Urbanism as a way of life : trying to rediscover

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Urbanism as a way of life

Trying to rediscover

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Urbanism as a way of life

Trying to rediscover

Editors

Marek S. Szczepański Grzegorz Gawron

Barbara Lewicka

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego • Katowice 2015

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Referee

Anna Śliz

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Foreword

It was July 1938 when Louis Wirth published his “Urbanism as a Way of Life” in the American Journal of Sociology. The paper was seen by many as the one defining the city as a social phenomenon. Looking beyond its physical structure, economic product or cultural institutions, the author discovers those

“elements of urbanism which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life”

(Wirth 1938: 4).

Wirth argues that three key characteristics of cities — large population size, social heterogeneity, and population density — contribute to the development of a peculiarly “urban way of life” and a distinct “urban personality”. In his opinion, for centuries casual observers have noted deep personality differences between urban and rural people and between nature-based and machine- based styles of living. He attempts to explain those differences in terms of the functional responses of urban dwellers to the characteristic environmental conditions of modern urban society. According to Wirth, people living in cities are weakly integrated; they take part in impersonal relationships being rather concentrated on self-activities than involved in social engagements. Segmental roles, isolation and disorder result in the city dwellers’ susceptibility to per- suasion or manipulation as their personalities are not coherent enough to fight external pressures. Moreover, people whose mentality was built in unfriendly city environment are likely to suffer breakdowns or commit suicides much more often than those living in rural areas. Although Wirth mentioned some positive aspects of living in the city like freedom or tolerance, his most mean- ingful ideas on the urban lifestyle were quite pessimistic with special attention paid to insecurity and loneliness experienced by city dwellers. As John Scott put it: “There was an anti-city bias in Wirth’s approach that reflected a widely found nostalgia in industrial societies for the life of the rural village”. (Scott 2003: 496)

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According to some authors, Wirth’s explanation of the sociology of urban life is nothing more but the attempt at social scientific verification of the ob- vious. For others, such things as an “urban personality” or an “urban way of life” simply do not exist at all. Anyway, although highly criticized, Wirth’s essay — due to many reasons — has become highly influential and his new approach to the city — convincing. It is worth to mention here at least two of his prominent opponents: Anthony Giddens (1981) and Herbert J. Gans (1968).

In Giddens’ view, there is something like a distinctive urban lifestyle on the one hand, while, it cannot be described anymore, on the other. In modern capitalism this is not the place which could be acknowledged as responsible for shaping people’s lifestyles. Instead, how much people earn and what they spend their money on do matter in a given context. In Gans’ view, there is not only one urban way of life. Nonetheless, Wirth gave us detailed descriptions of city conditions and their impact on society, it is not true that people lead the same lifestyles. Among the lifestyles distinguished by Gans are the following: cosmopolites; unmarried and childless; ethnic villagers; the deprived and the trapped. Only the deprived and the trapped were recognized as suffering social anomy, contrary to Wirth’s assumptions pointing to anomy as a natural characteristic of all city dwellers.

There is a long list of Wirth’s opponents and enthusiasts what is not strange taking into account how vital problems concerning modern city and its dwell- ers his short essay comprises. The main objective of the authors of Urbanism as a way of life. Trying to rediscover was to prepare a collection of articles that will show the diversity of perspectives on “urban way of life” in contemporary cities.

The book is opened by “Like fruits of the Bible tree. Moral status of metropolises” in which Piotr Skudrzyk, based on studies of selected intellectuals, concentrates on discovering moral aspects of living in metropolis. To accom- plish the task, he refers to Spengler’s catastrophism and Castells’s theory of network society. Finally, he undertakes an attempt at approaching the concept of the moral status of metropolis in the highest ethical categories.

In her article “Behind the urbanism. Images of the city in modern marketing” Barbara Lewicka tries to reconstruct the image of the city as a large over- populated conurbation, full of alienation, depersonalized interactions in contrast to an attractive place, being synonymous with modern and interesting lifestyle.

The article presents the examples of how associations with the term “urban” are used in marketing campaigns of various products.

Creative class is the subject area of analyses of many contemporary researchers. In her paper “Creative class — around related concepts. An attempt at critical sociological analysis” Małgorzata Suchacka proposes sociological theoretical considerations and critical reflections on the concept of creative class on the basis of several main themes connected with the process of its formation and determinants of its functioning. The aim of the study was to make an attempt

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Foreword

at critical reflection on the concept of creative class with the use of the notions of human and social capital. An attempt was also made to assess usefulness of over a hundred years old concept of leisure class by T. Veblen in the analysis of the notion of creative class. Considerations were focussed on identification of similarities and differences of these two theoretical approaches.

The next study “Spatial identity in the theoretical and empirical contexts” by Krzysztof Bierwiaczonek raises the issue of functioning and importance of the spatial identity. According to Peter Weichhart, one could distinguish three levels of it: individual, social and institutional one. Based on the data presented in the article, it is possible to find out the existence of the community of spatial experience which influences formation of the urban identity both in its individual and social dimension.

In his paper “Living longer in urban environments — developing “age- friendly” cities and communities in selected models” Grzegorz Gawron presents the main assumptions and models comprising the idea of “age-friendly” cities (AFC). The idea (and the article) should be treated as a significant input into discussion on how our cities will look like taking into account needs of contemporary societies among which growing demand for creating concepts securing the future of contemporary societies connected closely with the local (urban) perspective seems the vital one.

The next study “Urban space and sustainable development. Social challenges to contemporary design” by Paulina Rojek-Adamek concentrates on the problem of sustainable development in the perspective of creating urban spaces. Refer- ring to the concept of “sustainable design”, the author presents a wide spectrum of the roles fulfilled by specialists influencing the urban environment, i.e. urban planners, architects, designers. Based on the selected activities of the Design Council (UK), she shows how to ensure sustainable growth and prosperity of residents in long-term development perspective.

In her paper “Urbicide — when the city becomes a target” Karolina Wojtasik explores changes in the urban space resulting from armed conflicts — wars, terrorism or “urbicide”. As a consequence of changes in the attitudes to mili- tary operations, technology development, globalization and the emergence of the “asymetric threats”, armed conflicts moved from the battlefield to the urban space. The cities are fought for. They are taken over being divided into areas of influence of one side of the conflict or another.

