This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Saskia Sassen discusses The Global City, global urban dynamics and today’s smart cities.

Green European Journal: You wrote The Global City in 1991, can you explain this concept?

Saskia Sassen: The widespread notion in the 1980s that being in a specific place no longer mattered to economic sectors that could use digital technology spurred me to check out highly digitised economic sectors and led me to focus on the finance sector, the rising economic star after its deregulation, which allowed financial firms to enter all kinds of domains which they had been excluded from, from student debt to home mortgages.

That turned out to be the first step towards conceptualising the global city function. It became an effort to detect a new, somewhat elusive formation deep inside major cities: a sort of vast, complex, and diverse operational platform that installed itself in what were the major economic centres in the 1980s – New York, London, and Tokyo. That function eventually included about 40 major cities as globalisation proceeded and incorporated more and more countries.

My concept in its narrowest version was ‘the global city function,’ a sort of bridge that enabled entering the deep economy of a country.

What also amused me was the notion that there was a combination of elements that might produce this ironic outcome: the fact that the most powerful, rich, and digitised economic actors needed urban land or ‘central places,’ perhaps more than ever before. Large corporate firms engaged in routinised production could locate themselves anywhere. But if they went global they needed access to a whole new mix of complex specialised services almost impossible to produce in-house, as had been the practice.

A second hypothesis that was stronger than I expected was that this new economic logic, partial as it was, would generate high-level jobs and low-wage jobs; it would need far fewer middle-range jobs than traditional corporations. But those low-level jobs, whether in the office or in households, would matter more than one might imagine. I described these low-wage jobs in the advanced economic sectors, notably finance, as the work of maintaining a strategic infrastructure.

How does the global city relate to globalisation?

Standard economics does not capture the mix of dynamics that produced the global city function, nor does it capture the core dynamics of high-finance. Microeconomics and macroeconomics are at their best and most useful – or perhaps only useful function – when they deal with standardised economic sectors.

One key hypothesis I arrived at early on in my research was that intermediation was an increasingly strategic and systemically necessary function for the global economy that took off in the 1980s. This in turn led me to generate the hypothesis about a need for specific types of spaces: spaces for the making of intermediate instruments and capabilities. One such strategic space concerned the instruments needed for outsourcing jobs, something I examined in my first book.

But what began to emerge in the 1980s was on a completely different scale of complexity and diversity of economic sectors: it brought with it the making of a new type of city formation. I called it the ‘global city’ – an space for the production and/or implementation of very diverse and very complex intermediate capabilities.

This did not refer to the whole city. I posited that the global city was a production function inserted in complex existing cities. This was a function that cast a vast shadow over a city’s larger space.

In Europe there are more and more networks of cities and urban movements emerging and claiming a voice. Citizens express the will to ‘take back control’ and start new initiatives, such as energy cooperatives, repair cafés and fab labs. Can we be optimistic?

This is a difficult one for me to answer. It needs to be focused on the specifics of cities and these vary enormously. I definitely would answer yes. But it will take work, and it will mean that residents must know their rights and what they can claim from local and national governments regarding changes in their city and/or their neighbourhood. At present, most citizens perhaps are not aware of the claims they can make – an interesting item in itself. This effort then needs to expand to the right to make claims in domains where there is currently no clear law or statutes, and also to go beyond this… There is work to be done on several fronts to achieve this citizens’ standing vis-à-vis the local government of a city. It is a battle worth fighting and a mode worth developing.

What are the forces and/or actors that are really shaping cities in Europe today?

Two very different forces seem dominant; they are also partly still emergent in that they are different from earlier urban logics in European cities. One is the ascendance of cities as major actors and concentrators of key economic and political trends. The significant cities do not necessarily need to be the biggest – Frankfurt is a powerful city even if much smaller than London or Paris. The rise of a strong economic function that, somewhat unexpectedly, turned out to need urban space has made a major difference, for good and for bad. Cities are once again becoming wealthmaking machines, a function they had lost when the dominant economic sectors were focused on infrastructure, building housing, the explosion of suburbs. The wealth making function has some positive effects (updating infrastructure and transport, generating jobs, and so on) but also serious problems. The vast majority of urban residents and urban economic functions tend to be modest and hence at risk of being destroyed by the new high-end functions.

As I argue in my book Expulsions, a key dynamic in today’s Western economies is a range of expulsions of people, and other types of actors such as small firms, from the economic and social options they once had.

My focus there is precisely on that point of expulsions – an edge that is foundationally different from the geographic border in the interstate system. The focus on the edge comes from one of the core hypotheses running through this book: that the move from Keynesianism to the global era of privatisations, deregulation, and open borders for some, entailed a switch from dynamics that brought people into ‘the system’ to dynamics that push people out.

How do you see the future of cities and the whole discussion around ‘smart’ and ‘resilient’ cities?

The discussion around smart, connected, and resilient cities is political, and it is also – or should be – central to the environmental question, as well as to social justice. One observation that I have researched in my work on global cities is that in our current period cities have become far more significant for geopolitics, the global economy, and social justice, than they were in the period dominated by Keynesian logics. In that earlier period much was under the governance of the state and the post-war rebuilding was under state management to a large extent.

But when governments deregulate and privatise economic sectors once under direct management of the state, these managerial and regulatory functions do not disappear. They are transferred to private firms: they reappear as specialised financial, accounting, legal, advisory services for corporations. And these types of activities tend to be in cities, especially global cities, if they are complex because a firm’s market is global. And this is not always good.

We need counterweights to this emergent power system that is urban-centred. And that means strengthening the status and capacity to make effective claims of the vast majority of a city’s population who have a modest income. None of this necessarily eliminates the ongoing role of the inter-state system and its multiple institutions. But in the long run it has made cities de facto, rather than de jure, key actors in national economies and in cross-border economic spaces, transcultural circuits, environmental struggles, social justice struggles, and so much more.

The rise of a strong economic function that, somewhat unexpectedly, turned out to need urban space has made a major difference, for good and for bad.

It matters in my analysis that besides the growing concentration of power in major cities, there is also the option – especially in larger cities that cannot be fully governed – of contesting power in ways that go beyond what we can claim from national governments. We the residents can re-make parts of the city in simple ways that we cannot do regarding the national state.

The complexity and incompleteness of major cities gives those without power the chance to make a local economy, a local culture, a local politics. They can actually stand up to power – to some extent – and say, “We are not asking you for anything, we are just informing you that this is also our city.”

Are the urban movements in big cities not the feat of cosmopolitan, well-educated and connected elites who feel at home in Beijing, New York, Istanbul, and Berlin and share the same lifestyle – one increasingly distant from that of their actual rural neighbours?

This is certainly part of the story. But I also see a new type of energy focused on neighbourhoods, with initiatives around greening, food plots, and re-localising production where possible. I will never forget that some of my brightest, really brilliant undergraduate students at the University of Chicago – considered the most intellectual university in the US – went into community work: localising production of food, generating local entertainment (notably music and circus), setting up coffee shops to avoid franchises, and much more. All of this is not going to change the major systems in the world, from high-finance to destructive mining. But it should be seen as a first step in mobilising our energies towards more social justice, environmental protection, people-centered activities, and so on. A politics of place that recurs in city after city and can thereby have potentially vast effects on key urban functions – from political to economic.

Can we equate the city with the migrant today? Is the city the result of all those ‘thick’ cultures coming in and spreading into what we’d call today ‘cosmopolitanism’ (although the roots of the word are somewhat different)?

You said it! Yes, I think so, but cities are also the battlefield – it gets messy. I argue this a bit in my work on cities as containing today’s frontier. I think we are witnessing the making of a third type of migrant subject – neither the familiar immigrant nor the refugee.

The historic frontier was at the edges of empire – those spaces that we had not quite gained control over. But, in my reading, major actors, from U.S. and European to Chinese major sectors, have now succeeded in gaining access to most land in the world and can then engage in their extractive practices.

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 6th article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

Photo by fritscdejong

The post Whose City is it Anyway? Reflections on Global Urban Dynamics appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Julia Toynbee Lagoutte and Samir Jeraj discuss housing rights in the UK.

