Micro-Revolution: Class Struggle in 21st Urbanity

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Michael Kowalchuk

While Harvey aptly describes the city as a dumping ground for surplus value, allowing capital to expand relatively (as opposed to absolutely) in space, it is important to recognize that the right to the city speaks as much to the right to public ownership of the means of production as it speaks to public control over the means of distribution. The city is not merely hollow concrete buildings and its humbled inhabitants but a site of immaterial, creative, interpersonal and industrial labor. Whatever right to the city Harvey is searching for will have to be answered in terms of the right to publicly own the means of production as well.

The city, as a narrative, also offers the revolutionary question, “What happens now?” Harvey masterfully demonstrated how the success of Hausmannization was negated by the Paris Commune of 1871 and the “American dream”/suburbia could not contain the revolutionary explosion of the civil rights movement in the 60s. During the Modernist period of revolutionary upheaval from the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 to the demise of the socialist camp by 1991, imperialism and capitalist expansion was naively predicted to halt and lurch into fatal crisis once every conceivable area of the globe was parceled up by national monopoly capitalists in the West. While this prognosis seemed plausible in the heat of both World Wars, the Cold War demonstrated capitalism’s ability to survive crisis through the wanton destruction of surplus value and through the frenzied urbanization of the globe (Harvey 29).

The question for revolutionaries and oppressed peoples in the 21^st century is how to confront a system that seemingly can expand and revive itself infinitely. The answer is probably somewhat obvious: if capitalism expands infinitely through urbanization and the conscious destruction of surplus value, each instance of that relative expansion becomes a potential for rebellion. Of course there are no guarantees for success, as the Paris Commune was drowned in blood and the militancy of the American Civil Rights movement has led to a banal post-racial liberal excuse for equality. One could not conceive of the Paris Commune without Paris, nor the American Civil Rights movement without the march on Washington, but today’s conflicts with capital are generalized and universal. From the banlieus to the favelas to the slums, marginalization is meeting a common globalized enemy that cares little for tradition or national peculiarities. Following Rem Koolhaas’ logic of the Generic City expanding across the globe, the multitudes that are disenfranchised and forced to live informally or semi-legally are in some ways in an analogous position to the industrial proletariat of the 19^th century. Broudehoux’s description of Olympics Beijing is indicative of this explosive social struggle, pointing out that corruption, growth and disenfranchisement represent the rule, not the exception (Broudehoux 100). The coming period of struggle and capitalist crisis is exciting from a revolutionary perspective because it is unprecedented in scope. The right to the city will have to be answered in the coming period because the 21^st century city is the clearest example of capitalist exploitation. Whereas institutions such as the factory, church, or school previously articulated the roles in class struggle, today’s struggle can be understood on a larger, urban level.

Works Cited

Broudehoux, Anne-Marie. Delirious Beijing: Euphoria and Despair in the Olympic Metropolis.

Harvey, David. “New Left Review – David Harvey: The Right to the City.” New Left Review – David Harvey: The Right to the City. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2013.

Koolhaas, Rem, and Bruce Mau. S M L XL: OMA. S.l.: S.n., 1993.

The Right to the City Determined By Identity

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Can Cakmak

Dharavi, one of the biggest slum settlements, is worth $2 billion. With the booming population of today’s world, and the lack of land to build on, there is clearly a lot of attention to such settlements. David Harvey’s, The Right to the City, talks about the “most precious yet most neglected” human right to build and rebuild the city. (Harvey 35) So, say the government took over the land and moved the people from this settlement, what would that mean for the displaced people? The Indian Constitution states that they have a responsibility to “protect the lives and well-being of the whole population, irrespective of caste or class” – as almost any such document will say. (Harvey 35) Do they even deserve to be there in the first place? The Supreme Court believes that to go by such a ‘responsibility’ would be “rewarding pick pockets”… Harsh comment, but does the Supreme Court have a point? The title of Harvey’s article, Right to the City, can, by nature, be interpreted in many different ways from many different opinions. Who owns this right?

When talking about New York City, Harvey hypothesizes that there is going to be a “Financial Katrina”, where many of the low income neighborhoods, drowning in debt, will be cleared out. Will this then act as a blank-slate-like environment where those parts of the city could be planned again? Will there be planned developments to these parts of the city for the real-estate companies to make millions over? Thinking towards the sense of identity that is discussed in the excerpt from S, M, L, XL, what would be appropriate for the identity of such a place? Take a look at Dubai; a city which grew in just a decade or two, essentially the quintessential blank slate for an architect’s pen and paper. But what comes from the hundreds of developments and thousands of new homes that are being erected at an unimaginable rate. Dubai is essentially the airport city, “not only multiracial, also multicultural.” (Koolhaas 1252) One can even argue that with the collage of all sorts of projects, it lacks identity.

