Cities for the Many Not the Few

For Doreen Massey, every place poses a challenge, “the challenge of negotiating a here-and-now” – or what she called throwntogetherness. In this episode, we hear about different struggles to make cities more liveable – and more just – for the many, not the few. We discuss various limitations of the dominant political structures and why it is crucial to put continuous pressure on those who hold power.

Agata Lisiak and her co-host for this episode, Anna Richter, speak to geographer Ash Amin about urban commons and social empowerment. Urban scholar Carmel Christy K J tells us about the intersections of social and environmental justice in the port city of Kochi, and anthropologist Ayşe Çavdar uncovers the politics of mass housing projects in Turkey. Also, Anna and Agata make use of the sunny weather to go to a park and ask Berliners what they think makes a good city. 

What do you think makes a good city? Please let us know by filling out this form.

Episode Credits 

Host: Agata Lisiak
Co-host: Anna Richter
Guests: Ash Amin, Carmel Christy, Ayşe Çavdar
Also Featured: Doreen Massey
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone 
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks: Serpentine Gallery  
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review. 

Episode Resources
Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:
Doreen Massey interviewed at London’s Serpentine Gallery, 2006
Cities for the Many Not the Few, with Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift (Policy Press, 2000)
For Space (Sage, 2003)
On Space and the City. In: City Worlds, edited by John Allen, Doreen Massey and Steve Pile (Routledge, 1999)

Recommended resources:
Land of Strangers, Ash Amin (Polity, 2013)
Grammars of the Urban Ground, edited by Ash Amin and Michele Lancione (Duke UP, 2022)
Ekümenopolis, dir. Ucu Olmayan Şehir (2012) 
Geniş Zaman – a weekly YouTube program on contemporary political issues hosted by Ayşe Çavdar and Aysuda Kölemen (in Turkish)
The ‘Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen’ initiative
Housing Expropriation Referendum in Berlin: How it was won and what comes next?, Urban Political podcast, 2021
Housing Struggles in Berlin: Part I Rent Cap, Urban Political podcast, 2021
Housing struggles in Berlin: Part II Grassroots Expropriation Activism, Urban Political podcast, 2021
Richter, A. and D. Humphry. 2021. Ja! Damit Berlin unser Zuhause bleibt! That Berlin will remain our home! حتى تظل برلين بيتنا Berlin evimiz k

Transcript

Anna Richter reading Doreen Massey  0:01  
People come to cities for a whole variety of reasons, from positive choice to imposed necessity. The element of movement and migration, within and between, is an important aspect of today's city. But cities are also settlements and a continuing question ... necessarily has to concern how such differences are to live together. 

Agata Lisiak  0:24  
Hello and welcome to Spatial Delight, a podcast about space, society and power inspired by geographer Doreen Massey. I'm your host, Agata Lisiak, Associate Professor of Migration Studies at Bard College Berlin. In Episode Three, we talked about London, a world city that's been shaped by globalisation and continues to affect places far beyond it. In this episode titled Cities for the Many, Not the Few, we'll look at three other cities: Berlin, Kochi and Istanbul, and we'll continue to ask: who are cities for? How are they governed? What makes a good city?

Agata Lisiak  1:05  
I've been thinking and writing about cities for a long time. And I've been very lucky to meet amazing scholars, activists and artists along the way. Their work inspires and challenges how I understand cities, and how I experience them. One of those people is Dr. Anna Richter, this episode's co-host. Anna studied sociology and English literature, taught at HafenCity University in Hamburg, and is now an independent editor and translator. She's one of the editors of the academic journal City, to which Doreen Massey also contributed.

Agata Lisiak  1:38  
Hallo, Anna! Thanks for joining me. 

Anna Richter  1:40  
Hi! 

Agata Lisiak  1:41  
As we heard in a previous episode, Doreen Massey was a lifelong fan of Liverpool Football Club. You also have an important connection to Liverpool, right? 

