user-friendly cities - a missing argument

A visit last week to the office which manages the project I lead here led to another interesting conversation with one of the many pleasant young Bulgarians one finds here in consultancies, academia and foundations. As always, there was a surprised reaction to my characterisation of Sofia as one of Europe’s best capital cities. I gushed – as I usually do – about the charm of central Sofia –

with only a couple of high-rise buildings, its small shops, narrow streets, trams and atmosphere, the owners on the doorstep with a coffee and cigarette talking with friends; with its parks and buskers with their retro music.
Of course the downside of such charm is that those (young and old) who run the tiny vegetable, dressmakers, tricotage (thread); hairdresser shops and various types of galleries barely make a living. How many of them are rented, I wonder, and therefore vulnerable to landlord rental hikes and commercial redevelopment?
And I wonder how many of those who engage in this sort of soulless redevelopment realise what they are destroying – the sheer pleasure of wandering in friendly and attractive neighbourhoods. Is there nothing which can counter this Mammon? Do the city authorities realise what an asset they have? If so, are they doing anything about it? The lady mayor is certainly a huge improvement on her predecessor who, I was told yesterday, used to charge significant sums for those who wanted an audience with him to discuss their problems.

Mayor Jordanka has introduced traffic-free days; cleared many cars from the pavements and created bike lanes (where Denmark, Germany and Netherlands have blazed a trail). Here she is with a new Deputy Mayor who was, until October 2011, Deputy Minister of Culture

But have her advisers looked to the examples from Italian cities - whose city fathers well understood the treasures for which they had responsibility - and introduced regulations, decades ago, which made it very difficult to change the commercial use of centrally-located shops. Banks and mobile phone shops are an abomination – and should be located in side-streets (like whore-houses).
We need to understand the reasons which have produced such soulless, homogeneous monstrosities in so many European cities. The explanation is generally simple - a combination of political pygmies and professional advisers seduced by commercial interests. Their fall-back argument is the loss of municipal revenue from freezing commercial useage which serves the needs of the average citizen – as against the fickle purchases of young, transient, gentrifying residents who resemble so much the destructive Genghis Khan hordes who swarmed through these areas centuries before.

So, those who respect this human-scale really do need to meet this argument. I've mentioned several times the writings of Paul Kingsnorth who is one of the few people to deal with this isse. Even he, however, has not dealt with this central question.

A Lament on the impotence of democratic politics

Craig Murray’s latest post looks at the latest 2 examples of the collusion between government and commercial interests (Vodaphone and BAE systems (the giant aerospace company); notes the lack of public interest; and draws the pessimistic conclusion that "Conventional politics appears to have become irretrievably part of the malaise rather than offering any hope for a cure. But political activity outwith the mainstream is stifled by a bought media”. It’s worth giving the larger quote -
Sadly the comments on Craig’s posting (219 comments at the last count!) failed spectacularly to address the issue – descending to the religious ravings which are becoming an all too familar part of such threads. My own contribution (at the tail-end) was a rather pathetic appeal for a bit more humility in such discussions.

Instead of asserting opinions, can people not perhaps in these discussions share more quietly and analytically some of the perspectives which are out there on the possibilities of political and social action? For example, I've just finished reading the inspiring 2003 book "One No and Many Yeses" by Paul Kingsnorth. At other levels there are the writings of David Korten and Olin Wright's recent "Envisioning Realistic Utopias". Political parties and corporations remain the last protected species - and we should focus our energies on exploring why this is so; why it is so rarely investigated - and how we change it

All this gets us into the same territory I was trying to map out recently when I posed the question about

what programme elements might actually help release and sustain people power in a way which will force the corruption of modern elites to make significant and lasting concessions?

But, coincidentally, one of my other favourite blogs has produced a review of David Harvey’s The Enigma of Capital which I recently referred to as possibly offering a more solid analysis of the problems we face. Harvey’s book is not an easy read - and this review sets the book’s main arguments in the wider conext of other leftist writers who have faced the fact that there is something systemic in the latest global crisis. At this point, be warned, the langauge gets a bit heavy! All this reminds me of Ralph Miliband (father of Ed) ’s Parliamentary Socialism ((1962)which argued the basic pointlessness of the social democratic approach (The other 1,000 page book which arrived recently is in fact Donald Sassoon’s One Hundred Years of Socialism!).

Strange how few books come from political or economic academics offering broad, critical analyis of current political and economic life. David Harvey is a geographer! And the best stuff on the role of pension funds (and how they might be changed) is by a Marxist intellectual not associated with academia – Robin Blackburn. Both Paul Kingsnorth and Bill McKibben – who write on alternative systems - are campaigning journalists. Will Hutton who casts a periodic eye over the philosophical infrastructure which underpins the Anglo-saxon economic system (Them and Us is his latest 400 page blockbuster) is also a journalist.

