Dear Ladies and gentlemen,
When we look at the development of cities from a civic education perspective, two assumptions come into play. The first is that the future of humanity lies in cities. In fact, this is a quote from former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan when he opened Urban 21, the Global Conference on the Urban Future, in 2000. At that time, already well over half of the world's population were urban dwellers - and their number continues to rise to this day.
At the same time, the trends associated with globalisation and Europeanisation have become more visible. Borders have vanished, major decision-making powers have been shifted to higher levels, and not all political decision-makers are democratically legitimated. During the early years of the 21st century, many governments around the world followed the neoliberal current and gradually and voluntarily surrendered control over markets, financial systems and transactions. Local authorities across Germany have either privatised a significant number of their assets or transformed them into public-private partnerships. Social housing has been severely neglected, with particularly bitter consequences given the current refugee crisis. Demographic change is another source of worry for cities.
Having said that, urban dwellers across Europe had and still have comparatively little to worry about. In the slums of the world's megacities, the socially vulnerable, as well as children and young adults, suffer most from poverty, pollution, unemployment and the lack of municipal services. In 2000 Kofi Annan called for greater decentralisation and stronger powers for local authorities as well as for sufficient municipal funding. Strong cities don't imply weak national governments, he suggested; on the contrary, strong cities enable higher levels of government to thrive.
The second assumption revolves rests on a study commissioned by the Federal Agency for Civic Education to find out whether people who identify as apolitical are genuinely disinterested in politics. The results of the study were hardly surprising. It found that many citizens are indeed more interested in issues and problems that touch upon their personal lives and environments than in the political issues being debated "up there". However, most respondents did not equate their interest in local issues to a genuine interest in politics. In recognition of these insights, for years the civic education community has called for a wider interpretation of the term "political sphere", and has recognised that participatory structures that allow citizens to become involved in shaping their own environments are a core element of democratisation.
In Germany and beyond, mass democracy and a broader interpretation of political spheres have led to problems involving the legitimacy of political authority. Take Rousseau's Social Contract of 1762, for instance. He had some fundamental things to say about the city as a place of reference for citizens in pursuit of the common good. Of course Rousseau had no concept of today's mass societies in a globalised world. He argued that free citizens could only assert their democratic rights in an environment resembling that of the city-states of Antiquity. He believed that a political unit that is any bigger than a small local community, where individual citizens can raise their voices during an assembly, is no longer capable of democracy. In a representative parliamentary system, Rousseau suggested, civic liberty is an illusion. Without a city, without a public platform, citizens lack the points of reference they need as they go in search of freedom, self-realisation, identity and discourse.
In today's digital age, do we really still need the agora, an urban gathering place, to articulate our political desires? I would say "yes and no". Previously, the hallmark of the elites was their public visibility; today, it is their privilege to remain invisible if they choose to. The domain of the political actors is the parliament, while in the digital world of today, people air their political concerns for the most part online. However, we still see demonstrations, industrial action, election campaigning, protests and symbolic actions out in public, in the street. Collective memory and commemoration, too, are phenomena that do not translate easily to the virtual world. Finally, our cities and their individual faces are manifestations of our collective memory. They bear visible witness to our history, both the good and the bad. Each society is on the search for an architectural language that best represents its system of government - Berlin is a case in point. The destruction of cities is traumatic and painful for humans - just think of Dresden or Aleppo. This is because cities, as human habitats, are a source of identification for us.
I hardly need to mention the impact our economic system has had on our cities. You can all visualise the same run-of-the-mill shopping streets from which genuine retailers have all but disappeared. The vast majority of these districts differ only in terms of the wealth of their residents. In poor areas, the high street is full of cheap shops and discount supermarkets. Where there is wealth, there is Prada and Gucci. The only interesting observation here is the fact that shopping malls and outlet centres present people with a "fake" public space that is so convincing that shoppers fail to notice when they leave the city and enter a pseudo-public corporate environment. Corporations would not do this if the public space had lost its relevance.
In conclusion, allow me to talk about how cities are changing as we transform from an industrial to a cultural society. The concept of local self-government appears modern, yet it actually predates the democratic civic rights as we know them today. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his work Democracy in America, reports with enthusiasm about the local administrative structures that he encountered in New England. He subsequently designed a system of strong, self-managed local authorities, traces of which appeared in historic Germany's cities and city-states and are even still visible in modern-day Germany. Still, it took a long string of reforms until local authorities embraced the modern age and developed mechanisms by which citizens could contribute input towards municipal projects and functions. Today, participatory budgeting has become a common financial administration tool and a way to enable citizens to have a say in public construction projects. In the course of modernising municipal structures, and motivated by the acceleration of European unity, artists and civil society groups initiated supranational movements and initiatives that dealt with urban development, the public sphere and modern societies. Over the last ten years the Federal Agency has funded and/or provided input for a large number of projects on urban spaces as an educational setting. Most of these projects aim to examine the significance of citizens' participation in decisions that affect their personal environments.
For instance, we provided funding and advisory services to a project entitled "The new patrons", under which citizens install a work of art in the public domain to represent a shared public concern. With our support, they were able to organise meetings in preparation for the installations; we also put them in touch with artists who were open to the idea. In this way, citizens have become "patrons" who commission these public works of art.
Last year we provided funding for a conference of artists whose project "The Art of Being Many" examined modern forms of assembly in democratic settings. They wanted to take a closer look at the phenomenon of "being many" and share, discuss and try out the techniques, strategies and theories associated with democratic assemblies of citizens.
For a number of years we have supported an initiative entitled A Soul For Europe which deals with urban projects across the whole of Europe. Its aim is to foster a sense of European identity and make this identity visible by creating a cross-border network of pro-European initiatives by artists and civil society groups. We don't support the initiative for idealistic reasons - we do so because we believe that art is a basic prerequisite for ensuring that our societies remain viable and forward-looking. Creativity generates impulses that our transcultural society needs to survive. And here in Europe we should also pay heed to an aspect that was recently highlighted by the former President of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Klaus Staeck, when he stated that - and I quote - politics in Europe is largely unattractive to the younger generation. We need symbols and rituals, art and public attention as a source of orientation and identity. Our minds must remain open and creative so we can continue to reflect and redefine our personal and collective identities.
Examples of this are the metrozones project, Citizen Art Days and the We-Traders movement.
I hope to have given you some input to consider as we discuss the idea of the urban environment as an educational setting. Thank you for your attention.
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