Anna Richter  1:49  
Yes, actually, I also have a passion for Liverpool FC. But my interest in that city goes beyond football. In 2008 Liverpool was the European Capital of Culture, a prestigious title awarded to two cities in Europe every year. Many cities want this distinction, because it comes with serious investments and international attention. Liverpool promoted urban regeneration projects so I went there to conduct research on the politics of regeneration through culture. I found that it benefited some people in the city, but definitely not the many. 

Agata Lisiak  2:25  
And Liverpool is hardly an exception. In the late 20th century city governments across the world eagerly promoted spectacular developments. This is what geographer David Harvey calls urban entrepreneurialism. Cities adopt a corporate logic and act like businesses, they compete with each other for investments, tourists and media attention. Massey was outspoken in her criticism of such bombastic urban projects. Here's what she said in 2006 about London's bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012. 

Doreen Massey  2:57  
I was not in favour of the Olympic bid. No. In part because the Olympics has become such a kind of marketing vehicle for a small number of major corporations. So the whole business from what the Olympics are to: is that the only way we can regenerate the Lee Valley and the East End? No, of course it's not. There are other ways of doing that, which are much more bottom up, which are much more street level, which are much more community based. And that was what I think in the 1980s, not just in London, but in lots of cities - the old municipal left as we used to call it - that's what we were trying to do. That was the, in a sense, when the social democratic consensus broke down in this country between the 60s, 70s, 80s, there were different ways out of it. There was Thatcherism and neoliberalism and the far right. And there was a breakout to the left, and some of the municipal socialism of that period was trying to think about what that might be. The Labour Party, of course, was terrified by any idea like that. It found itself in this vacuum called the Third Way, refused to stand up for the other alternative and Thatcherism won out. And here we are, that is how I would see that trajectory. (Doreen Massey speaking at London's Serpentine Gallery, 2006. Recording used with permission.)

Anna Richter  4:13  
It's the bread-and-circuses logic that Massey critically addresses. She elaborated that critique in a pamphlet called "Cities for the many not the few", which she wrote with geographers Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift.

Agata Lisiak  4:27  
European Capitals of Culture, Olympic Games, fancy waterfronts and flashy housing estates claim to produce exactly that: cities for the many, not the few. 

Anna Richter  4:37  
But if you look below this glossy surface, or just around the corner, it's clear that this kind of urban development excludes most people. 

Agata Lisiak  4:46  
We reached out to one of the co-authors of the pamphlet, Ash Amin. He's a geographer at the University of Cambridge and he's actually the reason you and I know each other, Anna. 

Anna Richter  4:54  
Right! We first met at a lecture he gave at Berlin's Humboldt University back in 2012.

Agata Lisiak  5:00  
Oh my god, I can't believe it's been over a decade! 

Anna Richter  5:02  
I know... The pamphlet "Cities for the many not the few" was a response to a policy report published by the UK Urban Task Force in 1999.

Ash Amin  5:13  
The report was, it was actually quite dazzling in many ways, led by a very iconic, famous architect, and it was also typically and understandably quite design-led. But it struck us - as a group and the three of us who drafted this report - as quite romantic in its approach, and a bit elitist in the sense that it, although it made allusions to the need for cities to be reoriented, restructured for the people who live in them, I think much of that responsibility of regenerating the city, they saw that it should lie in the hands of people who are in the planning and design and architectural industry. And so what we wanted to do was to look at the city as it really exists, as a space of fragments, exclusions, constant returns to those who hold power or those whose voices the loudest, and we proposed an urbanism, which would tackle these issues of the city on the ground itself, through a politics of social empowerment, of creating conducive environments for the ordinary resident, and above all, a city that is governed in fair, inclusive and democratic ways. So what we did, I think, in this pamphlet, was to put the political city before the city of new design.

Agata Lisiak  6:48  
Massey's commitment to political thinking manifested not only in her activism, but also in her academic work. One important concept she developed is a bit of a tongue twister: throwntogetherness. Not a word you will find in any dictionary. Let's hear from Ash what it means. 