The pitter patter of a keyboard hums in the dust-speckled London space. Two tattered sofas in the corner are dwarfed by 70 square metres of open office space. Matthew, a thirtysomething freelance documentary film-maker, is working from home. One floor down, along from an old reception area, is a makeshift kitchen shared with 12 other people. Matthew is a property guardian, one of many thousands living in European cities such as London. Property guardianship started out in the 1990s in the Netherlands as ‘Anti-Kraak’ (anti-squat), a way to counter squatting. The owner of a building would employ a company to manage the building until it was sold, demolished, or redeveloped. That company would find people – often students and artists who needed cheap living and working space – to live in the building for below market rents and very short-notice agreements. The building would remain occupied, and thus secured against squatting. Some of these companies are set up for the sole purpose of property guardianship while for others property guardianship is one option in their portfolio of security measures. These businesses have since spread from the Netherlands to other parts of Europe; industry pioneer Camelot Europe has offices in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, and France.

Whilst initially seen as a marginal and stopgap solution for students or artists, property guardianship in London and elsewhere has become increasingly normalised, formalised, and expensive. Amidst the largely positive press, criticisms from lawyers and guardians themselves have joined those of squatter and housing organisations, pointing out that the legal grey area guardians occupy – as neither security guards nor tenants – opens the door wide open to exploitation of this new class of ‘sub-tenants’. On top on this, this practice represents a symptom of a problem; a symptom that has managed to market itself as a solution.

Where are my rights?

Property guardians in the UK are legally classed as ‘licensees’, not tenants (they pay a ‘license fee’, rather than rent). They are not protected by tenant rights, such as those regarding privacy and tenure. The average contract between a guardian and the property guardianship company would include: the right for the company to visit all areas of the property at any time without warning; no pets or children (even to stay one night); no guests in the building without the guardian present. Some properties are not subject to HMO (houses of multiple occupancy) laws about about how many toilets and showers are needed for a certain number of people, for example*. In one old doctor’s surgery in South London, nine guardians shared one shower and one kitchen. Many properties don’t have internet or phone lines and often guardians are not allowed to install washing machines or ovens – the short notice period means this is often not worth the cost anyway. The deposit guardians have to give to their property guardianship company (up to 800 pounds) is not legally protected, and companies such as Camelot are notoriously bad at returning them. Initially, guardians were given as little as 24 hours to move out but this has increased to 28 days after lawyers highlighted this was not legal. Many contracts also prevent guardians from speaking to the media about their experience.

In order to legally protect themselves from having to provide tenants’ rights, property guardianship companies ensure guardians cannot claim ‘exclusive access to a space’, one of the key conditions of being a tenant. This they do through unannounced visits to the guardians’ rooms whenever they want, often once or twice a month. Mirela, a mental health nurse from Romania, explained, “I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger coming in my room and finding a note when I come back. Someone has been here. I feel like my space is invaded and also because I’m quite tidy I wouldn’t like people to know if I have clothes around. I’m paying, at least give me my privacy.”

Guardians are not protected from sudden rent hikes: one morning Matthew received an email informing him his monthly ‘fee’ would increase from 350 to 550 pounds the following month. Guardians have no idea whether they will stay 28 days or three years in a place. Alice, an archaeology graduate working in tourism, was given notice to leave within two weeks of moving into a new place, shouldering time and financial burdens that she could ill afford. The lack of security built into being a guardian affects their homemaking; they tend to make less effort or have less furniture and a more makeshift and temporary feeling leads to many never really feeling at home, even after years of inhabiting a place (especially knowing a stranger could enter at any moment). This is particularly visible in larger properties – such as ex-care homes or old office buildings – with locks on cupboards, new guardians coming and going without input from other residents, and the anonymous feel of a hostel.

Many guardians report feeling anxious about the possibility of having to move on and uncomfortable with the lack of privacy and rights. Alice remarked of living in a property guardianship that “I didn’t feel secure, I never felt stable.”

Pop-up people

Looking at the characteristics required of a guardian, we can begin to see how property guardianship represents an extension of deeper contemporary socio-economic trends into the area of housing. For the characteristics required of them – reliable, flexible, disposable – are also those of the growing group of people who make up what economist Guy Standing has dubbed the ‘precariat’. For this ‘class-in-the-making’, work is increasingly precarious, short-term, and flexible. The rise of zero-hour contracts exemplifies this: in the UK today there are 1.7 million zero-hour contracts, making up 6 per cent of all employment contracts. This is four times higher than in 2000.

This shift towards temporary jobs and being ‘independent contractors’ underpins what many have called the ‘sharing economy’ but in reality is better described by the term the ‘access economy’. This includes platforms that enable people to monetise temporary access to their assets – such as their property (Airbnb) or their cars (Uber and Lyft) – and platforms that just connect service users with service providers, such as Deliveroo. Property guardianship as a platform linking service users with service providers to extract money from the use of temporarily empty properties, and the provision of this service by people on insecure and right-less contracts, is the epitome of these processes. It is a new manifestation of these under-the-surface dynamics that foster ever more imaginative efforts to bring new areas into the market and extract profit from them; bringing it to a level at which even the spaces in between the owner’s usage – when assets are apparently unused – can be used to extract money. In a new twist, guardians also pay for the privilege of providing the service of guarding properties.

The rights of the ‘pop-up people’ who maintain these new structures have been watered down if not dissolved. Just as guardians don’t have tenants’ rights, Uber drivers or Deliveroo couriers as independent contractors shoulder the financial investments and risks of their trade and don’t have rights such as sick pay or insurance. Just as Uber doesn’t have the responsibilities towards its drivers that taxi companies do towards theirs, property guardianship companies do not have the same obligations towards their guardians as a landlady towards her tenants.

What this represents in the broader picture is the creation of new structures of work and living which appear the same as before, but lack the same rights and protection and require a huge level of flexibility and insecurity of the person providing the service. Property guardianship represents the creeping of these processes of flexibilisation, precarity, and decreased rights into the new area of housing. In this scheme, which seems more emblematic of neoliberal logics the more one learns about it, housing becomes a by-product of providing a service, not a right. These pop-up people are also commodified as products as well as service users: guardians’ bodies are effectively replacing infrastructure (security companies would previously have boarded up the buildings and installed CCTV). Guardians like Matthew, Alice, and Mirela are also products marketed to property owners; “we provide reliable and trustworthy guardians”, as Ad Hoc Property Guardians company boasts. Guardians often have to provide references and, in some cases, proof of a social conscience and willingness to invest in the local community (such as with Dotdotdot Property Guardians).

Whose city?

More than most cities in Europe, London shows us how extreme the housing crisis can get. Private renters there spend around 70 per cent of their income on rent, sterile luxury developments are being built in areas once known for being affordable and vibrant, and social housing is being demolished and neglected, and replaced with private housing – with young professionals displacing working-class people who are pushed further and further out. Property guardianship plays a role in facilitating this.

Research by Green London Assembly Member Sian Berry found that 24 out of London’s 32 local governments were using property guardians in their empty properties, with over 1,000 people in over 200 publicly-owned buildings in 2016. East London’s iconic social housing building, Balfron Tower, was recently transferred to a housing association. Since its social residents were moved out in 2014 for so-called ‘refurbishments’ guardians have lived there, and the housing association has now announced it will be renovating the flats with a property developer and selling them on the private market. By preventing neglect and squatting for years, property guardians unwittingly – for they are victims of these same processes – played a role in facilitating its passing from public to private hands, easing the process by allowing the housing association to sit on it without doing anything for several years.

This is actively encouraged by the state – through recent legal changes such as criminalising squatting in residential properties and loosening regulations about changing a building’s use from commercial to residential (to let guardians stay there), as well as the deregulation of the housing market that started under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Almost all properties managed by property guardianship company Ad Hoc are in council-owned estates. Property guardianship also obscures and normalises the fact that there are so many empty houses in cities like London, private as well as council-owned, that have been emptied of residents in order to sell to private developers.

The point here is that property guardianship is not a natural and inevitable consequence of market forces in which people who need housing fit neatly into naturally empty spaces, but is part of a wider process where buildings that are in use are emptied of their residents and turned into vehicles for monumental levels of profit. Its increasing profitability is due to state intervention in some areas – in supporting property owners in extracting more rent from their properties – and the withdrawal of state intervention in others, when it comes to ensuring affordability and protection for tenants.

Whilst some guardians liked the idea of living in large and unusual spaces, most we spoke to were motivated by the high cost of renting. In this situation, renters in London are forced to trade in rights and security by becoming guardians for rents they can afford. And whilst the state is the main engineer of this process, the winners are private actors and companies for whom the London housing market is an increasingly lucrative cash cow – whether by buying up London’s public housing stock and turning it into unaffordable private accommodation or now through property guardianship (Camelot Europe having a yearly turnover of five to six million pounds). This slow takeover of publicly-owned properties and assets by private actors, supported by the state, is a classic feature of neoliberalism and bears out Naomi Klein’s argument that neoliberalism, rather than weakening the state, is highly dependent on it.

