City of Equals

Front matter

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Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit

Preface

Consider the photo on this book’s cover. It was taken in 2004 by the Brazilian photographer Tuca Vieira and immediately caused a sensation. Vieiras goal was to show Brazil’s ‘brutal inequality, as he explained in an interview in The Guardian (Vieira 2017). It shows part of the Paraisópolis favela in Sao Paulo, side by side with Morumbi, a very wealthy neighbourhood, in the southwest of the city. Obviously, upon seeing this photo the first thought that comes to mind is the shocking material gap. On one side people enjoy luxury, economic stability, and the prospect of high-quality leisure time (even if they are not seen there to be using it). On the other side, people are struggling just to get by, desperate to find jobs, and in the heavy Brazilian rainstorms their crowded and hastily constructed homes are liable to flooding.

Nevertheless, there is another aspect that appears on a closer look. While the tennis court and the swimming pool in Morumbi seem empty, and no one is using those curious water facilities on the balconies, in the favela people can be seen walking, and stopping to talk to each other. There is a sense of community in the favela, but in the high rises, Vieira, it seems, wishes to show both a colossal waste of resources and the alienation of people from each other. But what also becomes evident, and strikes hard, is the line that separates the two neighbourhoods in a single city. It is a wall, that distinguishes, excludes, and defines people living more or less next door to each other as us and them. This seems to us nothing but humiliating. When we showed this photograph to our students the most common reaction is that it is deeply depressing that people can become habituated to such indifference to each other. Although this photo depicts just one small part of one vast city, what it represents is present—overtly or disguised—in cities all over the globe.

In the interview Vieira talks about how he feels about what the photograph depicts, taking into account many issues which go beyond material inequality:

The unjust and brutal difference between rich and poor, inherited from slavery, is in the origin of many other problems—violence, below-par schooling, prejudice and many other issues. Inequality means that someone who is poorer is obliged to work more, so they have no time to study, which impacts on their education. As a result, they are not able to develop the critical and political awareness necessary to transform their own situation. Add to this the absence of any sense of the

Preface vii collective responsibility or solidarity among the privileged in Brazil, and you have a closed circle that is very difficult to break. (Vieira 2017)

In previous work we described this as ‘clustering of disadvantages’ (Wolff and de-Shalit 2007). Here we want to stress that while the material inequality of the picture is dramatic, Vieira is especially concerned with forms of what are often thought of as social or relational inequality: the physical and symbolic walls that separate and exclude, the prejudices and suspicion which alienate, all of which create a situation whereby members of the same spatial community do not regard each other as equals. But, more encouragingly, there is evidence that within communities such as the Brazilian favelas, despite mental health challenges and the constant threat of violence, strong, supportive and protective, social networks of families and friends develop, even if, sadly, those networks terminate at the favela boundaries (People’s Palace Projects and Redes da Maré 2020).

In this book we argue that a city of equals is not defined merely by reference to gaps in wealth or income, but rather by being able to secure a sense of place to all its residents despite economic differences; a sense of place as a member of a city as a whole, and not simply within a very local area such as a very restricted neighbourhood. Focusing on a secure sense of place might appear counter-intuitive. Income equality, it will be said to us, is surely the most important component of equality in the city. This derives from the basic egalitarian intuition that because income and wealth are highly important for achieving whatever goals one has in life, equality in income or wealth are of central concern. We do not deny the importance of material and economic factors. However, as we argue in this book, cities differ from states in many ways, which raises the question of whether equality in the city should be analysed as a type of micro case of equality in the state, as if cities are micro-states. We argue against this view. For example, if we were to rank major US cities in terms of embodying what we will sometimes call ‘the egalitarian spirit; in the sense of exemplifying features that egalitarians value, Berkeley California would probably come high on anybody’s list. But Berkeley also has very high income inequality, as it attracts both multi-millionaires and (due to its liberal ethos and reasonable weather) those who have nowhere to live but the street. Therefore when the Gini coefficient of 300 cities in the United States was calculated, Berkeley was found to be the tenth most unequal with a high Gini of 0.5438. The lowest quintile in Berkeley receives only 1.42 per cent of the city’s total household income, compared to 55.42 per cent received by the top quintile (Knobel 2014). In this sense, perhaps paradoxically, financial inequality in a city can be a sign of inclusiveness, provided, of course, it is not viii Preface accompanied by spatial exclusion, gated communities, ethnic discrimination, and the like. Contrast Berkeley with a city that has few poor people and very low ethnic diversity. It may do much better in terms of income inequality yet sounds, initially, rather unappealing to those with the egalitarian spirit.

The idea that a city of equals is a city where all residents enjoy a secure sense of place is itself difficult to describe in detail, though our aim is this book is to achieve an explanation by analysing it as consisting of four ‘core values’ of a city of equals (non-market access to goods and services; sense of meaning; diversity and social mixing; and non-deferential inclusion) and several further themes related to each of these core values. We are writing to articulate the implicit understanding of the values of the city held by those who wish to live in circumstances in which they can regard themselves and others as equals, and that this perception of equality is not simply a matter of subjective feeling but is underpinned and reinforced by the underlying organization and arrangement of the city. We hope that those who share the egalitarian spirit will recognize what we say as a statement of their own values. People who share such values with us, the authors, don’t wish to look up at those above them or down at others. They oppose snobbery and servility, and seek ways to include everyone in the material and non-material benefits of the city, rather than blame poor or marginalized people for their condition, or to exclude them from society. In other words, we argue that this egalitarian idea should appeal to those who wish to live in a city that is inclusive and welcoming, regardless of race, gender, age, sexuality, religion, disability, social class, or any other characteristic that sometimes drives people apart. To clarify, in this book we do not set out to argue that people should have the egalitarian sentiment, or spirit (although, of course, this is something we believe and have explored in other work). Rather we want to understand what makes some cities more congenial than others to people with that spirit. This, in turn, may help guide city policy in the future for those cities that aim for equality.

