The fundamental idea presented in this essay through the above illustrations is neither new nor original. The idea of cities as the ground for ideological contest has been written about by many scholars but mainly by urbanists from the left spectrum of politics. These critiques place neo-liberal urban administrative policies in their crosshairs that seem to privilege elites over the less advantaged. These policies, whilst ostensibly pandering to elite notions of what makes a good city, are often justified by city administrators as a necessity for improving everybody’s lives. In many people’s experience, the needs and living practices of the disadvantaged are subordinated to those of the elites. Saskia Sassen has suggested in her writings that globalisation has led to a readjustment of traditional power structures that transcend national boundaries. It has raised the power stakes for global cities at the cost of the nation state whilst simultaneously changing the way we work and who does what. Global cities, for her, become the sites that attract low paid immigrant workers from impoverished parts of the world to do jobs that the original residents no longer wish to do. They find informal means both to live and eke a living within the interstices of the formal economy and the city that embodies and represents the orderliness of a post-manufacturing economy. As I have tried to illustrate through the examples above, disadvantaged sections of society, such as
immigrant workers and low-paid women, utilise tactics to occupy planned and designed space thus resisting the elitist neo-liberal impulse to order and exclude. The examples I have presented above, are resistance movements and small acts of defiance staking a claim to a city that seeks to scarcely acknowledge their presence and necessity to support contemporary urban lifestyles. This has a direct impact on the form of our cities and architects and designers would do well to embrace this social tension to make our cities more vibrant and inclusive. The neo-liberal impulse to conserve, gentrify and beautify makes these activities ring hollow. On the one hand, they aim to condense a sense of place by celebrating the structures that were made possible by an older socio economic order whilst simultaneously jettisoning the people who have made/continue to make it possible. In conclusion, I write about a much bigger phenomenon than cities in themselves and the examples I provide are at once local and global. I critique globalisation and ubiquitous neo-liberal economic policy and how citizens find themselves on one side or the other - riding the wave or being crushed by it. I talk of people who do not passively accept their fate and I appeal to city administrators and urban professionals to celebrate and plan for the wide array of people and their lifestyles who make up the city.
About the Author Yashdeep Srivastava is an architect. He currently works with an NGO in Alice Springs Australia designing and delivering infrastructure projects for remote Aboriginal communities. He has practiced architecture in India and Australia and maintains a keen interest in the social, political and environmental aspects of cities and their impact on the built environment of both the developing and the developed world.
June 2017 | CITY OBSERVER
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