Monday 26 October 2015

Flashmobs and Flamenco: How Spain's Greatest Artform Became a Tool for Political Protest

Flamenco
Flamenco (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, University of Cambridge, The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/flashmobs-and-flamenco-how-spains-greatest-artform-became-a-tool-for-political-protest-49310

Flamenco is perhaps Spain’s most alluring cultural phenomenon, characterised by the stereotypes of sun, passion and tumbling black hair.

Political protest and social activism are less likely to come to mind when thinking of flamenco, but for some performers it has always been a powerful tool for voicing political protest.

Never more so than today. Spain has suffered immensely in the global economic crisis - especially Andalusia, the southernmost region of the country most associated with flamenco.

Neoliberalism has taken its toll on the Spanish people, who are suffering one of the highest levels of unemployment in Europe. In 2011, this led to the infamous 15M (indignados) protest movement that mobilised millions of citizens across the country to challenge policies of austerity following the banking crisis.

On the back of this movement, the flashmob group Flo6x8 has rebranded flamenco as a powerful political weapon. This anti-capitalist group has been well publicised for its political performances that have taken place in banks and even the Andalusian parliament.

Using the body and voice as political tools, the group carries out carefully choreographed acciones (actions) in front of bemused bank staff and customers. These performances are recorded and then posted online, attracting a huge number of views.


Through explicitly political lyrics, Flo6x8 denounces the banking crisis and the austerity measures resulting from European bailouts. By claiming public, capitalist spaces the performers give a powerful political message that challenges the status quo.

But these performances also break with typical gendered stereotypes in flamenco. The exotic, seductive and “oriental” image of the female dancer is turned on its head. Instead the female dancers in these performances become powerful, political figures.

The group believes it is repoliticising flamenco, returning to its historical origins. Nowadays flamenco is closely associated with the world music industry and tourism. Yet the origins of flamenco tell a different story. Flamenco was born among socially marginalised communities such as Gypsies, miners and other disadvantaged Andalusian groups. Lyrics from the 18th and 19th centuries tell tales of poverty and social hardship.

True, the flamenco we know today owes much of its legacy to the commercial theatres (cafés cantantes) of mid-19th century Spain. But its political side has come out during times of social upheaval. Republicans during the Spanish Civil War sang ideological messages. And singers of the 1960/70s such as Manuel Gerena and José Menese challenged the Franco regime in pursuit of democracy and equality.

Fandangos republicanos sung by Manuel González “El Guerrita”.

I want to say with passion, this fandango that I sing, Spain is Republican. And this is from the heart, down with the law and tyranny.
Flo6x8 see themselves as the continuation of this political legacy, where flamenco becomes a catalyst for social change as can be seen by this anti-austerity flashmob in the Andalusian parliament in June 2014.

Flo6x8 anti-austerity protest at the plenary session of the Andalusian parliament in June 2014.

The controversial new gag law introduced by the Spanish government in 2015 has restricted the activities of Flo6x8. Yet members remain committed to flamenco as a political weapon against continued social and economic inequalities in Spain.

Confronting racism

The history of flamenco has also been used to promote tolerance. Flamenco is said to have links to Spain’s Islamic past a period when Christians, Jews and Muslims allegedly coexisted in peace (convivencia). Although criticised by some as a utopian myth, convivencia carries a message of tolerance for today. Many argue that flamenco emerged from an amalgamation of cultural influences in southern Spain: Arabs, Jews, Gypsies, African slaves, Andalusian underclasses and so on. The belief, then, is that flamenco is born of intercultural dialogue.

However, Spain’s relationship with its Islamic past is problematic. In some quarters it is celebrated - in others it is shunned. Since the 1980s, increasing immigration into Spain, particularly from Morocco, has complicated matters. Like in many countries across Europe, racial tensions and Islamophobia have increased. Here flamenco has been used to confront racial tensions and promote tolerance.