The only UK academic I know who has written blunt analyses about the nature of our political system is the political development scientist – Colin Leys – whose time in Africa has clearly given him an important perspective his British academic colleagues lack. Sociologists are the masturbators par excellence - altough Olin Wright is an honourable exception with his recent Envisioning Realistic Utopias from the USA. In America the only challenging stuff comes form speculators like Nassim Taleb and George Soros – although Nobel-winning Joseph Stiglitz is an enfant terrible of the Economics profession and of World Bank and IMF policies there; and Paul Hawkin made us all think a decade or so ago with his Natural Capitalism.

Of course all this reflects the economic structure of the knowledge industry – with rewards going to ever-increasing specialisation (and mystification) – and, more recently, the binding of university funding to industrial needs. When I was in academia in the 1970s, I was shocked at how actively hostile academics were to inter-disciplinary activity. And the only Marxists who have managed to make a career in acadamia have generally been historians – who posed no threat since they offered only analysis or, like Edward Thompson, action against nuclear weapons. I have a feeling that the first step in bringing any sense to our political systems is a powerful attack on how social sciences are structured in the modern university – using Stanislaw's Social Sciences as Sorcery (very sadly long out of print)as the starting point. Instead of ridiculing Macburger Degrees, we should be honouring them as the logical extension of the contemporary university system.
I wonder if French and German social scientists are any different. Jacques Attali (ex-Head of the EBRD) is a prolific writer – although his latest book Sept lecons de Vie – survivre aux crises has abolutely no bibliographical refereces so it is difficult to know his reading. And has anyone really bettered the dual analysis offered in Robert Michel’s 1911 Political Parties which gave us his Iron Law of Oligarchy and Schumpeter’s (1942) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy – and its minimalist concept of democracy as competition between the elites? And does that differ significantly from the emergent Confucian Chinese model set out in Daniel Bells’s latest book??? I realise that these last few references are a bit cryptic and will return to the theme shortly.

What I suppose I am trying to say is that change requires (a) description of what's wrong (making the case for change); (b) explaining how we got to this point (an analytical model); (c) a programme which offers a relevant and acceptable way of dealing with the problems; and (d) mechanisms for implementing these programmes in a coherent way. We have a lot of writing in the first three categories - but I find that most authors think the task is finished when they produce at page 300 the outline of their programme. Craig's started his blog with a strong assertion -

British democracy has lost its meaning. The political and economic system has come to serve the interests of a tiny elite, vastly wealthier than the run of the population, operating through corporate control. The state itself exists to serve the interests of these corporations, guided by a political class largely devoid of ideological belief and preoccupied with building their own careers and securing their own finances.
A bloated state sector is abused and mikled by a new class of massively overpaid public sector managers in every area of public provision - university, school and hospital administration, all executive branches of local government, housing associations and other arms length bodies. All provide high six figure salaries to those at the top of a bloated bureaucratic establishment. The "left", insofar as it exists, represents only these state sector vested interests. These people decide where the cuts fall, and they will not fall where they should - on them. They will fall largely on the services ordinary people need.

The 2 sentences of his with which I began this long piece strike to the heart of the issue which must be addressed -

Conventional politics appears to have become irretrievably part of the malaise rather than offering any hope for a cure. But political activity outwith the mainstream is stifled by a bought media.

The question is how (if at all) do we break out of this impasse? Or do we rather build an explicitly imperfect world on the Michels and Schumpeterian insight?
So thank you, Craig Murray, for sparking off this rant - which I have dignified in the title with a more musical Celtic word - lament!

