Summer heat, movies and the great American dream

In the long, hot summer night, attention wanes, and sleep comes slowly. It demands a particular remedy: the visual phantagasmoria of the gangster movie and the political thriller. Both let us sweat out summer heat in the action-packed stories of deceit and deception and the guilty pleasures of voyeur luxury and success. However, more than a thrilling visual and guttural ride, these films are a glimpse into the true virtues of the great American dream. Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is not only a political philosophy of the neoliberal state, it is at the very core of that great American dream: power and success for all willing to sacrifice – even the most powerless. The gangster movie and political thriller are perfect genre from which to explore this recovery narrative. Fueled by ingenuity, charisma, street smarts, and more necessarily, hard work, and the occasional means-to-an-end trickery, the working-class hero is willing to sacrifice all in order to achieve what is rightfully theirs. They can but achieve that which they desire: power and money. But in the wake of this success love, friendship and family have been sacrificed, or forgotten.

However, this ride to power and success if often driven by an internal hate which is also a fatal flaw. True Colours, the story of two young law students who forge a friendship, pursue their career goals only to be faced with mutual betrayal, provides a glimpse into this realm. Peter Burton (played by John Cusack), the brash law-student is driven to succeed, and at all costs is willfully masking his lower-class upbringing in the deindustrialized decay of in the urban northeast to forge friendships with his political connected roommate. With hard work, Burton is able to get a summer internship on Capital Hill. His acumen, smarts and willingness to blur right and wrong, provides him with an initial steps to political office including a choice connection with a business-class campaign financiers. On his rise to the top Burton uses all the people around him including his best friend, his wife (and best friends ex), and his pre-dementia father-in-law (not that IS rotten!). Having used all, Burton gets his election victory. However, Burton’s business connections prove to be less than savoury, and the now Department of Justice lawyer best friend, comes in to help bring down the congressman-elect. Burton could rely on his bare knuckles and political smarts to win on election night, however, his lower-class background did not provide him with the right moral background to play the game. The only financing he could get was of a dubious nature. The lack of financial connections would prove to be his downfall. All can have power, but without the right combination of power AND money, success is fleeting. His strength and will to win would also be his downfall. In the search for success from the bottom, friends and family are burned, until, the mighty recovery becomes a downfall, sometimes fatal.

This narrative is the driving line to Brian DePalma’s remake of Scarface. Tony Montana, the equally brash, balsy, tough, edgy, street smart equipped, small time criminal Cuban refugee literally breaks out from an internment camp in Florida to rise to glorious wealth and power in Miami’s 1980’s drug trade. Like Burton, Montana uses powerful connections he makes to get the connections needed to supply his own power. Montana, working for an established drug kingpin carefully crafts a relationship with a powerful Columbian drug lord into his own drug empire. He discards his previous boss, marries his boss’ trophy girlfriend, and with his massive drug profits builds his odd to opulence, a tacky mansion featuring among other things an in bedroom sunk-in hot-tub and a lobby pool with his mantra, the “world is yours.” He gets all that he wants: power and more money than he can imagine. The world has become his. However, Montana, like Burton, becomes obsessed with his own aura of power and success. He recklessly botches a job to kill an international anti-drug trade crusader, and then knowing a full war is coming goes to find his long-time associate and fellow refugee. However, he finds his friend with his sister: a definite no-no according to Tony’s moral code. He callously kills his friend point blank. The stage is set for his undoing, but Tony is set up to go down swinging. Upset at the death Tony retreats to his office and snorts enourmous amount of cocaine from a huge pile on his desk just as the Columbians come to seek pay-back. He won’t be an easy target, though and from the balcony of his office takes on a mini-army. Despite his coked-up bravado and impressive stamina, even Tony’s street smarts cannot stall his undoing. His street smarts could only get him so far, and the well-heeled culturally sophisticated Colombia gets the better of him, just like the articulate and proper best friend got Burton.

The moral of summer films so far. The rise to success can be quick, but those who achieve, using dubious means, will fall fast. And justice prevails?

What is the colonization of everyday life?