Confusing symptom with solution

Property guardianship is a symptom of London’s broken housing market – but its appearance as a win-win solution which both solves the blight of empty properties and provides cheap housing means it is confused by many with the solution. It thus obscures the extent of the problem and provides an excuse for politicians not to act. Owning empty property used to incur costs, but now it is increasingly profitable, and this will surely have an effect on property owners, just as research has shown that Airbnb drives up property prices. Whilst reinforcing the narrative that the ‘invisible hand of the market’ will eventually sort out all problems, property guardianship is actually state-led and it is part of the problem, not the solution – not only that, but it contributes to it, by normalising corporate control of housing, lower tenant rights, and insecurity, by easing the process of gentrification, and masking the extent of the problem. It is a new way of extracting rent from properties, exploiting people like Mirela, Alice, and Matthew’s desperate need for housing in London.

When David Harvey, in his seminal book Rebel Cities, wrote about the city as the factory for a new type of class struggle that would birth real revolutionary movements, he argued that it was against new types of urban rent extraction and human desperation such as property guardianship that these movements would arise. This edition explores how cities foster new forms of political and social experiments – yet these cannot be understood without identifying what they are reacting against. And whilst a key characteristic of the ‘precariat’ – and of guardians – is being fragmented, dispersed, and not rooted anywhere, which makes it harder to organise and demand their rights, groups of urban precariat workers, such as Deliveroo couriers and Uber drivers, are starting to stand up for their rights, as are guardians such as Rex Duis who has published a charter for property guardianship companies.

A recent court case in the British city of Bristol has called into question whether property guardianship will continue in the UK. Regardless of the outcome, this practice has exposed certain processes at play within European cities, such as the tendency to put the needs of corporate actors before even something as basic as the right to decent housing. It raises questions about urban space: how are neoliberal economic processes reshaping and curtailing people’s access to urban space, and how can this access be safeguarded? What will happen to the already feeble political will to solve the deep yet politically resolvable housing crisis of London and other European cities if the expansion of property guardianship is seen as a viable alternative? Instead of being a solution, property guardianship must be a catalyst to examine and respond to the worsening crisis it springs from.

*This article was updated on the 31st January 2018 to reflect new information.

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 5th article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

Photo by diamond geezer

The post Guardians of the Property: Pop-up Housing for Pop-up People appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Olivier Petitjean, French journalist with experience in the NGO sector, discusses remuniciplisation in Europe.

For some years, the prevailing narrative in Europe, from pretty much all sides of the political spectrum, has been one of ‘crisis’ – an economic crisis, a democratic crisis, the climate crisis, and of course a so-called ‘refugee crisis’. The problem with this crisis narrative – no matter how much basis it may have in facts – is that it is often used to undermine a sense of our collective capacity and willingness to address common issues, including (but not exclusively) through public institutions. In that sense, it goes hand in hand with the impression of an inevitable decline of the role of government (at all levels) and of the public sphere in general.

We need counter-narratives and fortunately, there are some at hand. One of these is remunicipalisation: the story of cities and citizens reversing privatisation, and successfully developing better and more democratic public services for everyone, while addressing wider challenges such as climate change. In a way, the push for privatisation and for the continued decline of the role of the public sector (and all other forms of non-profit service provision) has perhaps never been stronger than it is today in Europe and the global level, as evidenced by the privatisation agenda of Donald Trump in the United States or Michel Temer in Brazil. Yet it is all the more significant – and heartening – to see so many people in large and small cities – elected officials, civil servants, public services employees, and citizens – willing to redress the failures of privatised services and, by doing so, invent the public services of the future.

Remunicipalisation surge across Europe

This is the story that a recent book, Reclaiming Public Services: How Cities and Citizens Are Turning Back Privatisation, seeks to highlight. While it documents dozens of cases of remunicipalisation across continents and across sectors, Western Europe clearly stands out, both in purely quantitative terms and in terms of the significance and ambition of the cases. There are well-known examples, such as the German Energiewende, which has seen dozens of local grids taken back into public hands, and dozens of new public- or citizen-owned renewable energy providers created. In France, water remunicipalisation has been in the news for some years, and there are also significant trends towards remunicipalisation in sectors such as public transport or school restaurants. Even in Britain, the pioneer of privatisation and liberalisation policies in Europe, some cities such as Nottingham, Leeds, or Bristol have created new municipal energy companies to address energy poverty and shift towards renewable sources. In Spain, many cities conquered by progressive citizen coalitions in the 2015 municipal elections have embarked on systematic remunicipalisation policies. At the other end of the continent, in Norway, a similar process has been unfolding, with city councils led by progressive coalitions implementing a reversal of past privatisations of social services, in close coordination with trade unions.

Of course, as the list above illustrates, remunicipalisation can take many different forms. In some sectors, such as water, it involves taking back into public hands a service that is a natural monopoly. In other sectors that have been historically or recently liberalised, it is realised through the creation of new, not-for-profit companies that provide a ‘public option’ – whether they are public-owned, cooperatives, or hybrid forms. Many cases of remunicipalisation have been and continue to be politically polarising, but many are not. Sometimes citizens themselves are in the driving seat, and the newly created public services open a significant space for citizen participation; sometimes the process is confined to city council meeting rooms. The word ‘remunicipalisation’ itself could be questioned, because some of the services in question had never been publicly managed or didn’t previously exist, because it is happening at intermunicipal or regional, rather than city, level and because some of what we call remunicipalisation actually involves cooperatives and other forms of citizen-owned, rather than city-owned, companies.

Nevertheless, out of all this diversity a coherent picture can be drawn: not a turn of the tide (except in some sectors in some countries) nor a coherent movement, but an emerging remunicipalisation trend that has the potential to be a game-changer, in many ways, and far beyond public services. This trend has remained mostly under the radar, apart from some clear exceptions such as the German Energiewende, because most of it happens at local level, as local authorities do not necessarily wish to publicise the actions they are taking, for fear of being accused of being ideologically-driven, and of course because there are powerful players that would rather keep people in the dark about these possibilities.

Beyond de-privatisation

So why Europe, and why now? First, in the shorter term, the economic crisis and austerity imposed on local authorities in Europe has forced many of them to take a closer, harder look at their budgets and to seek greater control over their expenses. And more often than not they have indeed found, in spite of what private sector propagandists continue to repeat tirelessly, that privatisation is more expensive than direct public management. When, for example, Paris remunicipalised its water services in 2010, it saved 35 million euros a year just by foregoing payments to parent companies. Later, the regional court of auditors confirmed that remunicipalisation had allowed Paris to “decrease the price of water while maintaining high investment levels”.

In Newcastle, United Kingdom, the modernisation of signalling and fiber optic cable system was carried out by a new in-house team for about 11 million pounds, compared with more than double this figure that it would have cost if done by a private company. The city of Bergen, Norway, where two elderly care centres were taken back in-house, had a surplus of half a million euros whereas a one million loss was expected. The costs of waste collection and cleaning services decreased from 20 to 10 million euros annually in León, Spain, with remunicipalisation, and 224 workers have received public employment contracts.

Second, 20 years or so have now passed since the large waves of liberalisation and privatisation of public services that swept both Western and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. It is a good time to appraise the real achievements and shortcomings of private management. It is also a time where a lot of concessions, leases, and so-called ‘public private partnerships’ (or PPPs) contracts expire, and get to be renewed – or not. Whereas privatisation of services such as water has been more in the limelight in past decades, outsourcing to the private sector has also started to progress in sectors such as local health and social services, and local administration. It is interesting to see many examples of remunicipalisation in precisely these sectors in countries such as Norway, Sweden, or Austria, where water, for instance, has never been privately managed. Local authorities seem to have found they could provide a better service directly, at a lower cost and with better conditions for workers.

When Paris remunicipalised its water services in 2010, it saved 35 million euros a year just by foregoing payments to parent companies.

But the story of remunicipalisation is not just about reversing past privatisation or redressing its failures. In many sectors, it is also about a profound reinvention of public services; a paradigm change. In the energy sector, this is obvious enough, with the rise of decentralised, renewables-based energy systems. But the ongoing paradigm shift is not restricted to addressing climate change, in the narrow sense. It is also visible, for instance, in the waste sector, with the emergence of ‘zero waste’ policies. Reducing waste volumes is often mentioned as one of the key motivations for cities that have decided to remunicipalise waste collection and disposal services, because it is in contradiction with the business model of private waste companies, which remains entirely focused on landfills and incineration.

