![[ Murdoch University logo and link to homepage ]](/images/header/cs/logo/mu_logo_lhs_45.gif){kind=logo}
| SEARCH| MURDOCH| INDEX| PEOPLE |
|
|
Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy |
|
|
ETHICS AND URBAN SUSTAINABILITYCIVIL SOCIETY AND HOPEBY PETER NEWMAN
|
||||||||||
Box 1
|
This case study looks at the last three of these ethical statements - these are all related to civil society and the need for hope.
The twentieth century and the modern era has not been without its city prophets. The kind of ethical choices outlined in the previous case studies seem to have been a powerful inspiration to writers and commentators in the organic city tradition.
This case study poses the question whether there should not be a renewed sense of the ethical basis for our city decisions through civil society actions. This is particularly necessary at those points in time where an old paradigm is no longer working, where we cannot fall back on our traditional professional praxis, we have to feel our way through to the next paradigm. In such a context, community-based or civil society approaches are essential as we cannot rely on the expert in the way we could before.
City prophets are able to highlight the areas where we are failing and suggest new visions for change. They can tell us what are the characteristics which bring life, hope and sustainability to a city and what brings death, despair and unsustainability. But to what extent can the urban issues of our day be linked to the processes of city life and city death as seen by urban prophets through history? Are there current urban ethical debates which can help us to focus on city life and city death?
Modern civilisation and modern cities are seen by most ethical commentators to be about new ways of individualistic consumption. Postmodernism begins to question many of the certainties of this era, but it does not question this fundamental value of individualistic consumption. And yet this value by itself can become most clearly akin to the city of death, the Babylon value of arrogance and self-orientation leading to frivolous consumption. Martin Pawley in his book "The Private Future" describes this value as privatism or isolationism and he says that it is central to understanding our society and our cities:
"Western society is on the brink of collapse not into crime, violence, madness or redeeming revolution, as many would believe - but into withdrawal. Withdrawal from the whole system of values and obligations that has historically been the basis of public, community and family life. Western societies are collapsing not from an assault on their most cherished values, but from a voluntary, almost enthusiastic abandonment of them by people who are learning to live private lives of an unprecedented completeness with the aid of the momentum of a technology which is evolving more and more into a pattern of socially atomising appliances". (Pawley, 1975, p75)
Photo 1.
The automobile is the key appliance or technology for creating a private future but it requires the city to be built around privatism for it to be seen in its fullest form. Thus in many cities it becomes difficult to do other than lead highly isolated or private lives moving from a private, isolated, suburban home complete with electronic entertainment (and now even electronic shopping and electronic work), to a private metal box for transport to whatever other element of urban life one chooses. There need be no obligation of community and little of family, with certainly no obligation for the city. Thus the public realm of the city (the streets, parks, squares, public transport, public buildings...), its urban commons, can become neglected and begin to fall apart. Fear of public spaces thus begins to dominate a city, particularly if inequity feeds crime on the streets.
As well as public safety, the urban commons of air and water also begin to deteriorate as people go further and further out in the private quest to escape the city. This loss of the public realm then spreads like a cancer to invade the private realm - first in the house, and then even the car, as evidenced by 'car jacking' and 'freeway murders'. Privatism allied with high levels of economic inequity can leave no secure place anymore. The collapse of the public realm is a sure sign of city death.[1]
The response to such loss of the public realm can be in several ways:
First, through ex-urban living which tries to establish an isolation that can never be reached by the city - some people going as far as 200 km from the city and commuting 3 to 4 hours to ensure their private lives are not interfered with.
Photo 2. Hobby Farm in Collie, 100km from Perth, WA.
Second, people go into 'gated communities', i.e. highly guarded, fenced suburbs with everything that can be desired (golf courses, health clubs) and extremely high price tags (the most significant kind of boundary definition). There are, 4 million Americans living in closed-off gated communities in the US, many with all the best solar and ecological designs (Egan, 1995).
Photo 3. Gated community in California.
Both responses lead to great sprawling metropolises with enormous automobile dependence and an obsession with private security (see Box 2).
Box 2
In a New York Times special report
entitled "The Serene Fortress", Timothy Egan discussed the trend in US
cities to gated communities, the "fastest-growing residential communities
in the nation". |
Alternatively, a city can respond in hope to recreate community, to reclaim the urban ecological commons, to break the back of privatism and its expression in technology and urban form. The choice would appear to be just as relevant today as it has been over 3000 years of urban choice.
As well as signs of city death there are also signs of city life in our era. Indeed it is possible to point to a prophetic, city life tradition which is growing again and has a new sense of vision. It is of course very timely because cities continue to grow and sprawl devouring rural and bush land, filling the air with automobile emissions and creating suburbs where we have considerable ambivalence. It is also timely as the whole mechanical vision of how we should function is being questioned and torn down by postmodern popular culture. Despite this we should never underestimate the power of the mechanistic spirit to dominate and control our society, particularly when postmodernism only laughs at it but has no obvious other set of solutions.
Photo 4. 'City Life' movements give new hope.
The prophetic city life solutions are however being rediscovered. The urban sustainability movement, whether it is being expressed through the urban ecology movement or the New Urbanism movement, has a new lease of life. It is networked across the world and is struggling to change priorities on transportation, on how we use land and on the ecological base of all life, including cities. But the fundamental ethical inspiration is the need to rebuild community.