In 2003, the dancer Ángeles Gabaldón and her company premiered the show Inmigración (Immigration), which was also broadcast online to more than 50,000 people. Inmigración raised awareness of the humanitarian issues surrounding migration across the Strait of Gibraltar: human trafficking, migrant deaths, immigrant sex work and racism.

The show, which featured a multiracial cast, sought to raise awareness of the social reality of immigration – and, interestingly, also presented Spain’s own history of emigration before it became a country of immigration. But the most powerful element of Inmigración was how the past and the present were joined together in musical performance. Flamenco was combined with musical styles believed to have originated in Islamic Spain that now exist in North Africa.

The cast included Jalal Chekara, a Moroccan performer who has lived in Spain for many years. He is known for his collaborations with flamenco musicians, promoting tolerance through the musical re-imagining of a shared cultural history.

Since 2003, the situation across Spain and Europe has deteriorated. The current migrant crisis is maybe the most difficult challenge facing Europe and Inmigración is perhaps even more relevant today than when it was first performed. It shows the capacity of flamenco as a form of social criticism that can give power to the powerless and voice to the voiceless.

Joshua Brown, a lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Chapman University and Juan Pinilla, flamenco singer and writer in Granada, assisted with research for this article. The author will be appearing at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Wednesday 21 October 2015

10 Reasons Co-ops Rock


The fact that co-ops are democratically owned and operated is widely understood, but that model brings with it a wealth of empowering benefits, such as:
  • Co-ops' jobs and revenues, by nature, stay within their local communities.
  • Co-ops are more resilient during economic downturns.
  • Co-ops generally bake social and environmental needs and solutions into their missions.
Further still, cooperatives don't exist in some foreign socialist utopia of the future (or past). They are organizations that operate in neighborhoods all over the world right now run by over 800 million members. Support one, join one, or start one today!


Tuesday 6 October 2015

Concluding Lifetime of Dedicated Activism, Grace Lee Boggs Dies at Age 100

Grace Lee Boggs at her home in Detroit in 2012. (Photo: Kyle McDonald/cc/flickr)
Grace Lee Boggs in 2012 (Photo: Kyle McDonald/cc/flickr)
by Lauren McCauley, staff writer, Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/05/concluding-lifetime-dedicated-activism-grace-lee-boggs-dies-age-100

Longtime activist, educator, and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs passed early Monday at the age of 100.

Friends and caregivers Shay Howell and Alice Jennings said in a statement about her passing that Boggs "left this life as she lived it: surrounded by books, politics, people and ideas." Boggs died peacefully in her sleep in her Detroit home.

Born in Rhode Island in 1915, the daughter of Chinese immigrants studied at Barnard College and Bryn Mawr, where she received Ph.D. in philosophy in 1940. These studies led to a lifetime of activism, starting in Chicago with the movement for tenants’ rights and the Workers Party. In the 1960s, Grace moved to Detroit, where she became known for her work, along with her late husband, author and activist James Boggs.

Over the past 70 years, she was involved with the civil rights, Black Power, labor, environmental justice, and feminist movements. In 1992, she co-founded the Detroit Summer youth program, "a multi-racial, inter-generational collective" that serves as a training ground for youth activists. She once stated, "you cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it."

"Grace Lee Boggs embraces a philosophy of constant questioning - not just of who we are as individuals, but of how we relate to those in our community and country, to those in other countries, and to the local and global environment," notes a biography of Boggs, which accompanies of portrait of her painted by artist Robert Shetterly.

Throughout her life, Boggs' speeches and essays frequently made connections between the suffering experienced by poor and marginalized communities with humanity's overall lack of vision, exemplified by the demand for "endless growth."

During a 2012 talk given in San Francisco, Boggs spoke alternately of the need to "grow our souls." She said: "We need to find that balance of life that respects each other, that thinks that the most important thing at this time on the clock of the world is not our accumulation of things, is not economic growth which threatens and imperils all life on this planet including ourselves, that the time has come to grow our souls, to grow our relationships with one another, to create families that are loving and communities that are loving, to bring the neighbor back into the hood."