The volume is closed by the article “Residents of urban and rural areas. The same or different?” by Zbigniew Zagała. Based on statistics and nationwide sociological research, the author undertakes an attempt at defining the similarities and differences between the residents of cities and villages. How they are perceived by different respondents? Are there or not differences in social perceptions? What is similar and what is different? Those and other questions were tried to be answered.

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As the editors of this volume, we hope that it will be an interesting collection of various perspectives on urban life in modern cities. We also do hope, it will encourage reflection on multidimensionality of this social phenomenon.

Marek S. Szczepański Grzegorz Gawron Barbara Lewicka

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Piotr Skudrzyk

Like fruits of the Bible tree Moral status of metropolises

Double-faced nature of civilization

Metropolises are a core of civilization. We may say this is a statement of fact. Civilization means highly developed way of human life: high technology, high level of organisation, high level of knowing nature, high level of express- ing human feelings, in other words, a developed culture and art. As has been on many occassions said, this level can be reached by common effort of a great number of people. Civilization means an organisation. Centres of such a big and complicated organisation must be very intensive in their structure and functions.

A great number of people and a great number of institutions need to be gathered in a relatively small place. They are metropolises.

We say metropolises are a core of civilization, an essence, flowers or fruits of it, but we do not say metropolises are a heart of civilization. However, we may say they are a heart of civilization bearing in mind they are a big pomp to make goods, technologies, political orders, fashions in architecture, music, painting, clothes and all the other forms of culture up to the ways of eating and life circulate. But we do not mean “heart” in the sense of deep and morally precious emotions. Why? Because we mainly understand civilization as a high technique — a technique in producing goods: material, intellectual and emotional ones. While using the phrase “emotional goods”, I mean feelings experienced by receivers of a huge amount of the forms of professional art ac- cessible on the market. Let us say, the feelings which do not constitute the core of people’s sense of life. The ones that appear with tremendous speech and — as such — disappear setting us free for a moment from harshness of our lives. But

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people’s sense of life is constituted by the feelings experienced in everyday life during confrontation with real problems and institutions.

In the age of Enlightenment, a “civilization” was understood as a social way of life which is rationally, technologically, institutionally and — morally

— higher. Now, civilization is seen as something morally neutral. It is seen as a gigantic process going on by its own logic; a gigantic mill which does not care about an isolated seed. This gigantic process is not concerned with fate of an individual. Because it is gigantic and independent from frail fate of an individual, civilization sometimes shows cynicism being prone to corruption and perversion. This is a frequent theme for intellectuals — to draw bad features of civilisation. We may point out Saint Augustin’s example at the close of antiquity or Jean Jacques Rousseau at the beginning of industrial era.

Metropolises have a particularly bad image. For Oswald Spengler metropolises are fruits and expressions of a deathly process of society’s aging:

A stone colossus of «metropolis» finishes biography of every great culture.

[…] Everybody who will cast a glance from a tower at this sea of houses will find in this fossilized history of a living creature precisely this epoch in which organic growth ends and nonorganic, so unlimited gathering going beyond all horizons begins. […] In every of these wonderful populous metropolises there exists a terrible poverty, a decline of moral standards which just now produces a new primitive man in mansards and attics. […] But no poverty, no compul- sion, even clear consciousness that this course is mad, nothing can diminish an attractive power of these demonic monsters.

(Kołakowski A. 1981: 243, 245—246)

For Spengler metropolis life is cut off from “the cosmic rhythm”. In metropolises we can find entertainment instead of a true joy of life, “a perfumed religious and philosophical cult” instead of “a pure logic of everyday work”

(ibid.: 248). For Spengler a human being ought to feel deeply real everyday life.

This is a true religion not this speculated one. Civilization with its metropolises which heavily lack spirit is in natural stage of an old age; it is close to its natural death.

Today, we usually do not look at civilization in such a catastrophic way.

Michel Foucault — one of the most prominent modern thinkers sensitive to faults and maladies of civilization — defined metropolis as “a seat of paranoia and madness, but also socially desirable behaviours” (Jałowiecki, Szczepański 2002: 9). I try to understand this double-faced attitude toward a metropolis.

Great dangerous faults and great power of positive attraction. Why? Why evil is seen as good? Or, rather, the question should be the opposite one: Why good is seen as evil? Looking this way or another, the answer seems the same: it is because a metropolis is great. Every great power, every great capabilities, every great process, even the one aimed at accomplishing good goals, has its side

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Like fruits of the Bible tree…

effects, its inaccuracies; it is prone to lose its right direction. Because civilization is great and powerful, its side effects and inaccuracies are deep, painful and dangerous. It is a dangerous thing to use a powerful tool even if aimed at fulfilling good goal. Such warnings one can find when buying the items like chain saws and the like equipped with a powerful motor: they are dangerous!

Such a warning one can find in the Bible: “Do not take fruits from the tree of knowledge of good and evil!” Knowledge is dangerous! The biblical order seems strange. Why are we not to try to gain more knowledge? As human beings we feel the opposite: we practically and morally ought to try to know about the world more and more; we ought to develop all sciences. The biblical warning ought to be understood as a warning to be careful during obtaining more knowledge — not as a warning not to get more knowledge at all. The biblical authors broke down under the pressure of danger. Thus, they wrote to us: Do not take these fruits at all! They were only humans. It is true that God speaks to us — as the Christians believe. But, I dare to say, God speaks to us only through human mouth, human psyche and senses which could observe only the natural phenomena. And human psyche is not perfect. One question has been still left:

What do we mean by the word “God”?

A metaphysical meaning of universalism

Let us treat knowledge, civilization and metropolises as the media allowing people to reach higher level of existence, taking into account that they [people]

use or shape them properly. Let us accept that a higher state of existence is an inevitable task for human beings. This is a metaphysical task. We cannot stay at any even good and quality level. We are forced by human internal and the world external natures — especially the nature of our societies — to go further and higher. Knowledge and civilization must extend to infinity: knowledge must extend and try to grasp the Whole Cosmos; civilization must extend over the whole Earth and unite the human race. In such a context, the “universalism”

grows into a problem. Polish famous writer and intellectual Witold Gombrowicz (1904—1969) wrote:

Only universal culture can face up to the world, never local cultures can do this, never these people who live only partial existence. […] a homeland is only one of manifestations of eternal and universal life.