The movement which focuses on the importance of the community is labeled communitarianism. The major philosophical foundation is set out by MacIntyre (1981), Bellah (1986, 1991), Sennett (1971), Lasch (1978) and Jordan (1989). These approaches suggest that both the individual and the state find meaningful roles only when an adequate role is given to the community.[2]
There is growing support for such communitarian approaches that suggest ethical frameworks are most meaningful when developed at the community scale, rather than from individual preference alone or from national systems. The community-based approach to solving problems is developing a new coherence in today's political climate e.g. the UK Labour Party has been reorganized and based on this philosophy. The collapse of communism has shown that heavy-handed authoritarian states cannot be expected to deliver basic human needs, rights and a good quality of life. At the same time, there is awareness that capitalism based on a market left to itself cannot deliver all this either, especially in the social and environmental area. Thus there is a quest to find an appropriate form of social democratic system that can fulfil economic, social and environmental goals particularly in our cities.
Photo 5.
Communitarianism is based on social capital and feeds the life of cities.
Putman found the wealth of
a city depended on the number of choral societies and social clubs.
Communitarianism appears to be a 'city life' form of ethics. Cunningham calls it the 'altruistic surplus' of a city. He says:
'The role of altruism in sustaining the city is generally deprecated or ignored. Yet it is primarily the results of altruism that keep the city functioning as a healthy, quasi organic entity'. Cunningham (1995)[3]
Communitarianism appears to be the city life process that most opposes individualistic consumption and arrogance towards the public realm. It is consistent with the ethical traditions outlined in this chapter and provides the kind of moral dimension to approaching the Auto City that is most akin to the urban prophets over millennia. Such prophets express what is wrong in images of everyday life. For example Friedman says:
"I come from a city without streets. The dominant feature of Los Angeles is its freeways. And freeways are designed for rapid movement. We race in our private steel and glass capsules at 60 miles an hour. If someone cuts in ahead of me, I curse and yell but the other driver, his windows rolled up, cannot hear me. No place is very far away in Los Angeles. We go from somewhere to somewhere at a frantic speed, dipping under the city, now riding high above its roofs. The building next to the freeway area turned away from it, they are shielded by noise barriers eighteen foot high. From the freeways the city is invisible. Streets are meant to be places of encounter but the streets of Los Angeles are empty. If you are caught walking the street, you feel guilty: chances are a squad (police) car will pull up next to you, demanding to know what you are doing there at that hour." Friedman, (1992).
And alternative images have been presented (Patsaoures, 1993; Walter, Arkin and Crenshaw, 1992) which have tried to show that there are other paths.
Box 3
|
Such ethical visions are behind the decisions like the new transit investment in LA. The 90's is now seeing billions of dollars going into transit in the city which turned its back on transit 60 years ago and led the world into the Auto City age. But the question remains whether it is possible to turn around a city so firmly dependent on the automobile. The recent evidence of a 10 year decline in middle class professionals from Los Angeles (due to the smog and crime) may suggest that they will rue their missed opportunities in the 80's when the economy was growing (Gobor, 1993). Cities need to grasp the critical opportunities for change that present themselves or they can spiral into a city death decline phase that is very difficult to reverse.
Can we make the link that this combination of heavy car use and dispersal in the Auto city is the modern equivalent of a major city death process? Environmentally there is little doubt that high auto dependence is the major cause of high energy consumption, high air pollution and high loss of natural and rural landscape. Economically, there are now many who are pointing to the very high costs of urban sprawl. Socially, it is a more difficult task to link this process of automobile-based isolationism and community.
Most people can see that the kind of city Friedman discusses (above) is not very conducive to community. It is harder to measure, though as discussed we have found that crime rates do follow the pattern i.e. the highest car using, lowest density cities have the highest crime rates. And we have found that there is little happening on the urban ecology front in the Auto City (which requires community for it to work).
One other level of our personal response to the global cities we visited for data collection, was to find that the vitality and attractiveness of urban life in the city center seemed to be negatively related to their automobile dependence, in particular the amount of parking provided (Newman and Kenworthy, 1989). This is reflected in the responses we experienced in talking to city officials, public servants and community groups in these cities. In Auto Cities, their planners, politicians and community groups were dispirited and despairing often saying there was little that could be done. By contrast, in cities where transit was good, with high levels of cycling and walking, where compact community-oriented structures were continuing to be the norm in development, then people exuded hope.
The question then becomes: What can be done to reverse this process? How can city life forces begin to change the Auto City towards sustainability?
Quite simply, the task of the community is to be a community. This involves dramatising the problems which prevent community so that the ethical issues involved in being a vital, alive and sustainable city can be appreciated by government, the market place and the many disparate parts of civil society. This means communities must be constantly finding antidotes to the isolationism or privatism which is so pervasive and so powerful in our cities.
Three antidotes to isolationism or privatism are summarised from the many discussions in other parts of this book which suggest what needs to occur in the Auto City. They are set out below.
Developing a "sense of place" in the public realm through a sense of history, a sense of social justice and a sense of nature.
This will be illustrated in the case study on Fremantle provided below. Most people could find a part of their city where the above values could transform the public space with that special sense of place that draws a community together in just enjoying the area. This was the guiding ethic behind the work of Jan Gehl and others in Copenhagen described in the European city case study. They worked for years to transform their central city from the domination by cars which had infected it, to a place where people are drawn by the sheer attractiveness of the public spaces and the public life which occurs there. Similar stories we discovered in the Copenhagen suburbs in places such as Albertslund where urban ecology projects have drawn people out of their homes, away from a lifestyle dominated by TV 'soaps' and fantasy, into the reality of community, their local ecology and their part of the city.