And in an essay written in 2010 explaining why she did not partake in a commemoration of the August 28, 1963 March on Washington, Boggs boldly questioned the value of "encouraging democratic illusions" while there was still such pervasive injustice and inequity in the U.S. Instead, she reiterated Dr. Martin Luther King's call for a "Radical Revolution of Values," which she said not only disparages racism, but also "Materialism and Militarism."

In her final post on the Boggs Center website, written in August 2014, she wrote, "I want my life to challenge people to think philosophically. I want people to ask themselves and each other what time it is on the clock of the world."

Friday 2 October 2015

Sweden Seeing Growing Success With 6-Hour Workdays

Eight-hour workday demonstration in New York (...
8-hour workday demo (1871) (Wikipedia)
Sweden, which already stands out among nations for its generous paid maternity leave and model prison system, is giving everyone another reason to applaud.
 
A number of companies and local municipalities in the Scandinavian nation have increasingly been experimenting with a six-hour workday. 
Jon Levine is a staff writer at Mic, covering politics and people. He is based in New York and can be reached at JLevine@mic.com.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Smart Cities: Asia's New Frontier?

songdo
Shutterstock.com
by Jean Chua, Eco-Business: http://www.eco-business.com/news/smart-cities-asias-new-frontier/

From London to Lahore, cities around the world are competing to be crowned as ‘the world’s smartest city’, led by a firm belief in the power of technology to make urban centres more innovative, efficient and liveable than they already are.

Nowhere is this opportunity to make cities cleaner and smarter more evident than in Asia, which is already home to 60% of the planet’s people.

The region’s cities, along with Africa’s, will account for 90% of the increase in the world’s population from now till 2050. That’s about 2.5 billion people who will be moving to urban centres in those regions.

The smart city is hailed as a way for urban planners to accommodate this growth sustainably. The services and infrastructure around it has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry in Asia alone.

According to a report by market research firm Navigant Research, investment in smart city information and communication technology (ICT) in Asia Pacific will total US$63.4 billion during the period from 2014 to 2023.

US research firm MarketsandMarkets forecasts that the global smart cities market will grow from US$411.31 billion in 2014 to $1.135 trillion by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.5%.

While experts differ on what constitutes a smart city exactly, the consensus is that it is a city that employs technology to firstly, deliver urban services to residents more efficiently; secondly, reduce costs for the service providers and slash overall resource consumption; and thirdly, enable active participation by citizens in the running of the city.

For Asia, a smart city - with sustainability, liveability and inclusivity at its core - is more than just a fancy, it is a need.

Smart city infrastructure can help governments and businesses save millions of dollars in energy bills and innumerable man hours. Smart Cities Council, a US organisation of companies that work to advance the smart city business sector, for example, estimates that US cities waste US$39 billion in electricity a year because of inefficiencies in their ageing infrastructure.

“Rolling out smart cities is a pressing need across Asia,” says Jonathan Woetzel, director, McKinsey & Company. “Leaders in developing Asia must cope with urbanisation on an unprecedented scale, while those in developed Asia wrestle with ageing infrastructures,”  he notes.

Beyond the latest gadgets and server farms, smart city applications allow cities to save energy, cut down on carbon emissions, increase their safety and reduce the need for inefficient and unnecessary human labour.

Think driverless public transport, sensors that monitor water levels, energy usage, security cameras, and traffic flows, and automated trash collection, for example.

Experts say, however, that the ultimate aim of smart cities should not be about the technology, but using it as a tool to improve the lives of urban citizens. In other words, it’s about the people.

“Smart cities are liveable and sustainable cities, based on integrated planning and good governance that may be aided by technology,” says Khoo Teng Chye, executive director, Centre for Liveable Cities based in Singapore.

