From the beginning, the big project of real estate investors in the second half of the 19th century has battled with the lack of interest of the Marseille elite. The buildings of the Société Immobilière Marseillaise (SIM) were rented to craftsmen, tradesmen and those working in the ports. The SIM maintained rent at a low rate. This extended to those households protected by the law of 1948 who installed themselves after the destruction of “the Panier” in 1944. Despite these laws, since the 1970’s, the local areas have seen a progressive degradation due to the lack of upkeep from SIM real estate. Those that can move do; only the poorest stay in these areas: park property becomes “a park social fact”.

Today, the huge rehabilitation project started in 2002 under the name of OPAH (Programmed housing improvement operation) and the Euroméditerranée project, with the support of public authorities, spotlights successful financial investors. This operation very quickly became a game for financial speculation, not only harming the renovation of living conditions and a community, but also countering elementary needs of the inhabitants and merchants. Without any convincing results.

Between the Sadi Carnot center and the Joliette, the street appears to be void of social activity: with closed stores on the first floor and the apartments on the other floors mostly vacant.

What about the waltz capital and the successful owners? What about the profits made from the losses of the residents and the citizens of that city?

From 1987 to 2004: a first speculative wave brings in big profits without rehabilitation

In 1986, the government throws the law of 1948 out which attracts investors, and in 1987 the SIM sells its assets to Danone- Cofinda. This first investor allows the buildings to deteriorate and then resells, at a higher value in 2000 to the company P2C for 82M€. The first assistant, Renaud Muselier, congratulates himself on this “new energy”.

In 2002, the State decides to give massive aid to Marseille, in the the name of the Euroméditerranée national interest project. Confronted by the risks of tenants being evicted because of a grand renovation project, the negotiates with the city two conditions:

1. The city must commit to the restoration of 500 buildings in the ancient area by offering government housing which will give rise the “protocol determining the destruction of the unworthy resident”, an accord between the city and the State.
2. The city commits itself to uphold the rule 3/3 foreseen in l’OPAH (1/3 free housing, 1/3 government housing, and 1/3 interim housing). All protocol applying these concepts are signed by the Euroméditerranée Public Establishment and the owners of P2C and Eurazéo in return for public subsidies.

In April 2004, a part of the street sees new ownership: P2C, who has not carried out an investment in 4 years, sells its property assets for total of 117M€ (1,350 housing establishments and & 50,000m2 of retail space) to an American pension fund (Lone Star Fund IV); 553 owners still reside in the resold apartments: for P2C that represents a loan of close to 30M€ without having done anything! Lone Star Fund - Marseille is created in a tax haven (double advantage - evade taxes and receive a discreet loan of 100M€, on behalf of Société Générale and the group Caisses d’Epargne).

In keeping with the image of a real estate investment operation of medium term, and not purely as a speculative financial project, Lone Star creates a company with a local name, Marseille-République (with a French CEO, Eric Foillard). However it was necessary to “sell” this plan to the residents of Marseille. A project is organized with the local authorities to present this as achance for Marseille and its inhabitants. The city quickly agrees to the plan and the speculative money being brought into the urban areas. A press conference of the town hall and Marseille- République announces the transfer of property.

“We are in agreement with the goals of Marseille-République” states Danièle Servant, assistant to the Urbanism campaign. However, confronted by journalists, the organizers make two confessions.

Danièle Servant states: “the 650 families do not have a right to stay on the street of the Republic”, and “we are not permitted to give government housing”. The municipal support to Lone Star is clear. Eric Foillard announces a financial goal of an annual profit of 18% (cf. 20 minutes, August 24, 2004) which is 3 to 4 times more than the average profit for real estate investors. He announces this with sweat and tears). The following will show by what illegal means and pressure the group resort to to achieve this objective.

In May 2004, by way of a merger, the group Eurazéo inherits the other half of the street (140 buildings, 1,350 housing establishments and 60,000m2 of retail space). From 2004 to 2008 the intervention of Marseille-République and Eurazéo-ANF in the renovation project, each on a part of the street of the Republic

- what were the results?

In the 2004-2008 period, the State, via Euroméditerranée and the local authorities, spend considerable amounts of money on public facilities that give value to the area: a tramway (from the Joliette to Sadi Carnot), an underground parking lot with 700 spots, an underground area for retaining water, a recasting of the public roads, a substantial contribution to improving the facades of buildings to the benefit of the owners. Euroazéo-ANF receive 4,74 M€ in grants for the rehabilitation under OPAH 2002-2006. These investments, beneficial for a building that has appreciated in value, come with no public controlled rent.

Many inhabitants left or are leaving… 2006-2007

Euroazéo-ANF master in renovation, organizes its property tax loan for the duration

Throughout these years Eurozéo-ANF have finished work on a part of its 140 buildings, apartment complexes, and retail space (7000 m2). Its investment wager is based on an average term project that is very different from Lone Star: banking on the rent of franchised shop owners and changing the population little by little by slowing, over time, raising the rents of tenants and shop owners.

From an aesthetic standpoint, in the Vieux Port-Sadi Carnot area, the renovation was effective: the buildings are in good shape, the apartments and small shops have been touched up, storefront signs have appeared (H&M, Vert Baudet, Sephora, Mango, Celio, Hilton…). In order to higher its property tax profit, Eurozéo-

ANF insists , when each lease is up for renewal, that the rent be comparable to the new buildings or those that were restored in the area, even if there was still work to be done.

