. Danish cohousing was mainly born as a response to early social fragmentation, and thus, its main issue was connected with community. The Danish Building Research Institute, committed to the search for new and innovative solutions to housing needs, supported cohousing technically but not financially, so that Danish cohousing was backed, owned, and developed by residents. The main consequences were social homogeneity and lack of concern in creating positive relationships with the larger community outside (Fromm, 1991). The Dutch case demonstrates that there cannot be significant social policies without movements that are able to enforce them (Bourdieu, 1979): in Holland, the strength of the squatting movements led to a greater government sensibility toward housing models alternative to the traditional one family house. Thus, even if it was not encouraged, the Cohousing option was integrated by legislation into the public housing system and still is, to a large extent, prevalent on private property (Maggio, 1986). This has led to a great social mix inside Cohouses, which are generally quite open to the surrounding neighborhood and, even if it is seldom mentioned nowadays, were often illegally occupied previously.

310

CHIARA DURANTE

In Sweden, the main interest in the cohousing model relates to feminist issues and the reduction of the burden of housework for women and improvement of the lives of working parents and their children (Williams, 2005). Togetherness was envisioned as a by-product of cooperative tasks. In the Swedish experience, there is a combination of the ‘providence state’ welfare tradition and modernistic collective housing. Following the example of the German Einku¨chenha¨user and Soviet Dom Communa, in the 1920s, Swedish institutions promoted Kollektivhuset (Gromark, 2000), collective houses endowed with common kitchens and restaurants and originally managed by professional staff. After discovering that it was not economically viable, these common facilities started to be run by the residents themselves. This provided a precedent that left its seeds in the Swedish imagination and led to the Swedish Cohousing model (Vestbro, 1992). It is noteworthy that the event which partially determined institutional approval and support was the combination of the presence of bottom-up organized groups and the need to restructure and reuse modernist buildings that were left vacant. As these structures were situated on public land, they were available for experimentation, a significant example of which is ‘Staken’ pioneer cohousing (De Gregorio, 2000). This compromise between self-management and bureaucratic management of needs is a very interesting point although this balance is not easy to achieve and maintain. Moreover in later experiments that tried to integrate cohousing with specialized residences, there was great difficulty in obtaining the direct use of shared common services, thus partially subcontracting their control to professional staff, as in the case of the Stopljikan experience (Lietaert, 2007). From a management point of view, most Swedish cohouses are run almost in the same way as the rest of the public housing stock: there are waiting lists and the rent is calculated according to the availability of common spaces. However, there are also additional contracts that serve as codes of behavior, including rules concerning participation in common activities. Providing cooperative organization of ordinary maintenance in the cohouse results in a discount on the rent. To limit problems with interpersonal relationships, a system of interviews is sometimes held by other tenants to choose newcomers, but some Cohouses prefer not to have additional selection criteria of any kind to maintain mixed groups. This happens because of the principle of nondiscrimination practiced in public Cohousing, leading to a general prevalence of cooperative issues over community ones (Delgado, 2010). Moreover, this could also be seen as a feature that developed within institutionalized experiences and shows a

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

311

‘natural’ evolution of the model from a long-term perspective. When necessary, people who prove themselves to be not keen on the Cohousing philosophy can be eventually persuaded to move elsewhere in the public stock through the intermediation of the public corporations that provide general management in Swedish public housing. With the Swedish welfare system affected by worsening economic conditions, a certain amount of public stock has been sold to tenants; the selling off of assets is also an issue for cohouses, which may then become gentrified.

THE AMERICAN PRAGMATIC MODEL The diffusion of Durrett and McCamant’s studies on the Danish model led to a second wave of cohousing, which spread through the United States during the 1980s and 1990s more widely and quickly than the European experience. This success was mainly motivated by the Americans’ need for community, social support, interaction, and security in their local neighborhoods. The second wave of cohousing is characterized by the adoption of an environmental focus: the communitarian form in itself would generate more sustainable lifestyles as a combination of strong social networks and communal facilities enable residents to share ‘resources, pro-environmental ideas and attitudes that lead ultimately to the creation of social norms which reinforce this behavior (Meltzer, 2005). Pro-environmental behaviors have resulted in significantly lower levels of resource consumption (including energy, land, goods) and waste production in cohousing communities, alongside increased recycling and car-sharing schemes’ (Williams, 2008, p. 271). However, a weakness in American cohousing is the homogeneity of social composition. Lacking strong public support, they are based on private ownership and shared facilities, such as car sharing and collaborative childcare, are often left to individual initiatives, and not organized in a more structured way. According to a recent study by Poley and Stephenson (2007), although as individuals American cohousers appear to exceed the national average in civic participation (within and beyond the community), the relationship with the wider community in which cohousing settlements are embedded is not always positive. Common spaces and activities are often open to the outside community to encourage greater integration and community development across a wider area (Williams, 2005), but there is often a lack of integration that can be traced back to different causes such as

312

CHIARA DURANTE

the perceived hostility of surrounding communities and fatigue among cohousers as a result of their involvement in the development, design, recruitment, and operational processes (Williams, 2008). One of the most positive aspects of American cohousing is its great capacity to affirm itself and spread, even if in a niche market. Its success is largely linked to the diversity of development approaches adopted (developer-led, partnership, resident-led, new and retrofit) and to the American pragmatic approach (Williams, 2008). Some studies have hypothesized a greater diffusion of cohousing in the United States, applying the diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers, 1962) for evaluating factors influencing the diffusion rate of cohousing (Williams, 2008). Cohousing adoption could probably be improved through the further development of those elements that are already present, such as publicity about security and the high resale value of houses built in cohousing areas. This is quite relevant, especially in the current economic crisis and also, potentially, to the interests of public property. It also gives rise to the possibility of experimentation, both directly through rental options and observing the positive effects on the wider communities. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that the political engagement aspects (such as time and expertise required by resident-led approaches) easily become points of weakness. Other studies have criticized the second wave of cohousing because of the gap with the European model (Sargisson, 2010), a discrepancy that is strongly related to differences in cultural and economic structure (Fromm, 1991). The latter is represented as a utopian movement with an explicit political purpose while American cohousing is recognized merely as a successful, small-scale attempt to build more interactive communities. Although the achievement of significant cohesion and the establishment of a set of common structures and highly valued behaviors and attitudes are acknowledged and recognized, American cohousing is described more as a new approach to housing rather than a new way of life. This is due to its almost dogmatic aim to be non-ideological and to the general adoption of conservative ideas about ownership (Sargisson, 2010). Property relations is a very crucial point indeed and is also significant with respect to third wave cohousing issues and experimentations toward more social inclusive models – a perspective that challenges the American bias for private property. It suggests exploring different options and, in particular, the hypothesis, rooted in the American affordable housing tradition, of a deeper involvement of third sector cooperatives in cohousing building (Fenster, 1999).

