As so many large, ex-industrial harbor cities, Goteborg (Gothenburg) also expects cultural investment to fix all the urban planning failures of the 1960-70s and make the place attractive for the creative classes, now that the industrial working class is being downsized and nudged out from the economy. The essential impossibility of such expectations was amply revealed in the CityScape conference, held in Goteborg at the end of August as part of the Black /North SEAS fall season, spread among several Nordic cities. A group of urban planners and architects, academics and artists, politicians and civil servants discussed the postindustrial transformation of the cities, rehabilitation projects, artistic practices, educational focus of museums, regional cooperation and border-crossing mobility.
Large scale interventions in the urban core are always controversial and sometimes traumatic, even if driven by the best intentions, promises of citizens’ input and public sphere improvement. In reality, corporate interests prevail over the public ones, not the quality and livability of urban space go up but the prices of the real estate. If the city owns the ground and runs an urban development corporation as a privileged virtual monopoly, as in Goteborg, gentrification is an almost inevitable outcome. As the harbor is displaced further away, the liberated shoreline is delivered to the upper class housing with a fine view. Former Gastarbeiter and their offspring remain contained in the ghettos on the periphery. It is up to politicians to lay out visions of smooth, integrated infrastructure of the urban conglomeration – but Goteborg academics who jumped into the role of urban activists reveal the sustained pattern of housing segregation and point out instances of further erosion of the public space.
A bicycle tour with an architect, organized for the conference participants, made the blunders quite obvious but revealed also the pleasant city enclaves, each with own character, cut off from a fine coastal recreational belt by a horrendous inner city highway. Goteborg stills searches for its post-industrial animus loci, obsessively commercial and relaxingly bohemian, multiculti here and high culture there, just like its Opera, exposed to the water, but turning its back to the city center, presents the classical canon of Mozart, Puccini and Wagner, but adds Guys and Dolls and Mary Poppins for a more populist tune.
When a bunch of people spend a day discussing Europe, they inevitably talk about the European cities, their troubles, failures, accomplishments and aspirations. Goteborg, Stockholm and Aberdeen dream, plan and build, Bucharest and Istanbul struggle to preserve their precious urban resources from the bulldozer assault of zealous investors. For culture to make cities livable and vibrant it needs to be inclusive, stimulating participation, searching multiple alliances and partnerships with cultural organizations and other sectors. Planners can’t make blueprints for the prospering of the civil society but a strong civil society can curb and steer the planning processes. In many places in Europe, where the real estate market has been overheating, the current economic recession is perhaps a blessing in disguise, putting on hold the intensive, even reckless build up and removing the truncated sense of urgency, thus allowing more debate and more reflection about the possible urban redevelopment course, more opportunity for the alternatives to be put together.
In early October, Black Sea/North Seas moves away from the big cities to the small leisure town of Skegness, on the East Lincolnshire coast. Once the stronghold of the vacationing working class, Skegness has been rescued from shabbiness and oblivion by the artists who turned its decayed beach cabins into a charming coastal attraction of international appeal. Fewer junk food stands, more artists joints, less of amusement arcades, more spots for a quiet reflection between the dark water and cloudy sky — that is also a revitalization strategy, built on the linkage of culture, ecology and nutrition.
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Dr Dragan Klaic, a theater scholar and cultural analyst from Amsterdam, has been following the Black Seas/North Sea progress as commentator, trainer and debates moderator. See www.draganklaic.eu