Un Centre Ville pour Tous, once being permanently open to residents, were able to read dozens of letters from Eurazéo-ANF to residents warning them that their rent was going to increase by as much as 3 times the amount!

Long time residents have the threat of not being able to stay due to the raise in rent at the time of renewing their lease: they can dispute this with the departmental commission of conciliation that the landlord is obliged to get if the tenant refuses to pay the higher rent. But you have to ask how many are not aware of their rights in order to defend themselves from this?

Many inhabitants left or are leaving… 2006-2007

Marseille République, master of short term speculative renovation

Between 2004-2008, Marseille République, by implementing often very questionable methods of property trading, is beginning a massive operation to destabilize tenants and traders, in order to “liberate” the most amount of buildings possible which they will in turn sell to cut. Tenants receive notices of them having to

leave due to their apartments being part of this vast renovation project.

At the same time, a project of suppressing business is launched by using legal means more or less ethical to make a clean sweep benefiting franchises, those who raised the rents, and that will be more suitable to future tenants. The distress of the social structure is beginning.

Pressure and threats were carried out by the intermediary of the pseudo mediators of Marseille République in order to oust holders of leases from 1948. Today many have left, frightened or worn out by the intolerable conditions that they were subjected to (blackmail, violence on building sites, or unfulfilled promises) where after having been “bought” with a weak compensation package upon leaving.

Many tenants were able to withstand, with the support of local associations, and move back. Their anger, solidarity, and petitions manifesting at the demonstration

on November 27, 2004 in front of l’Hôtel de Ville led the head of the regional administration, Christian Frémont, to establish from Lone Star Marseille République adherence to the rules in OPAH of 2002: the rehousing of tenants at a level equivalent to the rent they pay. Lone Star had to give up its wild profitability ideas and give away (at 650 € the m2) 356 homes to 6 social property lessors.

Isabelle’s place, 2007

Demonstration on the street, Novembre 2004, 27 © Michel Cuadra, Michel Guillon

The “reality” of speculation

Beginning of 2008, 255 apartments (of 1.350) are being renovated to be sold at 3.800 €/m2. If we take into account the other 356 housing that were sold back to the “social housing sector”, not even half of the housing units have been effectively renovated. Despite this, the investors of Lone Star are already cashing in their profit. In between 2007-2008 the speculative investment fund Lone Star Marseille-République sell almost all their remaining real estate portfolio (with the exception of the “lot 30” in front of the sea) to two companies:

• to Buildinvest (Paris): 13 buildings not yet renovated comprising of 154 apartments vacant from tenants (lot 12 for 16 M€)
• to its american mirror-company Atemi/Lehman Brothers Real Estates Partners, around 100 of buildings for a total price of 200 M€ (around half of these money are in form of dubious credits)

The surplus value created from Marseille République is on the range of 94 M€ in 4 years! This is the price “paid” by the speculators of Marseille République for a renovation never completed where the tenants, the inhabitants and the local traders are the only victims, whereas the municipality did not cease singing the praises of the investors, without taking care of the compliance with the legal provisions, enacting rigorous principles for a restoration whose social stakes were obvious.

The company ATEMI, subsidiary company with 80% of Lehman Brothers, keeps the name Marseille-République and place the funds under a company called : Marina Baie of the Angels, on March 7, 2008. Another ambitious 5 years capital spending program is announced by the newly formed company. For the 3rd time, although the crisis of the “poisoned” mortgages (subprimes) starts to touch the American large banks, and while the French real estate market started to drop, the city is pleased with this transaction:

– “Such financial signatures regild even more the image of Marseilles” declares J.C. Gondard, general secretary of the city…

2008 and after…

“]

The new «entrance» of Marseille, Euroméditerranée perimeter, close to la Rue de la République From left to right: buildings Kaufman and Broad (housing) and Sextant (offices), on the other side of the footbridge in demolition, buildings Constructa Coeur Méditerranée (hotels), Docks and silos of the quay of Arenc (transformation in offices, theater and panoramic restaurant. Seen since the departmental Library, in December, 2007

The financial crisis and the call to the responsibility for the public authorities: don’t let the speculators on their own! The bankruptcy in September 2008 of Lehman Brothers in the USA, and the general sense of unsecurity in new real estate investments, is likely to leave once again this part of the city to a state of urban waste land and social desert. The financial crisis touches the whole of the real estate sector. The other sectors will suffer indirect economic loss in this “credit cruchdesert” deliberative created. 600 apartments todayare still to be renovated and nearly 60.000 sq.m of commercial space is available! The few tenants that are still in the buildings (in a derelict kind of state) are in a total uncertainty about their own future.

“The restoration of rue de la République, it is finished” said the public authorities in 2007. The Municipality of Marseilles, that many times tried to “clean” the center of the city from their “poors”, will this time come out from its opacity and engage towards politics that will respect their own population? The town hall of Marseilles must produce a local and financial balance sheet of this operation and put it on the table to set out again on new bases. For Centre-Ville Pour Tous, the public authorities - and in particular the State, the municipality and the all urban conglomerate of Marseille - must take the responsabilities against the defective plans of these speculative investors. They have tools to do that (capacity of negotiation the right price and possibly use, as municipality, priority aquisition rights ) to reclaim this part of the city as common and public use.

Advertising on the street for the new buildings, 2007

These photographs are extracted from series realized during all the duration of my implication on the street since 2004: activist beside the inhabitants Un Centre-Ville Pour Tous, artist, and finally, associated with two sociologists within the framework of a research-action ordered by the Ministère de l’Ecologie, de l’Energie, du Développement et de l’Aménagement Durables in Paris.

