Desirable City

The City of CultureJoão Romão

Roadmaps for a Desirable City

Advanced Brainstorm Carrefour (ABC)THE SCIENCE OF THE CITY

Naples, March 2016

Roadmaps for a Desirable City The City of Culture João Romão

Advanced Brainstorm Carrefour (ABC) THE SCIENCE OF THE CITY Naples, March 2016

1. What is culture?

2. Cities and cognitive capitalism

3. Identities, monopoly rents and gentrification

4. Cultural economy, inequalities and conflict

5. Culture and the City of Commons

6. Questions for the Science of the City

Contents:



1. What is culture?Oxford Dictionaryway of lifethe customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or groupart/music/literatureart, music, literature, etc., thought of as a groupbeliefs/attitudesthe beliefs and attitudes about something that people in a particular group or organization share

UNESCO Set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature, but lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs

Culture Cycle model: practices, activities and necessary resources required to transform ideas into cultural goods and services and to reach consumers, participants or users. 1. Creation2. Production3. Dissemination4. Exhibition / Reception / Transmission5. Consumption/Participation

This collective processes of transformation of ideas into cultural goods and services (symbolic value creation) can be observed looking into three layers [Cohendet, Grandadam, and Simon]: Underground (artists; creators)Middleground (places, events) Upperground (firms / public institutions)



1. What is culture?

Underground

Creative individuals sharing a common cognitive framework and a common interest for their art and culture, which defines their identity and lifestyle, resulting in a mutual dependence.

Informal networks and communities of creative individuals and it is a reservoir of highly skilled individuals.

Underground culture is more oriented to exploration than to the corporate logic of commercial exploitation.

New practices and ideas remain latent in the underground until they are known through their transmission and communication via the middleground.

Upperground

Private firms and public bodies and institutions (municipality, record label, art gallery, etc) that marketize or facilitate artefacts and creative products that are constructed/produced in the underground.

They finance and unite the different expressions together, integrating dispersed types of knowledge and testing new forms of creativity on the market.

The underground and the upperground function on different modes and only rarely connect to each other.



1. What is culture?

Middleground

Underground and upperground meet in the middleground: spaces of cultural consumption facilitating events, gatherings, networking and the initiation of new projects. Normally these spaces are offered by institutions of the upperground.

Public (plazas, museums, roads, pavements. etc) Pseudo-public (bars, clubs, warehouses, cafes, art galleries etc).

Supply and demand for cultural and creative goods and services meets in the middleground.

The middleground plays a major role in fostering the dynamics of creativity, enabling:- a top-down process, where firms from the upperground dig into the underground; - a bottom-up process, where the individual talents of the underground blossom into the upperground.

The middleground allows spontaneity to be progressively structured and shaped in order to be interpreted and understood by market forces.

That market interaction in the middleground produces creative externalities.

The value of creative activity in cities mostly relies on the middleground.

This can be seem as a process of commodification where underground and upper ground participate in very unequal ways.



Bottom-up approach in the underground:Organic link of artists and creative entrepreneurs through common networks sharing the same cultural values form a very homogenous identity, implying that the development of the local middleground rests on the specific cultural values

Top-down strategies of real estate companies (within the upperground):Market-driven orientation, not being a part of the same local networks and not sharing their identity.

The middleground acts as the spatial terrain for:- cultural co-production and consumption;- repository of symbolic capital;- “arena” for struggles and antagonisms between different perspectives of symbolic capital production

Unequal relations between the actors of the underground and the upper ground regarding the collective symbolic capital:- motivations, quality and content of their contribution for its creation;- exploitation of monopoly rents.

1. What is culture?



2. Cities and the cognitive capitalism

Cognitive capitalism as a phase of development of capitalism [Allen Scott]

Capitalist economic order can be described in terms of: - leading sectors (technology intensive manufacturing, services, cultural products)- technological foundations (digital)- characteristic forms of labor relations (flexibilization / destabilization)- competitive practices (monopolistic competition)

Intensification of cerebral and affective labor in the modern economy

Increasing injection of aesthetic, semiotic, and libidinal values into the goods and services.

Expansion of culturally-oriented segments of the economy with growth of discretionary income.

“Culture is produced increasingly in commodity form, while commodity production itself becomes ever more deeply infused with aesthetic and semiotic meaning.”

This is not a urban question but it has important implications on urban dynamics.



2. Cities and the cognitive capitalism

Creative externalities and knowledge generated through the proximity of individuals, firms and institutions in the spatial terrain of a city or a locality.

Spatial clustering of cultural industries, in search of externalities and efficiency benefits related to co-location.

Migration of creators from peripheral areas to core cultural centers.

Competition for the attraction of investment flows and skilled labor (new forms of competitive advantages), where culture and creativity reinforce unique and authentic elements/values in processes of urban development.

Commodification of culture and creativity as a new way to promote urban renewal and/or city branding strategies.

“Place in product”: branding of cultural goods and services via association with places.

City as a stage for the major social processes of this era, emerging as strategic sites for major economic processes and new types of political actors. [Saskia Sassen]



3. Identities, monopoly rents and gentrificationGentrification: process of social and economic upgrading in downtown areas and surrounding inner city areas

Transformations of urban space by:- cognitive-cultural economic development;- social transformation;- functional changes;- re-imaging through new symbologies. [Scott]

Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio, Athens [Avdikos]

Creative newcomers attracted by the link between the local underground and the creative atmosphere of the middleground, establishing creative enterprises in the upperground (mostly self-employed or very small firms).

