Article from A&B issue 05|2023
On paper, everything looks great. And then it turns out, however, that something has gone wrong. We seemingly have local self-government, a market economy, a zoning law, a sizable bunch of urban professionals. And we are not satisfied with the results of this system. We tend to look for the cause in the wrong policies—whether personnel, wrong decisions, bad regulations. We rarely ask what entanglements make the policy not a good tool to „produce” a better urban space. It seems that, caught up in the details, we lose the context, the bigger picture.
Politics in the city is often reduced to a question about the party affiliation of the mayor or president. And possibly about the personnel games being played in the city office and council. Anyone who takes a closer look at Polish local government, however, knows that party colors hardly matter. Let me give one argument to the doubters: if they did, the former mayor of Rzeszow, who hails from the Democratic Left Alliance, would not be looking for his successor in the ranks of Zbigniew Ziobro's Solidarna Polska. And he wouldn't have counted on a significant portion of voters to listen to his recommendation.
However, this does not mean that the exercise of local power is devoid of politics, but rather that its essential content is unclear. This content is primarily a response to the development model of Polish cities that has been taking shape for two decades. Or, to be more precise, the readiness to correct what was considered „spontaneous and uncontrollable” at the beginning of the transformation, hiding what was capitalist under these euphemisms. It was often argued, moreover, that capitalist equals market, and therefore applies equally to a shopkeeper running a single outlet as it does to a mall or retail chain. Entrepreneurs who were affected by this equalization were treated as just another social hindrance in the transition to the "market order."
Rafał Matyja—PhD, professor at the Cracow University of Economics, historian and political scientist. Dean of the Faculty of Political Studies and head of the Department of Political Studies at the School of Business—National Louis University in Nowy Sącz. Publicist, author of books, including „Urban Ground. 250 years of the Polish game with modernity” (Karakter, 2021).
photo: private archives
The most attractive cities—those in which the private sector offered the best-paying jobs—quickly became the object of a second wave of „capital inflows,” and consequently developer investments financed by mortgages. Granted to those who did this „best-paying work.” Of course, at the beginning of the transition it seemed that the matter was relatively simple. A resourceful local government offers favorable conditions to investors, they „give jobs” to residents, and growth follows. As recently as five years ago, some metropolitan experts and local government officials were ready to swear that investments in their city were developing due to the efforts and intelligence of local authorities, and that provincial cities were governed by frustrated losers.
But as time went on, the map clarified enough to doubt such a thesis. One could see the choices made by global capital and the effects of EU funds—expressed in key investments for cities. The former built up the differences between the center and the periphery, while the latter—often ineptly—tried to equalize them. The game was written for roles, not for the talents of individual actors. Its silent heroes may have been those who somehow managed in cities outside the „doomed to success” list.
These observations are needed here not to once again lament the fate of smaller centers, but to point out a key player for some Polish local governments—capital. To a large extent, global capital. This changes the rules of the game described to us by the old visions of the city, the ones in which the most important role is played by some „urban patrician,” a dozen or so or a few dozen families related to each other. Those in which important industries or employers more broadly mattered. All this ended in the 20th century. So did the cities ruled by some opinionated elites whose opinions we can read in the local newspapers. Whose secrets we can learn by attending their meetings and behind-the-scenes intrigues. It's all terribly 20th-century.
Luc Boltanski, Ève Chiapello „The New Spirit of Capitalism” (from the series "Mutations of Capitalism") translated by Filip Rogalski, Oficyna Naukowa Publishing House, Warsaw 2022; cover design: Michal Piotrowski
© Oficyna naukowa
We are used to an image in which the city council looks like a bunch of extras with an assigned role of onlookers watching an accident, fire or other disaster. Very often, the more conscious councilors try—instead of jerking off to the magistrate—to construct some private or modestly partisan sense of their role.
But from this picture should come some picture of the essence of local government in general. For now, we must assume modestly that we will follow the flag words. If only such as participation. It seems to expose in a grotesque sort of way the sham of local government understood as the rule of the residents. If I have an influence on something, I usually have no need to "participate" in it yet. Similarly, the phrase „civic budget” suggests that the big one, passed by the council, is not. Anyway, to a large extent this suggestion is correct. Who, in view of this, are the city authorities? What is their role in the city game? Since they honestly tell us that ours may have the dimension of a decision to allocate funds for benches or a children's play garden.
And to participate in a certain casting call organized so far every four years. For the favorite actor of city politics, which usually turns out to be the winner of the previous casting. And who is not held accountable for anything more than „how he performed.” Because city politics is for us—not only as "ordinary citizens"—opaque. It is opaque even to its commentators and a sizable portion of the participants. Almost no papers on the subject are being written at universities. Stacks of commentaries on laws are piling up, rankings of municipalities and cities are being produced, insightful electoral analyses happen. But what dilemmas municipal governments face, what local governance is all about, we basically don't know.
Pierre Bourdieu wrote that the parts of social life that we do not describe—as scientists or journalists—are the most interesting. Especially when we understand the reasons for this silence. It seems that the great absentee of the Polish conversation about the city is capitalism, not only as a certain economic order, but also social and axiological. Dominant enough to go unnoticed. And at the same time inconvenient for most of the so-called serious players, whose causality would turn out to be modest compared to the changes resulting simply from the logic of capital accumulation and the search for an opportunity to buy something below the normal price.
