(1%) Divide and Rule (99%) Democracies

(a discourse with Beatriz’ editorial 21 November 2011)

For the Occupy Movement, democracy is in crisis as the elected ‘representatives’ are often beholden to the super-elite 1% and not the 99% majority - implying a direct conflict between democracy and capitalism as practiced in their ‘advanced’ forms. Utilizing Lefebve’s ‘social production of space’ to read the phenomenon, ‘real democracy’ has always been condemned in this elite (on the whole, authoritarian) production of capitalist space. However, it is only in the time of recessions (perceived failure of capitalism) that a sizable network of the 99% spatially and symbolically occupies the city’s public domain, attempting grassroots (re)production of democratic spaces. Yet in occupying capitalist produced ‘spatial practices’ of the city, the movement is inevitably set against their fellow (less enlightened?) 99%, inconveniencing/frustrating their (productive and consumptive cycles of) ‘lived spaces’ – hence finding themselves entrapped in this ‘divide and rule’ democracy. (Admittedly this is an unfairly reductive reading – but it frames/serves my usual convoluted thinking that follows).

Occupy Bangkok? Red Shirts in Bangkok April-May 2010 

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Virtually real

As Orhan Ayyuce noted in a previous editorial “Of Disaster Tourisms”, this year – and only half of it has transpired – has been exceptionally eventful from some of the worst natural and human-induced disasters to the Arab Spring’s democratic optimisms (although still selectively manipulated based on European and American geopolitical and economic interests) and so much in-between. These events are layered on top of the domestic disaster-saturated media that we consume on a daily basis, possibly a contributing factor to the numbness, passiveness and lack of empathy to the sufferings of fellow humans and the environment, such as societal apathy to the plight of refugees forcefully articulated in Eleanor Chapman’s “The Detention Spectacle”.



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Democracy Dreaming

As a Thai, the event that currently occupies my mind most is the protests in Bangkok which only recently escalated to violence resulting in deaths and injuries to both the security forces and the protestors. Like most events in eccentric Thailand, things cannot be taken at face value, however with the constraints of an editorial I am forced to reduce the societal conflict in Thailand to conflicts in the very definition of ‘democracy’.The protestors in Red, predominantly poor, rural admirers of the deposed prime minister, are fighting for ballot box democracy. For once, their votes translate into policies – albeit populist – that directly benefit them. In a sense, they are also demanding a democracy that re-distributes resources more equitably. In previous episodes, protestors in yellow were out on the streets and are predominantly urban-based middle-classes protesting against the very same prime minister because of his perceived corruption, unaccountability and increased autocratic practices. I see them fighting for checks and balances democracy, that they saw compromised and dismantled by the previous government.

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Convoluted thoughts on the Global Crises, Scientists, Politicians... and

"Presumably you've never been in business. You're a scientist, you can't tell me about the economics of it (the effects of greenhouse emissions cut)." Senator Ron Boswell (Australian Financial Review, 16 April 2009, p.5)

Who would have thought - the global economic gloom only months after the euphoria of the Beijing Olympics and Barack Obama's election? News from the environmental front isn't any better and Victoria's Black Saturday provided a stark and immediate reminder of our vulnerability. Is there hope?

In the midst of the double global economic and environmental crises, 'valuing the environment right' has been touted as the tool that can, albeit imperfectly, best address both issues concurrently. This involves extending, global society willing, economic practices to mitigate Climate Change through emissions trading and giving value to other environmental 'products' such as the water, air, soil, forests and the flora and fauna that inhabit them, which could result in a more 'Genuine GDP'.


While the benefits sound very attractive, we need to tread very carefully in taking this route when our knowledge of ecological processes and functions, while significantly advanced, is still imperfect. This leaves the likely scenario that the market will be the most influential in 'costing' the environment, which merely continues the profit-oriented hegemony where big businesses collude with Governments to manipulate and narrow societal supply/demand for 'environmental products'. Examples that come immediately to mind are hi-tech, mega-project quick fixes such as nuclear power and/or carbon sequestration plants to address 'demand' for emissions-lite energy, and desalination plants to assuage for the increasing water scarcity. Moreover, our politicians are straitjacketed by the ‘short-termism’ curse, framed by the election cycles that encourage those 'quick-fixes'. Thus, large-scale infrastructure projects that clearly have detrimental impact on the surrounding environment are preferred over finer-scaled, more complex and messier solutions that engage with and respond to the locality (such as VEIL's alternative framework of 'Distributive Systems').

