Brittle cities

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, October 29th, 2019 - 10 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, capitalism, China, community democracy, democracy under attack, democratic participation, Environment, International, Revolution, supercity, sustainability, uncategorized - Tags:

Following on from my little warning about the Auckland-central government relationship, it’s pretty hard to miss a variety of cities going nuts for apparently minor offences.

There’s no great regional uprising of the polis as per the Arab Spring or anything. Just a few big coincidences.

Cities are places people gravitate to in order to get ahead. But when we get there, the costs of living and the time-pressures and work-pressures are so relentless that the tiny measures of relief we buy from selling all this time and labour get so hard to defend, and so precious, that we can go psycho when we lose the tiniest measure of them.

Metropolitan living is a brittle and tenuous thing.

When you lose those little conveniences, those little margins of good, it can feel like a systemic social contract has been broken.

Tiny marginal things like fuel taxes affect everyone for whom fuel prices matter: most people.

Paris faced waves of protests since November 2018, because the French President raised fuel taxes. It has seriously corroded his Presidency.

In Saintiago Chile the President ordered an increase in metro rail prices. People went so nuts that most of the Cabinet is about to be fired.

Barcelona is having massive anti-Spanish and pro-Catalan protests that are going on and on. It’s one of Spain’s richest areas.

Hong Kong is having rolling upheavals after a proposal to allow extradition under law to the Chinese mainland. It’s half-assed democracy is allowing the worst of all representative worlds: limited power to express, limited autonomy.

In Beiruit the largest protests they have ever seen – last week – were instigated by proposed taxes on fuel, tobacco, and online phone calls.

By the traditional metric of GDP per capita, these cities are paragons of economic success. Per capital income is around US$40,000 in Hong Kong, more than US$60,000 in Paris, and around $18,000 in Santiago, one of the wealthiest cities in Latin America.

And despite this high average per capital income, people feel the need to revolt.

If they are so well off on average, why the mass protests?

All of them are by a long, long way on average are better off than the countries they dominate.

But there’s very little class mobility, very little respite from the grind of life: the promise of the city is broken. That matters the most when the city dominates its country or region and advertises its dream of class mobility the greatest.

For them ,the great ‘city on a hill’ is a lie.

Crippling housing prices are common in such cities, and for those who are utterly dependent upon cars, any change to fuel price subsidies or public transport is a devastating negative tilt in life.

In Hong Kong, Santiago, Lebanon, and Paris, their governments were quite blindsided.

Those cities who have the strongest social welfare nets, or the strongest class mobility, are going to be the most resilient. There’s less risk that the population will just rise up out of their kitchen chairs, snap in rage, and take in their millions to the streets.

Without strong formalized democratic expression, without sustaining the social goods that keep the marginal afloat, without strong links between local and central government, things just snap.

10 comments on “Brittle cities ”

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  1. Sanctuary 1
    29 October 2019 at 7:51 am

    My Chilean friends tell me that 2,000,000 marched last week there. The real catalyst in Santiago has been that the government has lost the middle class, who are also starting to feel the pinch big time.

    One other thing. My friends are nice middle/upper-middle class Chileans, very much the equivalent of anyone you'd find living in,say, Mt. Albert or Sandringham. But they've been marching and they've been taking risks – blacklisting is common, and thousands have been shot and/or beaten and/or arrested. In at least one case reported to me by friends on Whatsapp the army shot numerous people then blocked access to the hospitals for the wounded. When I see them bravely taking to the streets, and then I look around at the complacent cowardice of the NZ middle class, I am just amazed and proud of them.

  2. greywarshark 2
    29 October 2019 at 9:59 am

    We don;'t know how lucky we are. sang John Clarke as fictional Fred Dagg. And then the real person shifted to Australia where they are equally complacent but on a larger scale, and more competent about it than we are.