The question remains whether such civil society activity can begin to transform car-based suburbs, to bring the community together around their mutual problems of isolationism, of car dependence and all the implications of these interlocking forces. Can urban ecology be a focus for generating a new sense of local community? Can it provide a new sense of place which can lead to the development of their nodal center? Can the community simultaneously increase the urban activity in its sub-center so the center can provide local services and a quality transit service to the city, while creating ecological services in other less urban parts of the suburb? These are the challenges for sustainability in the suburbs.
Overcoming automobile dependence through (a) revealing the true character of automobile dependence, (b) fighting public priorities in the provision of transportation infrastructure, and (c) being pro-urban.
Automobiles are the most isolating devices psychologically, and the most impacting technology on communities and the environment.
Yet automobiles offer the most tangible form of freedom, power and status. To overcome this a community needs to dramatise its awareness of how freeways damage them. This starts in the big issues of motorways and transit debates, but it also comes down to a great many small issues at the local level.
Photo 8. Car environments are isolating for human interaction.
One of the reasons for the success of New Urbanism developments is that they stress how to put cars in garages around the back, not allowing them to dominate a streetscape, they deliberately make narrow streets and follow natural contours, even putting in s-bends so that cars are not favoured and pedestrians are, and they are unashamed of density and mix which help to provide more diversity and shorter distances. Communities should be demanding these qualities from their local governments and the market place.
Photo 9. Subiaco a model of neo traditional design for New Urbanism.
Communities should be stopping any further development of gated communities and other destructive symbols of automobile dependence. The Los Angelisation of the earth cannot be allowed to proceed and the communitarian movement is the key way it will be stopped. The sustainable city movements described in this book are alive and well but they are always needing help, especially in the realm of creativity. These movements have a strong sense of their moral calling and generally are well and truly able to articulate a rational and coherent set of arguments to back them up. But they frequently lack an ability to appeal below the rational surface and to tap into the deeper emotional issues. Thus in the section below it is stressed how civil society can reach to the symbolic heart of car dependence and help to break this 20th century disease.
Practicing hope rather than despair
Out of the discussions on spirituality above, one of the key characteristics of a city with life is the quality of hope. Hope is not blind optimism, it recognises the depth of the problem, it refuses to accept defeat, it is not a feeling, it is a choice (Moltman, 1967). Hope in the organic tradition outlined above is when people find their gem and start to work on it. Hope is also overcoming fear and replacing it with a sense of expectancy that you can really make a difference with your small gem. It is based on the quality of the relationships developing in the community as it seems to overcome its problems.
Perhaps the best flavour of what we mean by hope is given by Jim Wallis from the radical Christian community Sojourners which is based in Washington DC and works amongst the urban poor:
"Hope is not just a feeling or a mood, but the very dynamic of history. It is the energy of transformation and is the door from one reality to another. What seems impossible looking towards it (e.g. abolition of slavery in the US) was inevitable with hindsight.
Between the impossible and the inevitable, between the impossible and possible is a door, and that door is hope. The possibility of the transformation of history lies at that door. On one side of the door of hope there is a nonsense. On the other side of the door is the best news ever heard. Hope not believed is always nonsense. Hope that is believed is transformation.
Victories and transformations always seem impossible to begin with. They only become possible by stepping through the door of hope. To walk through the door of hope you have first to see it and believe that there is something on the other side. It is never easy. It is always hard! This is particularly so for the first few to walk through. Others then find it easier to follow. And that's how historical changes take place.
Hope is believing in spite of the others, and watching the others change." Wallis (1994)
We are aware of many churches that take seriously the ethical challenges from their organic traditions as described above. But there are also many that do not, who are so bound up in the culture of individualism that they can read no other message in the Bible than that of individual salvation. There are also many groups that are Christian in their focus and work but do not belong to any church as such. These groups, like the Sojourners (quoted above), are generally working on broader social issues including issues of the city and sustainability. Their work is frontline to the civil society's ability to create more just and sustainable communities.
One such group in the US is called Hope in the Cities and it works on the reconciliation of races as the primary issue behind urban crime and poverty. Although not explicit in their message, this is one of the keys to sustainability in US cities because without this reconciliation process there will continue to be inner city decline, urban sprawl and car dependence (as outlined in other case studies).
"Hope in the Cities" works on a small, quiet basis to bring people together so that racism can be exposed and healed (Henderson, 1996). It helped to organise a process of reconciliation in Richmond, Virginia where the business of slavery had once been concentrated around the Manchester Docks. The process involved a Unity Walk where city and community leaders of all races walked from one historic memento of slavery to another and had them explained. It also included the site of an AmerIndian village. For most of the whites present it was a challenging experience but it created the opportunity for reconciliation through a range of artistic performances, speeches and symbolic acts.
The process has continued through many political changes and of course has a long way to go. But one issue which reflected the new mood of reconciliation was the question of how the city of Richmond should honour Arthur Ashe the first black US tennis player to win the US Open and Wimbledon. Although a native of Richmond, Ashe had been banned from the city's tennis courts because when he grew up there they were still segregated. The suggestion had been made that a statue should be placed on Monument Avenue where all the south's famous civil war generals were honoured. To the whites this was a place of honour (for white heroes) and to blacks a place symbolising enslavement. But if a figure who was mutually admired like Ashe could be memorialised there, it would be a symbol of reconciliation.
The council debated the issue in public for 6 hours and then unanimously agreed to place the statue on the Avenue. Hope in the Cities suggested at the hearings, that for Arthur Ashe the process they were going through was more important than the outcome. The mayor announced, "This is a city defining itself through its most public of symbols."
Urban ecologists and environmental activists in Richmond need to build on these symbols of hope as they attempt to make their city more sustainable.