Based on these tendencies it is quite likely, even when environmental products are priced, that the market will still 'assign' higher economic value to mining the minerals than the pristine forest cover above it, which has traditionally been 'valueless'. It is also highly likely that the market will continue to favour urban sprawl into productive and ecologically sensitive landscapes as it will continue to contribute to 'growing' the GDP far more than food production which can always be industrially-produced/GMOed and/or imported more cheaply (even with emissions factored in). The huge irony is that this process of urban sprawl, accelerated over the past decade through ingenious 'financial engineering', has led to the subprime mortgages that precipitated into the current Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It is doubly ironic that this global recession has resulted in less consumption hence decreased economic activities down the line, which translates into lower GHG emissions from all economic sectors!

The dilemmas don't end there. While the environment seems to be temporarily 'benefiting', albeit in the form of slower exploitation, the GFC also result in lower societal uptake of green practices and technologies that often come with higher price tags (at least initially) and also diminished funding for R&D into the technologies. To top things off, we get conflicting messages from economists and Governments on how to get out off the "worse recession since the Great Depression". Essentially, they say, yes, we've been living way beyond our means and that this got us into this mess, but we need to consume more to get out of it! And not to worry if you don't have job security, here are 'tax bonuses' to lubricate the engine of the micro-economy, while awaiting big infrastructure projects (the aforementioned 'quick-fixes') to kick start the macro-economy.

These are indeed baffling times that, for once, have both the intelligentsia and the person on the street scratching their heads on what to expect next. For many hopeful commentators, these extreme uncertain times provide the 'once-in-a-lifetime' opportunity to "reset the compass" (to borrow from the title of Yencken and Wilkinson's prophetic book published a decade ago) at multiple scales. But to whom will we entrust this unenviable job? 'Everyone' is the obvious, but unfortunately too idealistic, answer - as, without a clear set of rules and directions, self interests inevitably kick in by default (as AIG executives sadly demonstrated). Just on the issue of Climate Change alone, as the opening quotation implies, scientists and politicians (advocating for the business world), have been at loggerheads for much of the past decades - in effect, neutralising each other out to the point that there's an emerging consensus that it's already too late to avoid Climate Change. The best 'we' can do now (and 'we' are still not doing much) is mitigating for its worse effects. While not enough has been done to tackle Climate Change (which is only one dimension of ecological issues), it is likely that not enough will be done to regulate the market off its proven excesses (being let off lightly, it will likely re-offend).

I seem to have drawn readers (and myself) deep into the dreariest labyrinths seemingly without any way out of this collective fate. But one has to have faith in human resourcefulness and hope (at least we have Barack Obama, the great entrepreneur of 'hope' [thankfully not Bush/Cheney!] hard at work, plugging holes on the battered Spaceship Earth). And here I look inward and ask: what about us designers? Do we - should we - have any role in this? Do we want to? Arguably we are best equipped to engage with the complexities, bridge differing, often competing multi-scalar variables to synthesise into formal and spatial processes and solutions, hinging and envisioning the issues in real space for real people. No I am not advocating for the Super-Hero designer of yesteryear (admittedly He meant well) nor contemporary Starchitects (purveyors of the spectacular, but on the whole, in the service of the [once] Masters of the Universe - the story of the 'previous era'?) nor the slick imagery conveyed by Hollywood disaster movies (often effective fictionalisation of environmental issues) - these are the 'new designers' who actually listen, empathise and engage with the highly diverse contexts and scales they are working in, establishing meaningful relationships and collaborations with people they are working with and for. Many have already been at work in various groupings such as Architects for Peace, Architects without Borders, VEIL, Urban Village etc...etc... In the times of plenty, they were working in the fringes of practice. In today's hard times, their work potentially provides possible blueprints and precedents that map out alternative pathways for practice (that at least bridge the concerns of 'scientists' and 'politicians'). Sounds like I'm patting like-minded colleagues on the back? I believe not. Design's raison d'etre can no longer be merely rooted in artistic, cosmic and/or commercial ideals. Design has to return to its basest instinct and relearn, to quote Kongjian Yu, "the art of survival"...