(Cited after Szczepański 2006: 5)

A metaphysical task to go higher and unite wider is difficult because it is the metaphysical one. The Bible authors warned us inventing a metaphor of the

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tree of knowledge of good and evil. Mankind does not obey this warning; all the time it tries to go higher and surely acquires more knowledge. However, it seems that mankind realizes this metaphysical task only as a side effect of limited concrete ends which mainly grasp people’s attention. People feel forced at first to take concrete earthly tasks. Not only because of hard demands of the material life but also because of pleasure and charm of the material successes.

To many people these successes are enough. Great intellectuals seem to be to teach and lead people toward higher goals. But now, postmodernism dominates in the world of intellectuals. In this world there are dominating an idea of equality of all cultures and an idea of scepticism which states that objective evalu- ation of cultures is impossible. An idea of higher goals and, specially, an idea of metaphysical goal seem to be passé, they are felt as something barren and boring. An idea of metaphysical goal and universalism are even accused of being the tools to dominate others who are not directed rightly. They are accused of being a way to totalitarianism.

Leszek Kołakowski has more balanced attitude towards metaphysics and universalism. He believes in “universality of European tradition”, promotes “Euro- centrism” and “superiority of European culture” (Kołakowski 2010: 283, 271, 282).

He promotes universalism but “an inconsistent one”. Kołakowski pronounces “su- periority of European culture” because “it has developed and managed to main- tain being unsure of its own norms” (ibid.: 282—283). He defines it as follows:

This ability to question itself, skill to throw out its self-confidence creates spiritual power of Europe […] We confirm our being Europeans by our ability to keep ourselves at a critical distance from ourselves, by ability to see ourselves through eyes of stranger, by that we appreciate tolerance in public life, scepticism in intellectual work, a need to confront all possible reasons as well in a law procedures as in science, speaking shortly, by that we leave open an area of uncertainty.

(ibid.: 277, 281)

“To leave an area of uncertainty” and “to be unsure of somebody’s own norms” do not only mean “to be uncertain” or “to be unsure”. Kołakowski also uses the terms “universalism” and “superiority”. European culture is unsure of its own norms because it “suspects” there are the better norms — universal, transcendental, metaphysical ones written somewhere in the air. For Kołakowski this is not only the European culture that “feels” universal norms but this is it which does so in the most advanced way. The universality of European culture does not mean uniformity of all the world. This universality is inconsistent.

Culture could interpret universal values in many different and uncertain ways.

The way to universal values is broad. We may head them by many specific paths following this way. We do not have to be postmodern to avoid being fundamen- talist. And we should be grateful to have Kołakowski.

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Universalism versus localism

The higher we are, the more we can see; the more we can grasp or conquer, the more we want. The widest base we have, the highest tower we can built.

The widest area on the Earth is the whole Earth as such. Thus, economic, political and cultural elites tend to be global; they tend to be universal. Economical method of building a high tower demands using as minimum cost-consuming material as possible. The most economical structure is a structure of a network.

The Eiffel Tower could serve here as a metaphor. The Tower stands thanks to its rivets put in cross-points which are nodes for all construction. They must be strong enough. Manuel Castells describes such function of metropolises:

The new global economy and the emerging informational society have indeed a new spatial form, which develops in a variety of social and geographical contexts: mega-cities. […] They are the nodes of the global economy, concen- trating the directional, productive, and managerial upper functions all over the planet […] Mega-cities cannot be seen only in terms of their size, but as a function of their gravitational power toward major regions of the world.

(Castells 2000: 434)

We may use our metaphor of the Eiffel Tower. We may imagine Castells’

global network society as the gigantic Eiffel Tower based on the whole Earth.

All the Tower construction is made from more or less the same material.

A second major trend of cultural distinctiveness of the elites in informational society is to create a lifestyle and to design spatial forms aimed at unifying the symbolic environment of the elite around the world, thus superseding the historical specificity of each local. […] international hotels whose decoration, from the design of the room to the color of the towels, is similar all over the world to create a sense of familiarity with the inner world, while inducing abstraction from the surrounding world […].

(ibid.: 447)

This picture is the opposite to Huntington’s picture of plurality of civilizations clashing with each other. In Castells’ picture there are also different civilizations.

They are different tissues located in space inside cells of the network. These different tissues may also clash with each other. But this is getting less and less important comparing to rising power of one homogenous global network.

In their monograph City and Space in a Sociological Perspective Bohdan Jałowiecki and Marek Szczepański form the term “metropolitan class”. They find ten spheres in which typical features of the metropolitan class could be drawn.

Seven of them are the material ones, like, among others, profession, income,

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place of living, mobility. Three spheres: educational level, cultural capital and wide social identification are of the cultural character describing the ways of thinking (Jałowiecki, Szczepański 2002: 246). I think proportion of these two groups of spheres in authors’ table is adequate to proportion in real life. Three to seven is quite good proportion for culture. A moral level of culture is a different matter. Now, in our analyses we observe a surface layer of culture of metropolitan class: its cultural instruments to build its social position and strength.

A deeper moral level of this culture will be observed below.

Manuel Castells draws a dramatic picture of rising the network society. Glo- bal elites have a huge ability, favourable conditions and attractive perspectives to build economic global network. They climb very high to catch a global view and act in a global space. This space is very distant from earthly space below.

[…] elites are cosmopolitan, people are local. The space of power and wealth is projected throughout the world, while people’s life and experience is rooted in places, in their culture, in their history. […] the logic of global power escapes the socio-political control of historically specific local/national societies.

(Castells 2000: 446)

The sociologist points that “capital is globally coordinated” what makes it enormously powerful; “labor is individualized” what makes it enormously weak (ibid.: 507).

In Castells view this drama is something more than a tension between two different societies: a society of capitalists and a society of workers. It is a tension between two abstract social spaces.

There is not, sociologically and economically, such a thing as a global capitalist class. But there is an integrated, global capital network, whose movements and variable logic ultimately determine economies and influence societies.

[…] [Capitalists] are ultimately dependent upon the non-human capitalist logic of an electronically operated, random processing of information. […] [capitalist classes] prosper as appendixes to a mighty whirlwind which manifests its will by spread points and future options ratings in the global flashes of computer screens. […] Networks converge toward a meta-network of capital that integrates capitalist interests at the global level […].

(ibid.: 505—506)

This space Castells names “the global network of capital”, or, in other words (and simultaneously), “the space of flows”. Those flows are the current flows of information, money, capital and power.