Such stories of hope (as in the case study on Richmond) are essential for civil society to achieve if they are to make changes to cities. That they can do this over race issues suggests that US cities can reurbanise and reorient their priorities to more sustainable patterns of urban life.
Our sense is that this process is now well under way in US cities. The evidence from Boston and other cities shows that there is a close link between the rapid decline of inner city crime and the revival of the inner city; and that this links clearly to their decline in growth of car use and sprawl. No teenage murders were recorded in Boston in 1995 whilst in 1990 there was 152. The turn around was a program called Operation Night Light which was a voluntary program of probation and police officers who are trained to do social work by following up every 'at risk' teenager personally in their homes and offering advice on how to keep away from crime, join work training and sport clubs. Churches provide 'big brother' partners to be there whenever they are needed. Thus all the available arms of civil society are being used to provide some hope for children instead of only punishment.
Photos 10 and 11. Overcoming crime in inner city Boston has led to revitalisation.
In many other US inner cities the teenage slaughter continues, though the rate is also declining in most cities as these kind of programs catch on. In Philadelphia there has been a decline in the local crime rate and a parallel growth in the central city as a place to live (Center City District, 1997)
However, it is likely to need a lot more creativity from the churches and from other parts of the civil society to continue this process before more sustainable city trends will be observable.
In seeking to draw out a particular role for artists in promoting a more sustainable city we can only stress those things that apply to everyone in the city, but perhaps can be given a special edge by the artist. This edge comes from artists' particular sensitivity to the cultural underpinnings in a city, to its soul. It is also a role of the artist to try and dramatise the darker elements of the city which are sapping it of life, which are not sustainable, and to try and help provide a vision of where it can go. In other words an artist can be, and probably should be, a prophet for a city. Artists can help us to see the characteristics of city life and city death as set out in the alternative city futures of the western spiritual tradition.
The main points from the above discussion on ethics and city sustainability are summarised in terms of artists' special role in Box 3.
Box 3
|
Thus, the artist can help provide symbols and acts of beauty and truth that can flow through a city's public realm breathing new soul and spirit into it or this spirituality can be diverted into private consumption alone and be lost to the city.
Two case studies are presented below, one from Europe and one from Australia, to illustrate the special role of artists in changing cities towards sustainability and a final case study on Liverpool examines how some important symbols of a city can be used to reverse the despair of decline and crease a sense of hope for the future.
Photo 17. Christiana - the pioneer of urban ecology.
The Christiania community in Copenhagen has been experimenting with urban ecology projects at their home on former defense land in the inner city for over 25 years. They have had constant battles with authorities over their right to be there and with their lifestyle. At each point where it seemed they would lose their battle and be removed they reversed the process with creative community arts.
The community has developed music, art exhibitions, and street festivals that by the sheer impact of their creativity has captivated the community and helped to spread their message.
One particularly difficult time was in 1982 when a smear campaign was started in Sweden by a group worried that the Christiania message would spread throughout Scandinavia. The community was accused of being the 'drug center of the North and the root of all evil' (Christiania Guide, 1996). Their response was to 'invade Sweden'.
Groups set out to 'conquer' Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo by cabaret, exhibitions and huge processions through the cities. Their message was that the new world restraining us should be about ecological limits not personal limits and that their community was pioneering what this would mean. They won the battle for Sweden and have been fighting other battles with the same community arts tools ever since.
The importance of Christiania in Europe cannot be easily gauged. However, Ole Michael Jensen says:
"It was in Christiania that we first find buildings made of recycled materials, efforts to sort refuse, and the first primitive windmills and solar heating units at work in the midst of a metropolis. It was here too that we simultaneously find how ecological building is linked, for better or worse, with building aesthetics and creative self expression" Jensen (1994, p357).
Those who have followed in developing urban ecology in Denmark and in other parts of Europe have been given the moral space to experiment and suggest some alternatives, by the Christiania people. Rational arguments by academics and others in the environmental movement have helped to create the moral climate that sustainability was needed, but Christiania dramatised it and then began to demonstrate it. Others could then have the courage to be a little different and move towards the new paradigm.
Everybody needs to be able to tell stories of hope from their home town, so we will tell a little one, stressing the importance of how artists have contributed to a more sustainable city.
Fremantle is a port city (about 25,000 people) associated with the bigger metropolis of Perth (a city of 1.3 million). Like many old ports it was associated with an industrial base but by the 1960's the port and the industrial base were in decline as sources of employment. Fremantle began losing its way economically as businesses started leaving and its population entered a sharp decline phase. Some predicted Fremantle would be finished and that like all other modern cities, Perth should concentrate on its new suburbs and let the old city of Fremantle quietly deteriorate.
Photos 18 and 19. Old buildings dying in the 1970s and restored in the 1980s.
Fremantle had however three qualities which would not let this happen:
Photos 20, 21 and 22. Three symbols of Fremantle displayed in its central St John's Square.
1.Memorial to a working class Martyr.
2. Memorial to the Italian sculptor who in the 19th century created all of the famous sculptures of politicians and generals - the forgotten symbol of multiculturalism and **.
3. The memorial to the original town plan created in 1833 and looking like a 'New Urbanism' model of the late 20th century.
All these elements were important in the processes that began in the late 70's to reclaim a future for the city.
The city council in this period was becoming desperate for solutions to stop the economic hemorrhaging. It had begun to accept some of the modernist solutions being adopted in other parts of the world and which were well underway in the center of Perth 20 kms away upstream on the Swan River. These solutions were generally to knock down any old buildings and try to attract modern high rise, and to provide easy access by the car through freeways and easy parking.