“Experts speak of smart, liveable or eco-friendly cities, but ultimately we all want to make cities better for people - with a high quality of life, a clean and sustainable environment, and a competitive economy providing good jobs.”

Smart cities in Asia

In Asia, Seoul and Singapore are often cited as the best examples of a smart city. Hailed by many IT experts as the smartest, most connected city in the world, Seoul’s focus has been on open data, public transport and the use of digital tools for supporting citizen participation - all 10 million of them.

Besides being a leader in digital transactions and real-time information on transit, jobs, and other public information, the city was a pioneer when it launched, almost a decade ago, a scheme called the Online Policy Suggestion System (OASIS) to receive planning suggestions from the public online.
This has received more than 5 million contributions to date.

Then there’s Seoul’s high-profile experiment built from scratch: The Songdo International Business District, a US$35 billion “smart city” adjacent to the Incheon Airport and about 64 kilometres from Seoul.

While the project had attracted worldwide attention since construction started in the mid-1990s for its audacity and scale, some experts have also questioned its usefulness and whether it might ultimately end up being an oversized white elephant.

The size of 1,134 American football fields, or 1500 acres, Songdo boasts universal broadband, integrated sensor networks to extract data, green buildings and an underground system of tubes for transporting kitchen waste from buildings directly to a facility that converts it into clean energy. About 40% of the land has been designated as green space.

While the developers - United States’s Gale International and South Korea’s Posco Engineering and Construction - say that the city is designed to house 2 million people, the take-up rate by residents has been slower and lower than expected. So far, there are just over 80,000 Songdo residents, who find the city’s proximity to the airport and the cutting-edge services a draw.

Asit Biswas, founder of the Third World Centre for Water Management in Mexico and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School for Public Policy in Singapore, feels, however, that the prospect of a city surrounded by computers and technology is unnerving, purely from a citizen’s point of view.

“I don’t want to live in a place where computers run my life,” he says. “You’re installing a whole bunch of computers which will do a whole variety of things but you’re forgetting that cities are for people. And it’s people who make cities.”

Singapore, a tiny island of 5.5 million, is another oft-cited example of a smart city in Asia. It is on technology research firm Juniper Research’s list of the top five smart cities, and came in third in Asia in the recent Sustainable Cities Index by property consultancy Arcadis.

Other experts cite Japan’s Osaka, South Korea’s Busan, and Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur as examples of  emerging smart cities in Asia.

“At the moment, almost every city of scale is deploying smart technologies in transport, resource management and services, from Busan to Shanghai, Tokyo to Manila,” McKinsey’s Shanghai-based Woetzel, who advises the Chinese authorities on energy, sustainability and economic development, notes.

The giants of the region

China and India, the two most populous nations in the world, also have ambitions to build smart cities across their countries. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to build 100 such urban centres fitted with high-tech communication capabilities grabbed headlines when it was announced last July.

Whether the plan will indeed become reality remains to be seen. As Arcadis Singapore’s Eugene Seah, country head and city executive, puts it, “this is viewed as a priority to try and address mobility issues and an infrastructure deficit within some of the cities.”

Others, including Dr Biswas, say that India should be focusing on meeting the basic needs of the people. “We are talking about 600 million people who do not have 24-hour access to electricity,” he adds. “And how about people who don’t have sanitation? Those are the facts of life in India. In those cases, the word ‘smart’ does not mean very much.”

In centrally-planned China, government agencies such as the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban and Rural Development, and China Development Bank are all involved in building smart city pilot projects across the country.

In 2013, 193 cities were chosen for such projects including Heilongjiang and Shenyang in the north to Kunming, Foshan and Shenzhen in the South.

Much of this will be driven by the need to cope with urbanisation. McKinsey Global Institute estimates that China’s urban population will grow from 527 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025. Cities in the country with a population exceeding 1 million are likely to increase from 153 to 226 in that same period.

