The element that is changing - for better or for worse - modern cities is capitalism. The changes it is causing, however, are not like those of the 19th and much of the 20th century. For capitalism in the age of the Internet and the dominance of financial markets has changed its pattern. From where it draws its profits and development forces, it operates in a different technological and geographic context. It has become a capitalism of surveillance, watching our mental identities, our emotional states and group affiliations ever more closely and intently. It has subordinated to its new logic areas that were hitherto relatively autonomous: artistic creativity, the academic and intellectual world, the rules of the media. Everything that is alive is subject to marketization. Autonomy has also been lost in the city, which for years grew thanks to capitalism treated somewhat like a garden: watered and pruned. Today, most cities allow capitalism to do with them as it pleases.
At the same time, the fact that this new capitalism is the most important context for the functioning of modern cities is often overlooked. Both by city authorities, who take all the credit for it, and by their critics, who prefer to have the culprit close at hand. And one that can be pointed out by name. Talking about it is not in anyone's favor.
the issue of subjectivity
The most important effect of this implicit domination of capitalism is to overlook the issue of weakening the subjectivity of urban actors. Municipal authorities in particular, but really - political authorities simply. The factors that determine the economic conditions of urban development are beyond their reach. The authorities of Warsaw and Krakow are unable to stop the processes that drive the emergence of metropolises. Development is taking place over their heads, allowing them to rake in some surplus and providing funds for more or less spectacular modernization. The authorities of Częstochowa and Kielce, on the other hand, have no chance to fundamentally confront the troubles faced by cities that cannot join the mechanisms of metropolitan development. Not to mention centers such as Bytom and Walbrzych, knocked off their developmental paths by the transformation of the 1990s.
Of course, these are not zero-sum issues. If we, as a country, had a mature urban policy, each of the aforementioned centers, and even cities much smaller than them, could, in cooperation with the government and provincial authorities, have stronger tools to influence their fate. If there were local elites, mayors and presidents would face harsh evaluation from them. If there were stronger local media....
But they don't exist, as well as other factors that today further play against the subjectivity of cities in the game against global capitalism, allowing authorities to rather surf the wave where possible, or administer a slow reeling where the waves are small or haven't been for years. And just to be clear - this doesn't make being president unattractive, but it does move causality from the level of playing with capitalism to the level of managing the public sector, personnel decisions, supporting local groups close to the power camp, and symbolic gestures. Subjectivity drains away slowly and imperceptibly.
logic of the system
The logic of the system in which Polish cities are stuck, therefore, is not the administrative order of the Third Republic, not based on any "communities of residents" and "tasks of municipalities," but on the rules of the global capitalist order. On rules that we recognize by manifestations rather than by reading the rules of the game written down by anyone. We understand the most basic relationships. We see that in some of the cities with the highest wages, new "office space" is being created at the same time, which means their attractiveness to the BPO sector, and in a less material version, their growing attractiveness as labor markets. Both the corporate one, and thousands more jobs in serving the newly affluent residents of the metropolis. This is causing the province to depopulate in the most acute way: losing its best high school graduates year after year. For these young people, it will be pointless to return to an inferior job market in a few years, even if a big-city device requires sacrifices.
For on one side will be the need to rent an expensive apartment and buy on credit a much smaller one than they could afford in the provinces. On the other is the chance not to be judged solely on the basis of the "social capital" of one's parents and their friends, not to queue up to get a job in government or the public sector, and not to be condemned to lower-paying jobs in industry or local services. The metropolises are also tempted by the level of public services visible to the naked eye, especially health and education. Thanks to well-functioning public transportation in most of them, there is no need to use a car on a daily basis. While in the provinces, even in cities that are quite large and prosperous, public transportation is still governed by the logic that "it's for the young and indigent retirees." And in many other centers - much more modestly, for those who need to get to school and work and somehow return from it.
At the same time, the same logic of capitalism that prompts people to leave the provinces is causing an endless process of urban sprawl. Today, in many dimensions supported by public authorities. The same logic is driving up housing prices, not only because of increased demand from incoming new workers, but also because of the trend toward putting money into real estate, which means that the largest cities will not quickly reach the level of meeting demand. Because this demand is not about living well, but - from a completely different perspective - nobody's money needs to be invested outside the housing market. And those already held, and above all those expected and saved in the form of a housing loan granted on the basis of a prosperous labor market.
The logic described cannot be limited to one city or even country. It is a global logic, in which cities fight for a place in the first circle of economic benefits. They fight to make them more expensive, but more prosperous. The objects of these endeavors are not the dream objects important in the system of old traditional capitalism: railroads, industry, cultural and educational institutions. Today the game is played for the airport, the business service sector, the expanded leisure industry. The game is played where it can be played. Elsewhere - it grows on its own. For various reasons, we have built a system in Poland that weakens the game with capitalism. Sometimes to the point that city authorities and governments do not consider the possibility at all.
perspective of the game
Of course, at some level, one may feel that capitalism leaves no choice for any player. The logic of the game is the race, not its rules. One can be a winner and a loser, but the rules are beyond the reach of even the strongest players. This illusion is so strong that it is easier to believe today that we have an impact on the climate and the environment - and can, by choosing the paper straw and forgoing another commercial, save something - than that we can change the purely human mechanisms of the economy.