The Fremantle community did not like this approach and thus a community association was formed (The Fremantle Society) which set out an alternative vision for the future of the city. It suggested that the city should try to build on its organic qualities: its historic building stock, its walking qualities, its mix of housing and businesses, its attractive (though run down) public spaces, and its vibrant though rather demoralised community. It suggested that somehow out of this attempt to heal the city based on its organic qualities that the economic base would rebuild.
The Fremantle Society were able to have some of its people elected to the City Council and began to change the policies and the culture of the local political scene.
As part of this suite of policies to regenerate the city, a policy was adopted of trying to facilitate artists in the city - both for the work they would bring and the qualities they would hopefully bring to the city's perspectives and plans for its future. A community-based planning process began to find an alternative future for the city other than that being sought in the rest of Perth which had gone for glass towers and car-based suburbia. In the debates and decisions that followed, the city opted to retain its heritage qualities and develop a city with much greater commitment to pedestrian qualities. There was a lot of talk about making the human qualities of the city central to its ethos and economy. Multiculturalism was allowed to flourish with rather anti Anglo-Saxon things like al fresco dining being encouraged (see chapter 6) and through Street Festivals and the encouragement of other cultural activities.
Photo 25. Street festival in Fremantle.
The city began to look up as this process led to people wanting to live or work in Fremantle or at least to go there on weekends. Infill housing in the inner city began to be built and a range of new businesses were attracted to the location for its organic urbanism.
Photos 26, 27 and 28. Social housing and urban infill in Fremantle.
In 1986/87 the America's Cup was held in Fremantle and huge money was poured into the city in the few years leading up to this major international event. The locals feared that the new money would swamp the city; fear changed from the problems of decline to the dangers of rapid growth. However, the event did not ruin the city as the community values were strongly in place and had been firmly embedded in the city's Town Plan (predominantly a one page set of goals for each area) and its planning process. Instead of modernist high rise hotels and big roads the city was restored and pedestrian/cycle facilities were built, as well as cultural and artistic facilities and a heavy emphasis on social housing (Newman, 1988).
Photos 29 - 34. Americas Cup: held in Fremantle in 1986-87.
But not everything was done during the Cup and as the city returned to less frantic planning it had to rely more on local energy. One area in particular was taken on for rehabilitation at this time - a rundown piece of foreshore that was the original historic landing site of the first British settlers, but which had significantly deteriorated as a public space.
Photo 35.
Aerial photograph of Fremantle's foreshore before it was restored.
The photograph shows the large stone wall that
existed across the original beach.
Photo 36. Bitumen and stored junk were features of the 'special' area before the Fremantle foreshore was restored.
A group of artists (led in particular by Joan Campbell a well known potter) were enlisted by the Town Planner (Jeremy Dawkins) to envision a new role for this area and to help make it a reality. This project is a good example of artists creating a sense of place that embodies a sense of history, a sense of social justice and a sense of nature. An article about the project is called "Fremantle's Heartland: Understanding and Designing a Special Place" which, as the title suggests, encapsulates these values (Dawkins, 1990).
The project is an excellent example of how public art can be much more than just a set of artifacts crafted by 'experts' and dropped on the public. It is a case study of urban rejuvenation where public art played a critical role.
Photo 37. Joan Campbell and a group of other artists saw a different vision for the Fremantle foreshore.
After developing a vision for the site, the first steps were political in obtaining the right to take over the land for public purposes from the Fremantle Port Authority. The ability of artists to dramatise the importance of the project was a major plus in this process. Apart from the politics of doing it all, there were many cynical comments from the 'experts' e.g. "people in Perth do not promenade", "you'll never get people out of their cars, so don't try and restrict them"......But the local artists believed in the project and began to work on their vision.
Photo 38.The bull dozer drivers were the first 'artists' needed to help recreate the natural features of the area.
Photo 39.The limestone cliffs were then steam cleaned.
Photo 40. Botanists checked all the native plants and then used them to rebuild the foreshore.
Photo 41. The old cliff and restored vegetation.
Photo 42. Artists helping to make a new staircase in original stone.
The first artists to be brought in were the bulldozer drivers who took away the debris of years of neglect and reshaped the foreshore to resemble the original beach. Even the limestone cliffs were steam cleaned to bring back their natural colour. They were followed by a series of artists who were employed to help shape the area e.g. by building a limestone stair case that linked the cliff area to the beach, by landscaping with original vegetation, by delineating the original shoreline with a brick path and ceramic bollards and by rebuilding a part of the original wooden jetty.
Photo 43. Overview of the new beach and restored dunes.
On this jetty-sculpture were placed ceramic inserts created by local high school students under Joan Campbell's instruction and the story of the area was inscribed on inlaid tiles. This story traces the use of the area from aboriginal times to the early days of white settlement and through to the present. This jetty-sculpture is one of the most impressive pieces of public art in Western Australia and like all good art was controversial, e.g. a major hamburger corporation, which is located adjacent to the foreshore, objected to its view being blocked, but now uses it in its advertising as it is so popular with the children.
Photo 44. Beach sculpture that reflects place of original jetty.
Photo 45. Beach sculpture detail.
