“Beyond
Plague Urbanism” by
Andy Merrifield, 2023
This book grows out of the CoVid epidemic in New York City,
reflecting on its empty streets, lack of traffic, howling sirens, fear of
infection and isolation. As you might remember in New York, many got sick or died
until masking, distancing and vaccines became prominent. It is written in an overly literary
style and references, which should probably be banned when talking about social
policy, as it becomes more about the writer’s erudition than the issue. But I digress.
What does Merrifield suggest, outside of the Baudelaire,
Rimbaud and flâneur references?
1. The
‘social contract’ is necessary for a city to live together. ‘Freedom’ without responsibility to others is
not possible. That is anti-social
individualism.
2. Rent
control.
3. Rent
control for small businesses, which are disappearing.
4. City
seizure of property that is handled badly by landlord capital.
5. Referencing
Henri Lefebvre and the Paris Commune, he insists ‘the city’ is a festival of
the citizens, not a hostile power over them.
6. Lefebvre
demanded a ‘right to the city’ where public-use values not corporate exchange-values dominate in the “secondary circuits of capital” of rent and real estate speculation.
7. Merrifield
goes into the benefits of density and the problems of overcrowding. Overcrowding inside small living spaces due
to poverty led to more CoVid deaths
8. He
celebrates main streets, high streets, promenades, malecons, boardwalks and
boulevards that draw social crowds.
9. Studies
showed that communities that came together to deal with CoVid did better health-wise.
10.
Urban removal and evictions deeply affect those
who lose their homes.
11.
Corporate chains brought sterility and
sameness to high streets. Merrifeld’s
hilarious 3 mile trek through ‘ye olde
London’ is full of chain stores, glass and steel high-rises & empty store-fronts
until he gets to a real street – Marchmont Street.
12.
New York corporations find it cheaper to work
remotely than renting office space, killing street life and small businesses in
the city, along with taxes and transit.
13.
Billions in public money in New York went to a Buffalo
Bill’s sports stadium and mega-projects like the ‘luxurious’ Hudson Yards – an
empty joke seemingly imported from corrupt desert kingdoms like Abu Dhabi.
14.
Merrifield, riffing off of Leopold Bloom’s favorite bar
in Ulysses, Barney Kiernan’s pub,
discusses a similar ‘moral’ New York bar, Coogan’s, a ‘third’ social space. Coogan’s closed after CoVid.
15.
He goes
to an Eco-Cities conference in Australia where everything essential is removed
from the conference document – about coal, oil, meat, degrowth. The ‘most livable cities’ like Sydney and
Melbourne are sometimes also the most expensive.
16.
Somehow ‘livability,’ ‘sustainability’ and
affordability don’t go together.
17.
Due to climate change, war and political
hostility, up to a billion people will become refugees, seeking solace in a
city. It is already happening. Instead
they will find temporary shanty-towns located ‘nowhere’ outside cities.
18.
Cities are more progressive than capitalist
nation states according to Merrifield, pointing to a “United Cities of America.”
19.
Memory of times before harsh neo-liberalism are
necessary in order to combat landlords, city collaborators and lawyers.
20.
He promotes Melanchon’s French party, the “New
Popular Union of Greens and Socialists.”
But as to overall solutions, they are only hinted at.
No mention in the book of the word ‘gentrification,’ urban
gardening, the damage of capitalist-generated poverty and the unhoused or the need
to ban many high rises and skyscrapers. Others might find similar absences, like who
runs cities? Who runs the police
force? City councils? Or the power of real estate developers and
corporations, though this is hinted at. The issue of who owns the land is never approached.
Climate change is telling us our urban and especially
sub-urban housing and business environments are improperly built and
car-dependent, leading to sprawl and building in improper locations. While the ’15 minute city’ without cars is
still possible in many places, including New York and London, it’s not in many
more, especially in the U.S. New
construction or retrofitting of housing is also lacking. There are no controls on new housing – requirements
for grey or cistern water systems, heat pumps, electric / induction stoves and electric water
heaters, solar panels, hemp concrete, reusable materials or limitations on size, among other things.
This is all left to the stupid ‘market’ - which is one reason why climate
change will destroy us. He mentions none of this.
The book is basically a celebration of and a plea for the
renewal of cities, which are really the heart of societies all over the world. Merrifield
celebrates Jane Jacobs and Mindy Fullilove; Theolonius Monk, Jackson Pollock, Ulysses, Andre Kertesz and Surrealism, along with others. He’s some kind of traditional left-liberal
urbanist and if that is your thing, buy the book.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “How to
Kill a City,” “Rebel Cities” (Harvey); “Extreme Cities,” “Capital City,” “From
Factory to Metropolis” (Negri); “Tales of Two Cities,” “Minneapolis 2040
Housing Plan,” “A Walk Through Paris,” “The Beach Beneath the Street.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
September 16, 2023
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