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

313

CIVIC COMMITMENT WITHIN THE THIRD WAVE OF COHOUSING The third wave of cohousing diffusion started in the 1990s in the Pacific Rim (Australasia and South-east Asia) and, later, in southern Europe, where it underwent further metamorphosis. As Williams (2005, p. 202) notes, ‘Issues including accessibility and affordability, green architecture and ecological habitation, adaptability and responsiveness to suit regional and cultural differences are being addressed in the third wave of cohousing communities.’ Many collaborative housing traditions, developed separately in different contexts, now tend to recognize themselves under the cohousing concept, and, in some countries, they are progressively spreading due to public administrations, which are willing to diversify the housing offers, as in some German cases (Bricocoli, 2011). The great interest in cohousing has arisen within the frame of a return to mutual help forms inside society (Guadagnucci, 2007), which can be seen as a result of the faltering welfare state ‘safety-net,’ which had compensated for social disintegration, especially in large metropolitan areas. Together with the phenomena of social exclusion, the philosophical tradition of the social economy – that is, self-help, mutual aid, civic, or religious associations – has made its reappearance, even in public discourses, after some decades of relative weakening (Moulaert, Martinelli, Swyngedouw, & Gonzalez, 2005). Current cohousing initiatives are often part of a new and wider activation of civil society that has ‘a multitude of expressions, from (y) an expansion and intensification of political activism and new social movements, an emerging social entrepreneurship and global solidarity movement, new forms of New Age spirituality and body practices (y) and a host of alternative lifestyles’ (Ardvisson, 2008). This deals with the affirmation of a ‘productive consumer culture’ in which today’s emergence of grassroots social production is a significant social fact (Ardvisson, 2008; Musaro`, 2010). Recently, this shift from an individual to a collective perspective and commitment inside consuming choices, defined as political consumerism (Tosi, 2006), is introduced with reference to primary goods such as housing. Cohousing has also been argued to be relevant as a field for testing degrowth theories (Lietaert, 2010). What kind of motivations induce middle-class people to involve themselves in these movements as well as in cohousing processes and other contemporary housing practices that contribute to the current diversification of housing models? Some authors explain it as an identity building process, constituting a

314

CHIARA DURANTE

kind of niche inside middle classes where Bourdieu’s theory of distinction can be applied (Lanzani, Granata, Novak, Inti, & Cologna, 2006). It is only recently that activists became concerned with the idea of defining Cohousing as a movement (Vestbro, 2010). The presence of some kind of coordination at the international level and national networks among associations contribute to form a structure confirming the attitude of cohousing associations toward organizing themselves in a movement (Ruggeri, 2000), even if there are some important distinctions on a national basis. In Scandinavia, there are well-organized cohousing networks composed of groups and associations (often including well-wishers and political activists) that are committed in various ways to knowledge diffusion. An exemplary case is the First Collaborative Housing International Conference, held in Stockholm on May 5–9, 2010 (www.cohousing2010.se), which was jointly promoted by academics (the Royal Institute of Technology) and Kollektivhus NU (Swedish cohousing network), which provided volunteers to take charge of most of the organizational tasks, including hosting a number of foreign participants. In the American case, we find a national network mainly involved in ‘market-oriented activities’ that supply information to newcomers interested in buying the empty apartments and even to investors and developers for new initiatives (Williams, 2005). In the Italian case, described later, the role of the national network is mainly concerned with sharing information and competences, providing mutual support to local associations and forming groups. A final concern is how to deal with different and well-characterized local traditions inside an international movement and network. In this context, ambiguity has proven to be quite positive and functional in international relationships. Different forms of ‘collaborative housing’ have been discussed among academics, activists, and politicians in the First Collaborative Housing International Conference, demonstrating a deep concern to find shared definitions and proper terms (Vestbro, 2010). ‘Experiment-city,’ an international research network promoted within the EU program ‘Europe for citizens’ on collaborative housing, is carrying on this kind of reflection. In this case, the choice to keep some degree of ambiguity in the use of the cohousing concept has started to be seen as an opportunity to keep the discussion about definitions open, conceiving them as possible instruments for innovating rigid historicized frames. This has much to do with the will to extend the reflection to a wider array of self-organized housing forms, including different local traditions and also experiences more radical than cohousing (sometimes even illegal, such as squatting practices).

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

315

From a research point of view, this shift is significant in terms of both politics and social movements. In politics, this attitude reveals a more attentive concern, which is focused on inclusionary tasks inside the city. Experiment-city’s first meeting was organized in Berlin (October, 27–31, 2010) within the framework of the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion.1

THE COHOUSING CONCEPT: DIFFUSION AND AMBIGUOUS TREATMENT IN ITALY It cannot be said that the cohousing concept was completely unknown in Italy before the current wave of diffusion. In academic circuits, publications had already described some Northern European experiences, proposing them as a model in the field of housing policies or typologies (Maggio, 1986; Saggio, 1993). Many activists and persons engaged in communitarian issues were already acquainted with these experiences. In addition, the international circulation and sharing of these ideas have also been proved by the many experimentations carried out in Italy since the 1970s and 1980s that show consistent affinity with the cohousing model, although the term itself had not been used until fairly recently Discussion of cohousing was reintroduced into the Italian debate by the European academic research EMUDE (Emerging users demands for sustainable solutions) coordinated by the Dipartimento Indaco of Milan Politecnico (www.sustainable-everyday.net). In this context, the Cohousing experiences of Northern Europe are presented as an exemplary model of ‘creative communities,’ which produce social innovations through bottomup production of new solutions to new needs, such as those for social relationships and ecological concerns (Manzini & Jegou, 2003). My research, beginning with a survey of persons living in Milan, has evolved into action-research. The aim of the survey was to explore their interest in cohousing and to identify the variations to be introduced to the original model to adapt it to the Italian context. As a result of the good responses obtained, a web site was created (www.cohousing.it) providing information on the subject. In addition, a partnership was formed between the university, the municipality, and the social innovation agency, Innosense, later called Cohousing Ventures, which has started functioning in Milan as a cohousing developer (Lietaert, 2007).