This is the definition of capitalism evoked by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello's book "The New Spirit of Capitalism," recently published in Polish—though not the latest, as it was written in the late 20th century. What is happening in the cities is only one of its threads. But an extremely important thread, albeit coded under the not entirely clear term „cities by design.” Some light is shed on the term by explaining that its historical predecessors were: the inspired city, whose shape was the result of individual inspiration and creativity; the domestic city, which is best imagined through the dominance of the patriciate and the key role of personal dependencies; the city of reputation, in which the circle of people influencing theits shape is expanding, but still passes are issued by an opinionated urban elite; and finally three more modern types—the civic city with a large role for democratically elected leaders; the industrial city with a dominant role for entrepreneurs; and the market city, which is governed by the mechanisms of anonymous competition.
The city by design is ruled by a network that may incorporate actors we already know from previous models, but in fact strips them of most of their former resources and advantages. It dilutes responsibility, enmeshing active individuals in some form of acceptance of changes created by those seeking the optimal pattern of capital investment. At the same time, it blocks effective forms of opposition or even control. Projects are often discussed in a way that deprives participants of the possibility of effectively correcting them, postponing the opportunity to express an opinion to a time when it is „too late” to do so, or „too early” to talk about it.
As Malgorzata Jacyno explains in a very interesting introduction to the book's theses, this is also the case because „people connected to the city's values by projects are unable to recognize their dependence on capital, or to constitute a subjectivity capable of resisting it.” This is made all the easier by the fact that, as the authors point out, the very idea of the city by design and its main contexts have a progressive pedigree, rooted in the slogans and climate of the 1968 protests and their subsequent social applications related to notions of creativity, innovation, flexibility.
This accumulation of catchy and popular slogans undermines critical judgment of the mechanisms at work. It obscures, for example, the fact that the other side of this networked model of the city by projects, is its selectivity in terms of the barriers to inclusion in the networks where decisions are made, information circulates, some binding opinions are forged. It is also easy to forget that the condition for entering the network is the prior relinquishment of powers of a different, more formal nature. One maintains and develops one's position in the network through the precariousness of one's acquired status. The game has poorly described rules and many participants—to avoid the risk of being eliminated from the network—behave opportunistically. This opportunism, by the way, is stronger than in other models, because it does not mean submitting only to the currently powerful, but also to all the potentially powerful.
The winner in this model is the one who has the most to gain economically, thus optimizing the return on investment of capital, who is willing to share only with those whose resistance may be an obstacle to action, and treating the network itself as a kind of justification mechanism. It is worth clarifying this point to the end. Networking should be considered to some extent inevitable, related to the logic of modern society, and can have positive effects, especially in crisis conditions, when formal structures are unable to respond quickly to challenges. It is important, therefore, to realize that there is the other side of the coin, and each network has temptations to exclusivism, and the very nature of networking is consistent with the logic of the contemporary phase of capitalism's development.
city by projects
Photo: Michal Beim | Wikimedia Commons © CC BY-SA 4.0
Indeed, this awareness makes it possible to correct the shortcomings of the network mechanism itself. First of all, the chance for its better effects is as much transparency as possible, revealing the existence of such structures or connections. In many cases this is done through joint ventures, open discussion meetings, disclosure of the mechanism itself. Secondly, the flaws can be corrected by striving to keep such networks open to new participants, especially when they present a slightly different perspective, correct or question the original assumptions. Any such network is inherently concerned with preserving agility, or at least lowering the risk of being blocked, and naturally quickly eliminates perpetual malcontents. Third, it is extremely important to realize the instrumental role described above that such networks have to play in the mechanisms of the current model of capitalism, which sees the city as a space of exploitation through the exploitation of various types of opportunities and facilitators.
What is crucial, however, is to unveil the very nature of the city through projects and to keep the discussion as open as possible—such as the one that recently swept through Krakow on the idea of building a high-rise housing development referred to as the New City project. In this context, a debated city is safer than a silent city. It is more difficult to succumb to the pressure of big money, unalternative ideas, and the propaganda machine that can be set in motion by showing promising a wonderful new world of mock-ups and visualizations.
Each of the historical forms of urban development—mentioned by Boltanski and Chiapello—had its flaws, each demanded corrections and in many cases produced such corrections. The brutality of the mechanisms of the industrial city could be corrected by social democratic housing policies. The city of renown could have obtained correction in the form of correcting the dominance of the elite through writings, social organizations, alternative lists in municipal elections. However, for such activity to be possible, it was always necessary to utter a certain diagnosis, look for the essence of the problem and design a balancing mechanism.
The modern game in the city is played partly in the dark. Or rather—on the basis of old and inaccurate maps, recalling outmoded models of the home city, the city of renown or the civic city. We evoke these ideas in order to recognize the more easily perceived features of the current orders. We focus on magistrate gossip, family connections, excessive or insufficient authority of opinion makers. We miss the fact that the reality is already quite different. Perhaps even the concept of „the city by design” is already outdated to some extent and fails to recognize new forms of capital activity, new actors and social mechanisms.
Playing the city requires looking for the conditions of subjectivity and audibility. Participation in networks gives subjectivity and audibility a sham if we don't have evidence that it translates into effective decision adjustments. That's why it's important to keep an eye on the parallel construction of open and transparent forms of discussion about the city, postulating corrections and enforcing the position of public authorities, keeping an eye on the rules and strengthening those that constrain the strong, not the weak.