This will create significant demand for digital communications infrastructure, smart applications, green building and construction, energy efficiency, carbon capture and other environmental technologies.

“In terms of emerging projects, it will be interesting to watch the development of new cities like Tianjin Eco-City in China, as well as Amaravati, the new capital of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh,” notes Khoo of the Centre for Liveable Cities.

Tianjin Eco-City is a joint project between the governments of China and Singapore, an environmentally-friendly and resource-conserving city in the northern part of the country that’s about 150 kilometres from Beijing. Amaravati is being developed as a smart city by the government of India with the help of the Singapore government.

Putting ‘Sustainability’ into ‘smart’

Even with all the money being pumped into smart projects across the region, a successful smart city isn’t one merely equipped with the latest and flashiest technology, says Ynse de Boer, managing director, Accenture, Sustainability Services.

Getting the right operating models is the key to long-term success of ‘smart’ initiatives, he adds. Investments in technology have to pay off for the city and its partners, which will then deploy the project on a larger scale.

“Without the proper operating model and business model, it is very difficult to move beyond the pilot phase and get any initiative to scale and to sustain,” he says.

For technology-savvy cities such as Singapore, Seoul and top-tier Chinese cities, de Boer adds, it is crucial for decision-makers to avoid the “technology pitfall”  - that is,  the temptation to invest in pointless infrastructure without considering the uses of the technology.

Indeed, the mantra of  “sustainability” should guide the development of all smart city projects, emphasises Thomas Menkhoff, professor of organisational behaviour and human resources (education) at Singapore Management University’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business.

In fact, it is no longer an option for city leaders as they confront challenges such as climate change, air pollution, and urbanisation in a world with finite resources, he says. “A truly smart city will manage to increase sustainability,” Menkoff adds. “Aspirations in terms of eco-smart towns and homes, electric car sharing services, reuse and recycling as well as greener practices in business and society at large are achievable in principle.”

“There is no doubt that the wise use of ICT can lead to a more efficient use of resources, energy savings, and a higher quality of life,” he notes.

A means to an end

On the other hand, the widespread use of technology can also increase the divide between the haves and have-nots, warns Biswas. “We want to be able to provide people with electricity, healthcare, education, transportation, water. If technology provides that, then I say, go for it, but I fear that the rich are just going to create a wall that divides them from the rest of us,” he says.

In developing cities that lack institutions and structures of good governance, the rise of the smart city may actually exacerbate existing problems, says a spokesperson from the Asian Development Bank’s Urban  Sector group.

On the other hand, in developed Asian cities such as Singapore, Seoul, and Yokohama, the adoption of smart technologies is a positive development. “If these cities can be modelled by other Asian cities in setting their development priorities, goals, and policy directions, then cities and towns would be able to develop sustainably, says ADB. The concern is how to cascade their examples into the other countries in Asia.”

At the end of the day, it is about technology as an enabler of equitable development, as well as the provider of key services like electricity, healthcare, education, transportation and water, and not technology for technology’s sake, experts say. And it has to go hand-in-hand with good governance and sustainability.

“Truly smart cities make a positive difference in the lives of their citizens,” says Menkoff. To achieve this, tracking and monitoring of progress is important. He cites the European Smart City model as an example in which more than a hundred indicators on the economy, environment, people, and living standards are tracked and studied.

“Technology can help to optimise all of these elements provided all social groups can benefit,” Menkoff says.

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Buen Vivir: South America's Rethinking of the Future We Want

Image result for andean design
dreamstime.com
by Juan Francisco Salazar, University of Western Sydney, The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/buen-vivir-south-americas-rethinking-of-the-future-we-want-44507

Two years ago heads of state and government and high-level representatives from across the world met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations Rio+20 Summit.

One important output was the document, The Future We Want. This outlined a vision for an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable future for the planet and for present and future generations.