Death of Ceaucescu's court poet and senator; alternatives

Dawn brings another superb, blue cloudless sky. The next section is from Sara in Romania's blog
Romanian poet Adrian Paunescu died this morning (5th Nov)from a heart attack (the third) at Floreasca Hospital in Bucharest aged sixty-seven. Reading FaceBook, I see friends posting his poems and plentiful comments of "Odihneasca-se in pace". Sorin Oprescu (the Bucharest mayor) has declared that Adrian Paunescu shall be laid to rest in the Aleea Scriitorilor of Bellu Cemetery on Sunday with all the honours befitting a poet of his calibre.
Considered one of the greatest poets of the post-war generation, he had political controversy attached to his name from the communist era, however, and is said to have been Ceausescu's 'court poet'... He did mea culpa, admitted fault in the early 90's and said he had behaved miserably and at some point justified his actions by needing better lodgings. By those who cannot forgive him, he has been labelled an 'opportunist', a boot licker', a man who 'tried to be a politician post-89'praised the deeds of Ceausescu' and 'organised gatherings at the stadium to chant odes to the joys of communism.' There are lots of other comments, too, that would not be fitting to add here today of all days. What to make of all that? It's as if we are discussing two different people - the talented poet who wrote verses such as the tender 'Ruga Pentru Parinti' , so moving it gives you goosebumps or 'Dumnezeul Salvarii', lovely too. This man was a magnificent writer, poet and painter of words. Perhaps then, we should make abstraction of his murky and controversial political past? Many say we should not. Does a man with such literary talent deserve to be forgiven for his wrongs? He has admitted shame at his actions and called himself some pretty offensive names publically.
It is, frankly, impossible to read his poetry and not be moved. Do we put him in the same class as other writers such as Kundera, Sadoveanu, Banus and Gunter Grass who fell along the wayside at some point or another to collaborate, coitoi and generally the lick boots of party leaders to live a little better? They did what so many others did 'to survive' but also for perks - for passports, for houses, the right to shop in the closed-circuit places where the average man could not have access... should we see them as different from the average Joe Bloggs in the street? Are they more difficult to forgive? Literature educates. Words empower and teach. They form and mould moral, social and spiritual thinking. This is a time long before I stepped foot in Roumania and thus my experience is only as witness to stories and the day to day life of others dear to me. I know they cannot and will not forgive. And so, what about the younger generation? Mine, I mean. The generation who is today between 30-40 years old. They are the friends of mine posting the beautiful verses of Adrian Paunescu on Facebook. They are the ones who drew my attention to the great outpouring of grief for this loss to Roumanian literature. My older Romanian friends stay quiet. Perhaps they comment on articles in the papers or simply sit still and remember. Perhaps there is nothing left to say.
Whatever we feel for Adrian Paunescu, one thing cannot be denied: the country has indeed lost another talented poet and shall be missed in the world of prose, verse, rhyme and word for generations to come. He has left an indelibly moving, poetic mark on the bookshelves of libraries, bookshops and sitting-rooms throughout Roumania and beyond with his 50 volumes. Between 1973-1985 when the last 'gathering' (cenaclul Flacara) took place, there were 1,615 shows with an estimated 6 million participants (voluntary or not - most of them were not. Some were caught on the street and dragged there to have a full house).
Here's 'In Love with Bucharest'...

This is a great post - but I would not agree that he was considered one of the greatest post-war Romanian poets. I'm sure, for example, he doesn't figure in the various English-language collections of post-war Romanian poetry - which certainly include Marin Sorescu's poems one of which I reproduced last weekend. Romania's "best-known" poet might be a better way of describing (best known by the Romanian population at large that is). I notice, for example, that Romanian Voice gives him 60 poems as against 28 of Sorescu's- and all in Romanian.

It must look a trifle odd for me to sit in Translyvania and read about China! In fact a large part of yesterday was spent in the pages of one of two 1,000 page books which have just arrived – German Genius, a well-produced book by Peter Watson which attempts to rectify what he (rightly) considers to be a serious ignorance by the English-speaking world of what Germany has contributed to the world in the past 200 years. I’ve previously confessed my Germanophilia – which I owe to my father. I read and speak the language, respect their professionalism and political life and admire the society they have built in the past 60 years. The long introduction of German Genius summarises various recent debates about the distinctiveness of german development (eg the “Historikerstreit” of the 1980s and the later “Sonderweg” thesis) is intellectual history at its best and demonstrate the depth of Watson’s reading and understanding. I found it difficult to get through an earlier book of his – A Terrible Beauty – the people and ideas that shaped the modern mind but find myself turing the pages of this massive book very eagerly. It helps that the chapters are short!
The little lane at the bootom of the garden was very busy yesterday – first a van which turned out to be from the electricity company with a maintenance team who lopped branches from trees which were in danger of fouling the line. This left a few trunks which will be a useful addition to my stock – and I duly trimmed and carried them up to the house. Very useful exercise! And today I will saw them into suitable sizes. Then a tractor towing a trailer full of cut logs for someone’s fire came by. Normally only the cows wander down this track.

In the evening I resumed my reading of the very useful One No, Many yeses by Paul Kingsnorth which contains great descriptions of and conversations with people who are standing up for their rights in places such as Papua New Guinea, Brazil or Boulder, Colorado. Now I’m into the section on the alternatives to the large corporations who poison our bodies and mind and destroy so much of our civilisation. He listens to David Korten at the 2002 Porto Alegre Social Forum and makes me feel guilty about sitting here and doing so little in this struggle. Instead of thinking about a paper for the next NISPAcee Conference (in May just down the road from here at Varna on the Black Sea), I should be attending conferences like the Social Fora!! But first, I have to sort out my mind - and read Olin Wright's Envisioning Real Utopias which I mentioned recently. Or at least, I should be linking up more actively with other sustainable livers in Romania and Bulgaria??

Universities are under the microscope at the moment – both in the UK and in Bulgaria