Similarly, in France, the main reason why many small and large cities have recently remunicipalised school restaurants is to provide organic, local food to children, whereas contractors such as Sodexo typically relied on standardised, international supply chains. Some smaller French towns even source the food for their school restaurants from local municipal farms, or through partnerships with local farming cooperatives. The strong connection between remunicipalisation and the ‘relocalisation’ of the economy (and of the cash generated by public service bills) is a common thread that cuts across all these sectors.

A renewed focus on cities and on citizen involvement

It is no coincidence that we see cities at the forefront of this movement. Indeed, they are first in line to deal both with the consequences of austerity and with the new challenges of climate change and resource constraints. It is at the local level that reality strikes, and it is harder for local politicians than for national or European ones to ignore the very concrete daily consequences of public policies. One would also like to think that European cities have retained a bit of their political traditions of freedom, asylum, and citizenship. There is no doubt that active citizen involvement and participation – for which cities remain the most natural space – is at the heart of the ongoing paradigm shift and has been a fundamental driver behind many of the most interesting remunicipalisation cases of recent years in Europe, whether in alliance with local politicians or against them.

Citizens have pushed local authorities to reclaim public services and in many cases have played an active part in creating and running these very services. In doing so, they are effectively reinventing what ‘public’ actually means. Fundamentally, it is about (re)building collective capacity and solidarity, beyond public services. In this sense, there is indeed a strong connection between the fight for local public services and the fight for the rights of refugees and migrants. The example of Barcelona and other Spanish cities, where years of organising against evictions and water or power cuts have led to the election of progressive municipalities committed both to remunicipalisation and migrants’ rights, are just some amongst many illustrations of this connection.

Cities are first in line to deal both with the consequences of austerity and with the new challenges of climate change and resource constraints.

All of this begs the question, of course, of whether the current emphasis on the role of cities in the public services sphere – and in climate issues or the topic of welcoming refugees and migrants – reflects, before anything else, a retreat of progressive forces from the national level. Are national governments not, at the same time, increasingly committed to the interests of big business and to forcing austerity on society, local authorities included? Although remunicipalisation is alive and thriving throughout most of Europe, there is also a distressing pattern of national governments actively opposing and seeking to prevent it. The Spanish government, along with the private operator and other business bodies, actually took the city of Valladolid to court, after it remunicipalised its water system. It has also adopted legislation to prevent the creation of new municipal companies or new public service jobs. Similarly, the UK now has a law actually banning city councils from creating new local bus companies.

Even if they do not all go to such extremes, it would be difficult to name one European government that is actually encouraging or even merely enabling remunicipalisation at the moment. As for the European institutions, they officially maintain some form of ‘neutrality’ towards the public or private management of essential services. But the culture prevalent at the Commission and the balance of power at the European Parliament and Council results in rules and legislations that, even when they do not directly favour the interests of large corporate players, tend to consider integrated, liberalised markets at European level, where a handful of large for-profit players compete with each other, as the ‘normal’ way things should be organised. Big business knows how to make itself heard in Brussels, whereas the local governments and citizen movements that drive the remunicipalisation movement on the ground have a weaker presence, if any, in the European capital.

Networks of cities to counterbalance corporate influence

Can the remunicipalisation trend thrive and expand without proper support at the national and European levels? Do cities have the capacity to deal, by themselves, with the wider economic and geopolitical forces at work today, over which they have very little control? In the short term, remunicipalisation and the fight for better, democratic, sustainable and inclusive public services will continue to depend on the personal energy and motivation of citizens and officials. This certainly appears fragile in comparison to the established machineries of the private sector and unfavourable national and EU policies. However, there is potential for responding to the challenge. Networks of collaboration between remunicipalised public services are building up at regional, national, and European level, particularly in the water and energy sectors. Mutual assistance between cities can be an effective way to address the limitations of smaller, local public operators in comparison to large multinationals; and it could even become an effective check on the influence of multinationals over public policies.

Of course, these networks also need to develop beyond the limits of Western Europe, particularly in places where the balance of power between cities and large international companies (who more often than not have headquarters and shareholders in Western Europe) is much more unfavourable. The Eastern half of the continent is the obvious place to start. Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, has recently decided not to renew its heating contract with Veolia and is now facing a one million euro compensation claim in front of an international arbitration tribunal. A few years ago, the authorities of Sofia, Bulgaria, cancelled a referendum on water remunicipalisation, allegedly because they were threatened with exactly the same kind of procedure. And whilst countries such as France, Germany, Spain or even the UK are experiencing a wave of public services remunicipalisation, their governments and the European Union often turn into active promoters of the private sector’s role in providing essential services in other countries and continents, including by subsidising European multinationals under the mask of ‘development assistance’.

The remunicipalisation movement in Europe already demonstrates that there is an alternative for the future of public services to the vision currently prevailing at the EU and national levels. One of the key challenges ahead is to consolidate this alternative vision and impose it on institutional agendas, both within Europe itself and in its relations with the rest of the world and particularly the Global South. With remunicipalisation, and with the reinvention of public services that it often entails, Europe has something much more valuable to share with the world.

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 4th article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

Photo by Harald Felgner

The post Can Cities and Citizens Reinvent Public Services? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Jorge Pinto, research associate at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society (University of Minho, Portugal) and co-founder of the Portuguese party LIVRE, writes about the ‘Order of Barcelona’, and global municipalism.

Jorge Pinto: Confronted with the lack of action and proposals by their countries, many cities have been trying to assume a leadership role regarding some of the most pressing issues of our times, from the reduction of inequality to the struggle against climate change. They do so thanks to their capacity to involve civil society – and all its diversity of views and ideas – to an extent which is difficult to achieve at the national level. This has allowed municipalist movements to assume power in various large cities, grounding their actions in democratic and participatory values, reinforcing the historic role of cities as progressive and cosmopolitan places, places of tolerance and of intercultural meeting.

A key characteristic of the current municipalist vision is the fact that, besides the attention given to the city itself, there is a clear global vision: a cosmopolitan sense, in which all citizens feel part of the city but also part of the global community. It was precisely under the banner of municipalism and a vision of a global polis that more than 700 mayors and activists from 180 countries came together in Barcelona, in June 2017, to discuss what ‘fearless cities’ can do. It might not be too optimistic to argue that this has planted the seeds of a new global and municipalist order – the ‘Order of Barcelona’ – that could potentially supplant the previous Westphalian order. This new order is one where fearless cities and regions have a more preponderant role in the definition of global politics, bringing decision-making processes closer to the people. This municipalist vision can support the development of republicanism, a political theory that has been kept in the shadows for too long and is increasingly worth exploring.

Rethinking republicanism

Republicanism as a political theory has its roots in Ancient Greece and Rome, with figures such as Aristotle or Cicero among its main thinkers. Central to the definition of republicanism are the notions of freedom as non-domination, civic virtues (Cicero talked of four: justice, prudence, courage, and temperance), participation in the political life of the community and the debating of ideas, public over private interest, combatting all forms of corruption, and also the defence of a state based on strong laws – the “empire of laws and not of men”, to use the words of the 17th century political theorist James Harrington.

Within republicanism, there are two different lines of thought: on the one hand, civic humanism (or the neo-Aristotelian line) and, on the other, civic republicanism (the neo-Roman line). The first, similar to communitarianism in its defence of a single vision of the common good, defends the positive concept of freedom, in which the individual is free through active participation in the political life of the community. The second, clearly the most popular amongst current defenders of republicanism, argues for a vision of liberty in which individuals are free as long as they are not dominated – either by the state (imperium) or by other individuals (dominium) – and are protected from arbitrary forms of power.

Non-arbitrary interference that serves to reduce domination over individuals – i.e. actions taken (by the state or the city, for example) in order to increase one’s liberty – is not only accepted but defended. To give an example, when we think of the fight against economic inequality and climate change, it is difficult to make much progress without any kind of interference from public powers, such as a stronger taxing system or better economic (re)distribution. And this interference is politically more difficult to justify through a liberal vision of freedom based on non-interference, than through the republican approach of non-domination.

A classic example used to distinguish between non-interference and non-domination is the case of the slave and the master. If the slave has a good relationship with the master and doesn’t suffer any punishment throughout their life, the vision of liberty as non-interference would consider such a slave to have more liberty than another one who is regularly punished. On the other hand, the republican notion of liberty as non-domination would say that although this slave has slightly better life conditions, they are not free, because all the actors – slave and master – are aware of the difference in terms of power and know that, whenever the master decides – an arbitrary form of power – the slave can be punished. Thus, in this view, the bigger the difference in power, the bigger the risk of domination. This offers the political justification to avoid the (increasing) inequality between states, cities, and individuals.