A book appears on February 2010, which makes public this research and the experience led on the street beside the inhabitants: Attention à la fermeture des portes !, by Jean-Stéphane Borja, Martine Derain, Caroline Galmot and Véronique Manry [http://editionscommune.over-blog.com]

In the policy discourses, it is assumed that urban citizens would socially and economically benefit from the direct and/or trickle down effects of these urban transformation projects –e.g. the capital inflows, increased urban wealth, improved housing conditions, and created jobs through tourism and business activities etc. However, in reality, the impacts of these projects are often the extending geography of gentrification, deepening socio-spatial inequality, increased hegemony of ‘elite-driven democracy’ in urban governance, reduction of affordable housing and displacement of the urban poor from their living environments.

These neoliberal policies and projects are widely challenged by grassroots mobilizations, which fight against displacement, socio-spatial exclusion of the poor, gentrification and further impoverishing impacts on local communities.

The second issue of Reclaiming Spaces Magazine will focus on these neoliberal urban transformation policies, projects and the rising resistance against them. Our aim with this issue is to trigger a political debate and brainstorming among social movements to develop more proactive mobilization strategies to reclaim our cities and to pose independent, alternative urban transformation agendas based on the right to the city.

We encourage contributions which focus on

1. The grassroots mobilizations that challenge these neoliberal urban transformation projects and policies through different strategies and alliances at the local, national and transnational scales.

2. ‘Why’, ‘how’ and ‘for whom’ these neoliberal urban transformation policies and projects are developed in different contexts together with their impacts on the ground.

Questions for Issue No. 2

Secondly, there lies another crucial subject at the heart of this issue of Reclaiming Spaces: how grassroots mobilizations in different contexts reclaim their rights to the city resisting forced evictions, gentrifications, brutal and symbolic violence of the state that is directed towards the urban poor and working class during these transformation processes.

The specific questions of this issue are as follows:

What are the socio-spatial, economic and political impacts of the urban transformation policies, projects as experienced in our cities?

What are the dynamics of grassroots mobilizations resisting these policies, projects? What are the strategies used to fight against this neoliberal urban transformation?

What are the challenges to grassroots? What are the challenges to organizing a bottom-up alternative transformation process in the neighborhoods under the threat of forced evictions, displacements?

How can we insert a proactive agenda for ‘just’ urban transformation processes based on the right to the city? What is the role of the academics, artists, urban professionals in pushing forward such an agenda?

What are the regional, national, transnational alliances for grassroots mobilizations resisting forced evictions, gentrification etc. in different cities? What are the viable strategies to strengthen these alliances?

Contributions and Formats

Contributions to this issue shall be submitted at the latest 01.02.2010 at editors-transformation@reclaiming-spaces.org

We accept proposals for popular political and journalistic writings, such as reports, critical commentaries and statements, news, interviews, overviews, personal experiences, portraits and scholarly work. We also encourage the visual submissions for photo essays, comics, maps and etc.

Written submissions should be no longer than 15.000 characters (approximately 2000 words). Longer stories (anything above 2500 characters/350 words) may also be accepted and shall be accompanied with illustrations. To map the phenomenon, we appreciate the submissions of short essays, reports (400 to 600 words) of national and local conditions regarding the urban transformation processes and resistance against them.

We also encourage urgent calls, announcements and news.

“Reclaiming Spaces” is an attempt to publish articles in many languages. We thus accept contributions in English, Turkish, French, Spanish and German language. Other languages are also possible, but require that you help us in finding a voluntary translator. The final magazine in PDF will be published in English and Turkish. Depending on your help, issues in other languages are possible.

Process:

A different process:

-> contributions are sent in and immediately published on the website

->  from these article, some are selected to be published in the magazine as well

Please send your abstracts, summaries or short descriptions of your contribution (including word count, the number of attached illustrations) to:

editors-transformation@reclaiming-spaces.org

by 01.02.2010

Accepted contributions will be published under http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation. The first issue will be published in PDF format and printed out later on.

Reclaiming Spaces magazine is a collective experiment. Besides the content, it is of high priority to build a network of contributing authors linked to social movements. Please feel free to ask questions about the details or get into dialogue with us.

The reclaiming spaces editing group of Issue 2

editors-transformation@reclaiming-spaces.org

The reclaiming spaces editing group of issue 02:

Bahar Sakizlioğlu, Julia Strutz, Murat Cemal Yalçıntan, Ulus Atayurt, Yaşar Adanalı

On June 6th 2009, hundreds of activists will converge on a piece of derelict land close by to Hammersmith in south west London to create an eco-village community based entirely on sustainable technology and construction techniques.

This eco-village occupation is inspired by campaigns like

The Land is Ours which campaigns peacefully for access to the land, its resources, and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of race, gender or age. for more information, please visit: www.tlio.org.uk

Will Hammersmith eco-village inspire new generation of Diggers?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/may/29/hammersmith-eco-village-squat

Some History .  Video from the “Pure Genius” Land is Ours occupation in Wandsworth, 1996 :

On June 6th 2009, nearly a hundred activists converged on a piece  of derelict land at Kew Bridge in south west London to create an eco-village community based entirely on sustainable technology and construction techniques.

Andy says, “Please join the group. If you live in London, please pop down and check the place out. The first community day is set for 21/6 so lots needs to be done before then to make it safe, if you have anything we can recycle please bring it down.”