Thus the transformation of the area was brought about through an emphasis on its history and its original natural qualities. But what about social justice in terms of such a project; how can this be built into the rehabilitation of an urban park? One of the goals of the area was to make a place where people of all incomes would like to come and walk, eat and enjoy the public space. Dawkins describes it this way:
"Central to the approach we adopted was the idea that the users of the area were local people. The primary person we had in mind was the resident of Fremantle, who was simply using the city and/or finding out more about their own past. Secondarily there were the people of the Perth region, then Western Australians generally. 'Tourists' were welcome, but had to make what they could of it all. No doubt, it would mean more to strangers precisely because it meant much to the locals...... Similarly, we determined to treat the project site as a part of the town..... This was not the time to set the headland apart from the city and landscape of which it had been such an integral part. This was not the time to precondition a response to the area as some sort of heritage park, where voices were lowered and steps were slowed. On the contrary, it was a place for the mundane things of life: Lunch, swimming, sun bathing, climbing rocks, playing chasey, watching the sun go down over the ocean. Of course, you could also visit the shop, the pottery and whatever else came to occupy the several buildings and you could go looking at the buildings themselves, the cliffs, the walls and steps, the complex spaces. It was the deliberate intention of the design that you could go there, and respond to the place in any number of ways, and not be aware of its underlying historical significance." (1990, p179).
It is now the most important piece of waterfront land in the city and is regarded as 'sacred' by more than the aboriginals who once used the area for their ritual dreaming ceremonies and who still come there. It is a piece of the urban commons or public realm won back for the city. Moreover, it continues to evolve and grow with artists providing the inspiration and often the hard work.
Photo 46. When the old jail was closed, aborigines carried an effigy of 'the pain of the prison' and ...
Photo 47. ... set fire to it and pushed it out to sea at the newly restored 'sacred site'.
Photo 47. The special new public space is ideal for festivals ...
Photo 48. ... and is a place for kids to have fun.
Environmental groups in cities are central to the whole vision for change that a city needs. It is important for the citizen groups of every city to realise that the real visions for change will vary rarely come from government or from the market, but from civil society. Communities have the freedom to dream and the responsibility to continue the ethical traditions of organic urbanism. Communities have power because of their ethics and their visions. They are not tied to the interests of capital, though market forces are needed to help reshape our cities in a more sustainable way. They are not tied to the institutions and processes that created the Auto City and which encapsulate the regulations of modernism, though they know full well how important it will be to have government processes to implement the sustainable city.
Urban environmental groups need to provide a city with the outlines of a Sustainability Plan. It should show the dream of the Future City with its organic communities creating local urban ecology and at the same time creating more urban sub-centres. It should show where the new transit lines should go and where streets should be traffic calmed and cycle lanes provided. It should show how capital should be redirected to inner city revitalisation and transit-oriented development rather than further fringe development. It should show where drains could be turned back into creeks and where permaculture gardens could be built around waste recycling. It should dream a thousand urban ecological dreams.
And then it should start using all the wonderful parts of the civil society to communicate it: the net, the media, the plain old public meeting, the universities, the churches,....
As the dream catches on, the separate organic communities of the city can begin to implement their part of the dream. They can show others through their 'tinkering' how to integrate ecological and reduced car use solutions into their community. The broader picture needs to be constantly presented by a coalition of these smaller organic groups, linked through international networks to the global eco city movement. Ideas and actions will flow around the world from city to city until we begin to change these great lumbering unsustainable urban spaces into something with which our grandchildren can be pleased.
In 1984 there was a British Council course on Urban Regeneration held in Liverpool. One of us (PN) attended, keen to learn the latest European insights on how to give life back to a city. Each day we were given a different theory or approach. Then we were told: 'But of course none of this seems to work in Liverpool!'.
Liverpool in the 1980's was teetering on the brink. It had been in decline since the 1960's and was losing population so fast it had reached the level it was in the 1920's in just 20 years. It was losing 1000 jobs a week, so most young people left to search elsewhere for employment. The level of dependence in the city (adults on pensions or unemployment benefits plus children) had reached more than 70%.
Urban decline is not pretty. It's not good for people or for the urban environment. There's little spare cash for upgrading factories to stop pollution, create new parks, restore heritage buildings, do traffic calming, little is there for new childcare centers or libraries or for the schools.....So the despair which can set in amongst those who remain can debilitate communities, spilling over into crime and violence and creating a deeper spiral of de cline.
Photos 49 - 51. Liverpool - a great city now in decline.
Amongst the racially-mixed areas of Liverpool, centred around the inner city area of Toxteth, the despair of poverty was allied to a largely racist police force well known for picking on local Africans. In 1981 this explosive mixture was touched off in the now famous Toxteth race riots. After several nights of looting and burning the city of Liverpool was left smouldering with its reputation in tatters.
On the course we were taken to whole neighbourhoods that had been abandoned, high rise buildings so vandalised they had had to be destroyed before they had finished being paid for, social housing areas where there were so few people and so many flats that if residents wanted to shift all they did was set fire to their home. We were taken to sites where beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings could be bought for a song. We were told that the city council could not resolve how to proceed but continued to blame everyone else, that capital had abandoned the city and that everyone with any means (including all the university professors) had fled to live in the far-flung suburbs. The political, social and economic divisions in the city seemed to be widening every year.
How can a city regenerate from such despair? Maybe it is not possible after such a process sets in and so the city will continue to slide ever down to its death?
I wrote a paper after the conference in which I speculated on the future of Liverpool using two scenarios: one where the decline continues until the city is abandoned and becomes the first modern western city to be a ruin, visited only by tourists, the other where regeneration starts and the city comes back to life.
The paper set out four strategies for regeneration, gleaned from the course, based on: housing, industry, tourism and environmental quality. But the key I felt would be whether the indomitable spirit of the Liverpool community (expressed clearly by its football team, its two famous Archbishops and its artistic tradition with people like the Beatles), could provide the ethical strength of character required to overcome their despair and their divisions.
Liverpool was on the brink. So, what has happened since the early 80's?