The political participation defended by republicanism implies the existence of a political community, which is, in theory, more easily promoted at the municipal level. At this level, it is easier to give a voice to citizens, and for them to be able to disagree openly, debating and deliberating the matters that interest them. Complementarily, municipalism contends that the local is extremely important and that it is at this level that citizens have a greater capacity to actively participate and to know the problems that affect them, and are being better prepared to resolve them. Obviously, in an interconnected world, there are a number of problems that cross borders, with inequality and climate change being at the forefront of this.

Republicanism needs therefore to be conceptualised in such a way that it can be applied globally, but the answer is unlikely to lie in a hypothetical global government. Rather than concentrating power in one entity, it would be better to distribute it among cities, states, and regions linked in a network. International institutions could, nevertheless, ensure that basic liberties are respected, guaranteeing a common minimum of republican freedom to every individual around the globe. The exact shape of a global republican approach is subject to big discussions between those who defend a statist view (where people are represented by their states) and those defending the civil society view (representation via non-state actors such as NGOs). Municipalism provides strong arguments in favour of a third view, a more expansive one that keeps the best of both other approaches, by facilitating the multi-layered representation of citizens at the international, national, and city level. With greater opportunities to participate politically in their own republics, citizens’ voices would carry more weight, both locally and globally, proving the advantage of this local/global republicanism when compared to the nation-state and the intergovernmental approach. And, after all, who better than the citizens themselves to put forward solutions to the problems directly affecting them?

The sun is setting on Westphalia

For the first time in human history, the number of inhabitants in cities has overtaken that of inhabitants in rural areas. This is a fundamental change in the way that societies organise themselves, and everything indicates that this trend of migration from the country to the city will continue. Although this reality must not mean a lack of investment at the level of territorial cohesion policies, or the abandonment of the rural world, it is also clear that cities will assume an increasingly important role in the definition of public policy. This is a moment in which states are increasingly losing control and sovereignty, to use Saskia Sassen’s words.

A world governed by sovereign, independent nation-states, coming out of the Peace of Westphalia, has been questioned by the advancement of globalisation. While it is true that states remain an essential element in governance and can be expected to stay this way in the near future, the progressivists who aim to achieve a more just and sustainable world should start to think about how a new model of global organisation could be designed. We do not want a retreat to a world of siloes that do not communicate, therefore it is of primary importance to think of alternative globalisation models. This is where municipalist cities come in.

There are a number of cities and their respective metropolitan areas which today represent what in the past was considered a state, in terms of their size, population, and income. However, the autonomy of cities in various domains is still very limited by the definition of national laws, which creates conflict at the level of sovereignty between state and city. This conflict is seen most clearly in the notion of citizenship rights. The European Union provides a case in point and can define the role of cities in the future. Currently, access to European citizenship is granted solely through the intermediary of national citizenship – people can enjoy European rights only when they enjoy the citizenship rights of one of the Member States. Now, the discussions surrounding the acceptance of refugees have started to expose some of the problems of this model. While the number of refugees that each state should receive has been decided at the European level, a number of states have postponed this intake.1 In contrast, some of their cities have not only shown themselves willing to take refugees in, but have also held demonstrations to demand this. This is a clear example of conflict between the three levels of sovereignty. It can be expected that such conflicts will increase as cities continue to grow in importance and states continue down the opposite path.

A small number of progressive cities, challenging the established order in radical ways but acting more or less separately, will find it difficult to achieve great things. However, a global network of rebel cities2 acting in a coordinated way, sharing their experience and knowledge, errors and lessons, will be able to completely reformulate the way in which globalisation takes place. A republican globalism based on cities organised in a network can therefore be our next step. And there are various examples of attempts to form these networks, with varying levels of success, such as: ‘Solidarity cities’, ‘Eurocities’, the ‘Global Parliament of Mayors’, or the ‘Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy’.

But specifically, what can be done to promote municipalism and to strengthen republican freedom within cities? A first step is to look at what has been done already, namely regarding remunicipalisation initiatives. Secondly, one can look at city governments such as the ones in Paris and Stockholm which have assumed a leadership role in pressing issues such as climate change. It has to be noted that the construction of a republic of cities will not only include larger cities, as proven by the municipalist examples of A Coruña and Bristol with their complementary currency system. These latter cities exemplify the republican motivation of the citizens and the civic virtues that animate them: the search for more justice, participation in the life of the community, and a strong sense of perseverance. These practical examples are truly inspirational and serve as baseline for other municipalist movements and for the definition of a 21st century brand of municipalism.

Barcelona: The Dawn of a New Order

The definition of a new global order should not happen through the creation of a hypothetical global government but through greater shared sovereignty. States should share their sovereignty with supra-national institutions (such as the European Union), but also with sub-national institutions, namely cities. The European Union can, as a matter of fact, be a good environment in which to experiment with municipalist republicanism in the 21st century, by supporting existing projects in various countries and promoting a true Europe of the regions and cities, in which subsidiarity does not boil down to intergovernmentalism, but to the sharing of skills, responsibilities, and funds with cities and regions. Direct contact between European institutions and cities must therefore be increased and improved, not making it dependent on the states in which these cities are located. Republican cities would therefore have various platforms on which to make themselves heard, and be able to have a more influential role in public policy and in shaping alternative development models. This true subsidiarity – clearly distinct from the current model – would help to promote the republican notion of non-domination at the European level.

Global municipalism has therefore a fundamental role to play in the critical moment we are living in, through the promotion and support of governance for the common good. Responsibility to the entire human community, based on the criterion of global justice, is a necessity for those municipalist movements which, having emerged initially as opposition forces, now have to start implementing their proposals.

Today a European republic, tomorrow a global republic

Throughout history, the constitution of citizenship has been defined as top-down. That is, the definition of a specific political area was followed by the attribution of a series of rights and responsibilities associated with belonging to that area. But the European Union can radically challenge this model, going to the heart of belonging to a nation state: citizenship. Allowing access to the privileges of European citizenship for those who are not citizens of any of the EU countries but reside in their cities, would represent a true change of paradigm.

We can imagine a European Republic3 formed by various republics at the municipal or regional level. Small, medium, and large republics agreeing on deliberation as a way of doing politics and creating the necessary platforms for citizen representation. Places with alternative currencies at the regional level, as exists in Bristol now, that promote sharing and the decommodification of goods. Republics that follow the example of Barcelona and where the citizens, also through their representatives, are members of energy production and distribution cooperatives, living in cities designed for this end: living. Cities and regions where everyone has the right to not be dominated, giving everyone a set of minimum conditions (e.g. access to shelter, to education, to health, to transport, and a basic income) that allow them to freely exercise their activities as citizens. Republics that look inwards, concerned about the quality of life for those living there, but also look outwards, cosmopolitan and open to those who arrive, conscious that there exist multiple visions of the common good.

The message from the main municipalist projects is opposed to a dark and defeatist vision based on fear. With a message of hope, justice, perseverance, and courage – essential republican civic virtues – these movements have managed to awaken in citizens a sense of urgency to act and to grasp their future with their own hands. Not by chance, the first municipalist meeting in Barcelona was called ‘Fearless Cities’. But fear of what, exactly? Of course, to no longer fear being open to all those who seek shelter there, be they residents or refugees. To be courageous in confronting states when they fail in the definition of progressive policies, in fighting inequality, in investing in education, and in promoting a sustainable development model. To not fear involving citizens in their civic virtues, giving them the platform necessary to make themselves heard. To not fear being ambitious in envisaging the future. And what objective could be more ambitious than the definition of a new global order?

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 3rd article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

1 In September 2015, in one of the peaks of the refugee crisis and faced with lack of governance and reluctance by Member States to open their borders to refugees, the European Commission adopted a refugees’ relocation policy, intended to relocate 120,000 refugees among the Member States.

2 Using David Harvey’s expression, who in his 2013 book lays out the potential role of cites as places of social justice and ecological resistance.

3 To use Ulrike Guérot’s expression, although not directly referring to it.

Photo by ifolha

The post The Order of Barcelona: Cities Without Fear appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Pablo Servigne, an agronomist and expert in ecology, behaviour and evolution of social insects, examines the role of the city on the midst of a convergence of ecological and social crises.