This group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=88020757939 is for anyone and everyone who would like to get involved. Or even those who just want to see how it goes…

Come, be a part of this eco-village community!

Kew Bridge Eco Villiage

2 Kew Bridge Road, Brentford, TW8 0JF

We’ve moved in, cleared the site of most of the rubbish, put our tents up, built a compost toilet and a kitchen, and are currently building a communal structure like a yurt!

We also did a bit of outreach and so far we have full support from the neighbours and those in the nearby communities, aswell as the local buisnesses and some unofficial support from certain local councillors…

We still need your help though! If you want to visit for a day, or forever, please come along!

Any skills/knowledge you have about building will be valued greatly,along with any tools you may have! Or even if you know nothing but just want to learn, come along too!

Follow us on twitter! http://twitter.com/KewEcoVillage

This eco-village occupation is inspired by campaigns like The Land is Ours which campaigns peacefully for access to the land, its resources, and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of race, gender or age. for more information, please visit:

http://greenvoice.com/groups/73-london-eco-village

http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/1530

A VIDEO-MESSAGE ABOUT THE ECO-VILLAGE OCCUPATION :

External link to video >  431893.mov

Squatmeet09, a meeting of UK squatters and people involved in autonomous spaces, took place over the weekend of 13^th - 15^th March. Hosted by Bristol Space Invaders who squatted what the Bristol Evening Post referred to as ‘a huge multi-million pound Grade II-listed mansion house in Bristol’, the meet-up attracted over 50 people from across the UK, with some visitors from Amsterdam and even the US.

What emerged from the day-long meeting on Saturday was a commitment to sharing resources to support new squatted spaces across the country. An agreement made to set up a network of people willing to travel to places most in need of people and expertise.

Skill-sharing was also high on the agenda. A number of practical workshops were held during the weekend but the main meeting was also concerned with the distribution of skills as a vital component in collectivising strategies and as a means of preventing the emergence of hierarchies. The so called ‘heroism of the front line’, when people who first break a squat are deferred to in terms of sleeping spaces and use of resources, was seen to be directly related to their skills and to contribute to the reproduction of dominant power structures.

This issue was seen as related to, but not exclusively confined to, the division of labour by gender where certain vital practical skills become the province of men purely because the dominant culture is still oriented to gender based education. But the meeting agreed that, while gender remains a factor, the need for sharing of expertise in general remains a high priority.

The subject of gender was, inevitably, introduced in connection with the issue of safer spaces and the problems of maintaining an open door policy. Several examples were given of squatted social centres that failed because of the presence of drug users and it was pointed out that chaotic spaces automatically become exclusive because ‘when things get rough, it is the women that leave’. This is a sensitive issue because policing squatted spaces is not only difficult but at odds with what the social centres movement, at least, is trying to achieve. Any ‘door policy’ risks a charge of exclusivity and also risks alienating people who believe that any form of proscription contravenes our commitment to inclusivity and immediately creates a privileged elite who are solely responsible for interpretation of the policy. A suggestion was made that spaces could hold specific ‘open door’ events and that documents along the lines of mission statements or constitutions, setting out the purpose of the space, should be produced and circulated. Another proposition (referred to as ’self-run asylums’) was for a segregationist policy where groups of drug users (or others) uninterested in the politics of autonomous spaces but needing a space could be helped to open buildings but, in essence, this amounts to the deliberate creation of ghettos.

The meeting was in broad agreement with the idea to draft a call-out for a day of action in defence of autonomous spaces, following the success of the event in 2008. A discussion/draft document was produced to be circulated internationally, proposing a day of action for early Autumn, 2009. In light of the current ‘crisis’, it was recognised that by focusing attention on ‘housing for all’ we have an unprecedented opportunity to reach the disaffected middle class as well as precarious workers and council tenants.

The call-out was seen as a move towards becoming a pro-active force for change in a time of uncertainty . The meeting was also useful in enabling networking and socialising to take place with others in the squatting movement. The whole weekend provided a very positive and productive environment for skill-sharing, solidarity, and progress with taking the movement forward.

From two people who attended the meeting in Bristol.

]]> http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/archives/96/feed http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/archives/84 http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/archives/84#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:14:18 +0000 macs http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/?p=84

Monsters in the Metropolis: Social Centres, Cultural Production and the Re-structuring of Capital.

Debra Benita Shaw

This was written following the European Conference of Social Centres in Barcelona/Terrassa (January 8^th – 10^th, 2009) and is a reflection on the themes of the conference and the concepts that dominated the discussions.

A primary concern was bio-unionism which refers to new forms of commonality in conditions where the hegemonic organising principle of all social relationships is biopower. Social centres were seen to have a crucial role in reclaiming cultural production and as spaces for developing self education initiatives in response to the continuing opposition to the implementation of the Bolonga Process across the EU. A primary focus of the discussions was how social centres should respond to the global recession and how strategies for intervention can be formulated. Crucial to this was an understanding of our identity and function in terms of the post-Fordist metropolis and changing patterns of work and social life.

