Book Review: Common Ground in a Liquid City

by Matt Hern

“We thought of the place as a free city, like one of those pre-war nests of intrigue and licentiousness where exiles and lamsters and refugees found shelter in a tangle of improbable juxtapositions...but what happened is that Reagan was elected and the musk of profit once again scented the air.” -from Luc Sante’s “My Lost City” Kill All Your Darlings (2007)

Freud’s final book, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), compares the complexity of the individual psyche to Rome, Eternal City of layers and layers of architecture, history and experience, a city whose “long and copious past [has created] an entity...in which nothing that has once come into existence will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one.” This makes it difficult to trace what influences, crises, developments, made it what it is today and for whom. Each of a city’s inhabitants has his or her own set, or map, of memories, streets, arteries, markers, tribulations, traps and desires. A city is an urban eco-system we all contribute to, for better or worse. Returning from my first trip to Rome, with its labyrinthine streets, lush fountains and ancient ruins, I remember how dull, with its gridded street plan and brick houses, my city, Philly, seemed. Still, as always, I was glad to be home. I love Philly – its neighborhoods, backstreets, graffiti, food, music, parks, bars; its weather-work-wear n tear-driven blend of grumpiness and enthusiasm. I’ve ridden my bike around the city for 30 years, and it still feels new and exciting to me. But Philly has problems – one of the highest poverty rates of the country’s BIG cities, displacement, homelessness, gentrification, violence (“Killadelphia”), pollution, high unemployment rates, police brutality, and racial inequality, to name a few. Like most cities globally we are struggling for sustainability – human, economic, social, and environmental. What are the possibilities? Within the constructs of global capitalism, the push has been to recreate cities (consider New Orleans – see Mike Davis’ “Who is Killing New Orleans?” in The Nation, 10 April 2006) in terms of corporate profitability. Corporations court city governments and vice versa. Over and over again we’re told that’s how to sustain the city’s economy: make the city attractive to people with money: “If we build it, they will come.” Then what? Journalist Luc Sante and urban theorist Matt Hern, among others, describe what happened to Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 80’s and 90’s, the “‘shock treatment’ that began the steady displacement of community and flavor from the neighborhood in favor of gentrification. A market mentality, skyrocketing rents and a distinct loss of vibrancy.” Comcast? Casinos? Stadiums? Or, a city can value its people, natural and social environment, have ethics.

Hern, whose new book Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future argues persuasively that “the only chance the world has for an ecological future is for the vast bulk of us to live in cities,” calls the relatively “new” and “liquid” city of Vancouver, British Columbia home. “Living compactly,” he posits, “necessarily reduces everyone’s footprints.” People in cities take up less space and use less energy, especially when they walk, bike and take public transportation. He loves his city too, but worries about its direction and the valued agenda. Using observations from his travels to cities, old and new, small and large, as a “petri dish” he reflects on Vancouver’s possible trajectories and generates ideas and goals for a more radical urban future: “I want planting gardens to be not just an aesthetic activity or an attempt to ameliorate capitalism’s worst excesses but the first punch in a street fight.” He is interested in how cities, Vancouver in particular (but his reflections are dialectical in nature and therefore relevant to all cities – I mostly related stuff to Philly), can be grounded, vibrant, ecological, egalitarian, and habitable.

Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty describes the “passage from the ‘solid’ to a liquid phase of modernity...into a condition in which social forms can no longer keep their shape for long, because they decompose and melt faster than the time it takes to cast them, and once they are cast for them to set.” Bauman describes how the pace and process of globalization (geo-political, economic, technological, cultural) has brought about an unprecedented state of flux and change, creating a generalized sense of detachment, anxiety, fear – loss of stability, lack of definition – and brought a new set of challenges (particularly for left social activism). George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, a character in Jason Reitman’s 2009 film Up in the Air, is a corporate lackey who travels around firing people so corporations don’t have to do it themselves and is a perfect example of such liquidity. Disassociated from people, places and things, Bingham is so free-floating he hardly seems human. Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004) offers a devastating portrayal of a disaffected Chinese society navigating modern urban life. Like Vegas, a simulacrum of “the world” in a Beijing theme park offers everywhere and everything, nowhere and nothing. Such disconnection and lack of groundedness discourage the community stability necessary for action.