Ash Amin  7:04  
Throwntogetherness is what makes contemporary urban life in all of its aspects, things coming together from near and afar, and life itself in the city produced as a result of this throwntogetherness. So relationality becomes the vector through which public life - and private life - in the city emerges. And this relationality is the product of things, materials, people, cultures in one place, coming together, juxtaposed together. Juxtaposition was a very important metaphor for Doreen. But what we shouldn't rush to conclude is that throwntogetherness is like a free for all, a republic of pluralism, in which all manner of possibilities may emerge. There's a tendency sometimes to think of throwntogetherness as a positive force, working for the many and not the few. And I think that's a mistaken reading of throwntogetherness. It's certainly a mistaken reading of Doreen Massey because throwntogetherness is also very much about particular forces of power and control, actively at work, ranging from those of political economy, that is the power of the state and of markets and how they structure the city. But also, the forces of, let's call them biopolitics, that is, a machinery of judgement of the value of particular subjects: people of colour as opposed to majorities or migrants as opposed to men. With these kind of forces of political economy and biopolitics are always at work, directing throwntogetherness towards particular outcomes, and normally those outcomes privilege the few and not the many.

Agata Lisiak  9:24  
Development projects, even those with apparently good intentions, frequently leads to entire communities losing their habitat and being displaced. We contacted someone who has been working on these issues for years. Dr. Carmel Christy KJ, an urban scholar at the University of Delhi. 

Anna Richter  9:42  
We met with Carmel over zoom to discuss the effects of modernization projects in Kochi in the Indian state of Kerala. 

Carmel Christy  9:51  
As a port city Kochi has gone through a lot of transformations along its seashores, in which many communities - especially shore communities - have been displaced for development. For instance, the major developments along the seashores in Kochi such as Cochin Ports Limited, Cochin Shipyard Limited and, more recently, International Transshipment Terminal. All these enterprises came into place after displacing large numbers of shore communities from the shores. And as per the Indian laws, since the compensation and rehabilitation of displaced communities is not clearly enunciated, many of them are still not fully rehabilitated. And there are many protests and struggles which are still happening, asking for rehabilitation and compensation for the land from which they were evicted. And many of them also kind of put forward this statement that a land that you leave behind is not just a piece of land, but it's also a way of life that you have cultivated, your livelihood, your life itself. So how do you compensate for that land is also another big question. 

Agata Lisiak  11:04  
Carmel's focus on the intricate meanings and value of land resonates with Massey's insistence that geography matters. Massey resisted generalisations and asserted that all social processes are time and place specific. 

Carmel Christy  11:19  
I think this also has to do with the geographical location of the islands in the city. They're almost like an addendum to the city. But at the same time, islands are a crucial geographical formation, which gave birth to the natural report of Cochin in its current location. And in the post-independence development narratives, the islands were not the focus of many, you know, development projects, or the islands were not fully developed on par with the Kochi metropolitan area. So one thing these protesters clarified was that it is not that we do not need development, we do need development, we do need electricity, we do need dams. But what we are talking about is sustainable development. We do not need big dams, we need to think about sustainable dams, which are probably more environment friendly, which are more community friendly. There needs to be development, which considers different sections in society, it shouldn't be just for one section of the society to thrive. So it's very important to bring in the question of social justice in the paradigm of development and environment. And therefore it should also be a space where all kinds of people can organise themselves, they can express their opinions, they can also dissent if the city is not offering them what they rightfully need. So the city should be open, and it should be open enough to democratise itself again and again. It should also be a space where everybody can contribute to the creation of the cultural, economic, or material space of the city. And they should also be able to enjoy the benefits of what they create, or what others create, as part of urban space-making.

Anna Richter  13:18  
How do we create such spaces: open, inclusive, enjoyable? Who takes charge? How do we agree on what's best for our cities? 

Agata Lisiak  13:29  
As Carmel says, we need to carefully designed infrastructure that makes cities liveable for all. 

Anna Richter  13:34  
And design is also a hugely political issue, says Ash Amin. 