"He (Lefebvre) said, prophetically, everyday life was being colonized. Colonized by what, exactly? Colonized by the commodity, by a modern postwar capitalism that had continued to exploit and alienate at the workplace but had now begun to seize the opportunity of entering life in general, into nonworking life, into reproduction and leisure, into free time and vacation time. Indeed it was a system ready to flourish through consumerism, seduce by means of new media and advertising, intervene through state bureaucracies and planning agencies, ambush people around every corner with billboards and bulletins... lived experience was changing in advanced capitalist countries: it was under fire from the forces intent on business and market expansion, producing fast cars and smart suburban houses, consumer durables, and convenience food, processed lives and privatized paradises."

Andy Merrifield explains the colonization of everyday life in Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction, 2006, p.9-10.

Lefebvre

"In the 1970's, somebody asked Lefebvre if in fact he was really an anarchist. "No," he replied. "I'm a Marxist, of course, so that one day we can all become anarchists."

From Andy Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction, 2006.

Barnes on Harvey on Harvey

"David Harvey (1972:323) once said in reply to Stephen Gale (1972), who was reviewing Explanation in Geography (Harvey 1969), that he was at a ‘‘disadvantage’’ because he had ‘‘never read it’’ and further- more he had ‘‘no intention of doing so now.’’"

Excerpt From ‘‘The Background of Our Lives’’: David
Harvey’s The Limits to Capital
Trevor J Barnes, Antipode, 2002.

“Creative Destruction:” The Political Economy of the Failed US Housing Market

In the Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi described how the capitalism created abstract market forces which detached people from place. Two years earlier, in his treatise on economic history, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Joseph Schumpeter made similar observations about the immense destructive power of markets. Capitalism, Schumpeter remarked, was a “perennial gale” that “incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” In the contemporary political economy capitalism’s “creative destruction” is acting wildly to destroy landscapes and recreate new geographies of power.

The continued centralization of decision making in financial centers such as New York, London, Tokyo and Shanghai has further removed the (abstract) market from place. Banks and corporations move further and further away from the places that depend on their services, these entities know and care less about the communities that provide them with surplus-value, and even less about the people that work for them. Finance, in particular, has globalized the search for higher profit margins, further detaching itself form the material realities of everyday urban life.

The recent meltdown of the US housing market can, in large part, be connected to market tendencies described by Schumpeter and Polanyi. In its revolutionary search for new forms of capital accumulation, US financial and insurance institutions developed an abundance of securities for the mortgage market (including the much maligned high-interest rate mortgages), selling an ever-expanding menu of packaged securities to a thirsty international capital market (including unsecured debt). The securitization of the mortgage market increased the distance between the asset (the home) and the debt (the security). As a result the financing and servicing of mortgage debt has become ever more distant from the homeowners, and the number of intermediaries has exploded. On the global level, large financial institutions such as UBS and Crédit Agricole had no idea what kind of debt they held. On the local level, homeowners were unable to negotiate with their banks to hold onto their houses. The result was dire: Banks with write-offs and cities such as Cleveland with large swaths of empty, abandoned areas. The failure of the housing market is indicative of the detachment from place, and the incessant “creative destruction” of urban landscapes.

Privatizing Parking: The Revanche Strikes Again

In an earlier piece, I gestured at the impending repercussions of Larry 0’s false prognostication of the City’s doomsday fiscal picture. In the recent budget debate O'Brien's run-by-the-seat-of-his pants reforms - partially filled in with suggestions for ‘transformation’ from his DND-buddy and man-for-hire Gordon J. Hunter - were in large part rejected by City Council. However the past budget debate cast the discourse of inflexibility and set the parameters for our own local ‘shock doctrine.’ Denizens were told that the City is plain out of cash: any variation of the City’s budget is unmanageable; any extra cost a doomsday scenario and solutions were to be cast in the 'free' market.

This discourse has recently resurfaced in the debate over Ottawa’s parking regime. To recall the details, council recently approved the shift from meters to pay-and-display for on-street parking. With lower maintenance and collection costs, municipalities across North America have successfully implemented this shift – to the benefit of City coffers, while still holding onto public ownership of the resource, and more maintaining control over public policy decisions. However, in Ottawa’s case, our current Council headed by Revanchist Larry 0, with the support of right-wing-rural-fringe henchmen, has argued that the City cannot front the money to buy the machines up-front. The solution: privatize the whole operation. The Mayor, with his background accumulating his own mini-fortune through contracting-out and privatization, has once again shown his zeal for private appropriation of public goods. Under the plan, a messianic Toronto company will set-up the system, and front money in exchange for the City’s on street parking revenues i.e. cash. To sweeten the pot the company promises to increase the City’s annual take by $1.7 million per year. Upfront this deal seems like a great deal: the City gets machines and increases its revenue without any investment.