Sometimes you can discount past victories and get a kind of token rent. Be Amsterdam or Copenhagen. A model in making progressive adjustments. But it is well known that the right to make adjustments is a privilege for the few. One can also position oneself in the second row. Not to be Amsterdam and Copenhagen, but to be able to emulate those cities in many aspects. Have a better system of bicycle lanes than others, introduce a slowdown in car traffic, or launch some nicely designed mini-park. However, this imitation is rarely about some more subjective strategy. It's pleasant to talk about the success of "red Vienna," but what's overlooked is that this success goes against all of our - social and political - beliefs that whatever, but housing must be private, owned, inherited. This is not where the most important roadblock is. Not in beliefs, but in the fact that we are unable to see certain things.
Meanwhile, in order to take up the urban game against global capitalism, we would have to construct in our imagination a more precise picture of the enemy than can be seen in reality. We would have to recognize that capitalism thinks and plans, that it is a player, not a set of rules. That is, to deny the various recognized foundations of mainstream social science. But as a reward - to replace the situation of total powerlessness, in favor of limited - but still - causality.
cities are some other
The second condition - besides imagining capitalism as an adversary rather than a set of rules - concerns understanding that the image of the city we have is anachronistic. The basic feature of a city under the system of traditional capitalism was geographical distinctiveness. At its simplest level, this consisted of having their own "doomed communities." The most talented and the poorest migrated. But the majority stayed at home. The cities performed educational and cultural, commercial and political functions that were important to their surroundings. Today, most have moved to the Internet, which has become a place for entertainment, education, political discussion. And a great shopping avenue served by a whole legion of vendors - in vans and on bicycles.
Cities have lost not only in the eyes of their residents, but also from the perspective of the surrounding neighborhoods. They have ceased to be the beneficiaries of geographic proximity and rural demographic surplus. The image of globalization in our imagination is transatlantic relations and crowds of passengers at airports. Because the changed relationship between the countryside and the county town is difficult to depict as artfully. Just like the patterns of cultural enjoyment or the change in the family model.
But cities are also different internally. They have a different rhythm of the day and different patterns of movement. They have almost no shopping centers in the traditional sense. Instead, they have food and beverage centers, often combined with other leisure activities. And they have almost no urban politics, locally recognized opinion leaders and local community heroes.
Cities today are governed by hard-to-identify networks that include actors who are needed for more or less immediate capital needs. Sometimes they invite experts to play, sometimes associations, other times architects or cultural people. But they always treat such invitations instrumentally, as a shield against criticism or activist actions, as a way of reaching out to power or securing additional public funds. Municipal authorities - if they can - become part of such causal networks, but often at the price of abdicating their traditional role.
politics is elsewhere
It is becoming clear to the smarter mayors and those around them that the game is played differently than written in the laws. That having an impact on what happens in the city is better than trying to use traditional mechanisms of obstruction and control.
Some of them must understand that the city is becoming a depoliticized spatial structure over which, in capitalism's view, no one in particular is better off ruling; instead of a community led by at least partially democratic elites, it has become merely a key area of technological, financial and communications concentration for capitalism, in which society counts as a labor market resource and, to a lesser extent, a collection of more-or-less wealthy consumers. Rarely, once every five years, it counts as voters, but, as examples from most major cities show, relatively easy voters. For real politics, too, is not about who should govern cities, but whether anyone is capable of doing so in a subjective way, capable of correcting the logic of capitalism, of harnessing its energies for the long-term interest of the local community.
For most politicians to take such a subjective gamble is to unnecessarily complicate their own situation. It can be done if there is a compelling reason. In the past, such a reason was pressure from the local economic and social elite or fear of criticism from the media. Today, such pressure does not exist. Moreover, representatives of other professions behave similarly to politicians - they prefer to play with capitalism, pretending that they do not see social losses. Therefore, they prefer a situation where instead of traditional city council rule, many issues can be resolved by resorting to more or less apparent participatory processes. Politics leaves the formal structures and starts happening somewhere outside them. More trouble than councilors cause activists, the municipal opposition counts only if its actions have resonance outside the council chamber, if there is any forum where the authority can lose or at least compromise itself. But a barrier to new urban politics is the lack of a language in which it can be articulated.
The weakness of urban activism, however, is that it is a struggle for concrete decisions, assuming that resources are under the control of politicians and capital. Nonetheless, it can be successful if some, even very weak, public opinion is preserved, if the media independent of City Hall has some reach, if urban issues live on social media. But it does not construct the basis of a new policy. Because this one, in order to exist, needs the use of various city structures, including administrative ones. It needs to be a policy of difficult advocacy coalitions, not simple opposition.
Part of such coalitions may include circles that I self-ironically allow myself to call academic or expert activists. The kind that do not have to subscribe to the mainstream custom of writing prescriptions under the needs of the powerful, who can seek a language to describe the new urban reality and seek allies in the political and administrative structure.
The essence of politics, however, is the ability to call on resources and tools under the control of central and local authorities. Only that it must be a policy conceived according to new rules. One that settles not for easy victories with the urban opposition, but for a tougher game with capital. For such a policy to be possible, the language and imagination of at least some of the actors must change: officials, ministers, mayors. At the center of this imaginarium must be as precise a depiction as possible of capitalism and its nature, as well as the opportunities and threats it brings.
Rafał Matyja
more: A&B 09/2024 - CITY, ARCHITECTURE, CAPITALISM,
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