In a heavily scripted and two-party-dominated federal election campaign, Scott Ludlam, a senator from the Greens in Western Australia, spoke to me about his long-standing interest in urban life and thinking as a lab for new forms of democratic experimentation.
Cities have played an important role in the turbulent history of democracy as places of public gathering, a refuge for those who were persecuted, and a source of inspiration. Imagine how Babylon, Byblos, Athens, and other ancient city-states gave birth to the idea of equal citizens gathering in assemblies. Spare a thought for the cities of medieval and early-modern Europe. They were surrounded and fought over. Yet, they hatched ideas and practices that remain today: civility and civil societies, citizenship, and self-government through elected representatives. In cities like Bruges and Nuremberg, the struggle for press freedom began. The republican opposition to absolutism and popish rule was also a part of this. Just over a hundred years ago, in many places, cities experimented with ‘gas and water socialism.’ This included the creation of public baths and libraries, music halls, and parks, as well as publicly-funded services such as horse-drawn trams and filtered drinking water.
New York City. Anna Skarpelis
Could cities function similarly today as the drivers of bold and new political ideas and practices that are uniquely suited for the 21st Century? Do cities hold a key to our future democracy? Scott Ludlum believes they do. Ludlum is a cut above the majority of politicians in Australia. His political genes are hard-wired with city thinking and city living. He is very knowledgeable about the topic. He is a young man (43 years old) who has a lot of political knowledge. He told me at a recent breakfast that cities were becoming political laboratories. He says that sustainable cities have been discussed and written about a lot in the recent past. There’s an explosion of creativity in theory and practice. We are now at the tipping point of urban development. He adds that the future is now, quoting William Gibson. It’s not widely available yet.
Scott Ludlum is not a romantic. He’s more accurately described as a realist with imagination. This senatorial quality is evident as we discuss the positives and negatives of city life today. Let’s start with the bad. In cities, empty pockets are common, and people feel exhausted every day. Homelessness is a scandal in the City. Ludlum says that cities should be human nests and not prisons that condemn people living on the margins of society to misery, shame, or forced removal. He rejects the stereotype of homeless people as smelly, lazy, and untouchables. They are only responsible for their misery. He says that on any given night, more than 105,000 Australians are homeless. This is one person in 200. More than a quarter of the victims are under 18 years old. The majority are victims of domestic abuse.
Detroit 2012. Steve D. Hammond/Flickr
Meanwhile, entire cities are falling apart. Detroit is a symbol of what can happen when an industrial town becomes dominated by the rich. Its fabric has been ripped. Its fabric is torn. The result is slums, desperation, and collapsing infrastructure, all amidst concentrated wealth. Money is an important part of city life but shouldn’t be a lord of the people of cities. He says that just as citizens in Istanbul rose to defend Gezi Park against the government and their developer friends, all citizens need to resist blind privatization.
Ludlum, with tea and bread on the table and jam on the plate, turns to everyone’s favorite subject: cars. Will Self: I find out that he doesn’t like to talk about ‘autogedden.’ Automobiles are good for personal long-distance trips. He admits there is a lot of support among Green activists and green-minded people for a planned switch to electric cars. He explains that the problem with private vehicles is their strange spatial effects. They do more than clog up cities. Ludlum describes them as “nowhere places” or living vacuums. “Look what happened after 1945.” Cheap transport to anywhere spawned a proliferation of soulless suburban sprawl-mart developments. “Across the United States, the general pattern was that oil companies bought and then closed down trams and buses, which had become quaint due to the saturation of automobile advertisements. In Australia, there was deliberate neglect in all places except Melbourne, which has the world’s largest tram network.
Senator Scott Ludlum from his Perth office. Felicity Ruby
Scott Ludlum believes that removing automobiles from the top of the planning hierarchy will ‘reduce the obesity rate and improve public health.’ It would also help the growth of “urban village archipelagos.” His vision is networked cities, which are characterized by ‘high-density human-scale settlements connected by fast and frequent transport.’ David Rusk makes a similar argument for the reintegration of suburbs in cities in Cities without Suburbs. This vision is not possible. Aren’t there vested interests in place and bureaucracies that are unable to change? “But that doesn’t make them wrong,” he replies. The alternative is auto-mobility, which stretches cities into unsustainable shapes. Cars create pseudo-cities. He cites Perth as an example. It’s a large city by land area. It is Australia’s fastest-growing City, and current projections show that by 2050, it will be over 200 km long, with a coastline.
Leo Hollis’ Cities Are Good For You, a book that has been widely discussed, downplays the dark side of urban life. The Senator is still in general agreement with the brave effort to reclaim the City from the gripes, grumbles, and doomsday sellers. Ludlum demonstrates a good deal of common sense. He is a lucid and smart urbanist who has a keen sense of how city life can empower. He tells me that things done close to home are more meaningful. Sydney and New York, cities that are crucibles for pluralism, cultivate people’s tolerance of difference, their sense of belonging to a community, and their desire for civility. They are ‘diverse organic places that solve problems’ when they work well (he quotes Jane Jacobs). Tokyo especially enamors him. Seville, a southern Spanish city, is ‘fine-grained and pedestrian-friendly,’ he says. The City is the star of a short film that he directed and shot. Tokyo is fun and full of energy, thanks to deliberate compacting. The public transport system in Tokyo is like a ballet. It’s the best one I’ve used. It is a city that has many pockets of memories, some of which are living reminders of the human triumph over nuclear weapons, firebombing, and nuclear meltdowns.
Another reason is that the experience of people bumping into each other in an urban setting is very important. The professor quotes Hannah Arendt to illustrate how important public space is in people’s lives. He doesn’t flinch. The shared public space requires that people nurture their sense of history. The city folk must feel grounded, their feet firmly planted on the ground. Heritage is important. Cities are the custodians of collective memory. London, given my roots, is the City that does this for me, he says. ‘I don’t know any other city where i can appreciate and feel the many layers of history.’
Do cities need great buildings and wonderful places? I ask. “Yes, cities thrive in spaces of aesthetic beauty.” He then lists some of his favorite designs. Ludlum’s father was a designer, and he is a trained graphic designer himself. He knows what he is talking about. He names three urban icons as his favorites: the Natural History Museum in London, Parliament House in Canberra, which he describes as ‘cleverly-designed, functional, and full of natural materials and light’, and the Cocoon Building in Tokyo, a 50-storey “graceful woven” basket.