However, the myth of P3’s and the tactics used to market former public goods has to be systematically disproved. In almost every instance promoters of P3’s offer the same juicy goodies: in return for a monopoly on a public utility they will dish out increased revenues to the state. This privatization of public resources - sometimes referred to as accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) - has largely been discredited.

The reorganization of state functions along these lines externalizes public control through privatization and de-regulation, quasi-private institutional development while interiorizing neoliberalism into urban policy regimes. Various "shock treatments” such as place-marketing, enterprise/empowerment zones, urban development corporations, private-public partnerships, property redevelopment and boosterism are deployed by local boosters, planners, engineers, property developers and politicians to meet the parameters of reconfigured neoliberal urban policy regimes.

The techniques associated with the “golden path” of entrepreneurialism are part of a more assertive networked style of governance, where a host of actors compete for the urban policy agenda, and where flexibility, efficiency, competitiveness, state entrepreneurship and collaboration have become the standard bearer and the “best practices” of urban governance (Rodriguez, 2001). Informal, networked based governance structures have become the norm, resulting in "a new constellation of governance articulated via a proliferating maze of opaque networks, fuzzy institutional arrangements, ill-defined responsibilities, and ambiguous political objectives and priorities" (Swyngedouw, 2005: 17). These non-transparent, ad-hoc, context dependent and networked institutional ensembles render existing power-geometries even more exclusive, and less democratic (Fainstein, 1994; Swyngedouw, 2005). The conduct of P3's raise questions of public accountability, representation and exclusion (Rodriguez, 2001; Leo and Fenton, 1990) since they provide, at best, limited and formalized democratic participation (Swyngedouw, 2005). They also offer greater possibility that concealed dealings will lead to public loss of control and to a “great deal of scope for abuse” (Leo and Fenton, 1990).

The move by the Toronto-based company to forge a parking P3 adheres to the general pattern for these contracts. In attempting to wrest control of public resources, companies offer added incentives such as amusement parks, bribes, cash, etc, in order to sweeten the pot. In most cases, users are gauged, contractors provide less revenue than anticipated and face financial losses on the contract. In many cases, the contractor comes back to the state asking for better contract terms, with full knowledge that they have an edge over the public in these negations. Having wrestled the infrastructure from the local state, and being a monopolistic provider, the public is left with little choice but to renegotiate more favourable terms to the contractor.

A parking P3 is also suspect public policy – from an urban planning perspective. Parking policy is a key aspect of urban planning toolkit. Pricing has been used to manage supply of parking, and in case of parking shortage short term limits allow access to on-street businesses, limiting the need for parking lots. Pricing can be used to encourage alternative uses of transportation and to alleviate congestion, and to encourage a move towards sustainable cities, no small consideration in face of climate chagne. In short, it is a complex policy tool that works beyond a simple source of cash for the City’s coffers and P3’s obfuscates public oversight over urban planning, and flexibility of using parking policy for multiple policy goals.

Finally, the effectiveness of such a parking regimes is also highly questionable. The City of London Ontario was one of the first Canadian jurisdictions to put out their parking services to private tender, and the evidence points to the folly of such an enterprise. The City of Ottawa should learn from such examples: P3’s rarely pan-out, and City Council should consider this evidence, and for once to show some long-term thinking.

All of this may be cast in the light of Karl Polanyi's prescient note on the paradox of the economic liberalism: "Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not." A lesson on economic history that wears well in the urban planning affairs of this current City Council.

