This is Kent Hakull calling: Banksy, the City needs you

Not in a superhero way, but as a voice of the Urban Revolution; an artistic voice among all the other urban revolutionary comrades in the world – in the City.

Cities are constantly changing and they are increasingly changing the world. Due to their density, scale, association and extension, development is driven, for better or worse, by their competitive advantages. The urban advantage is created by the rural migrants and the advantages changes according to how they are met in the City. However, in Brugmann’s words: “Efforts to keep our cities exclusive to an established citizenry or elite may be popular or profitable, but they are doomed to fail.”

Even if competitive and prone to exclusion, urban rebellions continue to challenge this again and again in all parts of the world. The Urban Rebellion is a sign of the inevitable democracy of the City. “Centralized, inegalitarian governments, initially empowered by their control of rural territories and populations, have steadily lost their exclusive grip over economic resources and international relations as their countries urbanize. Once settled in cities, even the most marginalized populations, under the most totalitarian regimes, can leverage urban density, scale, association, and extension to build their own economies, wealth, power, and political alliances.” The potential offered by the City, through its density, scale, association and extension, is accessible to all who determine to use and shape it.

Urban revolutions foment wherever large urban populations are aggressively rebuffed in their attempts to steer the development of their cities to their group’s advantage. Urban advantage is a flexible, open-source public good in all urbanizing societies. It can be seized, shaped, and deployed strategically in a myriad of ways. Attempts to overly control it reflect a fundamental blindness to the imperatives and ethos of the city.(Brugmann, p. 89)

The Urban Revolution, as a consequence of the Great Urban Migration, has in the past and continues today to manifest itself in cities all around the world.

• Iran in the late 1970s, as well as in 2009, and many other Middle Eastern countries is experiencing urban people expressing dissatisfaction with repressive policies, and however long lasting change is blowing in the wind.

• Africa is urbanizing in South Africa during apartheid and in Nigeria during oil production and all the other countries as well, with the resent Kenya in 2008 particularly in mind (even if not report as such by the media). Whatever the cause of conflict, it is the urban structure that facilitates the room for challenging the present disadvantages faced by the people.

• European countries experience the same urban changes, including numerous former communist countries witnessing their urban revolutions demanding an end to Communism; but also more current events in France, Belgium, Germany, England and recently Ireland due to expansion of the European Union and advancement of multiculturalism.

• The black migration to northern cities in the United States of America last century challenged the white’s advantage, leading to a successful African American Civil Rights Movement among other victories. Today it’s about downtown poverty and livability vs. suburban sprawl and waste, but the only certain thing is that change is coming.

• The Philippines‘ postwar transition from American military control to patronage-based political parties, dominated by the country’s rural economic elites, was brutally smooth. But the military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos failed to realize the rapid growth of the country’s urban population (which more than quadrupled from 1950 to 1985) meant more than a statistical increase in jobs, houses, and roads. It changed the fundamental dynamics of society.
• In the 1980s, hundreds of small organizations in Manila, of only a few hundred people each, organized to oppose the Marcos regime. Their “zones of autonomy” were small, informal networks: a typical group was little more than a personal network of like-minded middle-class professionals and lower-income, unemployed people. They operated as cells in shifting coalitions. Learning the techniques of urban revolution in trail-and-error fashion, they suddenly emerged in 1986 as the People Power revolution that brought down Marcos and shocked the world. (Brugmann, pp. 87-88)

• In Latin America urban revolution is noting new, with unplanned and uncontrolled urbanizing being the norm in most cities. Particularly Hugo Chavez who rose to power with the support of the long-demanded barrio residents of Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, and other cities in Venezuela remains vulnerable to urban counter-revolution. His support depends on his ability to develop the cities into places of opportunity for the middle classes, industrialists and trade unions, in addition the the growing ranks of migrants.

• In Asia China is not to be overlooked either, witnessing the world’s greatest urban migration in history the Chinese government faces a tremendous challenge in controlling the development of the country as a whole while realizing the inevitable likelihood of an Urban Revolution. No wonder they seek to control the internet, the threat of a large scale revolt is more likely here than any other place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

China in particular, expecting a 300 million increase to their urban population over the next 20 years, and the world in general (2 billion new urban dwellers expected) should be braced for further urban revolutions in the decades ahead.

Banksy, the City needs your artistic presence; the people are behind you.

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