316

CHIARA DURANTE

For the general public, much of the information about cohousing comes from the web, although cohousing has become quite a popular argument in newspapers and even in women’s magazines, the first circuits where the idea has started to circulate are those strictly connected to the field of ecological movements. For example, through cohousing representation in events dedicated to political consumerism such as the annual fairs ‘Terra Futura’ in Florence, and ‘Fa la cosa giusta’ in Milan, and also through articles in magazines and books published by ‘AAM Terra nuova.’ Among the attempts to reach a larger public, an important step forward was the publication of Cohousing e condomini solidali (Lietaert, 2007), a book (and a documentary movie) connecting the Italian experiences and new social tasks to an international scenario, thus creating a wide debate in ecologically committed cultural circuits. Many individuals and associations became interested in the public presentations, often spreading the information through word of mouth until, eventually, cohousing associations were formed all over Italy, particularly in the towns and metropolitan areas of the northern and central part of the country. In this book, communitarian experiences from very different backgrounds were introduced collectively to the wider public: the main ones were condomini solidali and ecovillages.2 Condomini solidali arose from an original experiment started in the 1960s in Milan, by two people, Adriano Volpi and its wife, who had a background of volunteer work in Africa. They started the project (Comunita` di Villapizzone) with the support of a group of Jesuits. Since 1988, the association founded by them, ‘Comunita` e famiglia,’ has promoted the spread of similar experiences. Now, in the north of Italy, there are about 20 of these communities consisting of families that, while still keeping their private households, share common spaces and facilities and also their earnings. Within the community, they can choose to follow a religious path and participate in social volunteering activities. Ecovillages, on the other hand, comprise a national network (RIVE) and a wide array of communitarian experiences. They are generally located in marginal areas set far away from great urban concentrations and focus on a strict relationship with nature. In the Italian context, the three communitarian associative networks have often chosen to appear jointly on public occasions, starting from the first meeting of the Italian Cohousing network, which took place on April 10, 2010, in Florence. This first meeting, organized by the older and more structured associations (Rome, Turin, Bologna, and Ferrara), was attended by people from all over Italy and from very different backgrounds: cohousing associations, nonformalized groups, single persons, students and

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

317

scholars, professionals, and also cultural associations dealing with social issues. Both ecovillage network representatives and those from Condomini Solidali expressed a common social and environmental sensibility and emphasized the affinity among these alternative habitat groups, defining the ‘abitare solidale’ field. This was also a cause of confusion, quite evident in cohousers’ frequent need to call attention to distinctions. One of the main concerns of the meeting was to provide a grassroots definition of cohousing intended for public recognition purposes. This was intended to reduce confusion in the public debate conducted among the general public and people from institutional and academic backgrounds who often proposed simplifications and inappropriate associations with betterknown initiatives dealing in various ways with community. Keeping their distance from more radical or holistic experiences, as well as from those forms of cohabitation perceived as reductive or not in line with the cohousing model and ideology, has been a common attitude among cohousing activists. This not only reveals much about the urban and cultural context toward which cohousing initiatives are moving but also about the way in which these associations want to be perceived. This is quite evident also from the repeated claims about the ‘normality’ of the Cohousing choice, held by ‘ordinary people,’ and its affinities with the local traditions of rural communities. Renewed awareness of the cohousing concept has given rise to a lively institutional interest, which coincides with renewed attention for the housing question. This is linked to serious problems nationwide posed by dwelling accessibility, ranging from immigrant concentration in big urban areas to middle-class sectors (the so-called gray band) that are experiencing a growing exclusion from the real estate market (Bifulco, 2011; Durante, Leder & Verdini 2010; Rottini, 2008). Increasing awareness about the necessity to link housing and social policies (Bifulco, 2011) has encouraged the idea of community and social cohesion in relation to housing issues. Public agencies have started using the cohousing concept in a very unprejudiced way, mentioning it without paying much attention to definitions: cohousing has become a trendy word used in many public speeches, program documents, and even for labeling specific projects that share only some of the specific characters of cohousing. For instance, in a program promoted and financed by the government in 2007,3 temporary housing for special categories such as students and immigrants is defined as ‘cohousing’ although it does not represent the cohousing model but is much closer to, for example, American students cooperatives. In the Italian context, the recent introduction of social housing policies intended to increase affordable housing stock through public-private

318

CHIARA DURANTE

partnerships, has promoted innovative initiatives incorporating some aspects of cohousing, such as the introduction of social activities among tenants in public neighborhoods. These kinds of projects4 are strictly related to often well-known experimental experiences,5 sometimes developed as residences dedicated to people who are elderly or not self-sufficient.6 It has been observed that this is a composite heritage in the field of housing, which provides in itself part of the implicit Italian imagination about Cohousing (Bifulco, 2011). The introduction of this topic into public debate helps to make explicit some cultural references and foster ‘niche’ and experimental housing policies toward mainstream application. It is also interesting to see how the use of the cohousing concept gives a larger resonance to this debate because of its present ‘appeal’ within civil society, even if the related territorial activation is quite misrecognised. The confusion within the field can only be partially explained by a lack of knowledge on the subject: perhaps, unintentionally, the confusion results in a ‘negotiated’ cultural production, which characterizes the ongoing process of clarifying its representation within the Italian movement. This ambiguity allows common ground for different subjects and experiences to intersect and be treated together.7 It has clearly been used in some cases for obtaining consensus, but the mix of heterogeneous experiences has also contributed toward enriching social knowledge and imagination, and to start delineating possible scenarios. In other words, Cohousing has played the role of an umbrella concept, providing, in spite of etymological mistakes, a general frame for a debate wider than its own boundaries. This fertile ambiguity has allowed also associations and institutions to come into contact with one another, through shallow interaction, although none of them could be said to understand clearly the basis on which a satisfying reciprocal relationship, if any, could be founded. This process has contributed toward delineating a frontier area, where different positions can positively confront and interact through misunderstanding (LaCecla, 2005).

BOTTOM-UP INITIATIVES CRITICAL ASPECTS AND MAIN ISSUES CONCERNING THE COHOUSING MODEL IN THE ITALIAN CONTEXT Although a generally positive tendency toward experimentation and a gradual opening up to participative issues may be noted in the attitude of local authorities, bottom-up social movements have confronted huge

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

319

difficulties in gaining concrete public support. The lack of support can be traced back not only to the scarcity of public resources employed in the housing field in Italy but also to the difficulty in conceiving forms of public involvement with self-organized groups. It is significant that most of the innovative policies associated with cohousing described in the previous section were initiated by governmental agencies and are top-down experiences. Citizen participation is a challenge for bureaucratically standardized schemes and procedures; moreover, it is often perceived as endorsing a kind of privilege: this point identifies a crucial problem. Another aspect deals with bottom-up efforts to provide precise definitions of the cohousing model: in a general overview, it is quite evident that associations are still moving on an abstract terrain, and thus, it is very difficult to forecast what the Italian cohousing model will be like. The lack of a relevant number of realized experiences in the national scenario confines the definition to a purely theoretical level. A recent sociological analysis of web sites of those groups supporting cohousing initiatives identifies four main frames representing the selfrepresented identity of bottom-up cohousing (Bifulco, 2011). Italian cohousing issues are generally presented with reference to the need for a richer sociality. These are seen as alternatives to hyper-individualistic lifestyles but, nonetheless, the kind of community seen as eligible for activists does leave room for individuality. This is firstly because it is seen as temporary, planned (intentional as deliberately chosen by individuals), and open to inputs and interactions with the community outside. Secondly, a strong emphasis is placed on mutual care – delivering beyond family links, which is one of the most important elements of the communitarian way of life. Thirdly, intentionality in community building is described as stemming from common concerns and lifestyles: voluntary aggregation (that could be read by critics as segregation) would be based on cultural affinity. Finally, in this model, the political engagement is expressed with reference to the attention accorded to sustainability issues and participatory commitment in the collective building process. Within this general description, several aspects could be recognized as an appropriate model to stimulate collective interest and generate public support: 1. In the Italian network meeting, commitments to the community building processes have been defined in terms of social disease prevention: this definition links general considerations about community relevance to quality of life and to individual development. Cohousing is visualized as