Look back to Dharavi, and compare it to Dubai in terms of identity. As Koolhaas describes, “The stronger identity .. the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction.” (Koolhaas 1248) So while certain parts of New York City may undergo a kind of “Financial Katrina”, and may be more open ended to be able to absorb a variety of developments, what would happen to a place like Dharavi if the government did take over? With clearly a strong sense of identity, how much would this $2 billion land being drooled over but certain professions actually allow to take place? When talking about possibility of even more developments in certain parts of the world, Harvey argues that there have been no “coherent opposition to these developments in the twenty-first century.” (Harvey 39) Yes, there have, in my opinion based on these readings. Dharavi keeps itself from becoming the generic city as described in S, M, L, XL. While the right to the city, whether it’s yours or mine, is certainly there, at times there is a sense of history that has written the course of the natural development of the city.

Works Cited

Harvey, David. “New Left Review – David Harvey: The Right to the City.” New Left Review – David Harvey: The Right to the City. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2013.

Koolhaas, Rem, and Bruce Mau. S M L XL: OMA. S.l.: S.n., 1993. Print.

Who does the city belong to?

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Sriram Chintamaneni

Much is discussed about the agency of the people who inhabit a city. In “The Right to the City” David Harvey talks about how “we live in an era when ideals of human right have moved centre stage both politically and ethically…I here want to explore another type of human right, that of the right to the city.” (Harvey 23)

This brings up the question about who the city belongs to. Before talking about the who associated with that question it must first be established what ownership of a city means. This cannot be taken too literally or naively and simply be assumed that ownership is in the hands of the city government or police or politics. Although those figure may be an important part of the ownership the focus is still about the citizens, it still begs the question of what ownership is.

Harvey establishes that neo-liberal ideology has led to a circumstance where elites have taken ownership. Some could that elites backed by their money fueled power stole the city from it’s rightful owner, the aggregate populace. This assumes that ownership is directly correlated to those with unchecked power.

If the idea of ownership is different though, then the elites have do not own the city. If ownership of a city is less a product of power and more a product of identity then the aggregate that develops, inherits, and creates the culture, reputation and identity of a city has ownership. The elites that are the “bridge and tunnel people” do not own a city in this case. (Koolhaus 1249) In this case the city and it’s urban nature are not owned by the elites but instead the city can be though to have adopt the elites.

In this case ownership of the city is not easy to establish because the question of what ownership is is the main concern. This complicates the issue because as power shifts and potentially becomes unbalanced the nature of the city changes to become a populace with a majority being the adopted instead of the who identify with the city.

If the second definition of ownership is followed a discrepancy can develop. A situation occurs where the owners of a city, those who identify with the reputation of a city, no longer become inhabitants of a city.

As power falls in the hands of the elite and those supported by a significant monetary backing the non elite get pushed out of the city. The original identity of cities and their neighborhoods needs to be moved out to accommodate the adopted wealth.

If this is the case, the question of weather or not ownership of a city can exists to non-inhabitants becomes an issue. Assuming this is the case, where does ownership default too? The easy answer become that ownership is left to the new wealthy and elite. But can the adopted populace ever really take ownership? Weather or not the “bridge and tunnel people” can take ownership of the city defines what gives a city its character. Is it those who establish the city and give it it’s uniqueness even though they have become marginalized the true owners or is it powerful who have created a commodification of the urban environment?

Koolhaas, Rem. “SMLXL”.

Harvey, David. “Right to the City”.

Look Closer

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Jared Grace

City Memory

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Xue Yang

“Instead of specific memories, the associations the Generic City mobilizes are general memories, memories of memories: if not all memories at the same time, then at least an abstract, token memory, a déjà vu that never ends, generic memory.”
Koolhaas S M L XL, 1257