But the initiative was met with hesitation and resisted by civil society groups. The alternative People’s Summit Rio+20 launched the document Another Future is Possible. This came out of the 2012 World Social Forum and aimed to articulate a different vision for sustainable development. This vision was shaped in part by a transformative program sweeping South America since the mid-2000s: Buen Vivir, which is Spanish for “good living” or “living well”.

This idea had already been incorporated into the Peoples' Climate Summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010. Buen Vivir draws from ancestral conceptions of sumak kawsay in Quechua and suma qaman in Aymara, the two most widely spoken indigenous languages in the Andes region of Ecuador, Perú and Bolivia.

What is Buen Vivir?

There is no single definition of Buen Vivir. Collective well-being comes close. It is germinating through a range of perspectives and social actors across South America. Buen Vivir is still a concept and a lived practice under construction. To give a clue to what it is not, it’s the opposite of the Fairfax-Lateral Economics Well-being Index, which puts a dollar figure on national well-being using a range of indicators.

Unlike any index based on logarithmic economic indicators, in Buen Vivir the subject of well-being is not the individual, but the individual within a community in relation to a specific cultural-natural environment.

Buen Vivir is foremost a decolonial stance. According to leading proponent Eduardo Gudynas, executive secretary of the Latin American Centre for Social Ecology, it calls for a new ethics that balances quality of life, democratisation of the state and concern with biocentric ideals.

This is much more than an emergent discourse of engaged intellectuals and Indigenous cultural activists contributing to the sustainability debate. It’s a strong criticism of the discourse of sustainable development itself. Drawing on the wealth of the region’s indigenous cultures, it has emerged as a lived practice against commodification, a way of doing things differently.

Gudynas sees Buen Vivir as a new paradigm of social and ecological commons - one that is community-centric, ecologically balanced and culturally sensitive. It’s a vision and a platform for thinking and practising alternative futures based on a “bio-civilisation”.

For activist-intellectual Catherine Walsh, a professor at Ecuador’s Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, Buen Vivir:
… denotes, organises and constructs a system of knowledge and living based on the communion of humans and nature and on the spatial-temporal-harmonious totality of existence. That is, on the necessary interrelation of beings, knowledges, logics and rationalities of thought, action, existence and living. This notion is part and parcel of the cosmovision, cosmology, or philosophy of the indigenous peoples of Abya Yala but also, and in a somewhat different way, of the descendents of the African diaspora.
The concept has been adopted in many academic circles across Latin America, mostly by intellectuals-activists and primordially by indigenous organisations and cooperatives. Many attempts are being made to translate it into normative principles that can permeate both public and political spheres. This is especially the case in Ecuador and Bolivia where Buen Vivir and the Rights of Nature have been inscribed in the constitutions.

The Preamble of the Ecuadorian Constitution states:
We decided to construct a new form of citizen co-existence, in diversity and harmony with nature, to reach ‘el buen vivir, el sumak kawsay’.
Following its constitutional adoption in 2008, sumak kawsay or “collective good living" was taken up in a National Plan for Good Living 2009-2013.

View from the South is of deeper change

A common feature of the diverse anti-austerity movements in Europe, Occupy and Buen Vivir is the reaction against the political legitimacy of institutions and increased mistrust of the financial sector and the political class as a whole.

But in Latin America, unlike Europe, this is less linked to financial crisis and austerity policies. And while the European movements include right-wing, xenophobic, ultra-nationalist groups, Buen Vivir is far more unified and proactive in developing a program for alternative solidarity economies and practices.

This is an important divergence. Europe’s anti-austerity movements seem to be, at least on the surface, an essentially Eurocentric (or Europeanist at best) project to push for a more humane capitalism. Looking at the Podemos movement in Spain, its proposals are basically a template for organising economic relations in a fairer way.

The Occupy movement is certainly internationalist in intent. Yet, again, the dissent is against social and economic inequality and labour precarity. A primary goal is to reclaim economic and political relations for citizens and civil society.