Cities around the world today face a whole host of grave threats: from pollution to climate change, resource scarcity to overpopulation, and many more. Growing awareness of this has led to a proliferation of ‘solutions’ such as ‘green’, ‘sustainable’, ‘smart’, ‘resilient’, ‘zero-carbon’ projects, as well as ‘eco-neighbourhoods’. But how effective can these initiatives hope to be, in light of the scale of the problems faced? Our vision of the future is in dire need of being injected with a good dose of realism. The vision of a ‘linear’ urban future is in effect fed by the imagery of abundance forged during post-war reconstruction. Yet the conditions of such prosperity are no longer in place. A closer look at the principal threats facing cities can serve as a base from which to devise potential future scenarios. By stimulating our imagination, it is hoped that this conceptual framework will help us design urban policies which are more credible and less unsustainable than those we have witnessed so far.

Cities under threat

The risks of global warming are well known. According to the UN, more than 60 per cent of cities with populations of over 750,000 are exposed to at least one major risk. One of the latest reports from the IPCC describes one major risk, amongst others – of climate and environmental shocks breaking down the industrial food systems that feed most European towns. [1] 

Resource shortages (metals, water, wood, energy, etc) also fall within these major threats. In fact, there is nothing simpler than seriously disrupting a city: it’s merely a matter of blocking its food and energy supplies. These are amongst the worst threats a city can face, because the social, economic and then political effects are felt almost immediately (within a matter of days). Hence the prioritisation of food security by all governments over the centuries.

Serious threats are also posed by certain types of pollution. As well as the heavy metals and organic compounds polluting the soil, and aerosols already rendering certain towns unliveable, there is the risk of major industrial accidents forcing entire urban populations to be evacuated. Cities must learn to anticipate all this, to absorb the shocks, to recover, and to learn from these events, most of which are already happening in certain parts of the world. Simply to achieve this, they need resources, energy and a degree of social order, which are increasingly hard to guarantee.

In fact, all these threats can be considered to come from outside the city (external threats). But there is another equally serious, and less well known, type of threat: internal threats. These arise mainly from vulnerable infrastructure and social conflict. It is well-known to historians and archaeologists that a town’s capacity to grow and thrive depends on its capacity to safeguard good communication, transport, and distribution networks. Today, much of the transport, electricity, and water infrastructure in OECD countries is over 50 years old (over 100 years old, in some cases), and is already operating well beyond maximum capacity. [2] The extent of its interconnection, complexity, and homogeneity, and the speed of movement of the components of city life, have also increased the vulnerability of this infrastructure. It is thus also easily destabilised by one-off events such as floods, hurricanes, and terrorist attacks.

When, following the rise in the price of diesel in the year 2000, 150 striking lorry drivers blocked major fuel depots in the UK, the consequences rapidly made themselves felt: “Just four days after the start of the strike, most of the country’s refineries had ceased operation, forcing the government to take steps to protect the remaining reserves. The following day, people rushed into shops and supermarkets to stock up on food. One day later, 90% of filling stations had stopped serving, and the NHS [National Health Service] started to cancel elective surgery. Royal Mail deliveries stopped, and schools in many towns and villages closed their doors. Major supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s introduced rationing, and the government called in the army to escort convoys of vital goods. In the end, public pressure led the strikers to end their action”. [3]

In the cities of industrialised countries – including, need we add, Europe – it is highly likely that we will reach ‘peak urbanisation’ over the next decade.

The social order of a city can falter rapidly, even when networks don’t break down. All it takes is an economic or political crisis, leading to a collapse of industrial activity, massive job losses, housing crises, the bursting of a speculation bubble, riots, community or class conflicts, terrorist acts, and so on. These events have become frequent because of the significant increase in economic and social inequality within countries, [4] and even within cities. [5] This is nothing new, but seems to have been forgotten; archaeology shows us that the economic and political elites of great civilisations have often caused the inexorable degradation of their environment, due to the pressure they put on people and natural ecosystems. [6]

Last, but not least, all these threats are interdependent, and nowadays operate at a globalised level. Large, homogeneous, fast-moving, deeply interconnected international networks have – paradoxically – become more resistant to small disturbances, but more vulnerable to major disruptions, which, when they occur, can trigger a domino effect throughout the system, leading to collapse. [7] Scientists speak of a new kind of risk: the ‘systemic global risk’ inherent in these extensive complex networks, and, as major nodes in these global networks, cities are very exposed to these risks.

Scenarios for the Future: Forwarned is forearmed

With that in mind, four scenarios can be envisaged. The aim is not to alarm, nor to predict the future, but to stimulate the imagination and test the effects of these threats against possible futures. These scenarios are to be taken as signposts, pathways or stages, like the points of a compass. They are archetypes for the future, to help illustrate trends and provide insight into what might lie ahead. The division into four scenarios arises from two forward-looking works: Future Scenarios by David Holmgren, [8] and Resilient Cities, by architects and planners Newman, Beatley and Boyer. [9] The first work describes the possible trajectories in relation to peak oil and climate change.

If climate change has a gradual effect (providing enough room for manoeuvre to transform society), there are two possible scenarios: a ‘green tech’ transition, which, if resources decline slowly, could be relatively comfortable, or a radical and rapid change, known as ‘earth stewardship’, in the case of a brutally rapid decline in energy resources. By contrast, if climate change has rapid and violent effects, society will tip into a ‘brown tech’ future, where the powers that be would muster all their force to maintain ‘business as usual’. Or, even worse, society could completely collapse – the ‘lifeboat’ scenario – if these catastrophes coincided with a rapid loss of resources.

The second publication focuses exclusively on the end of oil, and analysing its effects on cities. It explores the following question: knowing that cities are completely dependent on oil, and have a massive carbon footprint, what would be the consequences for modern industrial cities of the end of the oil age? Two areas in particular are explored: transport and food security. The authors describe four scenarios, similar to those of Holmgren: the resilient city (corresponding to the ‘green tech’ scenario), the divided city (‘brown tech’ scenario), the ruralised city (‘earth stewardship’ scenario), and the collapsed city (‘lifeboat’ scenario).

However, both of these forward-looking publications only consider scenarios based on external threats (climate and oil), without taking account of internal threats. The latter have been explicitely included in the following proposed synthesis. [10]

The ecotechnical city

If the impact of global warming turns out to be gradual, and an ‘energy descent’ [11] can be managed, society can adopt ‘green’ technologies, ensure a successful transition, and work towards distributed renewable energy systems, without conflict or disasters. This would lead to a resurgence in regional, rural economies, more sustainable agriculture, more horizontal political systems, and more compact cities that prioritise public transport and the local economy. A balance would be found between reducing consumption and slowing economic growth, thanks to energy efficiency technology and a relocalisation of the economy. However, it is only possible for a city to take this route if it already has a resilient, well-maintained infrastructure, and if it avoids major political, economic and social upheavals. This is clearly the most desirable scenario in terms of maintaining the living standards and security that our democratic societies rely on. To sum up, in the absence of significant obstacles, even in the context of an energy descent, an efficient transition is still possible. The city can prepare, slowly but surely, for the ‘storms’ ahead.

The ecovillage city

A rapid decline in resources, including oil and natural gas, could trigger a crisis that would bring the world economy to its knees. This global collapse could create political instability, which would in turn lead to serious social problems, but also, paradoxically, to an end of greenhouse gas emissions. Local resilient communities would then emerge in some rural areas (following a massive rural exodus). This would be achieved through agro-ecology and permaculture techniques, and above all by sustaining their capacity for local democracy. It is possible that the major megalopolises would still contain rich, private, gated neighbourhoods, by developing urban agriculture within suburban gardens. In this scenario, no-one believes civilisation can be preserved as it stands; people will have moved on, to work for something radically different. Cities would return to being semi-rural, meeting many of their food and energy needs very locally, along the lines of self-sufficient medieval towns. Peri-urban belts would be made up of ecovillages, supplying the town and recycling waste, much like the Parisian market gardeners of the 19th century. However, this ‘radical resilience’ policy will only be practicable if massive disasters (hurricanes, uprisings, revolutions, etc.), that could destabilise the political and social order are neither too intense nor too frequent. If they do occur, the organisation of the city could change radically, whilst retaining a chance of avoiding breakdown and chaos, and maintaining a semblance of democracy, albeit at increasingly local levels. In this scenario, the city is instantly transformed, yet without being wiped out by the ‘storms’.