The Un-Car

Last week, a Toronto artist and his accomplices were vindicated for driving a people powered 1986 Buick Regal down Queen St. W. in Toronto. Michel de Broin’s art piece “Shared Propulsion Car” transformed the aforementioned 1986 Buick Regal into an un-car: the motor, floor, windows and seats were replaced with plastic bucket seats, four sets of pedals and a levered hand-brake system. In September of 2007, during their maiden voyage, the police stopped the vehicle, charged the operator with operating an unsafe vehicle and towed it away. Not only were the Queen-westers able to bring attention to absurdity of driving a vehicle in the city, they also showed how peddle-pushers often get more attention then o-so dangerous gasoline-powered car. By winning their court case, they also opened up the road to Shared Propulsion Cars. See a full account of the event on Spacing Toronto, and watch the video here.

Tunnel Vision

“Let’s hear it for the boy,” the 1980’s pop-hit, pays tribute to the machismo of the good ol’ hometown boys. This ode to the boys might well apply the ongoing dependence of cities on the entrepreneurial style of urban governance and development. Boosterism of this particular kind, is nothing new to the neoliberal era. However, the ongoing dependence of the men in suits to this logic needs to be exposed in context of Ottawa’s tunnel vision.



During the highly contested 2005 mayoral election, the incumbent liberal Mayor Bob Chiarelli (center-right) faced a stiff challenge from the center-left candidate Alex Munter. After a few weeks of campaigning, the issue of Ottawa’s planned and approved light rail project came to dominate the election.

Enter the background. In the run-up to the election, the liberal mayor had pushed through the light-rail plan through city council claiming the deal, and federal funding, would expire if not signed before an election. Munter, his main challenger, took exception to the details of the plan, and to the manor in which it was rammed through city council. This struck a cord, while most Ottawan’s supported the idea of light-rail, many shared Munter’s skepticism about the project approval process.

Enter the dragon. A small group of downtown businesses formed the Albert/Slater Coalition to fight the proposed dedicated light-rail project. Initially the arguments held little sway, but the well financed coalition was organized and resourced, and consistently on message: light-rail would kill downtown business.

Enter the good ol’ boy – Larry O’Brien. A relatively unknown, Larry O, came into the race. For most of the campaign he ran a distant third. However, his zero-tax increase promise and vow as protector and champion of the business class garnered more and more support (a timely pay-off a rival right-winger also helped). Larry O took on the claims of the Albert-Slater Coalition as part of his pro-business platform. Munter’s attacks on Chiarelli’s force-play softened Bob’s appeal to suburban voters, and combined with an anti-Munter wave in the last weekend of the campaign, Larry O, the unknown and business allies were swept to power.

As reported in an earlier piece, O’Brien was a relative newcomer to city politics, and seemed to have few ideas on how to approach complex policy issues. He had for example, no fixed idea about light-rail beyond his concern for the Downtown business owners. Larry O waffled and wailed about light rail, switching his position here and there. Finally, his worship decided he was against the project, brought it back for a vote in City Hall, and with support from the east, west councilors left out of the north-south route, and rural right-wing fringe councilors, the project was shelved. During this debate, the concerns of the Albert/Slater Coalition emerged as one of the principal reasons for shutting down the plan. The Mayor made it clear that a downtown tunnel would be the only option. City Council acquiesced and voted in favour of studying the proposal for a 1B$ tunnel.

However, it was never quite clear who this Coalition was. For anyone who has walked, bused, driven or cycled down Albert of Slater street they would know it is a major transit artery with very few destination shops. The streets are dominated by small restaurants, coffee shops and other services that cater to the lunch-time crowd from adjacent office buildings. Moreover, the transit lanes make it near to impossible to actually park on the streets. Far from a mixed-use street celebrated by urbanites, the streets resemble the modernist Faustian bargain lambasted by Jacobs in 1961 and Berman in 1982.

The question then is why these seemingly unimportant businesses were able to trump the interest of Ottawa’s large commuting class. How did their interest outweigh those of the entire city? How were they able to fund their campaign? Why were businesses which would seemingly profit from increased foot traffic (which light rail invariably brings along with it) be against such a project?

After the dust had settled on this debate, and the light-rail defeated in city council, the Mayor appointed a special advisor on transit (this despite the fact that the city already had a transit plan). Once this report and others made their way through the City’s bureaucracy, the city release its four options for transportation – none of which considered a surface rail component. It was clear that the tunnel option was being favoured by the selection criteria – an option favoured by his business allies. Pedestrian users were being shoved off the street in favour of a subterranean enclosure.

