City as a Political Idea - UNIV PLYMOUTH

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in the eyes of the local community. They are lost because the City is not a community anymore. The idea that the City is a political community was European – in China, a city resident was still primarily a member of the clan. Their roots in the world were not geographical but social. Perhaps for this reason, Chinese ethnic neighbourhoods are still incredibly strong and unique. The legend of the ‘Chinese districts’ as dangerous places – a bit mysterious, but fascinating and important for the American cities, especially for their ‘mythology’ – can become the point at which we move from an analysis of how the Root is viewed from the inside in consideration of their lack of rootedness, and how they are seen from the outside, to a reflection on being uprooted as a tourist. However brutal it may sound, otherness is fascinating. Provided, of course, that this ‘otherness’ is under some control.

      Districts – Chinese, Italian, Jewish and red light districts – are the spaces inhabited by people whose roots in the City are weaker than most of the inhabitants of other, perhaps better districts. In most of these places such ethnically specific people find their roots outside the City, in their families and religion. Their presence, however, is necessary for the City. The strength of the City lies in its diversity: in potential tensions between people, groups and neighbourhoods. The City is an Exchange Machine, and the separate ‘districts of the uprooted’ (in the City) have a threefold purpose. First, to provide for the City employees who are able to accept the unacceptable conditions necessary for an embedded population. This is because the uprooted districts operate with a certain autonomy in relation to the rest of the urban organism. The rules that prevail in them are not exactly the rules of the City, and are connected primarily with lower housing prices and generally lower maintenance prices.

      In the history of Polish cities, there is the phenomenon of autonomous areas; areas separated from the city administration – ‘spheres of free trade’, as we would say today. The idea behind jurisdictions, special economic spheres and uprooted districts is economically the same; it is a kind of parasitic or symbiotic relationship with the City that functions independently, a separate socio-spatial structure within the city. Secondly, districts of the uprooted, due to their links with communities outside the City, become a specific transfer channel of information, people and goods to the City, from the world and back (sometimes on the border of legality, occasionally beyond it). Third, districts of the uprooted become a tourist attraction, which in modern cities is extremely important. This even applies to notorious neighbourhoods such as New York’s Harlem.17 Minorities who live in ethnic neighbourhoods may be anywhere between the City elites and the margins of society. The so-called ‘middleman minority’ economic niches are filled, ensuring a fairly rapid generation and retention of revenue in the social and economic structure of cities.18 For example, Korean communities who addressed this issue in 1992, to the great rancour of the African-American population during the famous riots in Los Angeles, illustrate this process perfectly and display immigrants who threaten the city.

      Denis Judd writes: “In the poststructuralist literature dealing with the city, enclaves (districts) are understood as local hubs of international capital and cultural structures, hiding behind a mask of locality: gated communities, through the magic of marketing, are becoming the neighbouring units, shopping malls are the new marketplaces, and neighbourhoods offer a simulacrum of authentic tourist cities, which they are replacing.”19 If on such a structure of cities – with strong vertical links to the outside world – we superimpose these districts of the uprooted, particularly ethnic neighbourhoods, we get a picture of the City which is – de facto – only a local representation of the forces and structures existing outside it. The City has lost almost entirely its local nature and situates its meaning almost entirely outside itself. The residents are rooted against ‘their’ city in a transcendent way. The European model of City as an autonomous entity is replaced by a kind of quasi-colonial city. Analogies with colonial cities are of course only partial, but such an image is firmly in favour with the imagination. The city becomes the space colonised by various entities, groups and forces external to its residents, whose interests and roots lie out of town. Suddenly it is occupied by both big corporations and illegal immigrants. The only ‘true’ residents of the city to remain are the poor, pushed to the margins and forced to feed off the dumping ground of globalisation. However, even these groups are trying to escape the city. Inside the city, the local poor are trying to become global paupers (the flight from the cities that I have already discussed).

      Then what is the role of immigrants in the City? Everything depends on their area of rooting. Immigrants who are able to fit the slots of the City, and fill the existing social and economic niches without losing the ties to their place of origin, can achieve relative success and stability. Frequently, they occupy better positions in the City than some of its native inhabitants. If, however, for various reasons the bond with their home country is poor, and the city in which they live has a socially and economically compact, tight structure, the immigrants fall to the bare bottom of the social hierarchy. They become modern slaves, exploited without mercy. They also become ‘invisible’ to the rest of the urban society, and so the city does not make use of the valuable culture they bring, but uses only their bodies as an extremely cheap and efficient workforce. Sooner or later this huge injustice results in outbursts of hatred (as in France during 2005), but primarily it works as a demoralising force on the city itself.

      Social capital is a concept of rather fluid definition. Generally, however, we can say that social capital is a network of (positive) social ties based on mutual trust, which enable the functioning of both civil society and capitalist economy. Contrary to what might occur to ‘capitalists’ (and ‘politicians’), the functioning of a free economy is very difficult without mutual trust. Edward Glaeser believes that intellectual flows – the ideas circulating among individuals that are not subject to the mediation of the market – are the foundation of economic growth.20 Similarly, ‘public trust’ is a very general definition of social capital, as social capital flourishes best where there is not much physical capital. This happens mainly in poor countries (to mention microcredits and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, who pioneered institutional money lending to the extremely poor), and also occurred in the People’s Poland. Social capital is usually territorial. Strong relationships between people mainly concern those living side-by-side. There is something of the original instinct here, which concentrates animals in a dense crowd in times of danger. This is because social capital is ‘primitive’. It applies mostly to ordinary people seeking help and is rooted in the natural communities of family or clan, usually very religious.

      In short – social capital is strong, whereas the single person is weak. Social capital was, for example, quite well circulated in People’s Poland around the tower block estates – people borrowed flour and sugar from each other, and watched each other’s children. But these relationships and the trust implicit in them disappeared when the ‘real’ capital emerged. It is clear that – as Aihwa Ong writes in her latest book – capitalism (or better, neoliberalism) devours everything.21 Social capital, as a relic of the industrial society (and earlier) is also criticised by Richard Florida.22 The mere notion of inventing a creative capital and designating spaces for ‘outsiders’ (people who do not fit the standards of the conservative society) suggests that social capital is an outdated idea, and with all its ‘hard’ social ties a dangerous and harmful one at that. In fact, social capital actually has its dark side: gangs, the mafia, nepotism and ‘cronyism’. Social capital is often tied to the institutionalised religions and, while on the one hand religious communities can often lend a hand to those in need, they are also linked with intolerance, fanaticism and sometimes – at least symbolic – violence. It is no coincidence that Hamas in Palestine owes its popularity not so much to the armed struggle as to its charitable activities.23 A similar mechanism has led to the authority of the Turkish Justice and Development Party, or the two major parties in Northern Ireland: DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) and Sinn Féin. It is no wonder that Florida, who claims that the basis of ‘creative capital’ is tolerance (as well as talent and technology), sees social capital as a threat to urban development in the twenty-first century and more of a problem than an opportunity. So described, social capital would thus be associated with a territorially defined self-help and self-control society.

      Maybe we would all be happy in a world

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