The enclave city

A slow decline in energy supply could leave influential power structures in place, thus thwarting any chance of real transformation. The combination of an authoritarian state and greedy private business would foster an extraction industry rush for non-renewable resources, with predictably catastrophic consequences. But then the climate and environmental crises would be so overwhelming that all of society’s energy and resources would be needed to keep the ship afloat, due to policies that are centralised, securitised, militarised, and inegalitarian. The city would splinter; the rich, cocooned in their safe neighbourhoods, would maintain access to increasingly expensive supplies, protecting themselves from climatic variations with new technology. The poorest in society would be left to their own devices in semi-rural areas (with survival vegetable plots providing resilience), or even shanty towns, with less and less reliable access to resources. In this scenario, the economic elite (the rich) and political elite (the government), in their opulent enclaves, would use violence and fear to maintain their privilege. These elites would have no choice than to bring in ever more oppressive laws. Those in the most precarious situations would gradually lose the means to protect themselves from environmental and social disasters, and certain districts (crowded with arriving migrants) would become shanty towns, and police no-go areas. Political cohesion, and thus democracy, would be the first victims, leaving the field open for the expansion of the private sector and its irresistible machine for generating ever more privilege and social division – in other words, social chaos. The city crumbles, the rich ‘manage’ the crisis, everyone else endures it, and the former control the latter by increasingly undemocratic means.

The collapsed city

If rapid economic and political collapse (the Ecovillage scenario) is compounded by severe environmental and climate crises, it is too late to take the resilience route; collapse is inevitable. History shows that a lack of preparation combined with a succession of various disasters will end up getting the better of any city. There is no lack of examples of dead cities, such as Ephesus, the port and second largest town in the Roman Empire, abandoned in around the year 1,000 when the river dried up after all the trees on the surrounding hills had been felled. War, illness, and famine have always cleared cities of their inhabitants, and this can still happen. In Syria and Libya, armed conflict has devastated entire towns, which have still not recovered. When the shock is too brutal, some of the urban population flee, and those who cannot, stay, prey to shortages and chaos. Epidemics and/or conflict can reduce social life to clans controlled by local warlords. Some small population clusters would survive in exceptionally favourable conditions (such as a healthy river, stable damn, fertile fields, or an isolated monastery). These small islands (Holmgren’s ‘lifeboats’) would be humanity’s only chance to find a way through a dark period and retain the hope of renaissance in a few decades, or centuries. In this scenario, unpredictable and irreversible domino effects lead to the rapid breakdown of the city.

A rupture in our imagination

This four-scenario compass provides us with a new way of looking at the future. It enables us to see more clearly what is at stake: from a hardening of class relations, de-industrialisation of towns, urban exodus, and infrastructure collapse to the development of green technologies. Even if the details of these trajectories are not specified, global trends are clear: towards catastrophes, or what some might term collapse. These narratives differ from the more common forecasts, based on myths around technological progress, and luring us with a future ever more connected to the virtual, and thus in the end disconnected from the natural. But we have clearly run up against the limits of this approach (and of earth-system science), and now we must prepare for a future of rupture and interruption.

In the cities of industrialised countries – including, need we add, Europe – it is highly likely that we will reach ‘peak urbanisation’ over the next decade. In other words, we cannot carry on in this ultra-urban direction. The future of industrial towns will more likely be one of depopulation, reconnection with green belts and the countryside, an overdue reduction in social inequality, and the re-localisation of the economy. It is up to us to tip the balance in favour of a particular scenario.

Even if the precise nature of these scenarios is not clear, we can be sure that the urban future has to be resilient. [12] Cities will have to weather various kinds of ‘storms’, some with more ease than others, and this will radically transform how Europeans design and inhabit their cities. Anticipating these ‘storms’ today, feeling and imagining them, equips us to be prepared, and thus avert disaster.

This is a revised version of an article that was first published on barricade.be.

• 1. P. Servigne (2017). Nourrir l’Europe en temps de crise. Vers de systèmes alimentaires résilients, Babel.
• 2. I. Goldin & M. Mariathasan, (2014). The butterfly defect: How globalization creates systemic risks, and what to do about it. Princeton University Press, p.101.
• 3. P. Servigne & R. Stevens (2015), Comment tout peut s’effondrer. Petit manuel de collapsologie à l’usage des générations présentes, Seuil, p. 116.
• 4. R. Wilkinson, & K. Pickett (2009). The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Allen Lane.
• 5. O. Razemon (2016) Comment la France a tué ses villes, Rue de l’échiquier.
• 6. For example, the salinisation of land during the third millennium BCE in Mesapotamia, or, today, the living stands of rich Europeans destroying
  tropical forests. See N. B. Grimm, et al. (2008). Global change and the ecology of cities, Science, n°319, pp. 756-760.
• 7. P. Servigne & R. Stevens (2015), op. cit.
• 8. D. Holmgren (2009), Future scenarios, How communities can adapt to peak oil and climate change, Green Books
• 9. P. Newman et al. (2009) Resilient cities. Responding to peak oil and climate change, Island Press.
• 10. Here, armed conflict is not included in external threats, and civil war not included in internal threats.
• 11. In the context of a post-peak oil transition, this refers to the shift away from an increasing use of energy to a reduction.
  https://www.transitionculture.org/essential-info/what-is-energy-descent.
• 12. A. Sinaï et al. Petit traité de résilience locale, 2015, Éditions Charles Léopold Mayer.

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 2nd article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

The post Gathering Storms: Forecasting the Future of Cities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Lorenzo Marsili of DIEM25 interviews Joan Subirats, founder and director of the Institute for Government and Public Policy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Lorenzo Marsili: A spectre seems to be haunting Europe: the spectre of the cities. Why do you think there is such symbolic power in what you are doing in Barcelona?

Joan Subirats: There are certainly various factors. One general factor is the transformation to a more platform-based capitalism – a monopolistic, digital capitalism – in which states have lost the ability to respond because the big players are the investment funds, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. States are then trapped in the logic of debt and austerity policy. At the same time, the population faces increasing difficulties and there is a sense of uncertainty and fear, a feeling of not knowing what will happen in the future; what will happen to my standard of living, what will happen to my country, and what will happen to us? Many years ago, the philosopher Karl Polanyi talked about the movement towards commodification and the countermovement of protection. Where do you turn today for protection?

Many would still argue to the state.

Yes, the state is the classic place to turn to demand protection. Following a more conservative, closed, and xenophobic logic, the state is still a space where you can claim protection, in many cases by closing borders and closing societies. However, cities are different in nature because they were born to be open. “The city air makes us feel free”1, as the adage goes. Cities are spaces that gather opportunities and possibilities. The proximity of city authorities and political actors offers another kind of protection, much closer and tangible to citizens, albeit admittedly with fewer policy competences and powers than the nation-state. This means that cities seem to be a space where some things – but not everything – can change and change for the better.

Speaking of Polanyi, the philosophy professor Nancy Fraser claims that the second movement, the movement of protection, is one that historically defended primarily the male, white, Western breadwinner against women, minorities, and the Global South. And so she introduces the need for a third movement: one of autonomy and emancipation. To what extent can the ‘protection’ of the city differ from traditional state protection?

It’s a very good question, because it links in with the Ada Colau factor, the Barcelona factor, the PAH factor [Platform of People Affected by Mortgages], and the antieviction movement. There is a specific type of change happening in relation to the PAH, which I think is highly significant. When someone goes to the PAH saying they are having problems and cannot pay the mortgage, and that they will be evicted, they meet others facing the same problems who tell them: “We are not going to solve your problem. You have to become an activist, so we can solve our problems together.” This means that you are not a client of the PAH – you must become a PAH activist, so that you can change things together. And this is a process of emancipation, not a process of service provision, and it does not follow the outsourcing logic of unions or political parties: “Come and delegate your issues to us, then we will defend your ideas in your name.” This delegating approach does not exist in the PAH. The PAH involves making people more active.

How does this become institutionalised? To what extent do these processes of politicisation, of activation – which are also at the basis of the discourse on the commons in the end, with co-ownership and co-management – end up in the policies of the administration?

This is the big initiative that started in May 2015. There were four basic points in the Barcelona en Comú manifesto in the elections, and these could be adopted by other similar platforms elsewhere in Spain. The first was to give control of institutions back to the people, institutions have been captured, and they are not serving our interests. Secondly, people are being put in an increasingly precarious situation, financially and socially. Inequality is increasing, basic social protection mechanisms are being destroyed. We still need to recover the capacity to provide protection, so there is a social emergency that demands a response. Thirdly, we have to build up a more participative democracy that does not delegate. It is not easy, but we must make people more involved in the decisions that affect them. That is where you get onto co-production of policy, co-creation of decisions, etc. The fourth point is that we have to end corruption and cronyism in politics, which people perceive as privilege. Salaries need to be reduced, things have to be done transparently, mandates must be limited – in short, there needs to be more morality in politics.