The next space — the one inhabited by workers — is of a different character when compared to the space of capital. Castells calls it “the space of places”.

Here the geographic localization plays its crucial role. This is so due to the relationships between people; those relationships have grown up through gen-

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erations living in that place. On the one hand, localization integrates group as a whole and, on the other hand, it separates one group from another. Thus, “Labor is disaggregated in its performance, fragmented in its organization, diversified in its existence, divided in its collective action”. (ibid.: 506)

Tension is great, dramatically great. The global network is enormously strong and like an avalanche it has to be stronger and stronger. Local people are weak and are getting weaker and weaker. However, getting weaker and being left aside sometimes means getting stronger by a sense of injustice, an emotion of anger. Especially, when this concerns a huge number of people.

Mega-cities are the main points of social space that is the global network.

But they are special points for this second space of people in historical places, too. Mega-cities are not the nodes of space of historical places. The structure and content of historical places was produced historically in other points and areas and still is maintained by them. Mega-cities suck people into their space providing them only with substantial level but not allowing them to participate in economic global network.

[Mega-cities] are also the depositories of all these segments of the population who fight to survive, as well as of those groups who want to make visible their dereliction, so that they will not die ignored in areas bypassed by communication networks.

(ibid.: 434)

A picture which Castells creates we may re-draw using our metaphor of the Eiffel Tower. The tower can be built extremely high under condition it has been not grounded on the sticky soil of historically and psychologically complicated people’s lives. But this undertaking could become a trap. Very high construction free from solid material may rise in a direction that leans from the desired perpendicular. Sooner or later, sloping construction must fall down.

Castells proposes us useful intellectual schemes. He also offers us the flush- es of moral spirit pointing out emphatically miserable, often tragic situation of a great majority of mankind. He exposes the mechanism leading the global net- work to mad, uncontrolled pursuit of wealth. In the prologue to his opus mag- num, he declares his strong opposition to “fundamental split between abstract, universal instrumentalism, and historically rooted, particularistic identities”. He defines this split as the “structural schizophrenia between function and mean- ing”. Castells declares his opposition to postmodern culture which celebrates

“the end of reason, giving up on our capacity to understand and make sense”

(ibid.: 3—4). According to him, rationality, social action and the liberating power of identity could counterbalance “the end of reason” (ibid.: 4).

However, all of this seems too little to me. His moral standpoint seems to break down under the strain of highly abstract academic phrases and empirical data unable to keep up with theoretical constructs. Such phrases and data act

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as nothing more but just building the material for the global academic network which exists for itself far away from the language and emotions of ordinary people rooted in concrete places and concrete life matters. Nevertheless, Castells’

morally precious statements rescue the remnants of our hopes in the academic world.

Some warm words about metropolises

Definitely much more warm words about living in metropolises we can find in a book written by Kwame Anthony Appiah (2008). He was born and grown up in Ghana, highly educated in the United Kingdom and now he works in the United States as a professor of philosophy in Princeton University. Appiah has won a position in an academic global network without leaving strong connec- tions with the soil of his background and its spirit of life. It is really a great achievement. Generally, the academic network tower is specially high because it is built from light and cheap material: it is built from paper. It has effective lifts built from words which are fashionable and free from connection with real life. These lifts can take an intellectualist very quickly to the highest position of paper fame. This career is not only an opportunity — it is an obligation: if You are too heavy You hinder growth of a tower or even threaten its stability.

But happily, the academic network has enough toleration for different kinds of intellectuals including such as Appiah.

Appiah is aware of dramatic tension between the global society and the local ones. He underlines power of the former and weakness of the latter. However, he puts special emphasis on deep moral essence of human universalism. Grow- ing up of the global society is not only achieving by it a great economic power which itself is a great value. Growing up of the global society is achieving a goal immanent to human nature: a goal of unity of mankind. This goal is deeply written in human psyche. We can see it clearly when an unknown stranger finds himself in a dangerous situation. Then we feel we ought to help him first of all leaving aside our interests and interests of our friends and countrymen. If we forget them for a moment and start thinking based on the rules of pure logic we will understand that “national borders are not essential — they are historical contingencies and accidents” (Appiah 2008: 14). He points to Hitler and Stalin as the preachers of loyalty limited to a nation or a class; the preachers who were strongly expelling the loyalty to mankind as a whole (ibid.: 15). The philosopher directs our attention at the most fundamental thought: “Cosmopolitanism has its origin in a simple idea preaching that in the community of mankind as well as in national communities we must develop habits of coexistence”. (ibid.: 17)

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These habits must create something more than “a neat isolation of communities”

(ibid.: 19). Appiah writes about loyalty to mankind in a captivating way: “Cos- mopolitanism is an adventure and an ideal […]” (ibid.: 18). Of course, loyalties to the communities which are closer to us are stronger than loyalties to the more distant communities. However, “[…] there is no conflict between a local loyalty and a universal morality — between being a part of a local place and a part of all mankind”. (ibid.: 17)

Surely, we live in a big amount of communities being emerged one into the bigger another: we live in a close family which is a part of wider family which is a part of a town or a village which is a part of a region and so on. To reconcile loyalties to different communities is not an easy thing; to give up one’s loyalty to a community — whatever defined — is morally and in a long perspective also practically impossible. Although there is no way to avoid conflicts between the loyalties to different communities, there is also possible to build coopera- tion between them and supporting one another. It is dialectics of all things. An attitude which takes stand that “we must disavow local loyalties in the name of this great abstraction which is mankind” is not the mostly desired version of cosmopolitanism (ibid.: 14).

Globalism and universalism are accused of milling all cultures into a one homogenous pulp. Based on his own experience, Appiah could easily deny this rule. He has found that globalisation, on the contrary, has favoured a blossom of local cultures and even has given birth to new ones. Appiah brings memories from his youth when he lived in regional metropolis Kumasi in Ghana. Coming back to his youth while he lived in the regional metropolis of Kumasi in Gha- na, he reminds the Indians, Iranians, Libyans, Chinese, Englishmen, Irishmen, Scots, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians who then lived and worked there. Due to globalisation, living and working there they created diversity of the Kumasi population. However, there are still places that globalisation has not touched yet.

Appiah finds them in the villages near Kumasi (ibid.: 17, 125—126).

