In an economy with uncertain markets and changing
conditions, partly due to globalization, the most advanced and speculative
sectors need concentrations of resources and talent, dense environments
where information does not simply circulate, but gets produced."
For this reason, the rise in living standard going hand in hand with the
growth of the big cities has to be implemented towards a politics of
sustainability. Otherwise, the gap between the highly-paid professions in
the business service sector (banks, insurance companies, but also
advertising agencies) and the lower paid jobs would grow even wider -
social imbalance would get the upper hand, while the creative and social
potential of the metropolis would become paralyzed.
Rachel Whiteread: Demolished, 1996, Deutsche Bank Collection
In New York of the nineteen-seventies, this gap led to a concentration of
poverty in the ghettos while the better paid parts of the population fled;
this resulted in a loss in tax revenue, and the city became bankrupt. The
city was only able to recover with great difficulty in the mid- to late
eighties. At the conference, London's mayor
Ken Livingstone formulated an entirely different example. In the course of
urban restructuring, the Millennium
Dome turned the Docklands
area at London's East End into one of the leading economic, cultural, and
trading centers of Great Britain. Yet the city wasn't prepared for this
development: it still doesn't possess an adequate infrastructure capable
of coping with the increase in local traffic - there aren't any bridges
spanning across the Thames into the new area of concentration, no tunnels
leading underneath. For this reason, the
Thames Gateway Project is currently underway, which is primarily working
towards an improvement in transportation facilities and a better blending
of residential and commercial space so that this part of London doesn't
turn into a pure business district that dies down each evening.
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Philip-Lorca di Corcia: London, o.J.,
Deutsche Bank Collection
Another
interesting point of Livingstone's illustrations is his assessment of
community involvement. He quotes an opinion poll of the British daily
newspaper Evening Standard ,
according to which 80% of London's population wouldn't invest public
funding into the improvement of schools and hospitals, choosing instead to
invest it in London's bid for the Olympics. In the end, Livingstone
actually committed himself to making the British capital the home of the
2012 Olympics - in order to help propel the "Thames Gateway Project." In
his mind, Barcelona had once again set a good example by completely
modernizing its seaside areas for the
1992 Olympics. The fact that certain parts of the historical city center
suffered in the process, however, turned out to be a failure both in terms
of urban planning and tourism. But Barcelona has learned its lesson in the
dangers of urban planning zeal. Not only the upcoming Mayors' Conference
testifies to this, but also the new perspectives Forum 2004 will be
outlining in the name of other major cities around Europe.
Philip-Lorca di Corcia: Cuba, o.J., Deutsche Bank Collection
Translation: Andrea Scrima
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