Enter WB. Walter Benjamin’s literal explorations of the city, in such texts as Berlin Chronicle, One Way Street and most famously his Arcades Project, offer the urban observer a way to see the city and to draw out the hidden and invisible city. Benjamin offers a dialectic of seeing the city. Benjamin urges the urban observer to turning the city’s past inside out by referring and juxtaposing images of the past. Each of these images is meant to rub like a friction against the readers own life world. Each of these images of the city, as fragments of modernity, emblematic of a representation of ideas, demystify the present.

Benjamin’s childlike curiosity and a topographical imagination were stirred by the wonders of capitalist modernity, including utopian urban renewal projects. While he wrote in the first decades of the 20th century, industrialization and capitalism was pushing the boundaries of progress, and technology was fetishized as the material expression of progress. Urban networks: sewers, water works, electricity were being introduced at a rapid rate in the city to control the power of nature in the city. Technology in itself would improve living conditions and social environments and lead to a better world. Networks marked a new aesthetic form and also showed the extreme promise of engineering science. Being connected to a network was identified with being connected to the future, to progress and to the possibility of a better society. Among these urban renewal projects, the filth of industrialization of the 19th century led to the development of underwater sewers. By closing off the drainage of waste, engineers hoped to clean up the mess of industrialization. In the case of sewers, it created a divide between the underground and above, between light and darkness.

As Benjamin noted, the transfiguring form one to the other the debris of the messy past is cleared out to form a new neat natural image, forming a new wish image. The old residue is cleared away to make way for the up-to-date green development. Yet, new wish-images, are more than a fantastic collective consciousness. New utopias exist both in the physical structures of buildings and in the ephemeral celebrations.

The downtown tunnel, at the monstrous cost of 1B$ is an enourmous project with much utopian appeal. This colossal bid-dig project will solve the cities downtown transit woes. Yet, the tunnel might also be seen is a subterranean enclosure, a capitalist sewer ready to catch the unsuspecting viewer, drawing off from the surface urban life and hiding it in the tightly regulated private space of the tunnel and office tower megalith.

For this an Ode to Larry O’, for “every-time he comes so near I just want to shout "let's hear it for my man."” The Downtown Coalition can sing “he's my loving one-man show… what he does, he does so well.” Indeed, let’s hear if for the boy. When you’re caught in the labyrinth of capitalist pleasure and tunnel fetishism you’ll only have to thank the boy - and his business cronies.

City Hall yells "Kill the Street!"

Sparks Street, 1909

Public space, Marshall Berman has noted, has the urgent quality of a common terrain where "men and woman can come together to heal their inner wounds" (186: 476), where strangers can articulate their differences, and where people "can begin to deal with the contradictions of urban life and potentially work them out (1986: 477).” For Berman, the right to public space is implicit in basic democratic rights, and a key aspect of the transformative aspect of liberal individualism. An ideal public space includes access for all, a place where strangers can mingle, is attraction to all, has plenty of exit routes and has no visible police. Street life, Berman insists is key to the creativity of the city: fun, theatrical display, dance, are all part of the structural transformation of everyday life.

This celebration of street life, somewhat romanticized by Berman’s incessant belief in the redeemable qualities of bourgeois urban life, has, since the emergence of Jane Jacobs fabulous critique of the concrete modernization of the post-war urbanization, become the key anchor of principles of urban planning.

Last week, the City of Ottawa demonstrated its complete ineptitude in making this city a truly walkable city – and its continued attempts to “kill the street.” Our civic-ly owned army for the propertied class, the Ottawa Police Service, undertook a pedestrian sweep. Yes, the coppers targeted those damn pesky and dangerous pedestrians with a blitz. The crime, jaywalking! The coppers issued 108 tickets to those purveyors of evil disobeying the crosswalk lights that run along Ottawa’s ONLY pedestrian street. How dare they think they might once have the right to own a whole street!

Now as you might gather, this irks me for several reasons.