Buen Vivir was a central plank of Chilean presidential candidate Roxana Miranda’s 2013 election platform. Wikimedia Commons/, CC BY-SA

In contrast, implicit in Buen Vivir is a much deeper reframing of the ways in which global justice movements challenge market globalism. This includes disagreement with free market environmentalism and the “Green Economy” promoted by the United Nations.

Buen Vivir tackles the ecological divide between the global North and South head-on. It sets up a radical discursive contrast between high-energy intensive economies of the industrial North and low-carbon eco-sufficient alternative models in the South.

Differentiating it from anti-austerity movements, Buen Vivir incorporates an environmental dimension founded on biocentrism. It demands an ethically different relationship with nature.

Certainly, within a Buen Vivir framework those other futures we want must be more austere. Buen Vivir incorporates ideas of de-growth and a stern critique of extractivism. This is another buzz word in Latin America to critique current modes of mining and hydrocarbon exploitation, industrial-scale agriculture, forestry and fishing.

Buen Vivir is of interest in any debate in an Australian context about transforming production processes towards lower use of raw materials and energy. We can criticise all we want the Abbott government’s deplorable push to cut investment in wind and solar energy. But we must also bear the burden of (and act on) our own individual unsustainable energy (and food) consumption, which is among the highest in the world.

Buen Vivir may be taken up in Australia as an interesting perspective in other ways too. First, as a way to engage more deeply and respectfully with Aboriginal communal ways of being. Second, as a way to take part in emergent local movements, urban and rural, pushing to build sustainable non-capitalist alternatives.

Towards another future as lived practice

Buen Vivir and related “transition discourses” such as “Ecological Swaraj” in India or “Eco-Ubuntu” in South Africa are calling for a significant paradigmatic or civilisational transformation.

Buen Vivir does incorporate long-standing Western critiques of capitalism coming out of politics, economics, geography and feminist thought. As a lived practice, it is aware of - and connected to - global movements of local solidarities that promote collaborative consumption and economies of sharing and care. Yet, as a social-ecological transformation, it entails more than a move to take back the economy. Buen Vivir is a move to repoliticise sustainability.

As an Andean cultural-political project, it doesn’t seek a return to an ancestral indigenous past. The call is to construct common ancestral futures, where different knowledges come together, not only under the directive of Western rationality.

In Latin America, proponents of Buen Vivir are ready to influence global debates on sustainable development by fuelling ideals that other worlds/futures are indeed possible. They are hopeful and waiting to see when, for once, the North might listen respectfully to peoples of the South.

Juan Francisco Salazar is Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Communication Arts at University of Western Sydney.

Monday 27 July 2015

How Placemaking Drives Resilient Cities

Image result for placemaking
andersonville.org
by , Project for Public Spaces: http://www.pps.org/reference/placemaking-drives-resilient-cities/

Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else, (…) lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over  for problems and needs outside themselves - Jane Jacobs.

A community’s connection to place is at the very heart of resilience. In fact, resilience on its own has limited value if residents feel little attachment to, or investment in, a place. Placemaking is the process of building and nurturing this relationship between people and their environment.

Through a broad focus on creating quality places, Placemaking builds the shared value, community capacity, and cross-sector collaboration that is the bedrock of resilient cities and thriving communities.

Thriving places have a direct impact on our ability to address major societal challenges. As numerous studies have shown, a strong sense of place is an important factor not only in our own health and well being, but also in the physical and economic health of our cities.

Part of this experience of a place comes from actively participating in the creation of its meaning and use - and people are less likely to develop a strong relationship to, and investment in, a place if there is a high risk of the place not being sustained. We need to focus on Placemaking in order to generate resilience, just as resilience is necessary for investing in place.

The conversation on resilience has emphasized the importance of creating smarter infrastructure and enhancing community disaster preparedness. A resilient community also leverages its investments for broader outcomes - this is what Dr. Judith Rodin has dubbed “the resilience dividend.”