Ash Amin  13:40  
Design in the hands of appropriate political leaders and planners has the sweeping ability, I think, to construct cities of the future according to a particular blueprint of the good life. But therein lies some of the problems as well, which have to do with the pretence of being able top-down to engineer life prospects and well-being prospects for everybody. Design comes with its own violence, of excluding some people and not others, some environments and not others, forcing a kind of pathway to prosperity that people on the ground may not actually approve of, and create structures in the city - which might be infrastructures or buildings or environments - which are, in some ways, quite oppressive. Modernist planning created structures which were well intentioned because they were supposed to make the life prospects of the poor much much better by providing decent housing, breathable air, little garden sometimes in the Garden City movement. But with these attempts to engineer the future, I think came an awful lot of difficulties of cramped space, of enforced forms of living, and so on and so forth. 

Anna Richter  15:22  
And it's not just infrastructure design that can produce enforced forms of living. The political design of housing projects can be harmful too, even when they're promoted a social improvements. To better understand such dynamics, we spoke to Dr. Ayşe Çavdar who has been analysing housing developments in Istanbul for many years. 

Agata Lisiak  15:44  
Ayşe is an anthropologist and journalist, and she's currently my colleague at Bard College Berlin. 

Anna Richter  15:49  
We met with Ayşe in Berlin's Gleisdreieck Park on a very hot summer day, right before an epic storm. 

Agata Lisiak  15:57  
Turkey, where Ayşe is from, has been experiencing a housing boom for a couple of decades now. Here's how it started. 

Ayşe Çavdar  16:04  
Since the beginning, Erdoğan, Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party, the AKP, have promoted the construction sector as a dynamo of the national economy. This approach was strictly in line with the classical promise of populism, of course: investing in the construction sector, they aim to give everyone a dream of owning proper house. Plus, they wanted to create the impression that unemployment is decreasing especially in big cities, thanks to the construction industry. Finally, they also created an illusion of prosperity by boosting consumption. The slums, I mean, gecekondu neighbourhoods - in Turkish, we call them gecekondu neighbourhoods - and other poor historical areas in the big cities, especially in Istanbul, were the first and most affected by the urban transformation policy of the AKP. First of all, most of the unemployed people were living in the slums, in gecekondu neighbourhoods, they were complaining of the uncertainty regarding the property status of their houses and the lack of infrastructure when it comes to especially gecekondu neighbourhoods because they are informal neighbourhoods, that's why their property status was not determined, was not clear. And also, they were looking for - the gecekondu dwellers - looking for opportunities to jump to the upper classes. So the urban transformation and destruction of gecekondu neighbourhoods, paradoxically, emerged as the original promise of Erdoğan to his lower-class supporters, I should say, it was like Erdoğan came to power promising: I will destroy your neighbourhoods and your houses.

Anna Richter  17:54  
The Housing Development Administration essentially forces people into poverty. It steals people's housing and communities and sells them life-long mortgages. 

Ayşe Çavdar  18:06  
Working classes became even more vulnerable to economic and political crisis because they are now in debt to the banks for very, very long terms. On the other hand, it is unclear if the new houses in the gated communities built by Housing Administration are better than gecekondus; regarding their quality, there are many problems. What is important is that their property status is even more unstable than gecekondus as they depend on long term loans. I mean, if a family cannot pay their instalments for three months, they might lose their houses and also savings so this is the biggest crisis. The AKP uses this risk as an advantage in every election. They have taken everyone living in the one million houses built in urban transformation project in the last 18 years as their electoral hostages. However, this advantage doesn't work anymore it seems, as we saw in the last local elections in 2019: the AKP lost both Ankara and Istanbul, these are the cities subjected to destructive urban transformation, more than any city in Turkey.

Agata Lisiak  19:28  
Ayşe sees a glimpse of hope in electoral politics. AKP's loss in Turkey's major cities is an important signal for sure, but that's not where the struggle for a more equal city ends. 

Ash Amin  19:39  
Power left to its own devices, whether it is at the state level or at the urban level, will make the city in its own image and for the interests of those who wish to advance. So it then follows, I think, that the only way to change things is to make sure that you have organised power from below, that communities and neighbourhoods and those who feel disaffected and alienated come together to make their voices be heard, to demand that their interests are represented, and to put continuous pressure on those who hold power to give way.

