The City of Everyday Life

Abstract

My argument in this paper is of crucial importance for the micro-spaces of the city, for the conduct of everyday life, social reproduction, and the construction of social meanings. Meanings are created wherever the built environment and the rhythms of social life coincide. In the perspective of its inhabitants, then, the city may be thought of as a dense, complex, and often contradictory web of meanings that, however difficult to disentangle, are yet essential to the good life. Unfortunately, these meanings are difficult to represent persuasively at the points of strategic decisions. And so they remain largely invisible to the planners of state and private capital as they endeavor to shape (and reshape) the city through comprehensive plans and large-scale projects. Given this lack of representation, dynamic change occasioned by planned interventions that are conceived at macro- and meso-scales frequently leads to the alienation of the city's lived spaces, causing widespread anomie, destroying individual as well as social meanings as well as community bonds, and deepening an already pervasive sense of powerlessness on the part of local inhabitants. Over time, the anti-city of drugs, crime, and violence becomes a preferred way of life particularly for many of the young people of disempowered groups whose life spaces are repeatedly targeted to absorb unwanted environmental, social, and aesthetic impacts from projects sponsored by the partnership of state and private capital. The answer to this problem, which will grow in severity during the coming decades in both the economically developed and less developed countries, must begin with an acknowledgment on the part of city planners of the importance of small urban spaces for the conduct of everyday life. Concerned populations must be brought into all phases of a planning process that is open to serious negotiation from the beginning. Even so, given the relative powerlessness of ordinary citizens, direct action by mobilized sectors of civil society, ranging from street protests and dramatic media events to counter-planning, may be necessary to compel the partnerships of state and capital to negotiate in good faith. The object is not preservation of the status quo but a social process of urban change that will minimize the alienation of small urban spaces and the tearing apart of the web of meanings that any city is for its inhabitants.

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