It will take another 20 years to tell properly, but from my perspective Liverpool seems to have come back from the brink and is regenerating. The signs are however quite mixed and so leave no room for complacency:
Population: there was a continuing loss of population through the 80's but the rate has slowed down and the city is expecting stabilisation in the 90's. But the young and skilled are still leaving.
Employment: jobs also continue to decline but have slowed as well. Unemployment remains at twice the national average.
Poverty: surveys show that Liverpool has poverty at twice the national average and there are now 41% of households officially in poverty and 16% in intense poverty.
The numbers are not very encouraging but the city has a new look about it which is no longer despairing. There has been a vast improvement in the buildings, streetscapes, parks, squares and other public places, i.e. there has been an environmental quality led regeneration. This has been closely associated with a return of investment in businesses, houses and particularly tourism development.
Photos 52 and 53. Restored housing in Liverpool.
So, in a sense all the strategies have started to be applied. But there has been another that I didn't think of at the time: a student-led regeneration. All the tertiary sector has grown, especially the Liverpool John Moores University and the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (funded by former student Paul McCartney), which have bought up many of the large abandoned central and inner city buildings. The activity on the street is much more exciting at all hours of the day when thousands of students are living or attending classes in the area and the flow on in jobs in the services area from graduates and research expertise guarantees the city a future in the information age.
But behind all this is a sense in the community that their divisions have been lessening, that the organic processes of community are beginning to win out. There are many stories of hope created by individuals and groups who have built bridges to heal divisions and forge political solutions. Two of these stories are briefly told below.
Photo 54. Eldonian community Hall.
The Eldonian Community is an example of a feisty local neighbourhood who refused to be cleared from their inner city location as so many others had been. Standing in the line of a new tunnel entrance the people of Eldon Street decided they would not allow their community to be broken up and shifted to a peripheral estate. Instead they formed a cooperative and began to design their own housing on a nearby abandoned industrial site. After many political setbacks and heartache they were able to start. Their leader, Tony McGann was a fork lift driver who had recently been made redundant. Throwing themselves into the process, the community was able to design their own houses and streets so they could keep their neighbours and have a much better quality environment.
Now they have over 300 houses and a community center. Tony McGann attributes their success to their fighting Irish qualities and points to many who helped, including the Catholic and Anglican Archbishops who later co-wrote a book using the Eldonian motto "Better Together".
The second example relates to racism where big efforts have been made to remove this stain from the police force, to provide special opportunities for those from the black community like a black enterprise agency, to start an Arts Anti-Racist Scheme, and perhaps of greatest spiritual and symbolic impact, to open the Museum of Slavery in the new Albert Dock tourism complex.
This award winning museum shows how Liverpool was central to the slave trade, being the main port for slaves being transported from Africa to the Americas. The displays graphically depict the whole process of slavery, show that it was the biggest diaspora in human history (perhaps 50 million people) and names the many established Liverpool families who made their fortunes from slavery. There is no better way for a city to demonstrate its readiness to face up to its sad racial past and to build reconciliation with those who are a part of its legacy.
Photo 55. Museum of slavery.
There is a long way for Liverpool to go but it has a sense of hope that will ensure it gives regeneration a fair chance of taking hold.
The message for other cities caught up in inner city decline based on problems of race and dispirited neighbourhoods, is encouraging. The implications for sustainability are obvious.
Ethical choices by communities are not often seen to be significant parts of city management. However as Kumar (1995) says:
"We need to walk on two legs - we need to put the 'inner' and the 'outer' together to make our cities complete; to make them whole."
The ethics of city life and city death are processes that over millenia have been related to choices that lead to community-building or community-breaking. This involves choices concerning technology, priorities in infrastructure, the significance of social and community activity in the broad approach to life adopted by a city, and in everyday decisions by ordinary people. It is not hard to see in many cities the seeds of city death. But it is not necessary to see such processes as inevitable. The seeds of city life are evident everywhere in civil society and can become a rapid source of hopeful change.
The challenge of sustainability is just another in the history of cities. It must not be under-estimated in its challenge or there will be many cities following in the spiral down associated with city death and unsustainability. But as we have shown time and again throughout this book there is hope, particularly if we look again at the ancient tension between alternative urban futures that is part of our spiritual tradition. And then look to the future based around a renewed sense of hope and the power of organic communities to create more sustainability in our cities.
Alexander, C. (1979) The timeless way of building. Oxford University Press, New York.
Alexander, C. (1987) New theory of urban design. Oxford University Press, New York.
Beatley, T. (1994) Ethical land use: Principles of policy and planning. John Hopkins, Baltimore.
Bellah, R. N. et al (1985) Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Bellah, R. (1991) The good society. Knopf, New York.
Boyer, P. (1978) Urban masses and moral order in America. Harvard University Press, Boston.
Center City District (1997) Population Trends. Center City District, Philadelphia.
Cunningham, C. (1996) A philosophical framework for urban planning: The concept of altruistic surplus. In Van der Meulen, G. and Erkelens, P. A. (eds) Urban habitat: The environment of tomorrow, Findhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.
Daly, H. E. and Cobb, J. B. Jnr. (1989) For the common good: Redirecting the economy toward community, the environment and a sustainable future. Beacon Press, Boston.
Dawkins, J. (1990) Fremantle's heartland: Understanding and designing a special place. Continuum, 3(1), 168-187.
Ellul, J. (1964) The Technological Society. Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ellul, J. (1970) The Meaning of the City. Eerdmans, San Francisco.
Etzioni, A. (1988) The moral dimension. Free Press, New York.
Etzioni, A. (1993) The spirit of community: The reinvention of the American society. Touchstone, New York.