It is true that many local identities are threatened by rising economic power of the global network and dangerous changes in global prices and capital circulation. Appiah suggestively describes disintegration of village communities near the metropolis of Kumasi. This disintegration was caused by lowering of global prices of cocoa. Many young people decided to leave their villages, families and communities and to go to cities to look for a new job and a new life. Older people sadly watch old life dying. Appiah writes:

We may sympathise with them. But we cannot force their children to stay there in the name of preservation their authentic culture; and we cannot sub- sidize to infinity thousands of isolated homogenous islands when this is sense- less from economic point of view.

(ibid.: 128)

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Preserving traditional communities in their previous form seems absurd. Ac- cording to Appiah, members of these communities cannot and do not want to preserve their poor old way of life having an opportunity to live better thanks to global civilization. Another thing is to preserve their historic oeuvre. “Preserv- ing culture — in a sense of broadly understood cultural artefacts — differs from preserving cultures”. (ibid.: 130)

Dying of cultures is a natural phenomenon. History as such is full of the cultures that died once, long ago. This must be taken for granted. Now, many traditional local communities very often reach for new technologies to continue producing traditional products, preserving and presenting some of their habits as an artictic show. In these cases, metropolises partly take role of the patrons, doc- tors and protectors of local traditional cultures enabling them the new forms of existence. Thus, universalism and globalism are not the opposites to the diversity of cultures. The true cosmopolitanism takes stand that “Because there are so many human possibilities worth to examine we do not expect or wish for that every person or every society ought to approach one way of life”. (ibid.: 14)

Tension between the global civilization, universalism, cosmopolitanism on the one hand and the local, historical cultures on the other does not have to be tragically enormous. He points to the essential powers engaging on both sides — to connect and build relationships — instead of separating one from the other.

His thought is optimistic in a mature way. And so is his manner of writing:

clear, simple, interesting, although concerning serious problems. His writing is like a letter from human to human.

A moral essence of metropolises

Metropolises are the nodes, crucial points and peaks of contemporary civilization becoming more and more global. They are like fruits of the Bible tree:

they give their inhabitants knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge means the skills, tools, capital, institutions and, in general, the ability to achieve defined goals. The bigger city, the bigger knowledge. The Bible authors were deadly frightened by enormous dimensions of knowledge of good and evil. We are frightened, too — but in another way. We feel a paralysing fear watching and imaging devil activities born in “civilized” contemporary world: watching ter- rorists’ cruelties, powerful tools of destruction invented by states and their ar- mies to harm or kill, watching destruction of human psyche made by drugs and alcohol, watching immoral and illegal activities growing in legal institutions like banks, corporations, whole states and in illegal mafias and other criminal organisations, watching developing of cybercrime, watching avalanches of mar-

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ket victories of expansive mass culture over delicate high culture. A cradle of all of these phenomena are the metropolises. We are frightened. We cannot imagine the evil could be stopped. We have resigned ourselves to our fate: we must live in such a dangerous and spoilt world. We have only a faint, timid hope: we (understood individually, just I and my family and friends) will be lucky, all these devil forces will miss us, we will manage to bypass all these horrors.

But the Bible metaphor has its other side, this better one. Knowledge means also the knowledge of good. The bigger city, the bigger good. We know this, too. It is a reason why we come to metropolises in millions. We come into them hoping to get better job, to live among educated, gentle and colourful people, to make use of wide spectrum of specialized institutions, to visit theatres, fine arts galleries and museums, to listen to music concerts, to live among impos- ing design and architecture. Shortly speaking: to be as close as possible to the achievements of our cilization. It is also true that while meeting a citizen of the metropolises like New York, London or Hong Kong we usually think: How lucky he must be! We boast with pleasure about our visiting any great metropolis, about working there or even cooperating with any firm from there; for every academic it is an honour to publish in any famous academic publishing house connected with some famous university connected with some global metropolis.

The most significant intellectual, civil, human rights, ecologic and artistic movements take their origin, have their centres, lead their activities in metropolises.

We know it all. But we are like the Bible authors. First of all, we see the bad fruits and complain about them. Such an attitude is psychologically comfortable.

We can treat all circumstances of our life as something alien, something stand- ing aside. We do not identify our circumstances as really “ours”. Thus, we can freely complain about our lives here and their meagre conditions, about people, institutions, towns, metropolises or states. Shortly speaking, we can complain about anything we like. And we could dream about other worlds and other ourselves. Not about improving what we have but about being somewhere else.

Instead of working hard on better conditions of our social environment, moving to another one thinking it would be better. But we forget — quite a new social environment does not exist. Emigrating means leaving one’s homeland and changing it into somebody else’s one — with the same problems. With the same ourselves. There is no way to escape from ourselves. There is no way to escape from Reality.

Our life is our love. An old truth taught to us by religions, arts and everyday life. Love understood as a consequence and an open attitude to positive ingre- dients of any object of Reality. The nature of Reality can not be homogeneous.

Multiplicity is its essence. Every object includes infinity of positive elements.

Every object includes infinity of negative ones. No matter if it is the landscape, the living creature, the human, the village, the town, or the metropolis. We should love them all. Without exception to the rule. We should love them as we

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can. We should love life as it is. And this really happens. We love (at least it seems so) our parents and our children. We love our partners, dogs, cats, woods, landscapes, minerals, stars at night. Some of us love their job. Others love their governments.

And, what is of special importance in this book, some of us love metropolises. We can hear about such an attitude to New York, London, Berlin, Sankt Petersburg, Bratislava, Warsaw. A regional Silesian magazine is accompanied by a supplement I love Katowice (i.e. the capital of Silesia). (Almost) everyone admits: a nice and brave watchword. Surely, the words that need courage to be spoken. Declaring love also means evoking positive emotions despite all the bad and harsh features that the object of our love is full of. Among many others, there is one danger that lover should be aware of. He/she may turn out to be naïve.

Being naïve occurs a bitter and destructive thing. Love must be mature. We rarely succeed in accomplishing this feat in relation to our families and friends.

And this is so in relation to towns, metropolises, states and governments.

Love is a delicate phenomenon. It is unexpectedly easy for her to turn into Embarrassment or Hate. Global civilization is also a delicate construction. It is unexpectedly easy for her to turn into a futile chaos of over-complication or barbarity. It can burst into pieces at any moment. In complicated world full of greed, injustice and anger economic breakdown is possible at any moment.