‘the monster is not an accident but the ever present possibility that can destroy the natural order of authority in all domains’ (Hardt & Negri, Multitude)

Hard and Negri understand monsters as emergent forms that are necessary adjuncts to the processes of social production. In a sense, monsters are abject in that they are the result of what is excluded in order for the ‘natural order of authority’ to function. In writing about the dissolution of commonality and community in the post-Fordist city, they identify monsters that have emerged from the conjuncture of neo-liberal isolationism and outdated Left community practices, ‘rabid soccer-fan clubs’, ‘charismatic religious cults’, ‘revivals of Stalinist dogmatism’ and ‘rekindled anti-Semitism’ (191). The need then, is for the monstrous to be re-thought in terms which can re-produce the commons but in a form which is responsive rather than reactionary and attuned to the need for new forms of cultural production and new patterns of social thought in a time when the restructuring of Capital in the current ‘crisis’ has the potential to intensify oppression through the institution of controls which limit mobility and the withdrawal of support for social initiatives.

There is no outside

If the production of ‘outsider’ identities is what the ‘natural order’ needs in order to sustain itself then it follows that there is no wedge thin enough to lever apart the monsters and their natural counterparts. Indeed, the conscious occupation of outsider subject positions is not enough to guarantee an effective opposition. If social centres are to be part of effective movements for change, then the need to strategise becomes paramount. If part of our strategy is to identify the common then we need to understand how we are positioned with regard to any emergent commonality. One immediate question then, is how we respond to the current wave of protests against the Bologna and Copenhagen Processes and the movement of students across Europe.

Social centres are well placed to operate as meeting points for students travelling across the EU. We can offer crash space and cheap or free food and also provide facilities for meetings, screenings, talks and workshops. But probably our most important function is the hosting of self education initiatives (eg., Universidad Nómada, London Freeschool and Temporary Schoool of Thought). The Bologna Process aims to standardise university education across the EU with the explicit intention of equalising the transfer of students across national borders and instituting standards recognisable by employers in all member states. Implicit in this is a demand that universities conform to a set of pre-defined goals, largely defined by the requirements of the employment market. Funding, for both research and teaching, will therefore be limited to those faculties and departments that can demonstrate a commitment to these requirements. The UK, where universities were placed under similar constraints following the creation of the ‘modern’ (post-1992) universities, has witnessed the demise of non-vocational subjects and an increase in degree offerings which blur the distinction between training and education with a concomitant curtailment of knowledge production in fields that cannot (or refuse to) demonstrate a commitment to a neo-liberal agenda. Because academic jobs increasingly depend upon the ability of departments to attract funding through competition and to meet certain ‘quality assurance’ requirements, short term contract working has become the norm. Therefore, the most far reaching implications of the Bolonga Process are likely to be an increase in precarious labour across the university sector and a significant contraction of opportunities for intellectual and critical debate.

Implementation of the Bologna Process depends upon an extension of the Erasmus programme which facilitates the exchange of students across member states of the EU. Alter-Erasmus is a proposition which utilises social centres as spaces for alternative knowledge production and training outside of the university. These kinds of initiatives are not without precedent. Intellectuals on the Left like Stuart Hall, former Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University (UK) has, throughout his career, been committed to self education; to making ‘what knowledge you have available to publics outside the framework of formal educational opportunities and the social class structure’ (Coté, Day & de Peuter (eds), 2007: 120). But, as part of movement for change, alter-Erasmus has the potential to mobilise considerable forces for social democratic knowledge exchange if local initiatives are structured into a mobile network of cross-European free schools and skill sharing events. However, Hall’s use of the term ‘publics’ is instructive. Carmona et al recognise a form of exclusivity, what they call a ‘politics of self affirmation’, leading to insularity and partisanship in the social centres movement which they believe is now less apparent than in eg., the 1980s. This they attribute to the resurgence of social centres as spaces allied to new global movements and attuned to the diversity of resistant forms. While this may be true, the predominate political affiliations of social centres attract a largely white and middle class constituency. For social centres to be spaces which welcome diverse ‘publics’, they need to not only be ‘porous’ (Carmona et al) but also engaged with communities which affiliate on the basis of fundamental needs rather than political commitment. The current ‘crisis’ provides opportunities for informal education on a grassroots level which takes account of the multiplicity of practical skills that can alleviate dependence on the consumer economy and that can be shared by people who may not necessarily identify with the politics of social centres.

However, this does not mean that practical skill sharing should supersede cognitive engagement and critical debate. Indeed, social centre collectives need to be aware of the dangers of anti-intellectualism and the potential for a retreat to dogmatic positions. Free schools can offer a unique opportunity for considerations of political, social and cultural theory in a non-hierarchical and non-commodified space. As the universities succumb to marketisation, social centres can be involved in the broadening of knowledge production, alternative publishing practices and new media dissemination. Social centres, in this sense, perform a deterritorialisation of knowledge and confirm their monster status in relation to the knowledge factories of European academia.

Reclaiming cultural production

In recognising the relationship between social and cultural production, we also recognise that the politics of everyday life is immured in the processes and practices of post-Fordist working and social relationships. Paolo Virno offers a term for thinking through the subjectivation of post-Fordism in the concept of the virtuosic which describes the practices of immaterial labour as performances which have no end product; which are affirmed by the presence and witnessing of others rather than the production of a material object. As Gerald Raunig points out ‘What defines a fundamental aspect of the political for Hannah Arendt—the presence of others, the exposure of oneself to the gaze of others, the necessity of cooperation and communication—now become fundamental qualities of labor’. In fundamental terms, this means that everyday reality is structured by the vocabulary of Michel Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’; the techniques that we employ to maintain ourselves as suitable performers in the virtuosic economy. To put it another way, because how we understand who we are has necessarily to be what counts in determining our position on the labour market, there is no social life that is demarcated or distinct from the field of labour. We are constantly working to position ourselves as subjects suitable to market requirements; a processing of the self which is made more acute by precarious employment and is largely structured by consumerist ethics. Cultural production can then be understood as working to confirm and replicate virtuosity. Reality TV, for instance, reproduces virtuosity as a condition of celebrity which itself is consumed and reproduced in social interaction; in the rehearsals of linguistic competence, information processing and emotional literacy which establish the subjectivity of workers under contemporary economic conditions. The distinction between public and private modes of being and interaction become blurred and the city thus comes to be understood as a factory which produces proliferating forms of identity and their symbolic equivalents.