Cities play an important role in every urban dweller’s memory. And urban architecture and landscape act as background or even identify our memory. The clear identity of a city strongly influences the memories that contribute to city’s image. Koolhaas uses the metaphor of lighthouse to describe this “identity”—“fixed, over determined: it can change its position or the pattern it emits only at the cost of destabilizing navigation” (Koolhaas, 1248). While after the spread of Neoliberalism and globalization, there are more and more cities from Global South countries tend to become “the Generic Cities”, where both urban landscape and people’s lifestyle move from difference towards similarity, which will finally lead to “memories of memories”(Koolhaas, 1257), the fading of city’s memory.
Beijing, as the city with imperial capital historical districts as well as new developing area, carries complex memories of more than 20 million local residences and migrant workers: old courtyard houses with gardens, vendors selling with verbal advertisement along old alleys, etc. However, these identical memories of Beijing are threatened by building booms towards to a Generic City. After Beijing won the bid for 2008 Olympic games, it’s interesting to see how these new monument building and avant-garde architecture are all from foreign architects whose practices locate in all parts of the world with the trend of Generic City. The conflict between identity city of Beijing and the newly built Metropolis filled with western avant-garde architecture corresponds with the one between general public and emerging economic elite in China. It is because of limited urban space and government’s ambition of rebranding city’s name in the world that Olympic facilities are built on the ashes of old neighborhood, and that eventually turning into “exclusive benefit of China’s emerging elite”. (Broudehoux, 91)
It’s ironic to see how deliriously Beijing is, sacrificing a cohesive and identical memory for most Beijingers, and reconstructing those “abstract token memory” with randomly placed “megalomaniacal architectural objects” that will only lead to a generic memory of a modern metropolis (Broudehoux, 101). However, we have to admit that people do simply enjoy their invention of this Generic City. The examples of protests that Broudehoux provides in the article are still limited to only very minority of people. Most Beijingers, in reality, even become millionaires, who we call “new elite”, by trading their authorities of identical memory with urgent and ambitious governors and developers in order to get the benefit like infrastructure of the new Generic City, which they consider as modern and better life.

Broudehoux, Anne-Marie. Delirious Beijing: Euphoria and Despair in the Olympic Metropolis
Koolhaas, Rem; Mau, Bruce. SMLXL. Generic City

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/p/2007-01-19/154612084451.shtml

Creative Destruction

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Leandro Cortez

The connection that exists between urbanization and capitalism has evolved throughout recent years. Many areas around the world most predominantly China, India, and certain countries in Latin America have experienced the effects of rapid urbanization as a result of capitalistic proposals. Interestingly enough these are some of the same countries that struggle with issues of informal housing.

As David Harvey states in The Right to the City, “ We live after all in a world in which the rights of public property and the profit rate trump all other notions of rights.” For capitalism to exist there must be a product that is produced in excess in order for the revenue itself to be worthwhile. As a result, “urbanization depends on the mobilization of a surplus product” [1]. In the everyday context this can be said to be the housing market with homes/apartments/ community developments being the product but also the need to house expanding populations. The demand for rapid housing results in private urbanization that generates revenue. However, In order to expand land must be acquired but in many of these expanding cities external problems such as the rapid mobilization of rural inhabitants to the city as a result of a plethora of issues ( all unique to country itself) have led to the settling of many potentially lucrative zones. Rural inhabitants moving towards the city center make up the largest portion of those who migrate to cities around the world predominantly in China. In turn this creates a situation where the boundary between urban and rural locations is slowly drowning away into as Harvey states, “spaces of uneven geographical development under hegemonic command of the capital and state.” [1]

The settlement of lucrative zones by squatters leads to the destruction of many of these settlements and the displacing of many individuals. This is active method of removal that is not new and is seen in many urban planning projects such as those of Haussmann tearing down through old Parisian slums in the mid 1800’s stating his methods are those of civic improvement and renovation. The affected are the poor who for the most part do not have land rights of where they live in and are thus subjected to the manipulation of those who can actually buy ,which are the wealthier elites of the population.

Present day depiction of slum destruction

Methods of acquiring land such as awarding property rights to squatter populations is plausible but in many instances difficult because the people who require these lands for revenue do not want to give up the chance to earn money. As result, instances of “surplus absorption” through urban transformation begin to utilize methods such as “creative destruction” which lead to the marginalization of the poor. It is not only through destruction that these areas are marginalized but it is through their recognition of their presence in the everyday context. For example many of these settlements do not even appear on the maps of the city that they physically pertain to. For this reason more proposals need to me made in cities around the world to regard these individuals as part of the formal city.