Nuclear weapons has been found out long ago. Civilization and Love are similar in structures. They need one another. Civilization is a great task, a great task needs great intellect and, first of all, great positive emotions.

Metropolises are crucial nodes of civilization. And civilization is a crucial form of our life. Thus, metropolises are crucial for our life. Our life always needs love from us. Metropolises also do. To love means to put down somebody’s roots very deeply in activity, human or (minor or bigger) town. Deep roots stabilize. Deep roots enable to keep contact with the essence. With that what is deeply inside often hidden by severe and harsh surface. Moral values of metropolises are based on their [metropolises’] deep possibilities. A moral admirer of metropolises must be like a miner: he must be brave, hard, patient, stubborn, resistant to dirty and dangerous situations and, first of all, he must have a strong, clear heart to extract the gold of Life. Our life is our love. Our love is our life.

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References

Appiah K.A. (2008). Kosmopolityzm. Etyka w świecie obcych [Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in the World of Strangers, 2006]. Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka.

Castells M. (2000). The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. 1. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford UK, Malden USA: Blackwell Publishers.

Jałowiecki B., Szczepański M.S. (2002). Miasto i przestrzeń w perspektywie socjologicznej [Town and Space in a Sociological Perspective]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.

Kołakowski A. (1981). Spengler. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo „Wiedza Powszechna”.

Kołakowski L. (2010). Szukanie barbarzyńcy. Złudzenia uniwersalizmu kulturalnego [Look- ing for a Barbarian. Illusions of a Cultural Universalism]. In L. Kołakowski, Nasza wesoła apokalipsa. Wybór najważniejszych esejów [Our Merry Apocalypse. A Selection of the Best Essays]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak.

Szczepański M.S. (2006). Między domem a kosmosem. Ojczyzny prywatne a system światowy [Between Home and Cosmos. Private Homelands and the World System]. Katowice: Biuro Rektora Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.

Quotations have been translated by Piotr Skudrzyk.

Jak owoce z biblijnego drzewa Moralny status metropolii

St reszczenie

Autor artykułu rozważa moralną atmosferę wobec metropolii obecną w pracach wybranych intelektualistów. Szkicuje katastrofizm Spenglera, a następnie teorię globalnego społeczeństwa sieci Castellsa. Szczególnie pozytywny materiał znajduje w pracy amerykańskiego filozofa z po- chodzenia z Ghany — Kwame Appiaha. Na końcu formułuje własną próbę, w której rozważa moralny status metropolii w najwyższych kategoriach etycznych.

Słowa klucze: cywilizacja, metropolia, moralność, uniwersalizm, lokalność

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Barbara Lewicka

Behind the urbanism

Images of the city in modern marketing

The history of civilization can be written in terms of the history of cities.

Louis Wirth

In his book Understanding Popular Culture John Fiske mentions research pertaining to the perception of an everyday object: jeans. During his or her life, almost every Westerner — and not only them — owns anywhere between a few to a few dozen pairs of those trousers. This is not what the analysis is about, however. Fiske undertakes a semiotic interpretation of advertisements for the famous Levi’s 501 and 505. Leaving aside the differences present in advertisements for the separate models, the British culture scholar’s conclusion is worth quoting even — or maybe particularly — because it encapsulates something about how objects other than Levi’s, or jeans in general, are promoted. Fiske writes:

Hence, designer jeans (or designer objects in general — BL) express market segmentation and social difference; they leave behind common values and nature, while approaching culture with all its complexities. Wearing designer jeans is supposed to make the wearer stand out, it is using a socially marked accent in the modern language; it means an advance into a more exclusive part of society, moving into a city and acquiring its sophistication (em- phasis mine — BL), joining a group of people who follow fashion and stand out in society.

(Fiske 2010: 7)

Hence, city life turns out to be one of the synonyms of a “better life”, in opposition to staleness, monotony, being behind the times: values characteristic of the stereotypical perception of the province. Fiske sums it up in a short

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list, pointing out, among others: tradition, immutability, labour, classlessness and, simply, rurality (ibid.). Sounds familiar? It is impossible here to avoid an association with what is probably the most seminal position in urban studies — Louis Wirth’s famous essay Urbanism as a Way of Life. To put it shortly, he found that millions of social activities make the city go round in fast, loud and intensive manner. Therefore city as a concentration of population is an opposition to small, calm, quiet and sacred countryside.

For Wirth, cities are spaces of diversity, understood not only in the social context and therein defined as heterogeneity, but also:

An industrial city will differ significantly in social respects from a commercial, mining, fishing, university and, capital city. A one industrial city will present different sets of social characteristics from a multi-industry city, as will an industrially balanced from an imbalanced city, a suburb from a satellite, a residential suburb from a satellite, a residential suburb from industrial suburb, a city within a metropolitan region from one lying outside, an old city from a new one, a southern city from a New England, a middle-western from a Pacific Coast city, a growing from a stable and from dying city.

(Wirth 1938: 6—7)

— writes Wirth vividly and even if this statement does not seem very complex today, one must focus on the issue of ideal urban types. They are what Wirth tries to write about; eighty years after the essay’s publication, they form the basis for a certain matrix of urbanity. From the American scholar’s perspective the city, the West’s cultural inevitability, is a space of — as it is fashionably described — dysfunction. Anomie, urban schizophrenic personality, alienation, weakening of relationships: those are just a few of the problems he describes.

After all, the large size, density and diversity of the population and stark division of labour in the city result in, among others, disaffection, postponed mar- riage trends, growing proportion of singles, high crime and civilization diseases rates etc. However, Wirth’s approach seems ambivalent — on the one hand he is sceptical about modern urbanized forms, but on the other he says: “The history of civilization can be written in terms of the history of cities”. (ibid.) Further- more, city life means cultural facilities and activities — museums, galleries, parks, cinemas, theatres, clubs, restaurants, cabarets: the big city lights. So no matter how hard city life is, Wirth also stresses that: “Metropolitan civilization is without question the best civilization that human beings have ever devised”.

(ibid.)