Sidh Sintusingha
Architects for Peace, April 2009

Olympic Musings

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well." (Olympic creed, Pierre de Coubertin)

By the time this editorial gets posted, the 2008 Beijing Olympics will have been in full swing. I thought why not join the festivities and reflect on the Olympics movement – or join the media (at least English language-based) in bagging the Olympics (poor air quality and terrorism have been popular). I decided to attempt not taking either route and reflect on the Olympics material culture – and Beijing’s is undoubtedly some of the most impressive to date, in ambition, scale, quality and speed of production. This is part of a meticulously choreographed media exercise, by the Chinese government, to impress the world and also its own citizens – providing material evidence to match its superpower aspirations whether economically, militarily or culturally. Judged by the way history is often (and inescapably) materially framed, they are certainly on the right track – as it is empires and their built legacy, remnants from the ancient superpowers such as Egypt, Greece, Rome, China to modern empires such as the British, French, American, that continues to inspire and leave ensuing generations in awe. On the contrary, societies that are more sustainable and operate within their ecological limits often do not leave monuments, culturally inscribing on the earth more lightly.

Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times asked rhetorically “…One wonders if the West will ever catch up?” The answer for him seemed to be a resounding “no” – and on this many others have rationalized in political terms that such achievement is only possible in totalitarian regimes. Maybe that is an irrelevant question as, arguably, the West does not need to catch up (of course, no one should if the broader objective is for a more sustainable world) – Beijing is already embedded within our modern legacy, where it is no longer valid to discriminate into “East” or “West”. At Beijing, we merely taste the latest maturing fruits of the 18th Century Industrial Revolution and the interwoven religion of neoclassical economics. Besides, the designers of most of these mega-projects are Europeans, fully collaborating with the Chinese in their quest for supremacy in the oil and coal fuelled economy – at least in the accumulation of symbolic capital in the case of the Beijing Olympics.

Moreover, the Beijing Olympics in self-proclaiming itself as the “Green Olympics” is only consistent with contemporary public relation best practice in paying lip service to the concept of sustainability. In stark contrast with those self-delusions (the ‘peace’ and, more recently, ‘green’ feeling billions around the world experience together every four years), both China and the world continue to gratify their addiction to oil through drilling in ecologically sensitive landscapes and seascapes, energy intensively extracting oil from tar sands (now that oil prices has been manipulated (?) to make processing dirty oil economically viable) and, in many countries and regions, destabilising politics and societies in the process of extracting oil. Worst environmental practices are also easily shared and transplanted such as large-scale desalination plants that make extreme resource blind developments possible from Victoria (planned) to Dubai.

These issues may never be effectively addressed while Climate Change, in which the entire world’s environmental problems seem to have been reduced into and entrapped, is an almost impenetrable conundrum. It is obvious that emission targets to deal with Climate Change cannot be met if China, India and other developing economies are left out of the equation. Yet, this also raises ethical and moral dilemmas. Developed economies have defined, through two centuries, a hegemonic ecologically disastrous path towards material wellbeing. In asking developing countries to hold back on burning coal and oil that powers economic growth, we are asking the billions living in poverty to defer what they see is their right to a better quality of life that we already take for granted.