320

CHIARA DURANTE

a lifestyle that is fertile for activating social learning processes that are essential for creating an embryonic alternative model of society. 2. On the social level, cohousing is presented as a possible service provider for activities such as car-pooling and car-sharing, micro-kindergartens, purchase groups, SEL (Local Exchange Systems) (i.e., systems that provide mutual help without monetary exchange) (Coluccia, 2001), and general neighborhood social animation. 3. On the political level, associations claim that their involvement in active citizenship practices within the city contributes toward visualizing urban development according to the perspective of sustainability, at both the environmental and the social levels, and opposing speculative urban transformations. Political engagement in collective action can be seen as an effort to develop a democracy laboratory that is valuable in itself while improving civic and social skills. Moreover, it engages on an area such as housing, which has traditionally been perceived as belonging to the private domain and thus politically ‘neutral.’

Cohousing intercepts some disciplinary reflections in the area of housing and is mainly concerned with criticism regarding the bureaucratic treatment of dwelling needs (Antonio Tosi, 1994), which tends to generate exclusion of, for example, the poor or those whose social profile does not match the codified ones, which are mainly based on the Italian traditional family (Cremaschi & Tosi, 2001). Such a criticism involves the application of the functionalist paradigm to the city and the adoption of a universal model of rationality, which defined as illegal the multiple and spontaneous housing practices thereby reducing plurality to a codified conceptualization (Vettoretto, 2009) and depriving people of their ‘power to inhabit’ (Agostini, Bollini, LaCecla, & Rondoni, 1980). This interpretation is strictly linked to a more general shift in welfare frames toward an empowerment perspective, meant to give value and enable the pursuance of self-defined life quality objectives, as in Amartya Sen’s (1985) capability approach. This perspective requires spaces for citizens to self-organize and produce new kinds of commons in creative and unforeseen ways, thus overcoming the actual discourse about governance and arguing a stronger role for participation (Cottino, 2009). The challenge is to perceive participation, not as a technique to provide consensus, but as a political activity, including conflict, and paving the way for active citizenship policies (Crosta, 2010; Paba, Pecoriello, Perrone, & Rispoli, 2009; Paba & Perrone, 2004).

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

321

This perspective is increasingly reinforced by various (re-)emerging spontaneous practices corresponding to unsatisfied needs, including the need for cohousing. Some are deeply rooted in history, structured inside proper movements, as in the case of the occupation of empty buildings in metropolitan areas. Recently, these experiences especially concern immigrant people, who act within the cultural framework and support of different local movements committed to housing rights.8 In a less politically organized way, a significant sector of the Italian middle classes is now facing the housing disease and thus enacting different kinds of housing strategies. These concern mainly young people affected negatively by a high working flexibility and unemployment, inducing various expressions of informal cohabitation (Caudo, 2008; Lanzani et al., 2006). In this perspective, persistent institutional rigidities in dealing with selforganized citizen initiatives have to be overcome: a key question concerns how to treat issues posed by specific urban actors within wider policy frames, conceptualizing a larger public interest (Paba et al., 2009). What is evident is that collective interest cannot be conceptualized definitely in relation to an abstract cohousing model, but, to a large extent, it has to be built inside specific contexts through interactions with institutions and other urban actors. It is interesting to explore how cohousing issues can intercept and enrich local urban policies. For instance, moving beyond frame reducing housing policies to the dwellings often predominant over a wider housing concern inside Italian policies (Caudo, 2008; Vettoretto, 2009), can Cohousing help to retrace a link between housing policies and more general policies concerning urban and regional development? In some studies, cohousing has been emphasized, at both the international and the national levels (Delgado, 2010; Pizziolo, 2009) in the presentation of key concepts such as counter-hegemony (Leitner, Peck, & Sheppard, 2007) and right to the city (Harvey, 2008; Lefebvre, 1968; Salzano, 2010). Cohousers are described as possible new territorial actors, capable of reinventing a relationship between the city and its regional context (Granata, 2005) in a similar and complementary way to other subjects involved in contemporary movements in political consumerism such as GAS (fair purchase groups) (Saroldi, 2003) and ecovillages (Poli, 1999). Could these experiences stimulate citizens’ active role as territorial care deliverers (Poli, 1999) in a viable new welfare policy centered on the quality of everyday life environment (Lanzani, 2005)? Although these questions may be stimulating, it is necessary to overcome conceptual and practical impasses between associations and institutions. A

322

CHIARA DURANTE

further exploration into and critical analysis of the cohousing model would be useful and necessary as a certain number of problems are related to intrinsic ambiguities and unresolved points in the cohousing model itself. The first element to be questioned should be the idea of creativity and social innovation (Manzini & Jegou, 2003) that accompanies the third wave of cohousing diffusion, as these concepts can be referred to different levels of complexity and social commitment (Bianchini & Landry, 1995; Drewe, Klein, & Hulsbergen, 2008; Florida, 2002; Moulaert & Vicari Haddock, 2009). To what extent can cohousing, within the framework of new movements that give a new interpretation to the common discourse (Ostrom, 1990), work in a further democratization and differentiation perspective (Donolo, 2005; Paba, et al., 2009)? What are the risks bound to exclusionary patterns? In fact, the Italian network Manifesto expresses cohousing attitude to open to the external context and to the wider community in its intent and seeks to establish a clear distance from segregating practices. In spite of these claims, the intentional character of these kinds of communities is seen by some researchers as ambiguous (Sampieri, 2011), whereas others argue that the cohousing model differs from gated communities only in shallow variations (Chiodelli, 2010a) and shares with them a central point: the right to exclusion based on private property (Chiodelli, 2010b). This critique identifies at least two key themes: the first is the intrinsic fragility of social innovation practices (Bifulco, 2011), which are somehow ‘naturally’ exposed to contradictions and mismatches between ideals at the level of discourse and concrete realization of the model. The second theme that requires further attention concerns property right: does the private property model of cohousing need to be questioned? The affordability of the model is a central theme in the debate in Italy, generally leading to an apparent paradox: if cohousing is entirely promoted and owned by cohousers, there is a strong economic divide, which excludes the lower- and the middle-income people who have difficulty accessing the Italian real estate market. This is the situation experienced by most of the bottom-up cohousing initiatives. On the contrary, if the cohousing is public property, the selection of prospective tenants will be based on income level, which would then have to be very low to access public housing. This would have the same segregation effect and also run the risk of requiring the development of beginning social skills for the weakest subjects accompanied and supported by an empowerment process. The introduction of cohousing within traditional housing policies must deal with the ambiguities of the empowerment frame that, especially in neoliberal paradigms, can be used to