What the he-double hockey sticks? Don’t the cops have something better to do? In the last budget debate the OPS was crying so poor it got a whopping increase in their budget, no questions asked, thank you very much. Now, surely, they must have some excess staff if they are able to spend a day issuing tickets to the most vulnerable users on the transportation ladder (Cars-Transit-Pedestrians). It makes you wonder how much the City actually cares about pedestrians and transit? While the coppers get a huge cash infusion, and take liberty to target pedestrians, transit users, some of the poorest of users, faced a massive fare increase. Are you as confused as I am about the City's priorities? Really, if the Cops are that bored, what about tagging those damn cars always blocking the crosswalks?

Now on a more serious, and disturbing tone. The OPS, faced with massive backlash, noted that the order to target pedestrians came straight from the Mayor’s office (Larry O’ denies this, but considering he is under trial for paying off a rival I will not give him the benefit of the doubt, and yikes, will believe the cops instead). Either way, someone had a brain cramp.

Here is my tow-bit theory. Probably the Mayor was driving (so ecologique, M. le Maire…) from the Daly Prison for Rich People, when he was made late for a meeting with his defense lawyer since his Gold Gaz-Guzzling Mercedes (GGGM) was blocked from its zero-mission by a jaywalker. Our revanchist Mayor, delayed on important duty, called out his henchmen (i.e. le cops) to target those damn obstacles to a modern city. Bravo, M. le Maire!

As Berman has noted, public space is only open if it "engenders encounters between people of different classes, races, ages, religions, ideologies, cultures and stances towards life" (1986: 484). I urge the Mayor to fix the brain cramp at City Hall. Perhaps cut back on using Mr. Clean on your head, it might clear your thinking. Or try reading something other text on urban life than the “Transforming Governance” blueprint. I suggest All that is solid melt into air… Mabye then you'll ditch the GGGM and embrace city life, with all its contradictions...

Respect for LeBreton Flats

This weekend a public dialogue was held to discuss the future of LeBreton Flats. The event attracted a broad range of residents, community activists, and included professional and amateur planners, non-profit housing providers, educators, health professionals, transportation buffs, accessibility advocates, cultural sponsors, local artists and writers.

A few of the old residents of the Flats, were also there, and risked opening-up old wounds, to remind the participants of the spector of the NCC’s expropriation. The importance of remembering and respecting the history of the site was laid out at the forefront, and especially that LeBreton Flats lay within Algonquin territory, on land that was never ceded, and of the significance of the site to Algonquin heritage and culture. Participants were also reminded of the diverse ethnic groups who were affected and rejected by the expropriation including those of Italian, Jewish and French-Canadian ancestry.

Drained once or twice before by administrative enclosure and exclusion of the planning process, community actors and activists were not detered from engaging once more in a process to define the next phase of LeBreton Flats - in an inclusive from that was reminiscent of the old Flats.

These enthusiastic participants brought forward their hopes and dreams of all in an honest and vigourous discussion. Their suggestions of what should happen on the Flats integrated the diversity of the community and the past, long and short, into a full-range of options for the next phase of development.

Many of the community actors who had been involved in advocating against the NCC’s sell-off to Claridge in Phase 1 participated despite the failure of past efforts, and the NCC’s obscene power-brokerage. They were willing to overcome what was generally seen as a slight against them.

Based on a multiple small gatherings in themed break-out groups reporting back to the room as a whole, the session produced an ambitious but lively call for a diverse and equitable community. The participants were almost unanimous in their call for a small-scale, inclusionary planning process which should be launched through a community directed planning process. Their vision included real, and long-term affordable housing maintained in perpetuity, provided my multiple builders including non-profit housing providers, for multi-generational, multi-income and multi-cultural users. The participants called on the new phase to respect the past, most importantly by acknowledged the aboriginal past, and be from the start in close consultation with the Algonquins ensure that their interests in the land were addressed. The working past of the Flats was also on their minds as participants suggested that places be created for the trades artist, and workers, with innovative spaces such as tool-cooperatives and workshops, and light industrial places. Local workers would also find studios and workshops to work from, and families place to play. It was a quite different from Claridge’s stale, condominium based Phase 1 “doughnut.”

Despite invitation, no one from the NCC showed up, even to observe. If they would have bothered to show-up, the NCC property sharks would have heard a clear rejection of Phase I and its limited view, gentrified and exclusionary vision for LeBreton Flats.