Our current world exists in two halves that collide, “those that exist in the planet of building and those in the planet of the slum.” [1] The possibility to unify exists but first we must look back and reflect upon what new methods of urbanization can be implemented to suit the two sides. The proposal must begin at the small scale and move its way up but it must indefinitely turn to the political sector because many of these cases deal with issues of human rights. As Lefebvre states, “revolution has to be urban, or nothing at all.” [1]

1. David Harvey, The Right To The City, ( New York : Guilford Press, c2003.) p 23-40

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Iconography as Generic

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Andrew Illein

The ways that Rem Koolhaas describes the “generic city” in S,M,L,XL seem a bit vague and subjective – and yet, in a good sense, open to interpretation. When thinking about the ways that modern cities are becoming less individualistic, as the claim states, comparing the indicators of this process to the recent developments in Beijing reveal some different conditions that have perhaps slipped between the cracks.

As Anne-Marie Broudehoux lists in “Delirious Beijing: Euphoria and Despair in the Olympic Metropolis,” Beijing underwent a major overhaul as a result of having won the bid for hosting the Olympic games of 2008. The changes were explicitly designed to project Beijing as an iconic, memorable, unique, and powerful representation of China to the multitudes of visitors that would be faced with a first and perhaps only firsthand impression of China. Examples of the icons built include the National Theater designed by Paul Andreu, the National Stadium by Herzog and de Meuron, and the CCTV tower by Koolhaas. Iconic buildings designed by iconic architects tend to make for a more iconic city. But the argument presented by Koolhaas regarding the generic city conditions propose the question: is Beijing less “generic” for creating these icons, or do they simply work to turn Beijing into a modernized construct that can be created anywhere?

In theory, any city on earth, provided the cash was available, could hire the most well-known architects to design unique icons that make their city different or more recognizable. However, as reported by Broudehoux, the creation of the huge exclusive structures came at the expense of the urban fabric of Beijing, where the locals live and work and participate in their communities. By commercializing the skyline and newsfeed of Beijing with recognizable projects, the local, everyday, pure fabric of Beijing is destroyed. This is not to say that this fabric is what makes a city purely non-generic, but for those who are familiar with the city and its history and its communities, the new and alien constructs built by famous and wealthy people for more famous and wealthy people are not what they know as “Beijingian.” If the trajectory of this thinking continues, we might one day have a multitude of cities that are all iconic, all recognizable, and all fun to look at; and yet, that in itself will be generic, as the new language of extravagance and “look at me” syndrome becomes the ultimate goal for urban life.

Land of Promise?

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Nolan Ediger

It seems to be almost ingrained in our minds that cities are the land of opportunity and that moving to them will almost overnight transform a hard working person into someone of stature and wealth. This false promise is what has and continues to bring immigrants to the United States. Taking a step back and forgetting the United States as a whole, let us focus on the city itself as a generator of “fake” opportunity.

In The Right to the City , David Harvey states countless times that cities are the device of “geographical and social concentrations of a surplus product.” What exactly does this sentiment mean? “Capitalists have to produce a surplus product in order to produce surplus value; this in turn must be reinvested in order to generate more surplus value.”(The Right to the City) Basically in order for me as a capitalist to make money, I cannot simply break even on my investment, if I want to invest again to make more money. As stated before cities allow this to happen. This leads to the obvious link between capitalism and urbanization.

Throughout time cities have been transformed due to capitalism and the sparkling, pristine mega city, the “generic city” as Koolhaas calls it, becomes a playground for the rich and hell for the poor. Cities, though they provide opportunity, provide it only to certain classes, thus producing a social ladder which is not climbable. It is heartbreaking to know this when thousands of people have come from all over the world to climb the not climbable. This has proved to be true time and time again.

The first example of capitalist city morphing due to surplus is that if Paris in the mid 1800s. At this time Paris was in a state of unemployment and poverty, Napoleon then took power and promised prosperity. To deal with this he set out building up infrastructural and other grand works around the world such as the Suez Canal, in France, other infrastructural entities such as improved railway network, harbors, and water control, allowed people to get back to work. Back in Paris Napoleon hired Haussmann to revitalize the city’s public works. During this revitalization process, Haussmann demolished anything that stood in his way of transforming Paris into the Utopian paradise he imagined in his head. Many neighborhoods were destroyed, in those neighborhoods were the poor and unemployed which the revitalization projects were originally meant to “help”. In essence the poor and destitute were thrown under the bus in order to make happy the capitalist monster.

This series of destroying impoverished in order to boost the capitalist villain does not stop in Paris, in fact it has happened many times since and continues to happen. In New York City, Robert Moses attempted to re-engineer the city, again by building up the infrastructure for the extremely wealthy. Again many neighborhoods containing the poor or working class suffered the wrath of Moses. Jane Jacobs, a writer and activist, sought to derail his plans and eventually, Moses’s ideals were no longer favored.