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

323

turn down institutional responsibilities and engender exclusionary patterns in relation to the limits recognized in approaches based on responsiveness requirements (Bifulco, 2011; Donzelot, 2008). One alternative concerns the possibility of pursuing mixed models that can be the object of institutional experimentation, thus deeply innovating bureaucratic patterns and procedures. Other possibilities deal with cooperative property, which could reconcile a wider cohousing affordability with the bottom-up character of the initiatives. This would be a useful instrument for handling the liveliness of existing social movements, the attitude toward collective action, and the strong cooperative tradition of Italy, which has a rich experimental background (Franz, 1998), although in recent times, a general lack of investment and experimentation in deep contrast to the different trends found in Europe has been noted (Bricocoli, 2011; Lanzani et al., 2006). The German baugemeinshaft has emerged as an alternative model. This baugemeinshaft is similar to cohousing, with the purpose of attracting a mixed population from the suburban areas to the city. In Hamburg, the municipality provides empty urban areas that are assigned, through public competition, to housing cooperatives that undertake the entire building process (Bricocoli, 2011). This is a mechanism meant to limit property speculation through public controls on the cost of the areas to be urbanized and controlled by the cooperative. In some of these experiments, the final property, or even the building itself, can remain public and houses are given in 99-year concessions.9 In Italy, also, the idea that bottom-up processes should provide instruments to avoid speculative urban development has begun to appear in speeches by cohousing associations: the incipient attitude of extending purchase group logic to new areas such as terrains,10 buildings, and building materials is starting to produce new models, possibly also inducing different forms of urbanization (Ciaffi, 2011).

A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF A CASE STUDY: THE SOLIDARIA COHOUSING ASSOCIATION IN THE FERRARA CONTEXT In this final section, I introduce a preliminary analysis of a case study, the cohousing association, Solidaria, in Ferrara. The experience described below does not deal with a realized cohousing settlement: the research

324

CHIARA DURANTE

focuses on contextual conditions that are considered relevant for a deeper understanding of the initiative and the ongoing process of interaction with economic, political, and associative local actors. I highlight the influence of regional and urban policies in Ferrara, which deal mainly with environmental education and participative processes that prepare a fertile ground for cohousing discourse. In addition, I will also look at some local experiences of citizen activation, which will be introduced as part of the local imagination and civic empowerment process. Ferrara is a relatively small city (of about 140,000 inhabitants) situated in the north east of Italy and belonging to the Emilia-Romagna region, which is characterized by a high degree of economic development, social cohesion, civic-mindedness, and trust in the efficacy of institutions. The EmiliaRomagna territorial development model has been regarded as exemplary for its balance and attention to public spaces and issues: that representation of the region is still largely accurate, although there has been criticism recently of perceived worsening of welfare levels caused by the introduction of some neoliberal elements in public policies and the high degree of urbanization and territorial exploitation (Bonora & Giardini, 2006). In the regional context, Ferrara is located in a slightly marginal position in relation to main economic currents and a large part of the province is considered a depressed area from both an economic and a demographic points of view (Osti, 2005): this considerably affects real estate costs. This is a central element in determining the success of the cohousing association in carrying out its project as ‘peripheral’ conditions are a key point in the Italian bottom-up experiences that are generally suffocated in congested metropolitan real estate markets. This ‘marginality’ has forced the city to reinvent its identity and economic activities, strongly investing in the artistic and cultural areas and in urban and landscape quality. Recently, particular attention has been paid to the governance of heritage and green spaces and also the participative forms of common management. In the past decade, a significant number of projects associated with sustainability education processes activated through A21L projects and structures11 (in which Ferrara has been deeply engaged at both provincial and municipal levels; see Munarin & Tosi, 2003) have been started in the city. These projects, often showing strong continuity, display a progressive know-how acquisition and involvement process by both institutions and citizens that interact in complex mutual appraisal dynamics. In a general overview, we can affirm that the sectors for environmental public policies as well as social and gender policies have contributed to provide competences, instruments, and vision for carrying out cohousing bottom-up initiatives in

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

325

Ferrara. For example, in the framework of A21L polices that are financed through regional INFEA funds (2006/2007), Ferrara local authorities carried out a project meant to stimulate the birth of GAS (fair purchase groups) to be organized in a regional network: this initiative led to the formation of ‘GAS Cittanova.’ Composed of a very active and cohesive group, GAS Cittanova worked as a cultural and civic commitment incubator and a fertile ground for social movements such as cohousing and Transition Town12 to take root in the local context. Ideas about cohousing started to circulate and be debated as a consequence of a seminar on the subject held in Bologna in October 2008. The meeting was promoted by the ‘consigliere di parita`’ (equality counselor), two provincial and regional figures concerned with gender issues, and provided some international cohousing examples as well as contributions from the Italian context. Thanks to the great interest which arose, a second appointment concerning a cohousing experience in Bologna hills was later held in Ferrara under the organization of ‘Sportello Ecoidea,’ a structure dealing with environmental communication and the search for best practices which was created inside the A21 department of the province. The interested group of persons, who recently formed the cohousing association called ‘Solidaria,’ was directly encouraged to pursue this route by the municipality, which, on various occasions, proposed different possibilities of intersecting public policies to the association. One proposal includes increased citizen participation and the redaction of municipal planning instruments, a process that is ongoing. A second option concerned access to unused public schools located in the peripheral administrative divisions of the Ferrara municipality. This would have been a good occasion to test the positive effects of cohousing on disadvantaged urban areas (Durante et al., 2010), but the efforts carried out by the association to acquire this public stock were not successful. However, this first contact would eventually open a communication channel with local institutional sectors involved in urban planning, leading Solidaria members to assume a generally proactive attitude. This is seen, for example, in their response when citizens have requested feedback and proposals about urban transformation projects by the municipality. In addition, the municipal agencies have started to recognize Solidaria, and cohousers in general, as possible interlocutors. Another small but important contribution is derived from social policies. Even if the cohousing model is not explicitly committed on this subject, it has been recently investigated, together with other experiences such as foster care and communes, in an Italian study that analyzes forms of social