Friedman, J. (1987) Planning the public domain: From knowledge to action. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Friedman, J. (1992) The right to the city. In Morse, R. and Hardoy, J. (eds) Rethinking the Latin American city. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Gehl, J. and Gemsoe, L. (1996) Public spaces, public life. City of Copenhagen, Copenhagen.
Gobor, P. (1993) Americans on the Move. Population Bulletin, 48(3), 1-40.
Gratz, R. B. (1989) The living city. Simon & Schuster, New York.
Greater Vancouver Regional District (1990) Creating our future: Steps to a more liveable urban region. GVRD, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
Hauerwas, S. (1981) A community of character. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame.
Haughton, G. and Hunter, C. (1994) Sustainable Cities. Taylor and Francis, Bristol, Philadelphia.
Hough, M. (1984) City form and natural process. Routledge, London.
Ife, J. (1995) Community development. Longman, Melbourne.
Jacobs, J. (1961) The death and life of great American cities. Vintage Press, New York.
Jacobs, J. (1969) The economy of cities. Random House, New York.
Jacobs, J. (1984) Cities and the wealth of nations. Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Jacobs, J. (1994) Systems of survival: A dialogue on the moral foundations of commerce and politics. Vintage Books, New York.
Jacobs, J. (ed) (1997) A schoolteacher in old Alaska: The story of Hannah Breece. Vintage, New York.
Jensen, O. M. (1994) Ecological building or just environmentally sound planning, Arkitektur DK, 7, 353-367.
Jordan, B. (1989) The common good: Citizenship, morality and self interest. Blackwells, Oxford.
Kostoff, F. (1991) The city shaped: Urban patterns and meanings through history. Thames and Hudson, London.
Lasch, C. (1978) The culture of narcissism. Norton, New York.
Lasch, C. (1985) The minimal self: Psychic survival in troubled times. Pan Books, London.
Macintyre, A. C. (1981) After virtue: A study in moral theory. Duckworth, London.
Marshall, P. (1992) Nature's web: An exploration of ecological thinking. Simon and Schuster, London.
McHarg, I. (1969) Design with nature. Natural History Press, Garden City, New York, reprinted in 1992 by John Wiley.
Moltman, J. (1967) The theology of hope. SCM Press, London.
Mumford, L. (1961) The city in history. Penguin, Harmondsworth, England.
Mumford, L. (1938) The culture of cities. Harcourt, New York.
Newman, P. and Kenworthy, J. (1989) Cities and automobile dependence: An international sourcebook, Gower, Aldershot, England.
Passmore, J. (1974) Man's responsibility for nature. Duckworth, London.
Patsaoures, N. (1993) A shared vision: A new Los Angeles TR as a catalyst for remaking our city. City of Los Anegeles, USA.
Pawley, M. (1975) The Private Future. Pan, London.
Roseland, M. (1992) Towards sustainable communities. Canadian National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Ottawa.
Schneider, K. (1979) On the nature of cities: Towards creative and enduring human environments. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Schumacher, E. F. (1974) Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. Abacus, London.
Schumacher, E. F. (1980) Good work. Abacus, London.
Schumaker, E. F. (1985) A guide to the perplexed. Abacus, London.
Sennett, R. (1974) The fall of public man. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Stren R., White R. and Whitney J. (eds) (1992) Sustainable cities. Westview Press, Boulder.
Toynbee, A. (1978) Mankind and mother earth. Book Club Association, London.
Wallis, J. (1994) Alive to God. Journal of Sojourners, Washington D.C.
Walter, R., Arkin, L. and Crenshaw, R. (eds) (1992) Sustainable cities: Concepts and strategies for eco-city development. Eco-Home Media, Los Angeles.
White, L. (1967) The historical roots of the ecological crisis. Science, 155, 1203-1207
Wickham, E. D. (1987) Social malaise in urban areas and the concept of the city. In Milward, S. (ed) Urban Harvest, Geographical Publications, London.
Yoder, J. (1984) The priestly kingdom. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame.
[1] Kumar (1995) from Schumacher College, puts it this way: "One of the greatest moral statements ever made is 'love they neighbour as thyself', but how can I love my neighbour if I have no neighbours, if I live in an apartment in an urban metropolis, cut off from my extended family, dominated by the cult of individualism and addicted to the drudge of consumerism?" (p39).
[2] In some places the collection of all communities is called 'civil society' (in the UK tradition) or 'social midfield' (in the European tradition). In the US it is sometimes called 'voluntarism' and there are strong exponents of the need for this focus in tackling the problems of US cities. Friedman (1987) in his 'Planning in the Public Domain' suggests planners need to "recenter political power in the civil society'. Etzioni (1988, 1991) has founded a journal in the US called 'The Responsive Community' and suggests that we need to have an "I-We" paradigm where we can express personal moral beliefs within a community framework. His training courses are designed to create community advocates and activists who can provide the third way in so many arguments between individual rights (including those of the market) and the rights of the state.
[3] It also has growing support from other systems approaches such as management theory and innovation theory as discussed in chapter 5. The social imperative in management systems today is to find the right scale at which to operate and generally this means more localisation of power. Only when a firm has adequate bottom up processes that allow more humanly fulfilling participation and 'flexible specialisation', does it become truly productive. There is a growing awareness in studies on cities that the "local milieux" is what makes it function as a source of innovation rather than just government policies or the market. This "local milieux" is closely related to the environmental concept of bioregionalism and greater local autonomy. Both the management theory and innovation theory concepts fit neatly into the tradition of communitarianism which suggests that the right scale for any change is the community scale. The demand for community-based solutions and participation is thus cutting across a range of disciplines.