Alex Fernside of MCC, having watched the Olympics opening ceremony performances and its implied symbolisms, argued that we have our priorities wrong in our futuristic focus for a sustainable future. We must plan/design for a greener present rather than towards a less certain future. This idea potentially redefines the priorities of “sustainability” – one that calls for a refocus on the here and now and not planning for a sustainable society in 2030 or 2050 – which, in effect, is merely deferring our present responsibilities to future generations (while conveniently deferring critical decisions to future politicians). Besides, if Climate Change and its impact projections prove accurate, it requires radical societal changes now rather than present incremental practices to avoid worse case scenarios. Cities can no longer afford just to accumulate isolated symbolic green icons such as CH2 (a drop in the ocean of unsustainable building stocks in Melbourne), collectively feel good about it, and market it for all its worth. We have to make sure refinement of such practices and experimental attitudes quickly permeate the broader city, whether in new projects or retrofits. Maybe it is through these finer actions where our ‘salvation’, if time permits, lies – in the defining, inventing and practicing alternative paths towards material wellbeing and quickly, unselfishly sharing and disseminating to other societies aspiring to our lifestyles. On that note, one wonders how historians in 3008 will interpret (or misinterpret!) the remnants of the Beijing Olympic monuments.

Sidh Sintusingha

Architects for Peace, August 2008

World Class Happiness?

The 7th International Conference on Urban Planning and Environment (UPE 7) was held in January this year in Bangkok and for the first time in Asia. The conference theme, based on the title “World Class Cities?”, was given a quick dialectical response in the first keynote speech from Lyonpo Jigme Yosser Thinley, Bhutan’s Minister of Home and Cultural Affairs, articulating the concept of “Gross National Happiness” (GNH). This set a framework for the rest of the conference where many papers and discussions questioned the notion of “World Class City” as it is seen to ignore and contradict the issue of ‘sustainability’.

“World Class” is an aggressive global concept, perpetuated by the Medias, that sets images and benchmarks that stimulate Third World aspirations. It is a homogenizing force that, in practice, treats the city as a palimpsest in the process of imposing imported gentrifying forms. In contrast GNH, although imposed by Bhutan’s ruling elite (parallel with plans for democratization), is an indigenous concept based on the old and deep-rooted cultural traditions and beliefs, and is proposed as an alternative to Gross National Product (GNP) as measures of society’s ‘wealth’ and ‘well-being’. This concept is arguably more consistent with the softer, more humane globalization of ‘sustainability’ that is responsive to local cultural, socio-economic contexts.

The case posited here is that for any real chance of ‘peace’, of which sustainability forms a critical foundation, it is argued ‘developing’ societies and ‘minor’ cultures must have roles in the process of glocal ‘development’. The hegemonic capitalist model, while exploiting social ties and the environment, also projects images that perpetuate the cultural ‘identity theft’ begun with 19th century European colonization. This process leaves the developing societies culturally insecure and chasing ‘mirages’ of unattainable material riches (or attained only by the few).

That is why concepts such as GNH, laughable it may be from the point of view of consumerism, needs to be given space to develop and grow – in a time, pressed on by global ecological problems, when alternatives are clearly needed. Evidence of environmental impacts of GNP based development, particularly of climate change, has prompted many in materially wealthy societies to realize that their way of life is unsustainable. In an election year in Australia, it remains to be seen, amongst the electorate, how wide-spread and deep this realization is. Will Australian voters reaffirm the phenomenon of ‘hip-pocket’ democracy, a common characteristic of capitalist, liberal democracies? Or will they take a step towards becoming a ‘sustainable’ democracy where social and ecological ties are truly valued as part of a re-conceptualized societal ‘wealth’?

Although it is difficult to clearly discern society’s priorities in the complexities of issues and events around elections, the significance of the images and messages of environmental concern should not be underestimated. It points to a possible – and critical – alliance, however superficial that may seem, between voters in rich societies and the myriad grass-root movements in poor countries resisting exploitation from the rush to ‘modernize’. In an increasingly networked world, this can potentially evolve into empowering narratives that dialectically tie local concerns with the global, which could assist local people everywhere in maintaining/re-establishing their socio-cultural ties and ties to the environment in the search for and negotiation towards alternative, more sustainable developmental paths.

Dr Sidh Sintusingha
Architects for Peace, June 2007