Anna Richter  20:28  
We're recording this episode in Berlin where a year ago we had a successful referendum on the expropriation of corporate landlords. That is, Berlin voted to take back properties from real-estate companies that own more than 3000 housing units. That gives them too much control over the city's rental prices. 59% of the votes supported plans to take back these large housing stocks and turn them into affordable public housing. The referendum was a serious step towards social justice in the housing market. For months before the vote the city was covered in campaign stickers, posters and banners in multiple languages, speaking to Berlin's residents in their native tongues. 

Agata Lisiak  21:16  
Yes, it was amazing! I remember the first time I saw a poster that addressed me in Polish: "aby Berlin pozostał naszym domem" (so that Berlin remains our home). I was deeply moved. I felt that, finally, someone acknowledged something I'd known to be true for a long time: that Berlin is my home. 

Anna Richter  21:35  
But only German citizens registered in Berlin were eligible to vote. Many migrants were unable to vote on this crucial issue affecting their homes.

Agata Lisiak  21:45  
Clearly, the legal structure doesn't correspond to our lived reality. 

Anna Richter  21:48  
The referendum reflects a collective voice, loud and clear. It's a voice that rejects speculative, commodified and financialised housing models, and opposes displacement and exclusion. Berliners have openly called for social alternatives that support affordable housing. But one year later the city government has done nothing to cater to the majority of voters and supporters. 

Agata Lisiak  22:14  
The referendum has had no real effect yet, but the campaign can still be considered successful because it sparked countless public debates and private conversations about what kind of city we want to live in. Everyone seemed to be talking about it: at school, at home, at work, on public transport, in bars. I remember one day my kid came back from school with an assignment to design a city of the future. I asked him to first consider the ideas behind the design. So I asked: what makes a good city? Here's how he responded:

A  22:47  
Good food for everyone. No racism. No sexism. Everyone has the same rights.

Anna Richter  22:53  
We asked our guests to respond to this question too. 

Ash Amin  22:57  
For me, a good city is one that organises for the commons. And that means shared interests. It means ensuring common spaces. It absolutely means some form of public ownership and audit. Above all, it means accepting that the city does not belong to special interests, whether those are native interests, or majority interests, or the interests of humans alone. Our cities are full of non-human life. And the good city should be that city that finds a way of accepting, understanding, incorporating these diverse needs and interests in the city. And the only way you can do that - at least, I think, philosophically - is to accept that the city in its throwntogetherness is a commons. 

Carmel Christy  24:11  
A good city is an open space where sustainable development is practised so that progress is ensured for all not just for a few, and therefore the true meaning of environmental justice prevails. 

Ayşe Çavdar  24:26  
For me, it is very obvious: equality. The will to create an equalitarian society among citizens could make any city good. I mean, an equalitarian will from below. I'm not talking about kind of equality provided by the states, by the laws and so on. But an equalitarian - a civic equalitarian will coming from below. It could start with demanding equality before law and institutions, but it is not the end, it's just the starting point.

Agata Lisiak  25:00  
What makes a good city are also good places. 

Anna Richter  25:04  
One such good place for me is Gleisdreieck Park, where we met with Ayşe. It's an old train junction turned into a green area with private housing developments on its fringes. The park has become a popular leisure location for Berliners and visitors. That's where people come to ride their skateboards, play frisbee, enjoy picnics, exercise, or just air their minds. 

Agata Lisiak  25:29  
We came here to ask people what they think makes a good city. 

Agata Lisiak  25:33  
What makes a good city? 

Speaker 1  25:34  
What makes a good city? Of course, a city where all the basic needs of the residents are met like housing and food and warmth, shelter, education. Of course, the question is what our basic needs, but at least these and some more. And I guess in a city where the demand is very high, that many people want to live, that it's very important to really like give enough housing and maybe housing for free for everyone or some other way to pay for it. 