Newcomers share the communitarian and spontaneous spirit of the local underground.

Relations between the underground communities and firms of the upperground of the creative economy feed the middleground of KM with creative flows (events and projects).

Middleground interactions generate creative externalities making the area trendy and famous.

Public interventions (Metro station, infrastructures, renovation of public spaces and buildings, land use regulations)

2005:Attraction of private investments with low property prices and rich symbolic capital

2007 - 2009 (economic crisis): Rents at the pre-crisis levels or increased by 10-20% (average fall of 30-50% in other areas of the city center)




Local repository of creative externalities within the middleground

Creation of local symbolic capital (authenticity and uniqueness)

Production of monopoly rents

Appropriation of symbolic capital by the underground and upperground through the middleground.

Unequal distribution of benefits and costs:- in the extraction of symbolic value- in the processes of the future creation of the collective symbolic capital

Gentrification processes may result in the fall off the artists and creative entrepreneurs from the area, diminishing their engagement in the middleground and their contribution to the local symbolic capital.

Homogenization of culture: Authenticity and uniqueness destroyed by market forces (upperground) and branding strategies that attempt to exploit the symbolic capital of an area, in the absence of the local underground.



3. Identities, monopoly rents and gentrificationNDSM, Amsterdam



3. Identities, monopoly rents and gentrificationSpujstraat, Amsterdam




Amsterdam: a long tradition disputing public space

Nieuwmarkt (1971): Popular riots against new urban plans for city centre(cancelled)

Schijnheilig (2012): Squatted cultural centre(evicted)




Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio, Athens [Avdikos]

Usually, artists of the underground have very precarious working conditions (project-based work).They do not extract the same level of value as firms of the upperground.

Reputation of artists by co-producing the local symbolic capital; Capitalization by playing music in bars and cafes or exhibiting cultural artefacts.

More significant capital gains are obtained from the local symbolic capital by firms, such as:- directly connected with cultural production (bars, galleries, etc);- indirectly connected to cultural production (real estate firms).

Firms can reap the reputation of the area and attach it to the brand name of the company.

More people visiting and willing to reside in the area (renovated flats and lofts)

Inflation in local cafes, restaurants, retail and real estate market.

First movers (underground) cannot afford to reside in the area and a large proportion moved out.




Deterioration of the capacity of the urban system for releasing and mobilizing the creative potential [Allen Scott]

Gated neighborhoods as zones of exclusion (work, residence and leisure of the cognitive-cultural elite),as a violation of democratic use of urban space and common citizenship.

Large numbers of low-wage, low-skill jobs are a major element of the cognitive-cultural economy,with precarious or informal labour relations, often performed by migrant workers.

High levels of unemployment; weakness of traditional structures of labour organization and representation.

Negative externalities created by high leves of inequality.

City as a strategic terrain for the conflicts and contradictions of contemporary cognitive capitalism,with the emergence of new political actors.

The contested city: [Saskia Sassen]Frequent episodes os violence and ‘delinquency” as a form of political protest.



4. Cultural economy, inequalities and conflictPublic space (factory) as a terrain for emergent, unstructured new forms of political participation (trade unions).

Squares in different countries become notorious at international level as spaces for political protests:Tahrir (Cairo; Egypt), Taksim (Istanbul; Turkey); Tiannamen (Beijing; China)

Take the street(slogan in Spain)

Occupy [different cities](central public spaces in cities like New York, London or Amsterdam)



5. Culture and City of CommonsBesides individual firms and households (regulated by markets) and coordination and management institutions, the city includes a Common, which is essencial for the creation of competitive advantages:

“public assets, liabilities, and cultural resources, freely available to all, that remain external to the market and outside the scope of individual private ownership,of great significance for the conduct of work and life in the city”: [Scott]- externalities;- resources;- cultural or intellectual assets that accrue to the city and that are.

Mainstream economics refers to the Commons “market failures”




Common pool of resources (CPR): [Elinor Ostrom]

Natural and human constructed resources (air, oceans, knowledge, digital world) for which it is difficult to limit access;

Difficult (not impossible) to define recognized users and exclude other users altogether.

Open-access resources (common-pool resources that anyone can enter and/or harvest)are likely to be overused and potentially destroyed.

Subtractability (rivalry among potential users) and Nonexcludability.

Indivisible local or global resources whose boundaries are difficult to delineate

Under diverse and evolving property regimes (private, state, communal or open access).

Problems:

Free ride: related to degradation or exclusion due to overuse by some users;

Investment incentive: related to the lack of incentives for preservation;

Appropriation: which group of users has rights over a given resource?(rents generated through the uniqueness of a space arising from cultural creation can benefit real estate companies)




Governance systems based on adaptive resource management processes: [Ostrom]

Characteristics:- wide participation;- community knowledge;- continual monitoring;- flexible policy design;- frequent review of management practices

Principles:- specificity (actions adapted to different situations, circumstances and contingencies);- precautionary (diversification of options, conservation of resources and avoidance of waste);- subsidiarity (empowerment of individuals and communities for decision making at local level).



6. Questions for the Science of the City

How to measure externalities from creative activities

How to implement fair processes for sharing benefits

Economic analysis of common pool of resources

Implications on city planning (these are not strictly urban questions)

Integration of urban studies with the analysis of labor conditions and institutional representation

Policy implications:

How to deal with concentration of economic power [Sassen, Haines] and neo-liberal hegemony

Desirable City

Healthcare

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