Possibly it is in the very capacious phrase best civilization ever that one could find the source of the notion of a city as the promised space, a place em- bodying a range of desirable values — a notion which, simultaneously, ignores the city’s dark aspects. As the French semiotician Raymond Ledrut wrotes: “The city is a symbol and there is a symbolization of the city, but it is in the image

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Behind the urbanism…

itself, apprehended through and by discourse, that what the city represents for men (sic) is revealed and expressed and that the city and its aspects are manifest- ed in various figures […]”. (Ledrut 1986: 223) Those various figures permeate each other and coexist — at various times some of them dominate others. They are perpetuated and communicated by diverse means: from an everyday urban to story to complicated media transmissions. In the recipients’ consciousness, then, there exists a range of visions of urbanity and urban lifestyle, and one of them — namely the one which dominates the enthusiastic, energetic, colourful advertising messages — seems particularly interesting.

In Wirth’s study — it is necessary to return to it for a moment — we see a simplified description of the city (and the country); despite its social, functional and cultural diversities urban space is something of a resultant which symbol- ises urbanity. As in the times of the Chicago school, now, in post-modernity, we observe the multitude of its patterns. “The city has historically been the melting- pot of races, peoples and cultures, and a most favourable breeding-ground of new biological and cultural hybrids”. (Wirth 1938: 10), notes Wirth, which could be supplemented with a statement that the city is — on the one hand — created upon this multiplicity, and on the other — acts like a magnet and a driving force for the constant growth of this same multiplicity. This neverending process makes the notion of urbanity quite precise. Characterising so-called “urbanity”

turns out to be, however, simultaneously simple and complex. As Wirth points out: “The city consequently tends to resemble a mosaic of social worlds in which the transition from one to the another is abrupt”. (ibid.) Constant, unpredictable change; the varied character of urbanised areas; the coexistence within one unit of dissimilar districts, quarters, streets — all of this means that a synthetic definition of “urbanity” slips away in the urban diversity. The Swiss architect Christoph Gantenbein says in an interview:

[…] urbanity is a very nebulous idea. It would be difficult to formulate a good

“definition”, to determine what urbanity is supposed to mean in modern times.

In 19th century France this word had a very precise meaning — the bourgeois society, wide boulevards, very formal spaces. At various times urbanity meant various things. Today we experience a complete lack of a cohesive idea, of constructive propositions […].

(Gantenbein: 2012)

Even if Gantenbein’s argument could be seen as postmodern grumbling, it should be emphasised that in our times the definition of urbanity is becoming more and more complex, because it encompasses such diverse spheres of life as, for instance, administration, demography, politics, cultural and social heritage, multiculturality, but also divergent styles of life, activity, beliefs and behaviours, etc. A certain image does emerge, however, from the whole urbanised chaos. Urbanity is frequently described through lifestyle, which — in common

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parlance — evokes specific, yet manifold associations. Those are present in everyday usage, and thanks to this easy to define. This is also influenced not only by the transmission of general knowledge, but by the presence of mass media messages, which increasingly make us perceive the city as a commercial object. “The product that is the city […] is a combination of specific, tangible, but also elusive and abstract components, which, related to each other, create a kind of effect which is an “experience”, available to the consumer at a specific price”. (Glińska, Florek, Kowalewska 2009: 20) — we read in an urban marketing handbook. The point here is not only the issue of promoting a city in the way other products are promoted, but mostly about using urban symbolism when creating systemic campaigns. The experience of urbanity that they feature seems to be a sum of particular values, emphasising what may be most attractive or even exciting to the advertisement’s viewers. It is equated with specific products — the so-called urban must haves. When you claim that you have followed the newest urban fashion trends, see if you have some of the basic fashion key items in your collection (http://woylaa.com/5-must- have-newest-urban-fashion-trends-of-the-season/) — says the online edition of a fashion magazine. The conclusion is clear: to keep your head above the city’s current, you have to surround yourself with specific items. The universal idea of “the urban”, omnipresent in avertising, also appears. It is a buzzword that can be used to promote practically everything, from writing utensils (Parker Urban ballpoint pens were designed to impress. The effect is a combination of ergonomics and art. The shape of the nib and a wide range of colours make Parker Urban memorable. If you care about having a modern image, choose this model. Urban stands for the city and this is exactly what those Parker pens are supposed to bring to mind — modernity and style. (http://www.parker- sklep.pl/kat57-urban-fashion.php)) to food (Urban Style Food is the synonym for good, healthy food in its best urban version. The flavours and style are typical for the streets of the metropolis. The appearance, method of serving and the pleasure of every bite express a modern approach to the cuisine of dynamic city streets. (http://www.urbanstylefood.pl)). Thus we know that the city offers the temptation of both style and modernity. But it is tempting also, or maybe mostly because it is a dynamic structure: it represents constant change, is the reverse of permanence and irrevocability — that is, simply, boredom. Accord- ing to Zygmunt Bauman:

It is the consumers who constantly desire new stimuli and get bored with every new attraction quickly. […] The market is ready to make people dependent on itself and change its attractions with increasing speed. […] One can live it up, enjoying everything the world has to offer, in many ways: one cannot just exclaim in the way of Goethe’s Faust “Beautiful moment, do not pass away!”.

The consumer is a person of movement and must stay that way.

(Bauman 2003: 143)

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The huge metropolis offers such movement, bustle, concentration of activity.

And even if we assume that in fashion, as well as in human habits, everything has already been said, the city puts new elements in motion. It is said there are cities that never sleep, and they are the trendsetters. It is to describe them sub- liminally that one chooses from a palette of patterns what at that moment one wants to combine, unexpectedly, with something it had never been paired with before, using an easily identifiable urban background.

If in fashion and marketing the urban signifies what is chosen, what is the object of desire, it turns into a commodity, although, of course, not for everybody and not forever. “Walking amongst the shops, the consumer actualises and realis- es in practice a particular philosophy of life […]”. (Douglas 2008: 342) — points out Mary Douglas in her essay In the Defence of Shopping. There are three key problems here: firstly, for whom, in fact, does “urban” mean “attractive”, and for whom does urbanity determine lifestyle; secondly — what character does this attractive urbanity have; and, thirdly, where does its image come from.