326

CHIARA DURANTE

commitment within the family and their consequences on the quality of everyday life and interpersonal attitudes (Bramanti, 2009). Because of policies meant to support families and family volunteer activities, ‘Solidaria’ was able to coordinate with a social mediator to train its members in conflict management, which did not help clarify the association’s mission and the individual and shared visions. This lead to the development of basic strategies about collective action. The services provided by the Ferrara municipality not only provided economic support but also organized seminars and informal events: that have facilitated knowledge diffusion, some of which present elements of continuity with cohousing visions and provide local inspiration in Solidaria’s internal debates and external communication. The ‘Parchino Schiaccianoci’ experience (Nutcracker Little Park, a name chosen by children living in the neighborhood) provides an example of this process, which started in 2003 with a neighborhood committee taking action to defend the quality of their living environment. The lamentable lack of public management and rapid urbanization of the surroundings were accused of being responsible for the decay of green areas in the neighborhood, which were still endowed with traditional landscape elements such as a ‘maceri’ (little humid zones connected with a strong local culture of traditional use). Through a positive interaction with the municipality, the committee took direct charge of these green spaces and produced an ecological improvement project later funded by regional authorities. In addition, citizen participation induced a strong community feeling that eventually led also to the organization of frequent cultural and recreational events in the neighborhood and the formation of a purchase group, all activities that are generally open to a wider public. From the Solidaria point of view, this experience could be described as a concrete example of realized cohousing as a social movement. The strong local tradition concerning the cooperative movement must also be taken into account (Pirani & Zanoni, 2008). Housing cooperatives played an important role in the public housing policies of the 1950s and 1960s, experimenting with innovative solutions both in spatial terms (presence of shared services in neighborhoods and condominiums) and in management (for instance, in this region, there are a few housing cooperatives still providing undivided property houses). An important part of this contextual analysis deals with citizen participation in Ferrara: almost from the beginning, Solidaria has shared communication channels (such as the blog http://gas-cittanova.blogspot. com/), cultural attitudes, and a certain amount of its membership with two

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

327

other associations cited before, ‘GAS Cittanova’ and ‘Transition Town Ferrara.’ Sharing a common commitment toward the environment and cooperative tasks, the three associations have often engaged in common events and activities, thus animating a kind of urban creative laboratory. For instance, they have introduced the possibility of using public or common spaces in unusual ways such as ‘de-growth picnics’ in public parks, barter-markets, movie projections and ethnic dancing in courtyards, and cul-de-sac streets and country fields. Solidaria members often hold association meetings in private houses, sharing meals and introducing the concept of ‘political’ use of private spaces. Because of their emphasis on local production, many association members are involved in allotment gardens, in partnership with other associations and cooperatives. It is interesting to note that public authorities have acknowledged these practices and encouraged similar activities by organizing courses, directly placing public green areas under the charge of interested citizens and community associations, and even adopting specific regulatory instruments for the adoption of green areas thus fostering citizen aggregations and care delivering for urban environment. Moreover, GAS Cittanova, with the support of various other associations including Transition Towns Ferrara and Solidaria, has recently been involved in the management of a community center for elderly people who have long hosted the purchase group activities. Although this is a very new experience, it is evident that this is an effort to open public spaces to different users, thereby also providing social animation in the neighborhood. These experiences can be considered part of a process of mutual trust and appraisal and a positive exemplification of how active citizenship policies can work (Cottino, 2009), being aware that community is, to a large extent, a fleeting and unintended outcome of social interaction (Crosta, 2010). As a result of interlacing factors such as the activities of social movements and institutional public policies, we can identify in the Ferrara experiences some examples of common production by citizens, endorsing positive effects on the urban public spaces and contributing to shared visions for development. Nonetheless, Solidaria’s deep involvement in these social activities cannot provide guarantees about the way a concrete cohousing settlement could affect its territorial context. The main cohousing project actually pursued by Solidaria is the reuse of rural buildings placed in a valuable landscape context and easily accessible from Ferrara, but also affected by strict architectural and planning regulations. After choosing the terrain on their own, the project group decided to adopt a partially developer-led model, asking huge local

328

CHIARA DURANTE

inhabitants cooperative to become involved in managing financial risks and developing the project in a participative way. This involvement with a concrete project implies a distinction among simple ‘cohousing supporters’ and people who can actually afford housing costs. To include as many interested people as possible, overcoming to a certain extent the economic divide, the group is trying to obtain a mix between house and apartment rent from the cooperative in Ferrara. The group has also assessed neighborhood needs through meetings with local residents, identifying a lack of recreation facilities and day-care services. Additional services could deal with environmental education activities, including allotment gardens in the huge green spaces to be kept open to public use, and car-sharing systems serving the neighborhood. These services would be carried out jointly with the public sector. The deep involvement in activities such as forming the group, managing the building process, and organizing collective living points to a risk regarding these initiations. The high level of commitment, often exhausting the energy reserves of cohousers, may limit active citizenship outside the cohousing community (Williams, 2008; Bricocoli, 2011).

CONCLUSIONS The origins, evolutions, and variations related to the global distribution and historical context of the cohousing movement have been presented in this chapter. Cohousing may be seen not just as an approach to housing, but as a way of life; furthermore, it has recently come to be defined also as an international social movement. The diffusion across international networks has induced a blurred definition of cohousing, but a certain degree of ambiguity is useful for keeping different regional specificities and traditions under the same umbrella concept and providing also a creative margin for innovation of the model itself. In the Italian context too, where the success of the diffusion of the cohousing concept is largely bound to relevant territorial activation through bottom-up initiatives, the ambiguity characterizing the subject’s treatment in public arenas can be seen as positive, because it has provided (through misunderstanding) a common ground for different perspectives to intersect and mutually enrich their discourses. Nonetheless, an accurate exploration into the potentialities and limits of the cohousing model is necessary to clarify the ambiguities and intrinsic points of weakness in the Italian context, making reference to the variety of international experiences and identifying the most relevant contributions of

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

329

bottom-up initiatives to wider collective interests. Inclusiveness and affordability emerge as two central aspects to be improved in cohousing issue; thus, the role of institutions is essential in participative processes for an enlargement of bottom-up policy frameworks. An important outcome from field research points out how emerging cohousing initiatives and processes rely extensively on the wider policies and strategic choices of cities and on the capabilities, present or future, of the social and administrative tissue. The possible convergence of third-wave cohousing political commitment with ecological social movements and institutional active citizenship policies linked to sustainability issues constitute an ideal common ground for experimentation. Future challenges can be identified in the areas of both subjects’ ‘capacitation’ (Cottino, 2004) and the involvement of a larger array of social actors in competence sharing.