Speaker 2  26:06  
Also eine gute Stadt besteht meistens aus den guten Menschen und das Miteinander ist immer entscheidend, finde ich. Man sollte sich wohlfühlen in seiner Stadt. Und eine gute Nachbarschaft ist natürlich auch wichtig in einer guten Stadt und gerade wenn so viele, so multikulturelle Städte wie Berlin, dass die Leute sich auch wirklich, nicht parallel leben, sondern wirklich miteinander. Genau, das ist mein Statement dazu.

Anna Richter reading translation  26:35  
And now in English: A good city is made up of good people and their togetherness is always a deciding factor. You should feel good in your city. Being good neighbours is also important and, especially in a multicultural city like Berlin, people should not live in silos but truly together. 

Speaker 3  26:55  
So I'm from collective Political Kitchen and for us it's very important like two topics: social justice and food justice. Solidarity is one of the main activities for us so we organise a lot of events, for example, like solidarity kitchen when we cook and eat together in the neighbourhood. And the second topic, of course, it's discrimination that we need more spaces that can protect us like from from discrimination because me and all members of our collective we have migration background and so we try to to make our work more like to fight these discrimination structures.

Speaker 1  27:49  
Also access to resources, access to funds, access to different opportunities, access to good food, healthy food, cheap food, ethical food, local food. Maybe not, you know, access to all types of food all year long, that's maybe not so necessary. That's too much of a luxury maybe so just seasonal food. 

Speaker 4  28:16  
Eine gute Stadt macht für mich aus, wenn sie aus einer nicht-dominanten, -weißen, -alten, -cis-männlichen Perspektive gedacht wird, sondern aus einer diskriminierungssensiblen, einer feministischen Perspektive – das ist, glaube ich, der eine Punkt, und der zweite Punkt ist, dass die Stadtstruktur nicht aus einer autofreundlichen Perspektive gedacht wird, sondern tatsächlich aus fußgänger*innen-, kinderfreundlichen oder eher mobilitätsfreundlichen für Menschen, die kein Auto fahren Perspektive gedacht wird.

Anna Richter reading translation  28:49  
And now in English: A good city for me is created from a perspective that is not white, old, cis-male dominant, but instead from a feminist perspective that's sensitive to various forms of discrimination. That's one thing and another is that the urban structures shouldn't be designed for cars, but for pedestrians, children, bikes, wheelchairs, for people who don't drive cars. 

Speaker 5  29:17  
I think what's good for the cities, the government should make the city more green, yeah? And then more trash bins so the people can throw the garbage not everywhere, yeah? I think only that.

Speaker 6  29:37  
What makes a good city? Like many parks, many stores and maybe some zoos for the animals and, yes, and good schools and good, like a good infrastructure. Yes. 

Speaker 7  29:57  
What makes a great city is when its inhabitants can enjoy all of the amazing things that go on in the city, whether it's culturally, whether it's like for your health, biking, parks, all of that, I think that's what makes a great city. And I love the fact that this particular city inspires all of that, it inspires you to go out to explore to connect, and, and the people as well and that's also what makes a good city.

Agata Lisiak  30:30  
In this episode we discussed the various dimensions of urban politics. For Doreen Massey, every place - every city - poses a challenge, the challenge of negotiating a here and now or what she called throwntogetherness. We heard about different struggles to make cities more liveable - and more just - for the many. We also discussed the many limitations of the dominant political structures. The examples shared by Ayşe, Carmel and Ash show that it is crucial to make our voices heard and to "put continuous pressure on those who hold power to give way". We'd love to hear from you, our listeners what you think makes a good city. Please take a moment to fill out the form linked in the episode notes to respond to this question. To learn more about the things we discussed today, visit the podcast page at thesociologicalreview.org. That's where you'll find a reading list. Today's episode was created by Susan Stone, Reece Cox, Adèle Martin, Bose Sarmiento and me, Agata Lisiak. Spatial Delight is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and hosted by the Sociological Review Foundation. Big thanks to today's guests Ash Amin, Carmel Christy, Ayşe Çavdar, the Berliners we met in the park and to my wonderful co-host Anna Richter. Thank you for listening.