Yesterday was Park(ing) Day, a global celebration of public space in cities and a call to action to counter the ever-growing dominance of cars over people in our cities. It's an event that fascinated me since I saw early videos of it on YouTube. A small number of us came down, we had fun (I hope), things happened, and I like to think we went home fairly happy with the afternoon.
Last month, I organised a workshop on Community Engagement in Planning and Politics. A small number of people came down, we had an interesting discussion, and I like to think we went home fairly happy with that, and with ideas and maybe some enthusiasm for taking things further.
OK. So that's good. Friends and collaborators have come down and helped me out with my crackpot ideas. What would I be complaining about?
Neither of these were my ideas, and in neither of these cases did the people who were most enthused about them even bother to turn up.
Park(ing) Day Leeds 2012. What's missing? You?
Why does that matter? It matters because it shows that I demonstrate something fundamentally flawed - an inability to maintain other peoples' excitement about their own ideas, or it you like, a kind of anti-enthusiasm vortex.
The reason why this is important is that there has been, for a long time, an increasing need to change structures and systems in human society. In some ways, what fascinates me about Park(ing) Day is that it is a microcosm of the city itself. Cities only get built in the first place because of a kind of collective, individual decisionmaking. More than one person decides that something is a good idea (such as trading in a particular place), and makes it happen. You became part of this process when you moved to, or even were born in this city. The city continues to exist because people want to do things here: work, play, relax, make or spend money.
This is, of course, all very well in an Anarchist or Libertarian Utopia where it's assumed that individual and collective goals and ideals are the same, and that maximising your own welfare (in the economic sense) achieves the same as maximising the welfare of the city and its society as a whole. This is where I go out on a limb and say that I don't believe this to be true. I think that, as with the rest of life in a city, achieving both individual and collective happiness involves a complex set of compromises, whether it's putting up with noisy neighbours or doing things at personal cost and inconvenience (whether fundraising for a charity or carrying furniture half way across the city).
In the idealised version of the Ancient Greek "Polis", important decisions were made by calling all free male residents to a central location for a public debate and vote. Over time, we've moved from an idea of cities being collective negotiation and decisionmaking to devolving those responsibilities to elected representatives, then to not even seeing this to be of any benefit, and ignoring that entire process completely. Over time, the spaces and places in the city which belonged to all of us, and were used by all of us (the "urban commons", to expand a common phrase) have declined. The city used to belong to all of us, but only some were interested in it, and now only those who are interested in making money from these spaces consider them to be of enough value to maintain and use. For example, in Leeds (as probably everywhere else), the Public Squares only really exist because they provide a necessary breathing space to support financial transactions elsewhere in the city, and trade on their perimeters. What they also do is provide rentable space for commercial events. The use of them by the public for meeting and organising events is purely incidental now.
Those who have had the interest (largely from a financial basis) have taken over from everyone else. We've become so subservient to this so as to no longer think we're at any disadvantage, to no longer think we've been "sold out" by people before us. Do those people want what you want? Does maximising their welfare also maximise yours? Maybe it does - maybe I'm completely wrong about this whole thing, but I've seen nothing to suggest this.
In the last few years, with Transition activities in Leeds, Public Space education and performance with Make-Pla(y)ce and the Occupy movement, I have seen people who appear to share my views of needing to individually do things within a collective framework, in order to aim at changing the city's mode of operation to something we think will be better for us all. I've met many people who believe that we need to organise ourselves on a more socially and environmentally equitable basis, and that the people who have assumed control of our cities are possibly not able to deliver the best overall welfare for society or the planet, because their objectives are not aligned with those. I've met a lot of passionate and committed individuals…
…but when it comes to the crunch, when opportunities arise to prise open cracks, to get together and make something bigger, people seem to retract. The last few months were full of conversations with many people about alternative modes of viewing and running the city in parallel with existing structures, I had many requests and ideas for Park(ing) Day sent my way. In both cases it was the same thing - people being enthusiastic and full of ideas and energy in conversation, then not turning up to back any of this up in front of other people.
Maybe I shouldn't doubt people I know to be hardworking and committed. I'm just not doing it for them any more. Over 3 years ago, I retired from performance poetry, something I'd been doing for 10 years. The time seemed right - audiences were no longer responding positively (or even at all), and I'd become sidelined at events. There was more dignity in giving up than carrying on, and in spending my time doing other things rather than being a figure of hate and derision.
I think that time is coming again. If I can't get people excited by their own ideas, it's time to hang up my boots. Notwithstanding the amazing help and support that people have given to their own ideas in things I've organised, it seems that I'm not really able to do this any more. I don't have the ability to attract people to a cause and keep them interested in their own ideas and in joining forces with other people. Maybe generally people want to be spoonfed, to have things done for them and handed on a plate. That's fine, you want a dictatorship, to be told what you're doing and to know your place. I imagine you're fairly happy now, but you're not in my target audience. I want to talk to people who want to do things, and want to do them enough to make them happen.
The logical conclusion, and one I've been thinking of for a while, is that it is me. This is fine - none of the things I've been pushing are my ideas, they're out there in the ether for anyone to do. All I do is present them as empty vessels and allow you to fill them with the things you want to achieve. I'm not an ideas person, and to be honest, my intellect and abilities are sapping away from me day by day with the Chronic Fatigue, or whatever else they eventually find out it is, so over time I'm going to be less and less use to any of this stuff anyway. There seems to be more dignity in giving up than carrying on, and in spending my time doing other things than being a figure of hate and derision.
The two things I've been talking about share one important characteristic, which is that they're things I've pushed on my own. Everything else I'm involved with is in collaboration with others. I think those things are doing well (but if you think not, let me know), so they'll continue. This is by no means a resignation from things that don't seem to be a problem, but a strengthening of something I said a while ago. I have no appetite for doing anything on my own any more. When I launched Carfree Leeds, a group to promote and support car free living in the city, as an idea, I said it would only happen if other people were willing to put the time and effort in to help me. That wasn't forthcoming, so there's no Carfree Leeds. It's not my fault, because I'm not responsible for your apathy. If Park(ing) Day looked somewhat smaller than you thought, or had been led to believe from previous events, then I'm not responsible for the apathy of the people who promoted it but couldn't be bothered to turn up themselves, or those who promised to put time and effort in, but decided that sitting at home and doing nothing was a better option.
If you don't want to step up at the end of the day and help make something happen, it's not going to. The people who change the world are not spectators - they don't sit at home spending all their time posting on Facebook and Twitter and blog sites, but take brilliant and successful ideas from around the world and try to apply them in front of an apathetic public and an even more apathetic professional and activist community - but they do this collectively. If I'm not someone worth working with, then it's polite to tell me to my face, to be honest.
But after all that, I'm going to the future anyway, whether or not you're interested in coming along for the ride… but if you are, you're going to have to help pull the cart...