It is these symbolic equivalents that make up the ’spectacle’ of the contemporary city, ‘the means modern societies have at their disposal to systematize and disseminate appearances, and to subject the texture of day-to-day living to a constant barrage of images, instructions, slogans, logos, false promises, virtual realities, miniature happiness-motifs. Batteries Not Included, as the old punk band had it’ (Retort Afflicted Powers).

The proposition that social centres can function to reclaim cultural production from the culture factory that the city has become thus needs to be understood in terms of reclaiming virtuosity as a condition of political action while recognising that the flexible subjectivities required by spectacular culture are a necessary condition of our organisation as institutions. This is what Hardt and Negri saw in the emergence of ‘multitude’ and what inspires Donna J Haraway’s formulation of cyborg politics. The fluidity of contemporary subjectivities under the terms of the information economy is, simply put, a strength which can allow for the production of some very promising monsters. Haraway offers the coyote or trickster as a figure for coding monstrosity; Hardt and Negri are in love with vampires ‘a threat to the social body and, in particular, to the social institution of the family’ (Multitude). Vampires emerge, they tell us, at the point where traditional institutions are breaking down. Vampires, ‘are still social outsiders, but their monstrosity helps others to realise that we are all monsters’ (193).

If social centres are to fulfill the promise of alter-institutionality then we need to provide space for vampires to flourish. We don’t, of course, know what form our vampires will take; only that they are a necessary part of the cultural expression of contemporary forms of alienation and thus new forms of commonality that undermine what Hardt and Negri call ‘natural identities’. These are the identities that once supported the institutions of modernity and are now called into being by the spectacle. For Hardt and Negri, ‘the family, the community, the people, and the nation’ which entail the assumption also of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity. Because the vampire ‘undermines the reproductive order of the family with its own, alternative mechanism of reproduction’ it can equally undermine the reproduction of the spectacle.

Connected with this was the proposition to form strategic alliances with established art cultural institutions to further the purpose of ‘creating seductive spaces and dynamics for the inclusion of groups with no direct link to the history and the practice of social centres’ (Carmona et al) and to attract funding for projects that can take advantage of grants available to recognised organisations. The social centre establishes itself with reference to a stable entity and derives a form of legitimation while continuing to operate in a local context. Such alliances are expected to destabilise notions of public and private, inside and outside while providing new forums for performances of virtuosity. However, this proposition may only be feasible under conditions where a social centre has at least a quasi-legal status and enough stability to generate long-term planning. In the UK, for instance, where squatting is legal, social centres are closely allied to the squatting movement and are necessarily both residential spaces (because of the need for security) and provisional (because eviction could come at any time). While there are exceptions (spaces that are rented or purchased), in general it is understood that occupation of social centre spaces is temporary and that the project does not depend on a stable space. Under these conditions, the establishment of wider networks and cooperation between disparate groups supersedes the requirement for stability. Provisionality, on the other hand, is not necessarily at odds with what Carmona et al refer to as staging creation ‘as an act of resistance and affirmation of shared production’. Social centre collectives are not outside of the circuit of established cultural production in that many users of social centres as well as those involved in their administration also work in arts administration and in the so called ‘creative industries’. As well as this, there are already informal links between social centres and universities in that many left leaning academics are drawn to social centres as spaces which facilitate the kinds of knowledge production which are curtailed by the marketisation of higher education. In recognising this, we also recognise possibilities for intervention, the appropriation of resources and informal strategic alliances as well as sharing of expertise which does not rely on the acquisition of permanent space or the need to attract state funding. Indeed, social centres are already experienced in raising funds for projects that do not claim alliance with any particular space (eg., No Borders and Food Not Bombs). Therefore any benefit to be gained from association with established institutions would seem to be in widening participation and enhancing the profile of social centres as spaces where more radical and interventionist art projects can be realised. However, the possibility of attracting surveillance in such situations would expose social centres to the risk of eg., health and safety monitoring and we may be forced to eg., meet the requirements of corporate publicity departments.

Further to this, alliances with existing cultural institutions would seem to be borrowing the power of legitimation, rather than acknowledging and utilising the power of the nomadic and heterarchical forms of organisation which social centres produce and participate in.