And how is it going?

To start with, I would say that the most significant progress has certainly been made on the second point: making better thought-out policies to respond to the social emergency. This has in some ways restored legitimacy on the first point: recovering institutions for a different type of politics. Secondly, there are no corruption scandals anywhere in the ‘cities of change’. The rather difficult point that I think still poses difficulties is making institutions more participative, and developing co-production of policy. This is because the traditions, routines, and working methods of the institutions are a long way from this approach. Our institutions have a very 19th and 20th century approach, they are very pre-digital, and discussing ‘co-production’ involves talking about methods for including collective intelligence in such processes – it’s not easy.

There is a very interesting international debate on technological sovereignty, moving beyond a system where all data and all social interactions are monetised by the giants of Silicon Valley. What exactly are you are doing on the digital commons?

We have begun changing the base of proprietary software used by the municipal council, and ensuring that contracts made between the council and software providers do not cede the data used for those services to the companies. This also means ensuring that, in a city that is home to Smart Cities and the Mobile World Congress, technological innovation alters the city’s approach, whilst at the same time changing the thinking behind these forums, although this is no easy task. This is why we appointed a commissioner for innovation and technological sovereignty. For instance, we are working on a new contract for a joint transport card to cover trains, buses, and the underground. This card will be manufactured by a provider, and the contract should specify that the local public transport data of all the residents of Barcelona will be controlled by the public authorities. It is a debate about sovereignty – not state sovereignty, but energy, water, food, and digital sovereignty. Those are the public priorities and the needs that are being debated.

I like the concept of ‘sovereignty of proximity’ or ‘sovereignties’, as too often sovereignty is equated simply with national sovereignty. But many constitutions, such as the Italian one, state that “sovereignty belongs to the people”, not to the nation-state! Yet, in constitutional arrangements the role of cities is still very limited; their actual competences are narrow. Wouldn’t any attempt to place the city at the centre of a renewed governance require a national-level political fight to change the allocation of competences between the different levels?

I like talking about the question of the ‘level of responsibility’ of municipalities, which is high because they have very broad agendas, in terms of responding to the demands of citizens. However their ‘level of powers’ – what they are able to do – is much lower. Not everything can be solved locally, it is obvious. And surely, that is why Barcelona en Comú is trying to build a movement across Catalonia. It is called Catalunya en Comú and it works within a logic of federal alliances with Podemos. This is because if you are unable to have influence at the level of Catalonia itself – where education and healthcare policies are decided – or at the state level, you are not able to act. But at the same time, it is true that at the local level, you are able to intervene more than your powers may suggest. My political mobilisation can reach further than my powers. In other words, the conflict is not only legal, but also political. For example, you may not have powers regarding housing in Catalonia. In Barcelona, these powers are in the hands of the autonomous Generalitat or the state. But you can also take it to the streets with political mobilisations to solve housing problems, and there you can make alliances against Airbnb – with Berlin, with Amsterdam, and with New York. That dynamic will force Airbnb to respond, even though the Spanish, U.S., and Dutch states are unable to solve the problem. So I think we should not be limited by the idea that there are no legal powers.

The opposition between city and state is interesting here. We have a paradoxical situation, as you know, where many cities across Europe – Barcelona is one of them – would like to welcome refugees and yet their nation-states often block this. The Spanish government is no exception. Could we envision a disobedient act, where a city would unilaterally welcome a certain number of refugees? Interestingly, you would be disobeying the national government but paradoxically you would be obeying the European scheme on refugee relocation that the national government is itself disobeying in the first place.

Yes, that is a good example and I think it could be implemented. It would certainly have more political effect than real effect, as you would not solve the big problem of refugees. However you would be sending a very clear message that it is possible to do things at city level and that people are prepared to do things, and it would not just be rhetoric. Certainly, in other cases similar things could be done. In fact, action has been taken here, for example on the ability of property investment funds to buy buildings. The municipal council of Barcelona cannot legally break the law, but it has made it more difficult in many ways for investment funds to make those deals. In some cases it has even foiled these purchases by buying a building itself to prevent it becoming a target for speculation.

German politician Gesine Schwan is bringing forward a proposal to directly connect the European-level relocation of refugees with municipalities, by essentially bypassing the nation-state. Do you think that we need to review the institutional levels that currently govern the European Union, which are mostly organised according to a ‘nation-state to European Union’ structure, thinking instead of a ‘municipality to European Union’ structure?

Yes, I think that this is an area where we can connect existing experiences. There are organisations like EuroCities that have been created for benchmarking and learning between cities. There are working groups dealing with mobility, social policy, and so on. I think that we should follow up more on this approach of coordinating at local level, and we should look for opportunities to have a direct dialogue with the European Union, skipping the state level. I think it will not be at all easy because nation-states have captured the European decision-making structure. So even if cities had an ally in the European Union, it would not be easy, but it could be done. I believe that the European Union would be rather reluctant to take that step. I think the way would be to create a European forum of local authorities, which would grow in strength, and would be able to make the leap in this area.

Can you imagine a European network of cities of change that acts a bit as a counterpower, as much to the European Union as to nation-states?

I think it is not only possible but desirable. I think that the Barcelona municipal authority is already moving in that direction. Many years ago, Barcelona made Sarajevo its eleventh district, and there is also a strong collaboration between Barcelona and the Gaza Strip in Palestine, including a very close relationship with municipal technical officials working in Gaza. The municipality of Barcelona’s tradition of international cooperation is well-established, so building on this would be nothing new.

There seems to be a particularity about Europe, namely the existence of a transnational political structure that governs the spaces that we happen to inhabit. The political theorist Benjamin Barber proposed a global parliament of mayors – which clearly is a very interesting intellectual proposal at the global level because there is no global government. But in Europe we do have at least a simulacrum of a European government. Do you think one could envisage creating an institutionally recognised space for cities, like a European parliament of cities?

It could be done but for it to be really constructive and powerful and for it to make progress, it should not be shaped initially by institutions, bureaucrats, or organisations. It should rather work on the basis of encounters from below and building the legitimacy of mayors that have made an impact (in Naples, Madrid, Barcelona, etc.). It should be seen to be a process working from the bottom up, without any desire to make quick political capital from above. This would be much more resilient and it would ultimately be powerful.

Building a European and international role for cities is a very demanding task. Often when I go and advocate for these ideas with city administrations I notice that municipalities very often lack the staff and the offices to deal with this more political or diplomatic work. If we posit a new global or European role for cities then cities need to invest in an institutional machinery that can actually perform this work.

This is certainly true. The shortcomings that you mention could certainly be addressed if we worked with a more metropolitan approach. The term municipality does not always refer to the same thing: Madrid covers 600 km2 and Barcelona 100 km2. Paris is divided into the City of Paris and Greater Paris. If we worked to build the concept of a Greater Barcelona rather than the City of Barcelona, this would mean moving from 1.5 million inhabitants to 3.5 million. The 25 town councils that make up the metropolitan area would certainly agree to invest resources to foster international processes. Paris may already be working on this, and it has a metropolitan dimension that could be strengthened. It is certainly true that there is a lack of staff and tradition. People think in global terms without stopping to think that cities always have to go through the state to work internationally. This situation would be eased by focusing on the metropolis.

Let’s close with the global dimension proper. More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas, while the top 100 cities produce just under half the world’s GDP. In June 2017, Barcelona hosted a global summit, Fearless Cities, bringing together mayors from across the world to commit to joint initiatives to tackle precisely the global challenges that national leadership seems increasingly unable to address. How do you see this developing further? What concrete actions could be put in place?

In my opinion the best way would be to work with a concrete agenda, and to find the issues that can most easily draw cities in and connect with them. For example, the issue of redistribution, the question of the minimum wage – which has sparked debate in London, Seattle, and New York – and issues of housing, primary education, energy, and water. We could start with issues like these, that are clearly cross-cutting and global, affecting everywhere in the world, and start linking agendas across Europe in a more specific way. This would facilitate the political and institutional side, and we could make the leap more quickly. When people see the shortcomings in the area of policies, this will highlight the shortcomings in the area of polity.

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 1st article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

1 After ‘Stadtluft macht frei’, a German medieval dictum describing a principle of law that offered freedom and land to settlers who took up urban residence for more than “a year and a day.”

The post The City as the New Political Centre appeared first on P2P Foundation.