NOTES 1. More information is available on the initiative web site, http://www.experiment city.net. A follow-up meeting was recently organized in Milan (on March, 24–26, 2011), which provided an opportunity to discuss local experiences and practices and also to involve local economic and social actors and representatives of the Italian grassroots initiatives in the discussion. 2. A similar attitude can be found also in other works of a different character such as journalistic survey (Rottini, 2008), or an essay in community psychology (Bramanti, 2009). 3. General information about the project are provided on the governmental web site www.pogas.it/cms-upload/avviso-casa.pdf. 4. An example is provided by some initiatives within Turin municipality housing policies (Sebastianelli, 2011). These experiences were presented (quite improperly) as variations to Cohousing during the conference ‘L’altro abitare: dal cohousing all’autocostruzione,’ which was held on November 18, 2010, in Florence about the subject of innovation in institutional policies, with particular reference to public housing issues. 5. Some interesting cases with regard to housing cooperative experiments like those held by Adria cooperative (Franz, 1998) or exemplary case studies such as Villaggio Barona (Rabaiotti, 2000). 6. In this field, a deeper knowledge of Senior Cohousing, long time present in the international scene (Lietaert, 2007, Vestbro, 2010), has been developed since at least 2000, as shown by the sociological journal AbitareAnziani issues of the past 10 years. 7. Among the experiences going in this direction, it is very interesting that the regional institutions have chosen to treat together cohousing issues and self-building issues, the latter being supported mainly by associations involved with immigrant squatting experiences in Florence. On various occasions (among which the conference ‘L’altro abitare: dal cohousing all’autocostruzione’ cited previously),

330

CHIARA DURANTE

this has generated the possibility of crossing different points of view in a composite public debate. 8. For an international reference, see International Alliance of Inhabitants web site (www.habitants.org). In the Italian scenery, there are local movements in Rome (www.coordinamento.info) and Florence (http://lottaperlacasafirenze.noblogs.org). 9. Similar experiences have been described during the conference ‘Experimentcity’ in Milan, with reference to the city of Berlin (http://www.stiftung-trias.de; http://id22.net/) and to British experiences of Land Trusts (Large, 2010). 10. This embryonic experience is described on the web site http://www.gruppoac quistoterreni.it/. 11. Local Agenda 21 (LA21) represents a response by local governments to the agenda set out at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. LA21 s seek to construct a sustainability program aimed at integrating environmental, economic and social objectives (Selman, 2000) and very much depending on local specificities in their procedures and outcomes: it has largely highlighted the importance of LA21 not only as a product, but also as a process (Bollini, Bologna, Calori, & Merola, 2002), whose attainments are mainly related to strategy production, stimulation of environmental citizenship, and inclusion of various sectors, challenging traditional assumptions and actions, and assisting local democracy (Selman, 1998). 12. Transition Towns (Hopkins, 2008) is a contemporary international social movement that, just like cohousing, can be seen as able to make a positive use of ‘ambiguous definitions’. In fact, under the umbrella of a very wide ecological philosophy inspired by de-growth principles, civic commitment to inhabiting and consuming choices in everyday life is supported by nonhierarchical global networks that provide activists with general instruments for collective action. Therefore, on the global level, a deep, worldwide engagement in sharing and spreading knowledge about local best practices, in addition to simple competences concerning community development techniques, seeks to inspire and facilitate the activation of local experimental processes, which are strongly related to context specificities.

REFERENCES Agostini, R., Bollini, G., LaCecla, F., & Rondoni, C. (1980). Il potere di abitare. Firenze: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina. Ardvisson, A. (2008). The ethical economy of customer coproduction. Journal of Macromarketing, 28(4), 326–340. Bianchini, F., & Landry, C. (1995). The creative city. London: Demos. Bifulco, L. (2011). Co-abitare: Come si incontrano privato e pubblico nella costruzione di agency? In: A. Sampieri (Ed.), L’abitare collettivo (pp. 111–126). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Bollini, G., Bologna, G., Calori, A., & Merola, M. (2002). Un’introduzione all’Agenda 21 locale, Attenzione, rivista WWF per l’ambiente e il territorio, 25. Retrieved from http:// eddyburg.it/article/articleview/705/0/95/.

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

331

Bonora, P., & Giardini, A. (2006). Orfana e claudicante. L’Emilia ‘post-comunista’ e l’eclissi del modello territoriale. Bologna: Baskerville. Bourdieu, P. (1979). La distinzione. Critica sociale del gusto (Original work published in 2001). Bologna: Il Mulino. Bramanti, D. (2009). Le comunita` di famiglie. Cohousing e nuove forme di vita familiare. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Bricocoli, M. (2011). Amburgo. Pratiche e progetti di abitazione collettiva. In: A. Sampieri (Ed.), L’abitare collettivo (pp. 67–79). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Caudo, G. (2008). La casa possibile. In: F. Garofalo (Ed.), L’Italia cerca casa (pp. 32–56). Venezia: Tese delle Vergini all’Arsenale. Chiodelli, F. (2010a). Cohousing vs gated communities. Un’analisi tassonomica della coabitazione. Urbanistica, 141, 79–84. Chiodelli, F. (2010b). Enclaves private a carattere residenziale: Il caso del cohousing. Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 1, 95–116. Ciaffi, D. (2011). Gruppi d’acquisto edilizio, co-housing e co-working: Perche´ partecipare? Paper presented at the Turin XIV SIU Conference, March 24–26, 2011. Retrieved from www.planum.net. ISSN 1723-0993. Coluccia, P. (2001). La banca del tempo. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Cottino, P. (2004). Capability approach e politiche integrate di quartiere. Territorio, 44, 65–75. Cottino, P. (2009). Competenze Possibili. Milano: Jaka Book. Cremaschi, M., & Tosi, A. (2001). Casa e territorio. In: IreR, Quattro studi sulla vulnerabilita` sociale. Rapporto dell’indagine Sociale Lombarda 2000 (pp. 133–191). Milano: Guerini e Associati. Crosta, P. (2010). Pratiche. Il territorio e` l’uso che se fa. Milano: FrancoAngeli. De Gregorio, I. L. (2000). Collaborative housing in Sweden. Stockholm: Byggforskningsradet. Delgado, G. (2010). Collaborative housing at a cross road: Critical reflections from the International collaborative housing conference. In: D. U. Vestbro (Ed.), Living together: Cohousing ideas and realities around the world (pp. 212–223). Stockholm: International Conference on Collaborative Housing. Donolo, C. (2005). Dalle politiche pubbliche alle pratiche sociali nella produzione di beni pubblici? Osservazione su una nuova generazione di politiche. Stato e mercato, 73, 34–48. Donzelot, J. (2008). Il neoliberismo sociale. Territorio, 46, 89–92. Drewe, P., Klein, J. L., & Hulsbergen, E. (2008). The challenge of social innovation in urban revitalization. Amsterdam: Techne Press. Durante, C., Leder, F., & Verdini, G. (2010). Cohousing di pianura. Ripensare l’abitare in chiave solidale e a zero consumo di suolo. Territorio, 52, 68–72. Durrett, C., & McCamant, K. (1988). Cohousing: A contemporary approach to housing ourselves. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class. New York, NY: Basic Books. Fenster, M. (1999). Community by covenant, process and design: Cohousing and the contemporary common interest community. Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law, 15(1), 3–54. Franz, G. (1998). Edilizia non-profit: Casa e mercato del lavoro. Rimini: Maggioli. Fromm, D. (1991). Collaborative communities: Cohousing, central living and other new forms of housing with shared facilities. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Graae, B. (1967, April). Børn skal have Hundrede Foraeldre. Politiken [Copenhagen]. Granata, E. (2005). Abitare: Mestiere difficile. Territorio, 34, 40–50.