In relation to the first aspect we would do well to return to the theory of four cultures determining consumer choice. People adopt specific attitudes towards the material goods on offer. Those can be defined along the lines of the following cultures: individualistic, hierarchical, egalitarian or isolated. The more or less (un)conscious decision about belonging to one of those orders makes the consumer a recipient of certain advertising messages, and thereafter — of goods constituting a lifestyle. To put it very shortly, the first approach, the individualistic one, is “choosing a life of competition, open networks of communication, joy, the ability to use available modern technology, a fit and groomed body, agility, cunning, risky and extreme entertainment and the freedom of constantly changing obligations and one’s commitment” (ibid.). The second, hierarchical, is focused on tradition, institution, family values and close relationships with friends. The third (egalitarian) “prefers equality, simplicity, honesty, intimate and genuine friendships and spiritual values” (ibid.), while rejecting lavishness, artificiality and excessive formality of relationships. Finally, the fourth — isolated — negates all the others, remains beyond the sphere of influence, is a certain departure from the mainstream and the rat race (ibid.). Like every other typology, this one is not ideal, but a good starting point for further analysis. It is not hard to guess that the city or urbanity become a marketing platform for recipients ascribing to the individualistic culture; the country, small towns or the province in general will appear much more frequently in messages intended for representatives of the second culture — the hierarchical one. In spite of stark differences separating consumer attitudes, it must be emphasised that elements of the city-country and individualistic-hierarchical culture continuum are not always positioned in a binary opposition. Interestingly, in some contexts both the urban (individualistic) life model and the rural (hierarchical) one coexist in advertising. Even a cursory read-through of magazines or websites shows that

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urbanity addressed to adherents of the first culture is used when promoting clothing, cosmetics or everyday accessories. But in messages related to interior design, especially in the context of kitchen spaces, there are motifs harking back to the second, rustic/ludic one, which is still, however, embedded in the landscape of an urban jungle. May the advertising campaign Country feel in the city be an example: it encourages consumers to complement ultramodern living spaces with folk elements. This, however, is a digression which would require a wider study, so it shall not be discussed here. In very broad terms, advertising messages using the urban formula are addressed mainly to young, resourceful members of the middle class who are attracted to the new, both unattached individuals and families.

Scholars of modern culture point out that: “Consumption is a significant part of circulation of shared and conflicted meanings we call culture. We communicate through what we consume. Consumption is perhaps the most visible way in which we stage and perform the drama of self-formation. We communicate by how we consume!” (Storey 2003: 78) Hence if, while shopping, the consumer chooses goods equated with success, self-reliance, independence, speed, variety, intensity of experiences etc. — because this is, after all, what the city is all about in the popcultural message — this means that he or she has those characteristics too. The city of the advertisement is like a screening of subsequent episodes of an urban series such as Sex and the City; full of freedom, glamour, good taste, lack of inhibitions, all the hedonistic pleasures on designer high heels.

Such an understanding of urbanity is based on images of the few metropolises whose character — genius loci — is multiplied in millions of idealised visual repetitions. It is not the urban slums or minority districts that become backgrounds for advertising campaigns of the urban type, but city centres, modern buildings, possibly spaces related to sports and leisure¹. It should be borne in mind, however, that urbanity carries diverse associations, and even adjacent de- notations can be valued differently. The problem of the urban hustle and bustle can be an example: to some researchers it is a synonym of the difficulties of city life, while to others — a symbol of enthusiastically accepted urban dynamics.

This could be a trap, if not for the first and most important rule of marketing

— the advertising message is always directed at a particular recipient; in this case it will be a representative of the first culture, and things that may be unac- ceptable to others (such as the dynamics, variety, openness etc.) will be precisely the most attractive to him or her.

As an example, let us take the brand philosophy of two popular, afford- able cosmetic companies: Maybelline New York (paradoxically, owned by the L’Oreal Paris concern) and Rimmel (owned by Coty Inc.).

1 Of course there are advertising campaigns such as, for example, the Nike campaign, which depict derelict spaces as well, but they are more about sport than the urban.

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Table 1 Examples of the advertising campaigns

Maybelline New York Rimmel London

With the glamour and energy of New York City, the ultimate makeup innova- tions, and the latest fashion looks from the catwalk to the sidewalk, Maybelline New York empowers women all over the world to express their personal “it”

factor. (emphasis mine — BL)

(http://www.loreal.com/brands/consum er-products-division/maybelline-new- york.aspx)

Beauty made in London is witty, edgy and street- wise. It’s about setting trends, not following them.

It’s about experimentation and self-expression. In a word, it’s about having fun. And Rimmel’s afford- able range of colourful, contemporary, high-quality products is designed to enable real women to do just that. Why have one identity when you can have as many as you like? With Rimmel, changing your look is as easy as hopping on the London Tube and switch- ing from Soho to Camden, from Portobello to Notting Hill. (emphasis mine — BL)

(http://us.rimmellondon.com/content/about-rimmel)

This is how the image of beauty brands is defined online. The advertising campaigns obviously relate to cities that appear in their very names. They are linked with words such as glamour, energy, witty or streetwise. Through a chain of associations the consumers themselves, in an affinity with the cities they model themselves on, attain the personal “it” factor. Use our products, be like New York/London! Even be New York/London, and everything that’s best about them! — is what the advertisements seem to shout. It is interesting, however, that in the above-mentioned descriptions the word “New York” could be exchanged with “London” and vice versa, and the texts would still be logi- cal. What is more, if one removes the city names, it would be de facto impos- sible to tell which one advertises Maybelline and which — Rimmel. Hence, the advertising message is not making use of a particular city, but of urbanity in general. Although London and New York are very specific and, in many ways, different cities, this is more about the image of their potential, entrenched in the collective consciousness, than of concrete spaces. The city as a vague con- struct is a carrier of meanings — of characteristics stripped of a wider context, combined to create an untrue, but very popular image: the commercial urbanity with its tempo, rhythm, dynamics, fast changes, vibrancy, history, architecture, people… How far it is from Wirth’s description, diagnosing practically the same reality

The highlighted mobility of the individual, which brings him [a man — BL]

within the range of stimulation by great number of diverse individuals and subject him to fluctuating status in differentiated social groups that compose the social structure of the city tends toward the acceptable of instability and insecurity in the world at large as a norm.

(Wirth 1938: 16)

Urbanism as a way of life : trying to rediscover

Urbanism as a way of life

Trying to rediscover

Urbanism as a way of life

Trying to rediscover

Marek S. Szczepański Grzegorz Gawron

Barbara Lewicka

Table of Contents

Foreword

Like fruits of the Bible tree Moral status of metropolises

Double-faced nature of civilization

A metaphysical meaning of universalism

Universalism versus localism

Some warm words about metropolises

A moral essence of metropolises

References

Behind the urbanism

Images of the city in modern marketing