    And there lies our point of difference, there are cracks in our bland, dairy-fed comportment, that offer opportunity for real thinking people to penetrate and grow something sustaining, like persistent mint popping up. So there is some hope. It took Greta to disturb the bourgeoisie around the world, someone new and with a driving heartfelt message.

    We are getting it but with all the oldies who don't want to think any uncomfortable, unpleasant and disruptive thoughts, how do we get humans with the good principles of basic human respect for each other's needs even before 'rights', and also the planets needs into Parliament, into positions of power and past the hidden portcullis of officials deterring action, feeling resentment and prejudice, and the hidden wormholes of power and privilege and money feeding through from the wealthy and influential to the vulnerable needy or greedy politician?

  3. greywarshark 3
    29 October 2019 at 10:58 am

    This news report on what organisers of public events have to consider and plan for fits into a brittle cities post i think.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018718770/the-festival-organisers-who-now-have-to-plan-for-disaster
    …In the wake of the attacks, new security measures must be incorporated. Organisers look more closely at security, including training security officers to be vigilant for the likes of unattended bags. Barriers are looked at differently – would it stop a car being driven into people? And if evacuations are required, can the barriers be moved quickly to ensure everyone gets out?

    And I think about what social policy workers and advisors have said ad infinitum, and been teflon-heard by government, that every $1 spent on helping parents raise children in a good way, is returned sevenfold when they become happy, principled, self-managing, socially integrated adults. The anomic* male and female in society, is at the base of an inverted pyramid of costly trouble to society, both in money and in dissension, negativity and crime.

    There is profit for the country in helping parents, being there with grants and parental education and rewards for taking part, and fast health services, and friendly clinics fostering parental groups and activities in friendship, healthy behaviours, openings for weekend camps for families where parents can access services free, with a reward system to encourage participation, while their children have supervised activities. The whole tenor of NZ society could flip over from being negative most of the time, to being effective with positive outcomes, and we would be living our vision of ourselves instead of living behind a screen of lies and claims of exceptions when the unattractive truth pops up frequently. Our lies and BS undermine us and weaken us.

    * Anomie is a sociological expression.
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anomie
    Medical Definition of anomie
    : social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values also : personal unrest, alienation, and anxiety that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals.
    .
    https://www.britannica.com/topic/anomie
    Anomie, also spelled anomy, in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals.

  4. Kevin 4
    29 October 2019 at 12:07 pm

    When will the US start calling for regime change in Chile?

    If its good for Venezuela…

    • greywarshark 4.1
      29 October 2019 at 1:04 pm

      They are brave in Chile standing up and protesting – they have already been through the fire so to speak, with the generals.

      1973 https://www.theguardian.com/world/1973/sep/12/chile.fromthearchive1
      Richard Gott Wed 12 Sep 1973 16.55 BST First published on Wed 12 Sep 1973 16.55 BST
      Chile is today in the grip of a military regime, with every indication early this morning that President Salvador Allende had committed suicide after the presidential palace had been subjected to air and ground attacks.
      Early yesterday morning, a military junta of senior officers demanded Allende's resignation and, when he refused, the palace was attacked.

      Till 1990 – This in turn resulted in the 1973 coup d'état and the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, whose subsequent 17-year regime was responsible for both numerous human rights violations and deep market-oriented economic reforms. In 1990, Chile finally made a peaceful transition to democracy.
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chile

    • Poission 4.2
      29 October 2019 at 1:22 pm

      When will the US start calling for regime change in California ?

      https://twitter.com/skepticaliblog/status/1187100498865745920

  5. greywarshark 5
    29 October 2019 at 1:12 pm

    A really thoughtful and illuminating think Ad. It's good to tell us what we sort of know but haven't time to think out in joined-up fashion, and might never do without a post like this.

  6. AB 6
    29 October 2019 at 4:55 pm

    It's the collapse of a myth – that a middle-class existence is the outcome of individual merit and therefore a stable and reasonable expectation within one's personal control. The realisation that it is none of those things (in fact more like a brief historical accident that is being deliberately erased) results in the rage of powerlessness.

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