332

CHIARA DURANTE

Gromark, S. (2000). L’habitat alternatif: Re´trospective et prospective 2000. Retrieved from http://www.habiter-autrement.org/35_colloque-lln-2000/04_coll.htm Guadagnucci, L. (2007). Il nuovo mutualismo, Sobrieta`, stili di vita ed esperienze di un’altra societa`. Milano: Feltrinelli. Gudmand-Høyer, J. (1968, 26 June). Det manglende led mellem utopi og det foraeldede en familiehus. Information. Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review, 53, 23–40. Hopkins, R. (2008). The transition handbook: From oil dependence to local resilience. London: Green Books. LaCecla, F. (2005). Il Malinteso. Antropologia dell’incontro. Bari: Laterza. Lanzani, A. (2005). Geografie, paesaggi, pratiche dell’abitare e progetti di sviluppo. Territorio, 34, 19–36. Lanzani, A., Granata, E., Novak, C., Inti, I., & Cologna, D. (2006). Esperienze e paesaggi dell’abitare. Milano: Abitare Segesta. Large, M. (2010). Common wealth. For a free, equal, mutual and sustainable society. Stroud: Hawthorn Press. Lefebvre, H. (1968). Le Droit a` la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Leitner, H., Peck, J., & Sheppard, E. (2007). Contesting neoliberalism: Urban frontiers. Amsterdam: ScienceDirect. Lietaert, M. (2007). Cohousing e condomini solidali. Firenze: Aam Terra Nuova. Lietaert, M. (2010). Cohousing’s relevance to degrowth theories. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18(6), 576–580. Maggio, M. (1986). La nuova utenza: Partecipazione e recupero nell’edilizia residenziale pubblica dei Paesi Bassi. Edilizia Popolare, 191, 33–59. Manzini, E., & Jegou, F. (2003). Sustainable everyday: Scenarios of urban life. Milan: Edizioni Ambiente. Meltzer, G. (2005). Sustainable community: Learning from the cohousing model. Victoria: Trafford Publishing. Moulaert, F., Martinelli, F., Swyngedouw, E., & Gonzalez, S. (2005). Towards alternative model(s) of local innovation. Urban Studies, 42(11), 1969–1990. Moulaert, F., & Vicari Haddock, S. (2009). Rigenerare la citta`. Pratiche di innovazione sociale nelle citta` europee. Bologna: Il Mulino. Munarin, S., & Tosi, M. C. (2003). Il progetto ambientale della citta`. Studi e ricerche per il Psc di Ferrara. Padova: Il Poligrafo. Musaro`, P. (2010). Diritti e debiti di cittadinanza. Citta`, consumo e beni comuni. In: S. Bartolini, C. Garotti, A. Iacomoni & S. Spellucci (Eds.), Territori di ricerca, ricerche di territorio (pp. 210–221). Firenze: Alinea. Osti, G. (2005). Un’economia leggera per le aree fragili. Sviluppo Locale, 11(27), 9–31. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Paba, G., Pecoriello, A., Perrone, C., & Rispoli, F. (2009). Partecipazione in Toscana, Interpretazioni e racconti. Firenze: Firenze University Press. Paba, G., & Perrone, C. (2004). Cittadinanza attiva. Firenze: Alinea. Pirani, A., & Zanoni, F. (2008). Cooperative e citta`: Pratiche innovative della cooperazione di abitazione nei processi di sviluppo urbano. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Pizziolo, G. (2009). La biocitta` e la comunita` urbana. In: O. De Zordo (Ed.), Quaderni di inchiesta urbana (pp. 111–126). Florence: Unaltracitta`/Unaltromondo.

Active Citizenship in Italian Cohousing: A Preliminary Reflection

333

Poley, L., & Stephenson, M. (2007). Community and the habits of democratic citizenship: An investigation into civic engagement, social capital and democratic capacity-building in U.S. cohousing neighborhoods. Paper prepared for the 103rd annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. Retrieved from http:// citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/0/9/9/8/pages209987/ p209987-1.php Poli, D. (1999). Comunita` intenzionali e spontanee, cura del luogo e scenari progettuali. In: L. Piroddi & E. Scandurra de Bonis (Eds.), I futuri della citta`. Mutamenti, nuovi soggetti, progetti (pp. 516–541). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Rabaiotti, G. (2000). Progetti nella citta` senza strumenti nelle istituzioni: Un progetto alla Barona. Territorio, 13, 97–108. Rogers, E. (1962). Diffusion of innovation theory. New York, NY: The Free Press. Rottini, A. (2008). Cambio casa, cambio vita. Milan: Terre di Mezzo. Ruggeri, V. (2000). Movimenti nella citta`. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Saggio, A. (1993). Co-Residenza. Nuove famiglie e progettazione della casa. Edilizia Popolare, 228, 4–21. Salzano, E. (2010). Memorie di un urbanista. Venezia: Corte del Fortego. Sampieri, A. (2011). Il progetto dell’abitare collettivo. In: A. Sampieri (Ed.), L’abitare collettivo (pp. 140–151). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Sargisson, L. (2010). Cohousing: A utopian property alternative? Retrieved from http:// www.psa.ac.uk/journals/pdf/5/2010/1225_1085.pdf Saroldi, A. (2003). Gruppi di Acquisto Solidali. Bologna: EMI. Sebastianelli, S. (2011). Abitare la densita`. Paper presented at the Turin XIV SIU Conference, March 24–26, 2011. Retrieved from www.planum.net. ISSN 1723-0993. Selman, P. (1998). Local agenda 21: Substance or spin? Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 41(5), 533–553. Selman, P. (2000). A sideways look at local agenda 21. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 2(1), 39–53. Sen, A. K. (1985). Commodities and capabilities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Starr, P. (1979). The phantom community. In: J. Case & T. Rosemary (Eds.), Co-ops, communes & collectives: Experiments in social change in the 1960s and 1970s (pp. 245–261). New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Torres-Antonini, M. (2001). Our Common House: Using the built environment to develop supportive communities. Retrieved from http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0000360/torres_m.PDF Tosi, A. [Antonio] (1994). Abitanti. Le nuove strategie dell’azione abitativa. Bologna: Il Mulino. Tosi, S. [Simone] (2006). Consumi e partecipazione politica. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Vestbro, D. U. (1992). From central kitchen to community cooperation: Development of collective housing in Sweden. Open House International, 17(2), 30–38. Vestbro, D. U. (1997). Collective housing in Scandinavia – How feminism revised a modernist experiment. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 14(4), 329–342. Vestbro, D. U. (2010). Living together: Cohousing ideas and realities around the world. Stockholm: International Conference on Collaborative Housing. Vettoretto, L. (2009). Housing e planning: Una prima riflessione attorno ad una relazione difficile. Archivio di Studi Urbani e Regionali, 94, 114–125. Williams, J. (2005). Designing neighborhoods for social interaction: The case of cohousing. Journal of Urban Design, 10(2), 195–227. Williams, J. (2008). Predicting an American future for cohousing. Futures, 40, 268–286.