A New Politics of Space

Social centres can be understood as Temporary Autonomous Zones, as defined by Hakim Bey; a concept we might do well to revisit, while not necessarily taking on board the counter-cultural separation implied by his Pirate Utopias. TAZs enable us to think through the current cultural moment in that they are spaces that are ‘a perfect tactic for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies’. The cracks and vacancies of the current order of flexible accumulation (Harvey) are becoming more apparent by the day but, if we are to take seriously the proposition that social centres can function to promote new forms of unionism then, in the current conjuncture we need a politics of space which can help us to understand the field (Bourdieu) in which we operate. This transverse politics of space might take the form of questioning our own assumptions with regard to what we mean when we speak about ‘autonomy’ and how the exploitation of ‘cracks and vacancies’ can operate across national borders and in diverse local contexts. Bey contends that TAZs share certain similarities: ‘the importance of aesthetic theory (cf. the Situationists)–also, what might be called “pirate economics,” living high off the surplus of social overproduction– […] and the concept of music as revolutionary social change–and finally their shared air of impermanence, of being ready to move on, shape-shift, re- locate to other universities, mountaintops, ghettos, factories, safe houses, abandoned farms…’. To return to Haraway’s coyote and Hardt and Negri’s vampire, it would seem that these are the figures that resonate with the nomadic and opportunistic concept of the TAZ in that they are never ‘at home’ and are associated with the impermanence of, not only the social centre as an occupied space but also the zone where the ‘pirate economics’ of all forms of production (cultural, social, economic) can operate. Indeed, what may be missing from our self-understanding is a notion of ‘home’ as a contested space under current biopolitical regimes where it is a prime site for surveillance under the terms of neo-liberal subjectivation. While we occupy literal vacant spaces in the metropolis and exploit the precarious architecture of capital, we may do well to recognise that the impermanence of ‘home’ is not only a new cause for concern as economies worldwide are unable to support lending for permanent home ownership but part of our common experience in terms of the social structures that demarcate the associated idea of ‘family’. Bey opposes the nuclear family to the band which ‘is not part of a larger hierarchy, but rather part of a horizontal pattern of custom, extended kinship, contract and alliance’. These contracts and alliances do not emerge spontaneously but must be discovered. A new politics of space, then, needs to be attentive to possibilities for their discovery.

For more readings :

• Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, New York: Penguin Press, 2004.

• Retort, Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War Verso, 2nd edn with Afterword, 2006.

• T. A. Z. ,The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic TerrorismBy Hakim Bey      Full text of T.A.Z. at Hermetic.com

]]> http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/archives/84/feed http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/archives/80 http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/archives/80#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:45:46 +0000 macs http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/transformation/?page_id=80 A video about the occupation of a building in Marseille during the European Housing Minister summit, on the 22nd November 2008, is now online on primitivi.org

http://www.primitivi.org/spip.php?article11

Une vidéo sur l’occupation d’un immeuble rue de la république à Marseille, lors du sommet européen des ministres du logement, le 22 novembre 2008, est en ligne sur primitivi.org

In in the depths of economic winter, this article analize the story behind the “failed” expansion of the City of London  and the battle behind it.

For more stories about Hammerson’s speculation international agenda visit :

http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/corporations/archives/13

But also the battle with Hammerson last summer over the city expansion  :

http://bowlcourt.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/squatters-battle-with-property-giant-over-historic-site/

Original article :

http://opendalston.blogspot.com/2009/02/as-credit-freeze-tightens-its-icy-grip.html

http://www.openshoreditch.net/

Article from OPEN Dalston :

Organisation for Promotion of Environmental Needs Ltd.

A not for profit company formed by local people.

For more information please contact info@opendalston.net

As the credit freeze tightens its icy grip on our shattered economy the worshippers of mammon shiver with disbelief. The mammonists said Hell would never freeze over. But now, in the economic winter, the glittering prizes they craved have slipped through their frozen fingers.

Eighteen months ago, in June 2006, Hammerson unveiled its planned £700m Bishops Place scheme in Shoreditch. Its Chief Executive told analysts and shareholders of Hammerson’s “unparalleled record of securing and delivering developments to make big profits for shareholders”

Foster and Partners vision for Hammerson’s Bishops Place - a landmark tombstone development of 65,000sq m of private housing, offices, shops and a hotel.

But by last February developers had started to feel the chill of the impending economic winter. Hammerson sought planning permission to demolish The Light and build the 50 storey Bishops Place tower. Although the demolition would proceed immediately Hammerson could not confirm when construction would actually start. Facing overwhelming community opposition Hackney Council deferred the application. Hammerson’s shareholders looked glum.

A second coordinated community campaign forced Hackney Council, on the advice of English Heritage, to finally concede that The Light merits the protection of conservation area status. That decision followed threatening letters to Hackney from City lawyers and was greeted with dismay by Hammerson. Achieving planning permission underpins the value of development sites. Hammerson may yet renew its planning application to demolish and redevelop The Light as Bishops Place but a refusal now could drive an icicle through Hammerson’s heart. (Does it have a heart? Ed.)

Now, in the depths of economic winter, property developers are stricken by the value of their sites being locked into the permafrost of the credit freeze. Hammerson is Britain’s fourth biggest property company. Its debt rating has recently been downgraded from stable to negative by credit ratings agency Moodys. It share value has crashed by 60% from a high in April 2007 of £1747p to a fractured 397p today. J P Morgan stated that it was at risk of breaching its bond covenants. Hammerson is reported to have put its flagship Bishops Place (the controversial redevelopment of Spitalfields Market) up for sale - for £60 million less than it was valued in June 2008. Now it also needs to raise £600million by a deeply discounted rights issue to improve its balance sheet.

With the carnage in financial services, and tens of thousands more City jobs in peril, the developers’ dreams of “regenerating” Shoreditch’s Bishopsgate Goodsyard, with a wall of high-rise offices, now looks like a distant mirage. Even if the credit could be raised to buy in there will be no-one to work there.