It is often the case that political philosophers and theorists apply a critical approach to whatever they study, and although this book follows that general approach, it is, perhaps, less critical than others may have been. For it is written by two urbanites who are in love with their cities. Jo has spent almost all his adult life living in London, and even as a child never lived more than just a short trip away, and Avner grew up, and has made his own home, in Jerusalem. We might not always like every aspect of our cities, but we love them. Moreover, we both believe that when things go well cities can indeed be inclusive and offer a secure sense of place to all their residents. To borrow a term from the late sociologist Erik Olin Wright (2010) we believe that such a city is a ‘real utopia.

Thanks and Acknowledgements

We would like to thank first and foremost our research assistants, Jakob Tonda Dirksen, Katarina Pitasse Fragoso, Tal Eldar, and Tal Alster, who were extremely helpful not only by conducting many of the interviews, but also in offering critical input and valid ideas. We have discussed the ideas presented here when they were still half-baked, or not even that, in various seminars, lectures, and mini courses, some online and some in cites, including Abu Dhabi (NYU), Athens Georgia, Bern, Durham, Jerusalem (the Hebrew University), London, Lund, Macerata Italy (The Giacomo Leopardi School of Higher Studies), Melbourne (Monash University), Oxford (Blavatnik School of Government), Portland (The Philosophyofthecity association annual meeting), Princeton, Rio de Janeiro, Rotterdam, Sapir College, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai, as well as during a special summer course we taught in Dubrovnik on behalf of the South East Europe Center for Advanced Studies. We warmly thank the organizers and participants, for their fruitful, helpful, and indeed challenging questions and suggestions. We also thank our students at Oxford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for their comments and questions while we were teaching our seminars in political theory and urban political theory.

Many individuals read parts of the manuscript or discussed our ideas with us. For very fruitful comments, suggestions, and points of criticism we would like to thank Rana AlMutawa, Tal Alster, Daniel Attas, Helmut Aust, Alice Baderin, Jana Bacevic, Nir Barak, Ana Barone, Ori Bechor, Daniel Bell, Galit Binet, Petar Bojanic, Nico Brando, Noam Brenner, Arina Cocoru, Elaine Collins, Maria Dimova Cookson, Jamie Draper, Tal Eldar, Marian Giannotti, Lior Glick, Daniel Guillery, Paul Heritage, James Hickson, Merav Kaddar, Aaron Kaugman, Hazem Kawasmi, Volker Kirchberg, Elizabeth, Kahn, Margaret (Peggy) Kohn, Pilar Lopez Cantero, Hélene Landemore, who actually suggested the book’s title, Patti Tamara Lenard, Pedro Lippmann, Pedro Logiodice, Gil Maymon, Marco Meyer, David Miller, Dan Miodownik, Giuliana Pardelli, Katarina Pitasse Fragoso, Rahul Sagar, Yael Shmaryahu Yeshurun, Ron Sundstrom, Bianca Tavolori, Bart van Leeuwen, Paz Yaacov, Nechumi Yaffe, Daniel Weinstock, and Steve Welch.

We also want to thank the three referees whose comments and suggestions were sharp, insightful, and constructive. Authors often complain about the x Thanks and Acknowledgements referees, but we genuinely believe that their suggestions helped us to significantly revise and improve the manuscript. Working with Dominic Byatt, OUP’s editor, is always a pleasure, and we thank him for making the submission process so smooth and painless. The production team was incredibly helpful. We want to thank Marten Sealby, Phoebe Aldridge-Turner, Raja Dharmaraj, and Susan Frampton.

We also thank from the bottom of our hearts the 182 interviewees for their time, for sharing their world views with us, and for insightful discussions of the questions we posed to them. This book would simply not exist without their generous cooperation.

Part of this research was conducted with the financial help of the Alfred Landecker Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation, and the Max Kampelman Chair for Democracy and Human Rights at the Hebrew University, which we gratefully acknowledge.

Finally, we would like to thank Elaine, Yifat, Max, Daniel, Hillel and Shiri, for their patience, support, and encouragement. We hope we have not been too unbearable while working on our research.

This research, to the best of our knowledge, is first of its kind. Our methodology combines philosophical reasoning with interviews with city-zens in ten cities in six countries. One of the key elements that strongly emerged from the interviews is that in a city of equals a person’s ability to enjoy a meaningful life should not be fully determined by their economic resources. We therefore arranged with the publisher Oxford University Press (with the generous support of the funders of our research The Alfred Landecker Foundation and the Max Kampelman Chair) that this book should be published Open Access so that it should be accessible and free to whoever wants to download and read it. We shall be more than happy to read your comments, and given how the world is these days, our email addresses are not difficult to find.

Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit

Contents

The Research Question What Is a City?

The Egalitarian Spirit Methods

The Argument in a Nutshell Conclusion

2.1. 2.2.

2.3, 2.4. 2.5. 2.6.