It is apparent that this “infrastructure building” always stands in opposition to the poor, those who can do very little to stop the destruction and bullying. To reflect back on the past readings of this class, the slums of Mumbai have been marked for the same destructive fate as the previous examples, again, to boost consumerism and capitalism.

There has to be a way to allow both the necessary capitalist agendas while aiding the destitute. Perhaps though, in the current state of things, these two notions are like oil and water. Let us hope for our future that the needs of the people are taken into account during the development of cites rather than turning them into monotonous land unfit for living.

A New Kind of City

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Victoria Brewster

Over the last decade, Beijing has begun a drastic change towards becoming a new kind of city, and will soon become what Koolhaas describes as a “Generic City.”
Since the announcement of the location of the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing has undergone an extensive transformation. The government has a deep seeded desire to become a metropolis that is modern, state of the art, and unforgettable, and they will stop at nothing to achieve it. Between striking fear into the hearts of the city’s inhabitants and destroying the neighborhoods that gave the city its character, the Chinese government is completely disregarding the importance of remaining a unique city (Broudehoux, 92, 100).
As Koolhaas describes it, a “Generic City” is not only devoid of character, but also loses its history, giving it freedom to become whatever kind of city it wants to (Koolhaas, 1248). This is illustrated in the destruction of Beijing’s poorer communities, which are, like in many other cities, the most vibrant, active areas within the urban fabric. By evicting a large percentage of the population and leaving them to fend entirely for themselves, the city is simply asking to lose its life force and detach itself from its history. Additionally, the move towards capitalism within China has pushed forward the process of separating the past from the future. With a capitalist economy run by an authoritarian government, the previous Socialist ideals of the country seem to fall through the cracks. Soon Beijing will become an entirely Generic City with buildings designed by some of the most famous starchitects in the world, which could be placed on any site in any city throughout the world without changing at all. While the buildings themselves may be beautiful, in no way does it produce an urban condition in the way the area had before. It loses every bit of rich cultural history that it once had.
Additionally, the government has little respect for its citizens who simply cannot survive in the changing world with extremely limited resources. The growing gap between the rich and poor will eventually lead to massive squatter settlements if not addressed immediately. As the city expands outwards, the gap between the rich and the poor inevitably grows wider. Those who can afford to live in gated communities will do so, further separating themselves from those whom they perceive as being lesser beings. There are millions of people whom the wealthy simply ignore as they pass them each and every day, exploiting them for cheap labor (Broudehoux 91, 96).
For any city, particularly one with as much rich history as Beijing, it is vital to never forget where you’ve come from in order to know where to go in the future. Sadly, Beijing may not have this option for much longer, since it is seemingly giving up on maintaining its urban culture or giving aid to its citizens.
What will it take for governments throughout the world, not just in China, to finally accept responsibility for their actions and take care of the entire population as well as their history and culture?

Broudehoux, Anne-Marie. Delirious Beijing: Euphoria and Despair in the Olympic Metropolis
Koolhaas, Rem; Mau, Bruce. SMLXL. Generic City

Prefabricated IKEA House Potential

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

The Swedish company IKEA has brought through its “Big Box Store” furniture and appliances at a low-cost. Now, in collaboration with the Oregon based firm Ideabox, they are offering a prefabricated home that can be constructed for around $86,500. Although the Aktiv House may be out of the price range for disaster relief, it reminds society of the efficiency and potential of prefabrication in architecture.

At the beginning of the modern era of architecture, prefabrication was emerging as the new method of construction. It is low cost and produces less waste. The ability to construct several parts at the same time also cuts down on time of construction which makes this method viable for emergency situations.

Although the prefab system is based on producing the same kit of parts for every unit, there is still potential for customization. There is not a single dwelling design that can be picked up and moved anywhere and then fit perfectly within that new environment. Design must be site-specific to have a positive effect on its surroundings. The Aktiv House is not sustainably sensitive to the environment around it, but again it is a reminder of prefab potential. The open layout allows for customization of any IKEA appliances and furniture. Customers can choose the cost, make, style, and even color of the products to fill their home with and it fits efficiently in the Aktiv House.

The Aktiv House is not appropriate for any site. It is a completely inward focusing project. But it takes a step back to remind us of the opportunities in prefabricated construction. By designing a kit of parts, architects, can then study and site and propose architecture that is customizable and sustainably appropriate.

http://www.ideabox.us/models/aktiv/

Practices of the Global South, Spring 2013

Syracuse University, School of Architecture

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