Whether the goal is improved transportation infrastructure, better utility networks and civic technology investments, or sea level rise protection (see the extensive proposal for post-Sandy lower Manhattan), putting place, and the creation of “place capital,” at the center of our policy and planning frameworks can more effectively, and more cheaply, address multiple issues at once.

Many movements and causes are starting to converge around place as a way to generate innovative solutions and achieve multiple outcomes at once.
Many movements and causes are starting to converge around place as a way to generate innovative solutions and achieve multiple outcomes at once.

In creating self-sustaining places, Placemaking needs to be a community-based process, not just a strategy or solution that has been imposed and implemented by city leaders or planners. Further, community members must not only feel like they belong there, but that they can play an active part in its creation and continued success.

When approached in this way, Placemaking can be an essential factor in building a community’s social capital as well as a sense of belonging amongst its residents.

A place-led agenda for cities, while still committed to securing better services and infrastructure for its citizens, focuses as well on strengthening a community’s capacity for disaster relief and crisis management. Evidence and experience has shown that it is this scale of governance that is most useful and effective during times of emergency.

Indeed, most of the aid that is generated during disasters comes from existing social networks. At PPS, we are seeing the intermingling of Placemaking and resilience initiatives at various scales and in many contexts.

In Detroit, for example, Placemaking is becoming a vehicle that enables all community members to contribute to and share in the rebirth of their city. From long–time residents to young students and artists, from small business owners to billionaire investors, people of all ages, abilities, and socio-economic backgrounds are coming together to contribute to the cultural, social, and physical life of the place.

The revival of Campus Martius Park, for example, with an investment of $20million, anchored the resilience of Downtown Detroit through the worst of the global financial crisis and the near-collapse of the American auto industry.

Vitally transforming the city’s core, the success of this project had a ripple effect throughout much of the city. In many ways, Detroit, and the state of Michigan more broadly, are pioneering a model for place-led development that can be adapted and applied in cities across the country and throughout the world.


With Downtown Detroit’s success anchored by place-led development, city residents and neighborhood organizations are also using Placemaking to define and create new neighborhood resources, such as area around Peaches and Greens grocery.

In Adelaide, Australia, a city seeking to build its resilience without the impetus of disaster or deficits, Placemaking and place governance have become a central strategy for building resilience and community capacity over time.

The crisis facing this otherwise prosperous city is one of community investment and shared responsibility. The city is in many ways seeking to replicate the place governance of more informal, limited resource, parts of the world. It is devolving governance to the district and community-scale, and the measure of success for each sector is based on its continued production of place capital and community capacity.

acemaking has become a cross-cutting agenda for defining how we work together to shape cities. Click here to download PPS’s 2012 report for UN-Habitat, Placemaking & The Future of Cities.
Placemaking has become a cross-cutting agenda for defining how we work together to shape cities. PPS’s report for UN-Habitat, Placemaking & The Future of Cities.

In addition, through our work with UN-Habitat and the Future of Places partnership we forged, to advance public space, place, and Placemaking agendas in global policy initiatives, it has become clear that issues of sustainability, resilience, and place are especially urgent in the fast developing and rapidly urbanizing Global South.

In these highly social environments, adopting a place-led development agenda can be an effective way to generate the kind of investments and outcomes that are necessary for building healthy, equitable and resilient communities.

As Jane Jacobs once observed: “Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else, (…) lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.”

Indeed, what is often missed in top-down planning and policy - or upstaged by the loud voices and competing interests that generally dominate the discussion - is a community’s own capacity to evolve and self-govern.

It is only by focusing on our capacity to sustain and create places that we will find real and integrative solutions to the most pressing concerns of the 21st century.

Not a single one of the major challenges facing today’s cities - whether it’s poverty, environmental degradation, social segregation, transportation, or inequality - exists in isolation of the others. A focus on Placemaking offers a practical, proactive, and integrated approach for addressing global change and resilience at every scale.



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