Another major developer, Telford Homes, has also been caught out in the East London frosts. Last May Telford was granted planning permission for The Block, a 25 storey twin-towers development in Bethnal Green. OPEN protested that Tower Hamlets’ supression of its own Design and Conservation Team’s strong advice, to reject the scheme, was a breach of environmental justice. In responding to OPEN’s High Court proceedings Telford revealed that, on this site alone, it was sustaining losses of £185,000 every month and that any delay imperiled negotiations with its bankers. Its QC said progress “…has all had to be put on hold pending these judicial review proceedings.”

In fact, a week before the Court hearing, Telford’s Chief Executive Andrew Wiseman had already announced that construction of The Block, together with other major schemes, would not be proceeding. “Delivery of these schemes” he said, “…will depend on the availability of finance for Telford and for our customers and our ability to secure future revenues.” The schemes are on ice.

Since March 2008 Telfords’ value has crashed by 90% to its January valuation of £10.8million. Its lender, AIB (Allied Irish Bank), has recently been bailed out at Irish taxpayers expense. What preference AIB might now give Telford over the financial needs of its Irish business customers remains to be seen.

The Judge eventually dismissed OPEN’s legal challange. But now it may already be too late for Telford’s plans to build The Block in Bethnal Green Road for the forseeable future.

Neither have our public authorities escaped the chill of the economic winter. Speculative investments of public money are leading to huge losses. Hackney Council, with the GLA’s London Development Agency and Transport for London, have invested over £40 million in The Slab at Dalston Junction - a massive concrete raft spanning the new station cutting intended to provide a turnaround site for 12 buses. Of 550 flats being built to pay for the scheme only 50 are reported to have been sold to date. Public awareness and unease continues to grow that Dalston Square will be left with half-finished concrete stumps.

The Slab where Barratt’s are to build residential towers of up to 20 storeys. The private/public partnership hoped to sell 500 private flats and attract brand retailers to pay for scheme. With credit and mortgage lending frozen the prospects are now looking increasingly bleak.

The scheme was conceived and implemented by a handful of public officials and politicians. OPEN protested at the time that it was an extravagent waste of financial and natural resources and would blight Dalston. We brought three judicial review actions to oppose it and fought to conserve at least something of Dalston’s architecural and cultural history. But our pleas fell on deaf ears. The authorities ripped the heart out of Dalston two years ago. If true as reported, that it is no longer 12 but only 1 bus stand that it now required on The Slab, the scheme’s flawed logic, which underpinned the justification for the demolition of historic Dalston and its high-rise redevelopment, has finally fractured.

Then, last summer, there was panic. The developer, Barratt’s, share price had crashed 90% and it would have to renegotiate its bank covenants. Barratt had £1.5 billion of debt.

If the Bishops Place scheme had gained planning permission last February Hackney hoped to take Hammerson’s £14million planning contribution for “off-site affordable housing” in Shoreditch and spend it on The Slab scheme in Dalston - robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now Hackney’s Mayor Pipe hopes to persuade the government’s Homes and Communities Agency (formerly the Housing Corporation) to buy out some of the 550 private flats. If a “buy to let” scheme funded with yet more public money finds favour we will see, as OPEN predicted, families on housing benefit with children living up to the 20th floor. The slums of the future.

But of all the public authorities it would be revelations concerning the City of London’s investments which attract the greatest public dismay. Since adopting its Vanity 2000 policy, to contest Canary Wharf’s challange to become the nation’s home of financial and professional services, the City has invested eyewatering sums of public money assembling sites in Shoreditch for office development.

Many of these investments, funded from its secretive “City cash” account, are joint ventures with its private sector partner, Hammerson. In the current economic climate Hammerson must be grateful to have such a well heeled and sympathetic friend in the City to help bear some of its risks.

A recent setback for this public/private partnership has been the defeat, by an articulate and well organised community opposition, of its appeal to redevelop Norton Folgate .

In the depths of our economic winter the Freemen of the City of London must shiver to hear some financial commentators reporting a 40% drop in Central London commercial property values and that speculative development sites now have a negative value. The £millions of City Cash, invested in property and land deals, are presently locked deep within the permafrosts of Shoreditch. When Spring comes round we may find that much of the City’s frozen funds have melted away to slush.

“mammon”: (noun) possibly of Aramaic origin, meaning riches. First personified in English as the false god of wealth, avarice and injustice in the mediaeval poem Piers Plowman and later as the fallen angel, Lucifer, in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

“mammonistic”: (adjective) consumed by the desire for wealth at the expense of beauty, creativity and the human soul.

“mammonists” : (secretive) the dark forces, including Philistines, pursuing material gain by the obliteration of heritage, identity, culture and sunlight in the name of regeneration, best value, necessity and progress.

Fatih PINAR is a fotojournalist from Istanbul and he is searching on the topic of neoliberal urban transformation in Istanbul.

“I believe that public sources should be used for enhancing the lives of the ones who need it instead of providing the rich with unearned income. This is also an attitude of claiming that the dominant powers are not the owners of the world. I am opposed to the idea of transforming living quarters into some artificial and dull places. Because the unique cultural heritage of a neighborhood should not be destroyed all at once in such a way.

My aim is standing up to the ones who take people’s living spaces away from them in a domineering way and try to create some new touristic and sterile ‘Disneyland’s. As a photojournalist, I try to show what a loss for us it will be. So the main function of the documantary is to create a movement against this injustice by recording this huge and fast transformation as much as possible.”

Fatih PINAR

Link to Video: http://www.fatihpinar.com/m_persembepazari.asp