For Hern, who admittedly loves to travel, rootedness is key. People attached to place are more likely to feel invested in it; if a place nurtures us, as cities can do – with creativity and energy – we nurture it back; it’s symbiotic. A real city can’t be a corporate simulacrum for the wealthy “people with little attachment and few civic bonds...global consumers rather than citizens who care about the place as more than an investment or temporary stopping point.” “Cities have to be made solid,” and that means commitment, active participation, and community-building. Some of which, of course, takes time. One problem with Vancouver, Hern notes, is its lack of density and common spaces. Visiting Istanbul, a city of dense urban vitality, Hern senses the commonality of a strong collective urban memory, a constant flow; inhabitants fill the streets every night “and most of the activity takes place in unofficial rhythms and colonizes spaces intended for something else: impromptu cafes on street corners, simit sellers in every alley, tea vendors on the sidewalks, fishing off the Galata Bridge.” In contrast, he notes later in the book that the restrictions for park use in Vancouver are so over-regulated, a frisbee can’t be thrown outside of a slated area. “Great cities,” he says, “are built bit by bit by a huge number of actors, not by planners or developers.” People need to resist the increased regulation of human behavior in cities, which becomes more likely – consider Central Park, London’s hyper-security and Hern’s chapter “Sustaining Privilege – Portland, Oregon” - the more gentrified and “precious” a city becomes.

Considering what makes a great, vibrant city, alongside de-regulation, Hern looks to Montreal and answers “funk”: Montreal is a “participatory city” with “so much flexibility and so much mixed-use everywhere.” The corporate city de-funks, creating sameness and “safety” for the comfort of the upwardly mobile. “Our public spaces need less grasping governmentality, a lot fewer mega-projects. And more emergent and incremental growth,” writes Hern, “more flexibility and a lot more room for a real democratic urban tradition to grow. There’s just no funk in endless glass towers and sanitized parks.” Cindy Milstein, Hern’s co-educator at Montpelier, Vermont’s Institute for Social Ecology (see also founder Murray Bookchin’s writings) argues, in “Reclaim the Cities,” that “deciding what to do with streets in general – say, how to organize transportation, encourage street life, provide green space, and so on – should be a matter open to everyone interested if it is to be truly participatory... It is time to move from protest to politics, from shutting down streets to opening up public space, from demanding scraps from those few in power to holding power firmly in all our hands. Ultimately, this means moving beyond the question of ‘Whose Streets?’ We should ask instead ‘Whose Cities?’ Then and only then will we be able to remake them as our own.” Both are looking for a “radical plurality of values” which rejects sameness, but finds commonality in terms of the desire for a healthy, vibrant and just city: “physical place is the basis for all community and all ecological thinking.” Like Milstein, Hern suggests that active civic participation, social networks and norms of reciprocity can revalue city life, so that “everyday people can construct a good and vibrant life beyond careerism, privilege, or a fixation on monetary accumulation.”

Yesterday, I checked out the Kinetic Sculpture Derby in the Kensington section of Philly, a good example of the kind of funk Hern’s talking about. Kids, adults, families, young, old, multi-racial, punks and greens, proudly rode bike sculptures they’d created from dumpstered and crafted materials through the streets to the cheers of onlookers drinking locally made beer. Vendors sold handcrafted goods and old men stepped out of bars to clap. City art collectives are working to make art – both creating and getting – more accessible to all, subverting middle-men and art’s reification. In West Philly large groups of kids gather weekly in Clark Park to play at “knights” using handmade styrofoam swords. Spiral Q’s Peoplehood Parade celebrates those who bring the city its life. Collective urban gardens are springing up everywhere and Kensington Welfare Rights Union continues its fight for the rights of the homeless to squat or “reclaim” vacant space. All of these are examples of what gives the city its spirit – outside of capitalism.

Another chapter “Where the Rapids Are,” which focuses on Fort Good Hope, Sahtu, Northwest Territories, a settlement of 550 people, finds Hern pondering another aspect he sees as key for a sustainable city: the kind of resiliency and community found in this longstanding, indigenous community. Hern started a youth exchange project between “non-Native low-income kids from East Van and Native Kids from Good Hope to travel, work and live together for a few weeks” each summer and to foster a Native/Settler conversation. On his many visits he’s noticed the “cultural strength and solidarity” of the people and believes that a similar solidarity, overcoming the antagonism often felt between city and rural folks, and within cities themselves is possible if a critical mass of us can stay put for awhile.

A put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is activist educator, Hern isn’t a utopian and he doesn’t posit an “ideal” city, but his book offers valuable insights and motivations for pushing towards more livable, equitable and ecological cities, a survival imperative. “Is there the political and ethical will to work toward sustainable cities that are based on local knowledge and local economies or must cities simply roll over and show their belly to the global marketplace?” he asks. Only we can answer that question. I think Philly’s up for the challenge. We’re a resilient bunch.

Matt Hern founded the Purple Thistle Center, an all-ages youth-run community center for arts and activism. He has a PhD in Urban Studies and lectures at a number of universities. He also started Car-Free Vancouver day – an event that clears the city of cars and brings out 150,000. His website is: www.mightymatthern.com